I am currently in the process of slimming down the potential candidates for my this AP and I have slimmed it down to 7. I originally said I would take 5, but I am not sure if I can cut 2 more.... I love the concepts and builds.
IF I do not slim down the PC count to 5 this is what I was thinking to help keep things balanced.
1) 15 Point Buy
2) Core only. If it is not is the Core Rulebook it does not exist.
3)I will not be increasing the loot. This will help keep them lower in power since the party is already large.
4) Advanced Templates OR Add extra mooks.
5) No Leadership
6) (Maybe) No Item Creation
For those who have ran this or have ran it with more PCs, what are your thoughts on the above 6 points.
1) 15 point buy will make it so that the fights are moderately easy for a group of 4. (Except for the last book... the last book is a hell of a fight!)
2) Core only makes sense as that's what was out when Kingmaker was released. But that being said, allowing other things wouldn't unbalance anything in any noticeable way.
3) I seem to recall people on here saying that there's not enough loot for even a 4 party group so not increasing it might be a problem. I don't really have an opinion on this one though.
4) I had 25 point buy and added the Advanced Simple template to nearly every fight. The main difference is that it makes the enemies harder to hit and they last longer. I don't know how your group feels, but heroes that are missing more often than hitting kind of suck. I'd suggest more mooks over Advanced template.
5) Leadership (and to almost the same degree, summoning) is always a pain in the ass.
6) Allowing Item Creation may balance out the not increasing loot part but, at the same time, might over-compensate for the loot. I'm undecided on this one so hopefully someone else has a more solid opinion than I do.
Allowing item creation would balance out it, but I know it is very easy to break it since they realistically have all the time in the world to craft. I know world events happen in the downtime but still. I have hear horror stories of people using the BPs from the kingdom to craft and things quickly get out of hand.... That is what caused me not to wanting it around.
Oh, I'd be super careful with it. I had a lot of time between different plot points but if the players try to take advantage of that it's fairly easy to sped things up.
And, thankfully, my players didn't take money out of the kingdom. They knew that they couldn't fail the checks to avoid unrest but also knew that taking money out wasn't the right thing to do. We had an understanding that there would be negative consequences even if the unrest didn't go up. (Eg: Other people on the council would've been upset and would've reacted appropriately.)
Hey, GM RelickBlackOUT. The big issue with this AP is that the nature of the party's exploration results in the "five minute workday" phenomenon. More often than not, there's only one encounter per hex (which means one encounter per day), which results in the party blowing their big spells and daily powers, and then resting overnight, and then being completely refreshed for the next hex. Therefore, I think 15 BP and FOUR players is fine for most of the campaign.
I ran the first book and part of the second with five players, and I used the Six-Player Conversion work done by community members. My party still cake-walked through most of the encounters. That thread is stickied in this forum.
So, I think your points 1 through 3 are fine, 4 might be covered by the 6 Player conversion, and 5 I think is problematic in a PbP unless the GM and players want to do a lot more work, and I have no opinion on 6. (However, if you're worried about the Kingdom Economy, consider using the very similar Kingdom Building rules laid out in Ultimate Campaign rather than the AP. They supposedly counter one or more exploits that the AP version of the rules have.)
I see that you've already selected your party. Good luck!
|
I'm also DMing this and am running RRR right now
I strongly suggest not core only
some of the most broken things were in core
further one of the "sticky" threads in this channel is a conversion guide to a 6 person party and you could further augment them in a variety of easy ways if you felt the need by adding
I would also suggest adding the monster army plot that's also pretty easy to find on these forums and use that to make things more engaging in book 2 by adding more trolls
IF I do not slim down the PC count to 5 this is what I was thinking to help keep things balanced.1) 15 Point Buy
2) Core only. If it is not is the Core Rulebook it does not exist.
3)I will not be increasing the loot. This will help keep them lower in power since the party is already large.
4) Advanced Templates OR Add extra mooks.
