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So I have an interesting situation on my hands. I've been into pnprpgs for roughly 25 years, the number of actual gaming groups I've played in could be counted on one hand...
At work the other day, I somehow got myself volunteered to run a D&D game for some friends there that have never played before. I suggested Pathfinder as I felt it was an upgrade to 3.5 and I was more comfortable with PF rules, they all agreed...they kind of had to since i got roped in to run the game.
After looking through my books to get familiar with the game again, I decided to first run the beginner box adventure to 1) break them in a little 2) get them into sandpoint without worrying about detailed backstories and other fluff that may drive a timid new gamer away from the game.
Unnecessarily long backstory behind, I do have one player that has a similar level of experience to me, the party will consist of a rogue, sorcerer, monk, and druid.
My question is what pitfalls would you forsee with a party like this and are there recommendations you would make for me to any editions i should make to prevent a TPK situation?
Thanks!
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I'd recommend that you allow the monk player to play an Unchained Monk, mostly because it helps solve some of the issues that come up when playing a monk. The other three characters should broadly meet the requirements for a traditional party - you've got the skill guy, the arcane guy, and the divine guy.
http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/unchained/classes/monk.html
That class distribution is high on player cool but is a bit light on a couple game mechanic features. The monk can function like a front line melee fighter but the class isn't optimized for it. I'm sure there are raging debates out there on the interwebs that explain how wrong I am, but sometimes there simply has to be someone "out front" keeping the marauders off the soft underbelly (also known as the sorcerer.) A druid can be a functional healer but lacks access to some "fix me, I'm broken" spells like break enchantment and remove curse. The druid gets Heal two levels later and lacks access to raise dead and resurrection. Depending on how your players feel about it, play style, etc. being forced to change race to come back from death (reincarnate) can be a fun thing or a total downer. The monk and druid player, really all the players, can adjust to these limits but if they're newbies it may take a while and you may need to coach them.
RotRL specific comments below
That group should be okay in Books 1 and 2. There are undead in Book 2 but I wouldn't expect lack of a cleric to be a big challenge - though the haunts in Misgivings might be frustrating without access to positive energy.
I'd be more concerned about 3,4 and 5. In 3 and 4, the antagonists are ogres and giants - high hp creatures that move up close and smash. High AC and hp are recommended to resist them. And Book 5 is off-world. In other portions of the AP, your pc's can (admittedly with more challenge in some places vs. others) retreat to town to get fixed up - raised, etc. But in Book 5, retreat is not obvious or easy and requires some magic ability or finding specific items/locations. If one of the characters is incapacitated in an unfixable way, it may severely impact the survivors ability to proceed. And the sorceror and druid may lack spell selection to use some options - like plane shift.
Also, the magic items found in the AP (this is running on my memory now) are not very monk friendly. You can change the items (more work for you) or you can let the pc's buy what they need, which is not quite as good a deal for them - sell found magic items at half price, buy desired item at full. Great way to leach wealth out of the campaign but can create some dissonance pending wealth distribution - some players are finding things, the monk is buying things and so forth. The class heavily favored by the AP for treasure is Wizard based simply on the preponderance of spellbooks found (especially in books 4-6) and that many of the BBEG types are high level casters.
You can adjust the AP to these challenges but that means you're running it as-modified instead of as-written. Example: that group screams high stealth - sneak in, strike, retreat, lather, rinse, repeat. No loud-mouthed barbarians or paladins in their clanky armor. But that means you need to very up on all the npc perception modifiers and have a plan for how the npc's respond to successful and failed incursions - which isn't well addressed by AP-provided tactics (except in a few cases and even then only in general terms.)
Wow, I wasn't expecting such prompt responses! thanks everyone!
Misroi, I followed your link but it appears to be broken, found it on the pfsrd though, it seems more simple and doable and noob friendly as would going unchained with the rogue as well.
Skeld, yes, I plan to go slowly at first.
