Hello Friends,
I am going to be running ROTRL starting Friday, and I had some questions regarding party composition and power level.
It is going to be a three man party (Two PC's, one DMPC. Yay small towns).
I believe my two players will be playing an Orc barbarian and a halfing ranger respectively. I have no idea what to make to compliment them. My first instinct is a Celestial Sorcerer who studies with clerics to get a few healing spells. It mentions in the sorcerer entry that sorcerer's can study other spells to learn them, even if its not on their normal list. I don't think I could manage playing a full blown cleric. What do all of you think?
Second, I have to wonder, given that I played through this module a few years a go and remember the numerous character deaths, that a three man party can and will be overwhelmed at times. Any suggestions to alleviate this?
Thank you for reading and I appreciate your responses (assuming you do lol).
Run Gestalt characters may give a little boost to survivability.
Or start at level 2 instead of level 1. You could even run a little pre adventure... there is something involving Choppers Isle, and in the Pathfinder comics there is an encounter written up for Junk Beach in issue 1. (I don't remember all the details, unfortunately.)
For your GMPC, maybe a bard, that buffs the other guys and also has access to some healing. Though you may need to restrict some of the more social aspects of that character.
A few random, not guaranteed to be consistent suggestions:
1. GMPC's are a challenge. More so if they are a spell-casting class. I would see if one of your players would be willing to be a cleric or wizard (or one of their many variants) and leave a simpler class for you to run. GMPC's have game mechanic equivalence to the pc's but the GM has so much else to do, they are not quite as effective. The more choices the GM has to make, the less effective they are.
2. See if your players would be up for playing two pc's each. Less work for you, more party flexibility for them.
3. In the later books of the AP, social interaction does trail off notably as a problem solving technique but it is somewhat to moderately important in the first two books. With an orc barbarian, halfling ranger and celestial sorceror, who is most likely going to end up "doing the talking?" GMPC's should not be leading the conversation with NPC's. Unless of course you like talking to yourself.
4. The AP is written for an assumed party strength of 4 pc's with 15 point builds. One answer is to build the pc's with 20 or even 25 points. It's not a perfect answer, but it'll make them a bit tougher/more powerful.
5. Calibrating for 3 characters instead of 4 is going to be much more art than science. The smaller party has fewer actions, fewer hp, and fewer tactical options (abilities, feats, spells, etc.) You'll just have to be careful about how you run the NPC's/enemies. You can reduce the number of enemies or have them engage slower. The AP helps in the first book where the primary enemy is goblins, who are reckless and chaotic combatants who don't always make the best tactical choices. I would recommend the milestone advancement method (assuming you have the anniversary edition) that has the pc's level up at story milestones. This way, you can reduce the enemies if needed but not change the assumed xp awards, etc.
6. In the later books of the AP, there are a lot of arcane challenges to overcome and arcane magic to discover/acquire. You don't have to have an arcane caster pc in the group, but you're missing out on a ready avenue to engage a player who is focused on such things.