5) No Leadership
6) (Maybe) No Item CreationFor those who have ran this or have ran it with more PCs, what are your thoughts on the above 6 points.
I'm currently running KM with a 7 PC party (though its rare for all 7 to be there I do frequently have 6). So first, the direct answers based solely on my experiences, realizing of course your mileage might vary.
1) This is what I used. Pretty sure initial races were limited to the Core Book as well, though I have since expanded that.
2) I limited it to Core, The Ultimate Books, and APG, maybe one other, can't recall. Haven't had any issues with that, but a lot will depend on your players as well.
3) Honestly, the loot table in KM is pretty low already. I had not increased loot either and it started to really become noticeable (though I failed to increase loot more as an oversight than anything). The sandbox nature of the campaign can potentially make this an even bigger issue as its perfectly plausible that they'll skip over a key piece of loot and then suddenly be fighting a big bad without some "expected" items. I would at least consider increasing loot a little bit or even just occasionally changing an item to something that you know one of the PCs will want.(remember they sell for 50% which makes matters even worse if you don't increase loot)
4) Definitely consider the 6 player conversions thread that is floating around here. There are some great ideas there and it has the advantage of making some of the encounter areas more interesting as well. At the same time, be mindful as to how well your party handles it -- especially if you haven't increased treasure. To be honest, with my group I use it sometimes but usually not (more on that later).
5) Leadership can definitely be abused in this campaign to be sure. However, its also a campaign that can take to Leadership really well -- especially if your group really gets into the Kingdom aspect and the Roleplay aspect. I've allowed it and so far two PCs have taken it (they are only just now 7th level having more or less completed RRR).
6) I would caution against banning item creation. I mean sure, this is a great campaign for crafters, but on the other hand, THIS IS A GREAT CAMPAIGN FOR CASTERS! A lot of players rarely take much in the way of crafting feats because their characters don't get a lot of chance to use them. Kingmaker provides plenty of opportunity. In fact, I reckon the seemingly smaller treasure parcels are perhaps a direct result of the fact that this is a great campaign for crafting (IOW, they assume players will do some crafting and so have a little less payout). The other thing to keep in mind though is that if players are taking crafting feats its true that their magic item output is likely to be higher than otherwise. However, they will also be taking fewer combat oriented feats because of the need for the crafting feats. So it does kind of even out in that regard.
So keeping in mind what I have answered above and what I've done, I can tell you that my group has really struggled a lot at times. We've had a lot of PC deaths. Random encounters in particular can be downright unfair (I rolled 4 trolls during the first session -- no, I didn't have them attack, party heard them passing through though the ranger almost attacked them).
That said, some of the deaths can be attributed to the players themselves. In some cases they have taken reckless actions (either to impress their new party members, or as a result of Roleplay -- She's calling for help, I'm going in whether you follow or not). More to the point though, my group is not a group of Min/Maxxers. There's nothing wrong with Min/Maxxing, just that my players I think play so many games (most are in multiple games) that they just enjoy playing characters, not maxxing out their abilities. So a lot will really depend on your players. Are they going to think its crazy to take a set of abilities that give them 19.8 dmg/round when there's the option to take a set that give them 19.9? Or are they a group that you can go "Hey, feel free to do this, but please, just be reasonable."?
I'm fortunate that with my group I can very much say "Hey just don't go crazy" and trust that they won't, even though they are VERY experienced. I've had other groups though where I would absolutely have to wring every possible advantage out of my NPCs/Monsters in order to make the combats interesting. At the end of the day, you know your players far better than we do. Just know that while there very much is a sense of the 5 minute work day, some of those work days are still pretty brutal (especially the random encounters).
One thing I would suggest though: Roll your random encounters ahead of the session to prep for them. That way you know exactly how you want to run that owlbear that shows up as a random encounter rather than looking at the stats and running it on the fly (assuming of course you are like me and not great at running monsters on the fly).
Most importantly, HAVE FUN. If you and your group are having fun then you are doing it right!