Starting CotCT party composition feedback.


Curse of the Crimson Throne


Hey everyone, I am jumping back into DM'ing after a few years hiatus, I have a group of 5 and we are going to start CotCT. My players all let me know what they wanted to play and some people gave a few options and were open. I didn't want to influence to much what they choose. And I'm not very familiar with the hybrid classes and I have read all the source material for though.

The party comp is a Bard, Warpriest, Slayer, Investigator and a Shaman.

The player that wants to play the Shaman is aware of the difficulties that may come from playing a shaman and is excited for the RP value of that.

I was worried the comp might not be balanced and they might need more arcane abilities but also think ultimately it's their choice. I have read that some think it might be easier for them in the beginning of the campaign but harder later in the campaign.

What do other thinks? My goal is for everyone to have fun.


My experience has been that curse doesn't require a particularly specific party combination and they should be fine. (Currently running book six).

It's heavily urban focused but for a single book, so there's limited use for wilderness focused abilites. Druids and Rangers won't find much to do. There's no particular point where Arcanists are needed, although always useful, and the city provides convenient access to scrolls for the most part. A use magic device character could work for any arcana specific problems.

Book 5 -requires- a cleric, or somebody who can handle heavy stat drain, fight a lot of undead, cast certain cleric spells, etc. However recognising this the module does provide a helpful NPC cleric at the time, so this is pretty taken care of if the party doesn't screw up and get them killed (or kill them or refuse to work with them)

A trapbreaker is helpful, particularly for Book 3.

Broadly speaking, fights happen in enclosed small environments - little to mid sized urban rooms - which limits area effects, flight, and ranged combat in effectiveness.(all still usable, but we've had a few fights with people stuck in doorways).

Moreover you have 5 PCs to the modules expected 4, so encounters will generally be easier across the board unless you tune them up.


Aside from having no arcane casting besides bard (which is just a buff specialist), you have a heavy dependence in Wisdom as an ability score and boosters that would be helped by having someone move to Int or even another Cha score dependency. While Reverse is correct regarding some specific use Arcane magic being handled by scroll, ensuring you have the right scrolls for any circumstance can become expensive, especially when you are forced to leave the city. I also disagree with his comment about druid's and rangers: not only is there an urban archetype for both classes, but Ranger has an archetype specifically dedicated to Korvosa (Sable Company Marine, or Sky Stalker on d20pfsrd).

Also, by book 5, the Warpriest (probably not the Inquisitor because he shouldn't waste a spell known on this) should be able to cast all the spells necessary for Scarwall, even without the help of the provided Cleric.

Another concern I have is that there is a pretty good character that can join the party as a cohort starting in book 4, but she is also a bard, so it might be too redundant to have them and an actual bard if they are just looking for good buffs but can wait a while to get them.

Lastly, while this otherwise could work as a good party line up, you have to consider that Slayer, Warpriest, and Inquisitor can all be melee or ranged builds perfectly interchangeably. Bard and Shaman really could to but they would likely opt to backline. Be sure advise them against cluttering the front line too much and stepping on each other's toes, or the opposite and having too thin a front line with everyone in the back being constantly at risk.

My best suggestion would probably be having the bard switch to a more martial focus class (Fighter, Paladin, Ranger, Barbarian, etc.) so at least one of the Slayer/Warpriest/Inquisitor can drop back to a backline/ranged role while the others offer buffing or other support in a more midfielding position to shore up the Full BAB class. It also means if someone really likes that bard in the game already, you don't have to modify her to make her useful to the team.


Thanks, to both of you.
The one player is an Investigator not a inquisitor so they are int focused and plan to be in combat, their studied strike ability requires them to be in melee. The warpriest and slayer both also want to be on the front line from talking to them. The slayer specifically was a ranged ranger in our last game and wants to do more melee. The Warpriest was considering being a paladin but decided last minute that he wanted to be a warpriest instead to have more healing.

I think I was planning on buff some of the encounters but not by much. Ill give them some feed back and see if they want to change anything before we start.


There are a lot of hard to hit high hp monsters in this campaign as well, I have two dedicated melee combatants (slayer and swashbuckler)and one melee based cleric. The cleric spent a lot of feats and has a high strength on trying to be a good fighter but only good base attack bonus makes a huge deal. He just does not dish out the damage that a fighter type class can deal.

That said my group is a slayer, swashbuckler/shadowdancer, sorcerer and cleric. A really good group that deals a lot of damage and solves a lot of problems well. But their cleric being so melee focused cannot keep up with the healing demands of the party. That is my worry with that group.


Ardent Outlaw wrote:
The one player is an Investigator not a inquisitor

Blasted dyslexia.

In any case, if the slayer and Warpriest are frontline that's pretty good. I will point out that Warpriest actually doesn't have that much healing, their "channel equivalent" ability Fervor is fairly limited (especially since it doesn't scale by ability score and doesn't have an "Extra Fervor" feat) but also consumes spell slots as normal, so unless he is wasting the entire point of Warpriest (the self buffing on top of limited cleric utility), he will likely not have much left over for healing. At least Paladin Lay-on-Hands has to be used on healing (or damaging undead, which is a terrible alternative given they can save), but the choice is ultimately up to them.

For the investigator, unless he takes infusion, he isn't really an arcane problem solver, and even then (with or without) he sorta fills the same role as the Warpriest: combat (self-)buffing. So arcane hurdles can still become full-stop obstacles. I will also add that if he doesn't want to be melee, there is a feat called Ranged Study that lets him drop to midfield (30ft range increment) and can be taken before he even gets studied combat at level 4.

Only thing left is Shaman and Bard, but they can pick up the slack of Warpriest along the healing front because as mentioned above, in practice Warpriest tends to do less healing.


The bard is a good pick in shoring up the 3/4 bab heavy classes you have. Additionally, the nice array of skills that this team can bring and it's sneaky nature can play well into this campaign. Not having Teleport and Teleport-like spells for books 4 and 5 is not a huge deal, just a note. You have some great options for the role of Blackjack. Not having a full 9 lvl Divine caster (esp. a cleric)can make book 5 a little more difficult, but that may be a good thing to try and push the players into multiple forays of the haunted castle instead of finishing it in 2 days like my group did. They also have the tools between the classes to come up with clever solutions.

Is the Shaman going for any Str? If so, hes gonna have a lot of fun early in book 4. Otherwise....Eats-What-He-Kills may enjoy his torment of the party ;)

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