I would say that one of the biggest weaknesses of the Kingmaker AP is that it is largely reliant on random encounters. I have found that my players will quickly blow up any sub-difficulty random encounters with ease. I find that these encounters are so easy because the players don't need to conserve resources. For example, if the players get a random encounter (1d6 wolves) they just dump their highest level spells without fear that they will be needed later whereas in a dungeon, you never know how deep it goes and thus save your higher level spells/abilities for the boss.
How do I increase the difficulty? I have several options that I have brainstormed, but I wanted to know the community's opinion. 1. Waves of enemies. Basically swarm the PCs with lower level random encounters. 2. All upper level random encounters. Give the PCs encounters that are 2 or 3 CR higher than the party.
What do you guys think?
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There are a variety of things you can do. One place to start is to look into the idea of encounter areas/groups. There was a thread on that in here previously. Basically what it did is if you roll up a random encounter, rather than having it be just one encounter, it was actually several encounters tied together.
Another idea I saw was to make it so that spells and such don't refresh after an extended rest, but rather refresh only after they have had a chance to get back to "civilization". This does two things: 1, it keeps them in touch with Oleg's (or their capital after Book 1), and 2, it obviously thins their resources more. Of course, the potential problem here is the party running back to Oleg's after each encounter so that they can replenish right away.
Another thing to consider is the weather and to use weather related rules. There's a link to a really great weather generator here complete with full spreadsheet that generates precipitation, temps, and allows for notes, etc. You can even seed the baselines with whatever High/Lows you want. For my campaign, I used Edmonton as the historical baseline for the Stolen Lands. What this has done is made the first month a pretty cold month. As a result, the Cleric and the Druid are casting Endure elements each morning. (The druid twice, once for him and once for his pet). At the second session, when the party was ambushed (by an admittedly high level critter) the cleric was knocked out instantly and the druid didn't have any healing available because of those Endure Elements castings. So, not only did the cleric die, but so too did the ranger after he went unconscious and nobody stabilized him.
The upshot is that you simply need to give them reasons to be careful with their resources, whether it is enforcing the cold weather rules, adding extra encounters, whatever. The other thing that I will say, is that having read through the campaign a few times now (though only having played two sessions) I do think that the main point of the campaign is the social/roleplay challenges and not the pure hack and slash challenges -- hence the prevalence of 5 minute work days, etc. Its much more about the story in this campaign than in a number of other published campaigns.
The other thing I will say (which may be too late for you if you have already started) is to remember that the APs are balanced around a 15 point buy and a party of 4 players. I went a small step further and went with a 15 point buy, starting all stats at 10 but only allowing one stat to go down to 8. This limits the high end (especially at game start) on stats which does tend to make the earlier encounters a little trickier.
Ahh yes, the Ride rules are also very good to remember. In my experience, a lot of players take riding a horse for granted, especially since my groups had historically rarely even bothered with horses. Realizing that they needed natural 20s on their ride checks to dismount without using an action suddenly made encounters slightly more difficult. Not to mention trying to keep the horses from freaking out. Also, don't be afraid to attack the horses. A worg in one of my random encounters managed to trip a horse, knocking off the rider and dealing him damage too as a result. One of the cool things about KM (in my opinion) is that it really is about exploring the wilderness while the PCs are at their most vulnerable and a lot of players will take a lot of things for granted (I've had players for instance who never buy a tent because the GM never made it an issue).
Mixing up encounter areas are good too. Encounters in water can be particularly tricky for early level PCs -- especially the heavily armored ones. Additionally, don't be afraid to have the encounters happen during the night while the party is camped. Sure, they will probably be smart enough to have somebody on watch, but the rest of the party is sleeping which a) makes it harder for them to even learn of the encounter and b) also makes it likely that they are not in their armor during the encounter. After all, if they try to sleep in their armor they'll wake up fatigued. Don't do this all the time, but doing it occasionally will really help to increase the feeling of danger in the Stolen Lands. They've remained uncivilized for a reason after all.
I used kingmaker to pay attention to the little things that players rarely think of.
Food
A lot of players don't think about stocking up on food. I made this a crucial issue when wandering through the stolen lands. Not only players need food, but their mounts as well. Remember that a large sized horse eats 4x the amount of food as a medium creature. Some characters are able to hunt for food. Those with a high enough survival check can get food for the entire party. Rations were one of the biggest reasons my party came back to Oleg's. Also rations contributed a lot to carry weight, especially food for horses.
Carry Weight
This is something that I usually don't pay much attention to (within reason). However the weight of food for horses and other basic essentials contributed a lot of weight to the PCs. I also thought that I would track the weight of coins as well (50 coins=1 lb.). It turned into a lot of micro-management, however I just delegated the task to one of the players. This turned into a few interesting encounters such as having to protect the cart of loot and chests of gold from rogue fey and bandits. Also, players had to navigate terrain with thoughts of clunky carts in mind
Weather
I have thought of this, and it contributed a lot to my story. Especially when it is raining so hard that spell-casters have to make a concentration check to cast!
Down-time
This was an interesting part of the game that I tried to take advantage of. I had one of the players print a calendar and track time. That helped when it came to weather as the time of the year would determine what type of weather system the players would encounter. Downtime also helped players make a little money on the side or create magical items.
Purchasing power
This is something that came up often. Whenever players came back to Oleg's or their town with a ton of loot to sell or a bunch of gold to spend, they had to keep it within the purchasing power of the location that they were in. Oleg could only deal 800g per week. If they needed more than that, Oleg had to make a special trip to Brevoy to buy the items they needed. This turned into a wait for the items that they wanted.
I went ahead and made a new thread for this.
Those are all pretty good points too. I'll admit that I am pretty lax when it comes to carry weight (just because I hate doing that much bookkeeping) but at the same time my players have so far been pretty good about bringing along extra horses to serve as pack horses, etc. I do intend to keep an eye on them as the campaign progresses and I have been making sure that they bring enough food, etc.
Those are all pretty good points too. I'll admit that I am pretty lax when it comes to carry weight (just because I hate doing that much bookkeeping) but at the same time my players have so far been pretty good about bringing along extra horses to serve as pack horses, etc. I do intend to keep an eye on them as the campaign progresses and I have been making sure that they bring enough food, etc.
you should delegate
At least one person in each of my groups has enough survival skill to feed the party when they need to.
Weather is amusing occasionally, but if it becomes a full blown feature of the game, it detracts from everything else that is going on. personally, I want my players to concentrate on other aspects of the game rather than coping with the weather all the time - and seeing as the Kingmaker AP takes a long time to work through, it gets boring fairly quickly. As do many of the Kingdom building / management rules.
As to bookkeeping and delegation, well we all do that in Real Life. Many of us for a living. I play this game to pretend I am an adventuring hero - in my mind, extra bookkeeping and management is for that awfully successful game known as Bankers and Bureaucrats.
Another way to discourage the PCs from blithely burning all their resources on every fight is to play intelligent wandering monsters more cautiously. On encountering the party, they might follow them at a safe distance for days learning about them, choosing the best time (from their perspective) to attack. Immediately after the party has just had another fight would be a good time...
I was thinking this as well. As a player who played through the adventure and now thinking about GMing the AP for a group. One thing I thought of was widening some encounters to small groups of encounters. Like the Tyzleford could be multiple nests along that stretch of river. A partially flooded sinkhole cavern would be a fun site.
Similarly the spider den fight doesn't need to be just one fight.