Smallest group possible

[spacemonkeyDM]

I was wondering if any has tried to run pathfinder with a super small group of one player. Have you success with players running two characters? How does a DM running a character work out in the long run?

[Zepheri]

I have my arcanist for 5 years ago and in the first lv it's was difficult task but not impossible you need to play more smarter.

The gm first needs to check your character sheet to see how are your build. He will tell you that since you are a solo player the buy system is going to be epic (25 point). At this point you can ask if the azlanti race is available since is solo player, if not the gm can give you a extra gold to purchase some magic item or contract some follower.

Then it come the part of the gm to reduce the cr of the encounter and the number of encounter you may have.

[Neriathale]

We have a couple of third-party modules which were written for solo play, where the character class and level are set. I've played one which was for a ranger of 6th (?) level, and from what I remember there were a lot of stealth type encounters, and the fights were against lower level opponents.

With a bit of research.... https://paizo.com/products/btpy7tm7?1-on-1-Adventures-3-Forbidden-Hills.

It was fun as a one-off, but only having one player means no interaction between players, so I wouldn't want to do it as a long term campaign.

[TxSam88]

we used to run 2 character per player, or a GM run character. we finally just determined that 1 character per player was fine, and it's easy to adjust the encounter to fit. we's played games with 1 GM/1 player, up to 25 players.. (trust me, any more than 6 is too many)

[Aaron Bitman]

I've run many, many successful campaigns one-on-one. Typically, the player would play 2 PCs and I - the GM - would run 2 "GMPCs", basically treated as PCs, but the player would make the major decisions.

["Auntie" Baltwin]

Well, I can remember playing in a band of adventurers composed of a Pixie (Rogue), a Sprite (Cleric), a Brownie (Fighter) and a Pseudo Dragon (Wizard) - and I think the Brownie was the biggest of the bunch at 23 and a half inches - she was a bit sensitive about that last half inch, otherwise we'd have just said she was 2 feet tall... and she had a bit of muscle beefing her up, not exactly chunky mind you but being the strongest... what? ... (whisper-whisper)... "Players" you say? how does that... oh.

I always have trouble telling when the poster is talking about PLAYER instead of CHARACTER. Ok then. Well... I ran a game for 3 pre-teen girls. Ages 8 to 12 I think, so they were pretty small. I mean the biggest of them couldn't have weighted more than 5 Stone dripping wet. So, if you didn't count the fourth player... what? (whisper-whisper)... goodness, again? Numbers of players you say? ... oh. Why didn't they say that then? (looks back at title "SMALLEST GROUP POSSIBLE"...) Goodness...

Well, that's an entirely different group then. I mean I guess you could run a Solo Adventure, that gives you one player and one GM - and I saw a Dragon Magazine article once for a random generated dungeon that I guess you could play as a solitaire game, which would be just one... but I actually never saw it played. I don't think we could go to less than one player though. Unless we count some of those computer games. The things players do on this Web thing, you never know. I don't do it myself you know, to afraid of spiders and... oh. Okay then.

So I guess I'll just move on now...

Have a nice day!

[Mark Hoover 330]

Years ago I ran a short campaign for my daughters, ages 8 and 10 at the time. It was a lot of fun but also pretty challenging for all of us. I'm an experienced GM who is a stickler for mechanical consistency in PF; they were brand new to any TTRPG and had no idea what they were doing.

In short, we had a blast!

As for how it handled encounter-wise, I basically designed the adventures as a series of 5-room dungeons. The formula was an encounter, then a trap or social encounter, some kind of a setback (like they could see the BBEG's room but they had to cross a pit with a monster or something) and then the final "boss encounter." Room 5 traditionally is either the treasure/reward for the adventure or some kind of surprise twist or reveal.

The encounters I designed were geared towards 2 PCs instead of 4. I also gave the girls lots of potions of healing since their "party" consisted of a Wizard and a Rogue. Finally I ran an NPC Warrior 1 named Fred who essentially did whatever the girls told him to do.

I fudged a lot. For example, one of the "setbacks" involved the PCs having to get past a barred grate in the floor. It proved too tough for Fred to just bend the bars but my daughter remembered from her Science class that if you freeze metal it gets brittle. The rogue poured her waterskin all over the bars and then the Wizard cast Ray of Frost, then Fred was commanded to try and break the bars, which ended up working despite the fact that mechanically per RAW the cantrip should not have been able to get through the Hardness of the metal.

I guess my one piece of advice is that it's possible to scale adventures down to a single player or a couple, but it will take some work on your part. The monsters in the Bestiaries are meant for 4 PCs to handle at once, so a single PC with a level equal to the CR of the monster is about 1/4 as effective.

Also not the lowered action economy. Generally monsters are defeated by a group of PCs not just because PCs have superior stats and abilities but because they can take 4 Standard actions to the monster's one in a round. A reduced number of attacks from the PC side means the monster lives longer, has more chance of affecting a PC with one of its special features and so on.

Finally, you really need to think about the special abilities of the monster should they succeed. For example, if you have a party of 4 characters and send a solitary monster against them which uses Grapple as a key mechanic it's not much of a threat; while the monster grapples one PC three others have an easy target to hit.

The same monster attacking a lone PC and successfully maintaining a grapple into round 2 means that this one PC is locked into a narrow set of choices, taking automatic damage and has a reduced DPR. Complications like this also exist for monsters that inflict conditions like Blinded, Nauseated or Stunned, monsters that paralyze their victims, monsters that put PCs to sleep, etc.

Ironically the binary nature of traps in PF works to your advantage in solo play. If the PC has no obvious way to disable the trap, even better. Detecting a trap is just a Perception check, something a smart solo player will max out on their character. Once detected however, the player with no ranks in Disable Device has to really think it through: how do they avoid/trick the trap?

If for example an Oracle 7 with the Dark Tapestry mystery makes a Perception check by 5 to detect a pit trap, they might just decide to use 1 minute of their Wings of Darkness revelation and fly over it. However, if you have telegraphed that much of the adventure requires flying and the PC hasn't also taken spells/items that grant this movement type, the PC has to really consider: do I give up one minute of this to dodge a simple trap, or do I risk it and save the wings for later?

Know your player. This is the final bit of advice I'd suggest. If the player isn't great at resource management, the mechanics of the game or just RP'ing in general, a solo game with this person can be so much more challenging than it already needs to be. Make sure your player(s) are down for this kind of challenge before you throw it at them.

[gnoams]

A number of years ago, our pfs lodge held a just for fun event where players ran through pfs scenarios solo, one tier lower than their level (so like a level 8 would play low tier of a 5-9 scenario). People had a blast. Most succeeded. There were definitely situations where players lacked the proper skills for the challenge, but that also encouraged creative solutions.

[Ryze Kuja]

Master Summoners can solo with relative ease compared to any other class/archetype. The next best solo’er would probably be anyone with reliable stealth checks or someone with really high social/charisma checks. After that, tier 1 or 2 classes who focus on summons in the early game and transition into whatever they really want to do for the mid/late game.

[Name Violation]

It's possible to do a 3 or even 2 person group, if they make mechanically strong characters.

An archery warpriest and a sacred huntsmaster inquisitor work wonders. A (chained)summoner, skald, bard, or pure caster finishes a trio