I'm GMing a Kingmaker campaign. Long story short, between running slightly elevated combat challenges to keep up with my very tactically minded party, and adding some additional encounters and subplots to round out the AP, the PCs are well into fourth level (almost fifth, actually) and we haven't really even started Rivers Run Red. I kind of feel like the PCs are a bit too far ahead of the curve, but I don't know what to do.
If I pull back on the challenges, they're going to walk all over everything. Reducing XP awards seems like kind of a jerk move. I've thought about switching over to the Slow progression table, but that seems like a jerk move and possibly taking things too far in the other direction.
I can keep bumping up encounters, but that just adds to the feedback loop of the PCs advancement. Has anyone else run into this issue? How did you handle it?
I'm GMing a Kingmaker campaign. Long story short, between running slightly elevated combat challenges to keep up with my very tactically minded party, and adding some additional encounters and subplots to round out the AP, the PCs are well into fourth level (almost fifth, actually) and we haven't really even started Rivers Run Red. I kind of feel like the PCs are a bit too far ahead of the curve, but I don't know what to do.
If I pull back on the challenges, they're going to walk all over everything. Reducing XP awards seems like kind of a jerk move. I've thought about switching over to the Slow progression table, but that seems like a jerk move and possibly taking things too far in the other direction.
I can keep bumping up encounters, but that just adds to the feedback loop of the PCs advancement. Has anyone else run into this issue? How did you handle it?
I think you will find that the most commonly used "solution" is "Stop using XP".
I suppose reducing the number of encounters would also work. It might speed up the campaign (which you may or may not want), but at least the PCs won't outpace the expected level.
I think you will find that the most commonly used "solution" is "Stop using XP".
I actually considered this. The problem, however, is two fold - one, since Kingmaker is so non-linear it makes choosing leveling points difficult, and two, we use both Action Points (a la Eberron) and Hero Points, both of which are resources that renew when the players level. Part of the metagame is managing those resources, and that's difficult if the players don't have a metric to consider.
Game night is tomorrow, so I may just need to sit down with my players and hash this out at the start of the session.
An alternative approach to abandoning XP altogether is per-module XP caps. The players can earn XP up to the start of the next module's level range, and then stop earning XP from the current module's content. For the first module, the cap would be 9,000 XP.
Fortunately, your players haven't yet advanced to 5th level, so if your group adopted XP caps, they'd just drop back to 9,000 and stay there until you start on RRR. It would mean that they'd spend a long time on 4th level; with your action and hero points, you could potentially say they refresh at the start of each module as well as on level up, to alleviate that problem.
We're using XP caps in the Kingmaker game I'm GMing and another AP I'm a player in, and it's working for us.
I encountered the same problem and offered my players the choice between slow XP progression and cutting some content. They preferred the second option, which probably was to be expected. So I will skip pretty much an entire book of the AP, and be more reluctant with encounter amount and bonus XP in the future.
Doing away with XP is tempting, but I feel giving my players details how they earned how much XP is more fair. And no XP means less motivation for sidequests.
And no XP means less motivation for sidequests.
This very much depends on the players. My guys love rounding out characters and doing extra stories, reward or no reward.
These are some great ideas. Game night is tonight, so I'll have a nice long chat with my players about how they want to proceed. Fortunately we're at a pretty good place to confront this right now, so whatever we decide tonight will probably set the tone for the rest of the campaign.
Everyone seems to be having fun, so I'm sure we'll be able to come to some sort of arrangement to keep things moving forward smoothly. I'll report back with what we end up doing if anyone is curious.
If they're tactical, up the tactics of their enemies - don't use the "tactics" block of the NPC enemies; they're generally pretty inferior. Play them just as smart as your PCs are playing against you. Also, give your bosses "villain points" to counteract their hero points.