I'm running a new CC campaign and am about to head into our fourth session (about 3 hours apiece, playing remotely over Roll20, pace moves fairly slowly). Thus far it's been very little combat and a lot of roleplay between the players/Kendra/handful of the townsfolk I'm featuring.
My group consists of:
Human Paladin (Undead Scourge)
Human Magus (modified staff magus archetype)
Dhampir Inquisitor (Kinslayer)
Aasimar Cleric (Gozreh)
Human Bard/Brawler (playing a Jekyll and Hyde character with two sheets - randomly switches between the LG Bard and CE Brawler based on a die roll once per session or when I say so for plot funsies)
As we get into Harrowstone proper and going forward I'm concerned about how to make combats fun and challenging (I want the very real threat of character death). My group rolled ability scores and one player (the Bard/Brawler) rolled absolute rocks, which is part of why I was OK with the Jekyll/Hyde setup which will nerf the character some. Paladin and Magus rolled around 20-25 point buys so I didn't feel the need to do anything special. The Dhampir and Aasimar rolled 10-15 point buys so I allowed them access to advanced races.
Group has 2 experienced players, one with some reasonable experience, and 2 newbies. All but one player built fairly optimized characters, and the one who didn't is the cleric so they ought to still be pretty effective in this Book.
TLDR - I have a party of 5 pretty optimized characters averaging around a 25-30 point ability score buy. My current plan is to use max hit points for all enemies, and add additional enemies to most multiple baddy encounters. Haunts I think are tricky enough not to need tweaking. Does this sound about right? Asking up front because my brain likes the idea of applying this consistently across the Book rather than, say, yes for the Lopper but no for the Splatter Man.
Thanks by the way to all the other great tips I've gotten from this forum.
5 optimized characters with that much in point-buys will likely steamroll through Harrowstone. You will probably have to adjust the encounters a little for more challenge or have them progress without a place to rest and hit them from a resource perspective. The latter might blow up in your face if they don't have the means to deal with the Splatterman while low on resources.
That said, I omitted Father Charlatan completely, mostly from a mechanical standpoint (needlessly complex, and I'm not a fan of taking over a PC this early in the game). Flavor-wise, he doesn't fit the theme of the other four. Alternatively, If you have already let the PCs learn about him, you could make him an Allip instead, that was my backup plan anyway.
Love the Jekyll/Hyde build btw.
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Thanks for the feedback. We ran a session, probably the last outside Harrowstone, and they straight mashed a CR 3 encounter. Gonna have to keep that difficulty turned up to 11.
I had thought I’d figured out how to run Father Charlatan interestingly (remote so as written isn’t an option), but I really like the idea of making him an Allip. There are enough haunts I do think it’d be fun to really get to fight another 1 of the 5, and I can run him optimally without risking character death in a semi-contrived situation.
Hello. It seems all but one of your characters have options that allows them to hit the enemies of the prison, which would be otherwise difficult do face due to be ethereal.
If you have problems, just use the environment: allows the ghosts to use magical darkness, mists or move more easily up and down, forcing your players to use prepared actions to overcome them, or modify themselves the environment.
Otherwise, leave some other undead left by the WW to kill the Pcs. If they seem very strong to you, have the Slatterman send them swarms of ants without actually engaging them, from the lower levels. Those swarms exist for 7 rounds. If they reach your players in 3-4 rounds, they can engage them for 3 rounds before disappearing.
I ran Father Charlatan as is, and in both cases it worked really well for me. I made sure to focus on the religious characters and make it more of a tug of war for her soul. But, I was trying to make it more enjoyable on the RP side of things than the game side.
but DO NOT FORGET, there is an Encounter Table for Harrowstone.
If you're not feeling like the fights are spicy enough, run something in. Play with Haunts.
I will say, you may wanna sprinkle a bit more of the spicy skeletons on the bottom floor, AND also run in the HG during the battle.
I almost made a TPK of that situation because I was able to draw in a player too close.