Latrecis, I'm not certain a lot of thought went into the function of the characters as a team, however, I want that realization to happen organically with perhaps a little facilitation from me. They're new and they want the cool factor. but if one or two or, perish the thought, all characters die, then I would hope that would be a lesson on the importance of character interdependence within a party.
Also, I'm not trying to make modifications according to what might happen right now, I need to see how they play first and help them understand the rules. perhaps lenience with the character setup and allowing retroactive changes if necessary would work out well as first time gamers. I plan to run the beginner box adventure to get a feel for what the party is capable of, then start into RotRL with the characters already more or less railroaded into being in sandpoint at the time of the ceremony hehe.
Thank you all again for the advice! I look forward to getting this started!
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Your situation is remarkably similar to mine when I began running RotRL, right down to running them in a smaller adventure before throwing them in to the main campaign.
Some things I wish I did differently:
I wish the starter adventure had been during the Late Unpleasantness... this would have given them some backstory without the long conversations to 'get to know' the town before the festival. I recognize there are other ways to do this. This also allows them to play characters from Sandpoint so that they know people and places.
I wish Pathfinder was easier on noobs to learn... Druids, most especially, as they have the most rules to learn of any class I've tried or DM'd. In general, the two at my table that had gamed before took to it, but the three that had only ever done videogame rpgs were and remain in the weeds, a year later. And these are some bright folks. This is a personal gripe, though. Maybe limit their exposure to extemporaneous rulebooks until they're ready. Do go with Unchained Monk and Rogue, though.
I was glad I had the rain start earlier, but don't start it where I did: just before Foxglove Manor. Wait until later in Skinsaw, otherwise it will have been raining longer than even a fantasy campaign can withstand.
That's it I think. Xanesha is still a TPK possibility. Don't be afraid to give them lots of Thassilon info early. Everything else is worthless advice for managing first-time players, and you can probably manage that bit on your own.
Good luck!
It's interesting you mention wanting to have run the beginner adventure during the late unpleasantness. I had been considering running the adventure at some point in the past, giving handouts of the sandpoint appendix in the RotRL anniversary book, and treating the entirety as character knowledge for ease of getting the characters in place for the rest of the campaign. Perhaps not as far back as the late unpleasantness, but back far enough for them to remain "transient" while gathering enough information simply from time spent in town to put two and two together.
As it stands now, I'm really restricting things to the CRB and APG regarding character options. the only exceptions being the unchained characters.
regarding the rain...I don't think I have made it that far yet in my read through. I'm just at thistletop and figure getting there will take this group a fairly significant amount of time.
The wealth of information that people have posted here since Rise was first printed is really amazing.
Any subject that you might have a question on these forums probably have a bunch of different ideas about - steal shamelessly.
Seeing what other people have done has really upped my game - some ideas I dont care for or propose ideas that I cant use, but the perspective makes me think in different ways about the campaign.
I'd download Wayfinder 7 at the very least.
Someone did a decent set of chase scene cards for the Boar Hunt.
And dont forget to introduce NPCs before you need to kill them.
You'll usually get lots of help here - better help if you are more specific about what you want to do.
Enjoy!
I agree with everything that has been said so far.
Adding my $.02: RotR is very much an old-school adventure path. There is a lot of combat, and a lot of dungeon crawling. As Latrecis said, this party configuration is big on cool but low on the core mechanics.
The party needs a front-line fighter. I was the fighter in our game and I took a severe beating on a regular basis. They can get away without a fighter now, but once they start going up against giants they could be in big trouble.
