I'm running a homebrew campaign (1st Edition) for my wife and some friends, mostly ladies. 3/4 of the group are playing Witches, the remaining player is playing an Occultist. Half of the group is very green when it comes to Pathfinder and gaming in general. One of the ladies has played PF once but is a regular gamer and seems to know her stuff, and the gentleman is a regular PF player.
Characters:
Green 1 is a half-elf, has a Bat familiar, took Disguise Hex and EH: Murksight (with the intention of leaning on Obscuring Mist). Initially wanted to be all about potions but couldn't be persuaded to play an alchemist once the Coven theme started catching steam. Picked Obscuring Mist and Ear Piercing Scream. Seems like the face.
Green 2 (totally new to any gaming) is a gnome, took a Fox familiar, Improved Initiative (option overload happened when picking a feat and I recommended it) and the Flight Hex. Picked Bungle and Hypnotism. Wants to be very nature-themed but couldn't be persuaded to play a Druid once the Coven theme started catching on. I talked her out of picking Nature's Path in favor of the Child of Nature trait. Seems like the heart of the group.
Experienced Gamer New to Pathfinder is a Half-Orc, has a Pig Familiar, picked Evil Eye and the Tusk Feat (for flavor). Relatively high Strength/Con for a Witch, picked CLW and Mage Armor. She def built her character like the witch version of a Tank, but Player 4 was still on the fence during final character creation sesh (which Player 4 did not attend).
Player 4 has indicated to me that he's playing an Occultist with a Tanky/Martial build, possibly a half-orc, flavoring the character as a the child of a witch who wants to distance herself from the magic world and develops magic powers despite herself. It's possible that before we begin EGN may relax some of the tankiness of her build as a result.
Training Wheels: The two greenest players have now had two character building sessions with me(and one is married to the DM). During session 2 my wife asked "how much stuff can I buy?" I shrugged, reminded her she had a hundred gold and pointed to Ultimate Equipment. When she said, "Oh, just as much as I can afford and carry?" I gave her a kiss because I felt she had leveled up in taking agency over her character. Some downtime at work this week, so I'm currently in the process of printing up descriptions for all their spells and stats for Familiars, as well as descriptions of stuff like Fascinated and the Scent ability. Also, since the group is going to be traveling and acting as an informal coven, I ruled that all the familiars will pretty much share all the spells of the group (Excluding Occultist, who P4 wants to start rping as if she's not aware she's doing magic). I may also rule that Coven members can swap Familiar bonuses to give the face the Diplo bonus and the Flyer the flying bonus.
Question 1
Has anybody ever ran or played a (mostly) all-witch campaign? Can you tell me about unanticipated problems that crop up with a caster-heavy groups?
Question 2
I require advice running a group with mixed experience levels. I easily foresee a situation where everybody is digging social encounters/roleplay, and then when an encounter starts my experience gamers take over, start making "suggestions", and my green players fall asleep. Alternatively I could scale back the amount of combat for the sake of the green players, at which point players 4 and maybe 3 potentially get frustrated. And at some point every campaign hits a session that slogs, like a boss battle that takes a few sessions to get through. If my green players are on the bench or being puppeteered for one or two sessions the group will almost certainly dissolve.
I should mention that this is total homebrew sandbox, so I therefore have a lot of flexibility to provide as enjoyable an experience as possible. This campaign got started when Green 2 casually mentioned that she had never participated in a TRPG and really wanted to. Certainly it helps that we're workshopping the party dynamic and shared backstory before play actually begins.
Thanks!
Joey
First off, all witch familiars can share with each other anyway. It is one of the ways to learn new spells.
For running a caster heavy party, combat can be difficult. Most casters cannot handle much damage, and often have AC that is not ideal for combat. That said, at higher levels, spells and hexes can control the battlefield. At lower levels, learn when to disengage or avoid combat. Most important will be focus fire. The party needs to learn to work together. Point out how eliminating a single target allows the PCs a much better ratio of damage delivered to damage taken.
Also point out spells for taking out low level opponents: sleep, and color spray are very good at low levels. As to hexes, they can also be powerful. The healing hex provides a fair amount of healing to a party, especially a party with 'pets'. Evil Eye is a great debuf for enemies, and lets you use spells less.
Another way to dish out damage without making yourself vulnerable to melee is to used ranged combat. Bows are great for this. Slings are not as good, but are free and there is no reason not to have it. Damage delivered at range is damage you don't need to do in melee, allowing your time in melee to be shorter.
