A swashbuckler isn't bad on the front line, but as a GM be sparing with your use of fort saves (e.g. poisons) and disabling will saves (e.g. sleep effects) since they can easily be overwhelmed when their charmed life ability runs out. Or just with an unlucky roll like anyone else of course.
I'm not at all familiar with most of Paizo's APs, sorry.
What kind of healer?
A sturdy dwarf cleric in Heavy Armor (via feat) and shield? A lightly armored elf druid? A witch with the Healing patron? An aasimar oracle/paladin? An inquisitor or bard with a wand of Cure Light Wounds?
A tanky healer can support the swashbuckler and monk. An archer cleric might be a good ranged support character.
What will the monk do? Move in to flank with the swashbuckler? Act as a buffer between monsters and the party spell casters? Use the swashbuckler to flank (so the monk can flurry AND hit a lot)? Do Zen Archery and stay in the back and shoot?
A magic-based DPS will work well in RotRL. Lots of fights with lots of opponents with very poor Reflex saves. There will be opportunities to fireball a dozen ogres at once!
It looks like you'll have a pretty balanced party. Rise of the Rune Lords can be kind of tough (I've only played it as a 5th Edition conversion--and with 6 PCs in a very well balanced party (barbarian tank, ranger archer, fighter two-weapon fighter, rogue switch-hitter, cleric healer & buffer, wizard blaster & battlefield controller). A party of warriors, healers, and blasters should do well. You don't really need rogue-types.
But we had a 5th Edition ranger in our party. Besides being great at dealing damage, his spells were pretty clutch: emergency healing (saved my cleric a bunch of times--which let me then save everyone else!), a mass scouting spell, and a damaging battlefield control spell. He didn't outshine the rest of the party, but he made it a lot more survivable.
As a matter of principle, I think a good DM is *always* adapting an AP (or any published adventure) to his party.
This said, RotRL isn't a particularly demanding AP in terms of optimisation. It's designed for four 15-point-buy PCs, casually-designed, not optimised. Your party should do fine.
This doesn't mean thet won't ever be challenged, threatened, maybe even TPKed. There are some tough chokepoints in each chapter, even the first.
IMHO, the swashbuckler won't be a problem. What the party is missing is a real wizard, one who understands that a wizard's role isn't dealing pure damage.
Yes it is very possible. So long as he has a 60%+ chance of dodging the attacks he will be fine
Nameless_1, by tanky, I mean high AC/high hit points, with enough damage and/or effectiveness to be a threat to the NPCs/monsters. Not necessarily a high damage inflictor, but someone able to absorb attacks (either by avoiding them or just soaking up the damage).
I know in the past, I used to use the term "tank" to mean somebody with a high damage output, which isn't necessarily what everyone else used the term for.
But from what I remember of RotRL, most fights are groups or a BBEG with some minions. This means you can customize the fights by adding or subtracting from the groups and add or subtract minions from the boss fights.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
My party also made some dumb tactical decisions...
We took on 60+ ogres and some spell chucking giant support all at once.
We DID take advantage of terrain so we only had to fight 6 ogres at a time. We were around 5th or 6th level, so I was rich enough for full plate and shield, and had spiritual guardians, so I just waded into melee, took the Dodge action and used mass healing word ad spammed healing word to stay up, and relied on ogres having poor Wisdom saves to take 3d8 damage per round. Hitting AC 20 at disadvantage is pretty hard even for an army of ogres. (Their javelins did 2d6+4 damage!)
The others helped too. This was before we had the barbarian, so just a rogue (arcane trickster switch hitter), wizard (diviner blaster), ranger (hunter archer), and fighter (eldritch knight two weapon wielder). They all had really good ranged attacks (5th level cantrips and/or Extra Attack (& Horde Breaker + hunter's mark arrows) and the wizard had lightning bolt, which he was able to use to mow down lines of ogres.
It was pretty epic.
In one dungeon, we ran out of non-cantrip spells--and then had the boss fight! Well, bosses fight. In another, we were getting ready for a long rest, so we didn't "waste time healing" and got ambushed by a metal mage that hit my cleric with a disintegrate that caused damage equal to exactly my current hit point total, so I got dusted--and resurrected via a succubus balor wish bargain. It gave me an opportunity to try out some of the "darker" magic I hadn't used before: bane, inflict wounds, bestow curse, contagion for a couple levels until I felt like I redeemed myself in Desna's eyes.