Agreed with mousmous that Xanesha could be a TPK unless they have a strong melee fighter in there somewhere. That encounter is deadly and it's common for at least one PC to die. (My personal opinion? It's one of the best and coolest encounters in the entire AP. Don't nerf it, add an NPC to help them if you are worried.)
its been a while but we finally got started! my group bumbled their way through black fang's dungeon...mostly backwards and are now at the begining of Rise of the Runelords! next session starts with die dog die and moves on to chapter 2 where i hope to let the players become more acquainted with sandpoint. my biggest concern is for the sheer volume of information provided for Sandpoint and making sure the players get the most out of their time there. any suggestions for facilitating this?
its been a while but we finally got started! my group bumbled their way through black fang's dungeon...mostly backwards and are now at the begining of Rise of the Runelords! next session starts with die dog die and moves on to chapter 2 where i hope to let the players become more acquainted with sandpoint. my biggest concern is for the sheer volume of information provided for Sandpoint and making sure the players get the most out of their time there. any suggestions for facilitating this?
Answer: organically. Let them experience Sandpoint while they are doing something else. They just finished an adventure - do they have loot to sell? Role-play those transactions as they find people to do business with. There are carnival games for the festival - see the Community Created sticky thread. The shopkeeper's daughter sequence could start prior to the festival as easily as after. If they are selling weapons or other loot or otherwise behaving as "adventurers," the Sheriff could look them up and give them a "We don't want any trouble here" speech - the same one he gives to everyone new in town that looks dangerous. (I just made that up.) Introduce interesting or important NPC's going about their daily life - like Brodert or Titus Scarnetti. If your players like it, keep it up for a while. If they get bored, jump to the AP festival events.
Also, responding to a comment you made a month ago (and is hopefully out of date) but I would strongly encourage reading the entire AP end-to-end before starting. It's really one long story and you need to know how the various books are interconnected and what's the underlying motivations of various NPC's. Example: there is an NPC who is mostly a side show in Book 1 that is absolutely critical to Book 2. Knowing that NPC's real motivations/situation can help you role-play early encounters and you can make sure to keep said NPC alive until Book 2.
thats some good advice, thanks, we're past the swallowtail festival and most of the way into the goblin attack. i kind of made things happen fast for the festival since we finished with black fang earlier than expected and i wasn't 100% prepared for starting RotRL. so in the fighting at the cathedral, i focused a lot on the goblins and their antics, painting a scene that could be comprable to the goblin city in The Labyrinth. after they finish die dog die, im gonna throw shayliss at one of them that night and give them a couple of days to wander around town before the boar hunt....all after the vault though. the sheriff will put in his piece and perhaps send for them for some side quests during the buildup of the final part of part two leading up to the glassworks. i hope for a killer cliffhanger.
Mostly irrelevant fun-fact: I went through RotR as a player. Our group ended up hating Sheriff Hemlock because of that speech. That, and his conveniently-timed absences as we dealt with stuff around Sandpoint for the first three parts of the first book. I think half of us thought he was involved somehow, or just outright incompetent.
A little RP goes a long way. :)
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Yes, Hemlock comes off poorly in the AP as written. It makes sense from a meta-game perspective - you want the pc's to be heroes, not NPC's. I made a few sublte (in my mind) changes to make it better:
First, make sure the pc's know that multiple goblin tribes were involved in the attack and that guards actually died. Yes, the pc's prevented widespread casualties and burning by stopping the goblins inside of town but the guardsman fought off the main assault (which may have been a diversion but still involved several goblins.) This makes the guards and Hemlock appear more competent.
Second, make sure you call out the fear in town. This is not normal goblin behavior and no one knows how they got into town unobserved? The whole town is scared you-know-what-less. Not the haunted house on Halloween scared but the bring-me-my-brown-pants, I'm putting whatever I can in a backpack and running away right now scared.
Third, do not have Hemlock ask them to tackle the crypt. While it might be presented as a "test" it just makes Hemlock look weak. One of my pc's was a cleric of Saranrae who trained at the temple so I had Naffer Vosk approach the group surreptitiously to investigate - he doesn't want to inflame the panic if it's a false alarm. If nothing else, have Father Zantus approach them discretely.