A word of warning about the murksight/obscuring mist plan: while this PC won't be bothered, the rest of the party will suffer loss of sight for fighting. It can work, but the party needs to understand how to use it and what it will do to combat. I think it might be best for a retreat, or to prevent enemy archers from using their bows. It will hurt melee combat.
On to training wheels. Be sure everyone knows that the experience level differs, and that the more experienced players will know what is going on and how to handle the more intense moments. The way to address this is to make sure each player gets some time to be center stage.
My recommendation is to have Green #1 be the party face. That way, not being the center of attention in combat won't be so important. For Green #2, party leader is a good choice. Having them choose what path the party chooses gives them a near exclusive role that gives them center stage for a time. The experienced players will shine in combat, and will often have good ideas for the party. However, don't force these roles. Nothing worse than being forced into a role you did not choose. Recommend this, and explain why. Be sure and tell them that they can choose different roles whenever they want, but that you think this will be a good start.
/cevah
First off, all witch familiars can share with each other anyway. It is one of the ways to learn new spells.
What I meant was that I wasn't going to make them go through the motions and that it would be taken for granted that the spells are pooled by the trio and I wanted to encourage them to work as a team as of creation.
Color Spray isn't a Witch Spell. Even with Patrons. Good suggestion though.
My recommendation is to have Green #1 be the party face. That way, not being the center of attention in combat won't be so important. For Green #2, party leader is a good choice. Having them choose what path the party chooses gives them a near exclusive role that gives them center stage for a time. The experienced players will shine in combat, and will often have good ideas for the party.
This is an excellent suggestion, and it fits with the progress made; Green 2 was the first to have solid, non-Pathfinder related ideas about who her character is and where she lives, so essentially called dibs on where the campaign starts, which is in her home. The other two witches live with her like. Ya know, like the Golden Girls.
Almost forgot: Coven Hex. Not a lot of combat utility, but good for an opening round at an ambush. Great for spells like Mage Armor. Getting that extra hour ow two can make it last so much longer. It can also enable the Flight Hex's Fly ability sooner. It enables the Healing Hex's bump from CLW to CMW earlier. Later, if you capture a Hag and convince it to work with you, you can get all sorts of coven goodies.
/cevah
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Get with your experienced player after they get the hang of Pathfinder, and figure out ways that you two can guide the group when they're having growing pains. Having that extra set of eyes, particularly on the player side, looking for folks who are either struggling with the rules or struggling with their role, gives the group an advantage as they mature in the game.
As far as other concerns, combat will be a different animal with 3 slow & 1 medium BAB classes. Expect more magic, more summons, more alternative ways to approach combat than run up and kill it. Even with a tanky occultist or witch, your group wont be hitting BAB+6 until level 8 (or 12 on the slow classes), locking a lot of physical combat utility away from the group entirely. You might even remind them that they can buy hirelings (or enthrall some, being witches and all) that might make up for their squishiness, but that will likely just draw out encounters longer than they already will be with limited quick martial combat turns.
If I were in your shoes, I would probably play more toward the magical strengths when designing encounters. Don't mob them with low level bads, unless they've got some melee backup. Instead try to mix in magical enemies (wizards, bards, etc) instead of yet another stock goblin, kobold, or thug. Traps and puzzles are also to likely get more enjoyment from a group of this composition than another extended fight.
Being so caster heavy will be a little dicey for a level or two. After that, they should be fine if they organize themselves well. The big thing is that there are types of enemies that the Witch spell list and hexes find themselves in trouble with, particularly things like mindless undead and constructs.
How often they encounter such things will be up to you, how well they plan to deal with them when they do is up to them.
As far as your combat balance question, you know your players, but unless they more experienced ones are jerks (in which case you have bigger problems) I wouldn't expect them to try and 'puppet' the other players, rather than help them to learn and be effective. In any event, the way the newbies will learn is by doing. Have some combat. Have some combat right in the first session. As they participate, they will learn.
If I were in your shoes, I would probably play more toward the magical strengths when designing encounters. Don't mob them with low level bads, unless they've got some melee backup. Instead try to mix in magical enemies (wizards, bards, etc) instead of yet another stock goblin, kobold, or thug.
My philosophy on this is different. I believe that if you customize encounters to avoid party weaknesses, you are taking away player agency as well as the challenge of overcoming weaknesses.
If the answer to 'how do we as a party overcome the weakness of not having any martial characters?' is 'The GM will make sure that we don't have encounters where we need martial characters' it isn't very satisfying to me.
That doesn't mean you specifically target weaknesses and go out to TPK the party, but avoiding a type of challenge because the party isn't good at that type of challenge actually incentives not being good at certain things. The best way to avoid traps shouldn't be making sure no one has disable device.