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Hi there. A friend of mine who is relatively new to DMing but not new to Pathfinder is about to be running Iron Gods for me and two friends. We know that Adventure Paths are best balanced for parties of 4 with a 15 point buy, as I recently re-balanced Books 1-3 of Rise of the Runelords for a rolled-stat party of 6, but this presents a different balancing puzzle.
Human Priest (3pp cleric variant with wizard-like stats but 3 domains, more spell slots, and Bardic Knowledge) of Brigh (Fire and Artifice domains).
Tiefling Construct Rider
Human Transmuter (Shapechange) or Human Twinned Summoner (focusing on reach weapons).
We've been wondering about how to take this and make it a viable party. Our ideas so far have been:
- Increase our point buy to Heroic or Epic (this doesn't fix the action economy issue, so we're thinking probably not)
- Start at level 2 (same issue, but also we'd be hitting milestone spells and abilities early, so this could swing the balance off in both directions)
- One or two of us run second characters (I've proposed a melee Ranger for this). Our hesitation with this has just been the difficulty of roleplaying two characters in a scene and potentially slowing combat.
Do any of you have experience with this AP and small parties (and ways to handle that?) And what else do we need to cover for this adventure? I suspect we'll need an archer, preferably with full BAB, but beyond that I don't really know.
I began my Iron Gods campaign with just three players (Iron Gods among Scientists). We used a 20-point Heroic build and I gave them more money for better gear. However, the main point of balance was giving them a 1st-level NPC to help.
Two of the three characters took the Local Ties trait: the dwarf gunslinger (really gadgeteer) Boffin was Khonnir Baine's assistant and a cousin twice-removed of Dolga Freddert and the half-elf magus Elric was Khonnir Baine's field agent. Thus, in the first campaign they brought some concerns directly to Councilor Dolga Freddert. The town appreciated their discretion and offered one of the town guards or maybe an acolyte of Brigh, both 1st-level characters, to acccompany them in the caves.
My players picked someone else. I had added 4 more years to Khonnir Baine's time in Torch to better accommodate Boffin's backstory, and that had aged Val Baine to 17 years old. They invited her along as the 4th member of their party. Kirii, the strix skald, argued that she deserved a chance to search for her father.
My prior campaign had been Jade Regent, so I had practice in running important NPCs along with the party without stealing the glory from the PCs. I successfully managed this with Val, too. She was a fusion of the three characters, a gunslinging bloodrager, and she looked up to Boffin as a big sister, Elric as the new boss, and Kirii as an exotic new friend. At the end of Fires of Creation, I had a perfect excuse for pulling her from the party, that her father wanted her to stay home. We had recruited a 4th player by then. Nevertheless, the players still wanted Val along, so she stayed with the party through the entire campaign.
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I think a fourth character is your best route.
Whether this is someone playing 2 characters, an DM run NPC or a NPC run by the other player on a rota will depend on the preference of the people involved.