Fourth, do not have Shalelu do her exposition/brain dump about goblins while the Mayor and Hemlock are present. They both already know that information but if it happens while they are in the room, it makes them look ignorant. Have them make their request simply - introduce Shalelu - she confirms what we learned in the fight - the local goblins appear to be coalescing into one force. We can't fight them alone, Hemlock is going to Magnimar to get more forces. We'd like you to hang out in town for a few days to keep morale up. After they leave, Shalelu can brief them on local goblins at the Rusty Dragon where you can also show the friendship she has with Ameiko.
Fifth, sending the town's best warrior away on the eve of battle seems nonsensical. So give it some plausibility. Have the Mayor explain that the political situation in Magnimar is so convoluted/corrupt, any request from other leaders in town (who are all part of Magnimarian noble families) will be perceived as some kind of power play. It would take weeks for a decision. Their only chance is if the request comes from someone both credible and without political aspirations - best candidate: the Shoanti Sheriff. Call out their sense of desperation in making that choice.
The AP doesn't elaborate on when Hemlock arrives, or with what, if any, allies. I had him arrive with additional Magnimar soldiers a day before the pc's returned from Thistletop. (I had the Magnimar soldiers be disdainful of their small-town allies.) Off camera, Hemlock, Shalelu, the Sandpoint guards and their Magnimar reinforcements, went out and gave the Mosswood goblins a good thrashing. Lesson to local goblin tribes - don't ever do that again.
The problem carries over to Book 2 as well. Don't have Hemlock simply turn the investigation over the pc's. He saw the same sihedron symbol carved into the victims on a medallion the pc's have. And there are the notes with their name on it. Sure it looks like a frame but crazy stuff happened, the pc's showed up to stop it and then more crazy stuff happened. Are the pc's cause or cure? It would be best if the pc's ask to clear their names but Hemlock shouldn't jump to that conclusion without hearing their defense (such as it is.) Now when the pc's start figuring out things he couldn't, he lets them take over the investigation. He and his men do not have the skills to find the undead information at the crime scenes, etc. By the time the pc's are investigating the farms, it should be clear to everyone the danger exceeds the capability of the sheriff and his guards. Ghouls are a very different level of challenge than goblins. At that point it will make sense for some of the town's leaders to defer to the pc's.
It's been a while, but I remember enough of these incidents that I think these little tweaks would have improved our opinion of Hemlock. Especially the fifth item there, which I think is what really rubbed us all the wrong way. Like you say, it was nonsensical as written.
One of my players actually played starting as a member of the town guard whom Hemlock had taken under his wing from a rough upbringing in the traveling caravans and turned into a deputy. It actually worked great to instantly legitimize Hemlock and will hopefully keep them tied to the town in later books.
This is brilliant. One of my chief complaints about RotR was that the Player's Guide didn't give you any real connection to the town, or much of a reason to want to form one in your backstory. I believe the most guidance you got was something to the effect of, "If you aren't from Sandpoint, establish a reason to be there during the Swallowtail Festival". It was our first Paizo AP so we didn't know better.
These AP's run so much better when there's a real connection between the PC's and the central places and NPC's in the story.
I would point out that the Anniversary edition Players Guide has some Sandpoint specific traits that can connect the pc's to town.
Your point about the pc's having a strong connection to Sandpoint is probably the most important bit of GM advice for RotRL.
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I would point out that the Anniversary edition Players Guide has some Sandpoint specific traits that can connect the pc's to town.
Your point about the pc's having a strong connection to Sandpoint is probably the most important bit of GM advice for RotRL.
I can't agree more. I spent a lot of time very early introducing the town to the party, keeping the stories small and personal, introducing as many people around town as I could. The ones that interested them got more screen time; the ones that didn't moved towards the background. One of my players proposed to and married the daughter of the town cartographer, another has taken over in Jubrayl Vhiski's place after running him out of town, and a third is poised to take over as Mayor of Sandpoint after the conclusion of the campaign.
The sooner you make Sandpoint dear to your players, the more they'll care about it when it's threatened.