I'm having a little trouble with my party. There was already a TPK just as early as the menagerie, with a whole massacre at the jaws of That Bastard. After that we've had the little goblin investigator and an iruxi fighter die horribly digested by the jelly ochre in the Hotel's basement. We managed to work in some connections and political interests in order for the goblin to be resurrected.
While infiltrating the Skinsaw Cult hideout, both the catfolk swashbuckler and the human paladin of Iomedae died, albeit somewhat ceremoniously in the case of the paladin, who was sacrificed to Father Skinsaw with the ivory-handled war razor, yet the hobgoblin war-bard went to a bank and asked for a heavy loan to resurrect the two fallen.
Now they've been brutally beat down by Bloody Berleth, even without the aid of his minions, and the goblin investigator is once again waiting for Pharasma to say "hi" and a third loan is on the way.
The thing is: I feel the foes in this campaign are a bit too strong, and after revisiting the amount of treasure they have received this far, they are severely underequipped. Even after paying out the loans, they still are like 6.000 gp short of what is usually expected for characters at their level (they just hit level 10).
Am I the only GM who has encountered this level of difficulty moving forward?
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I was running this for 2 groups. One was quite experienced players, that group has been doing ok with a few hairy moments and a little bit of softballing/retrofitting on my part. They do consistently run into the issue that (for quite valid reasons) they try to get off the rails. This is an AP with VERY visible and obvious rails that quite often make little to no sense in world.
The second group were playing 2nd ed for the first time and they all foolishly (:-)) made characters who were actually cops first and murder hobo's second. That group I ended up with them all a level higher than they were supposed to be (with gear for the lower level characters, not characters of their actual level). That allowed me to take the gloves off a little bit (eg, have encounters run together when it made absolutely no sense whatsoever for them not to) but they still found it all quite challenging.
Short answer - yeah, it can be overtuned in places. But its not as bas as, say, Abomination Vaults :-). Paizo seems to LIKE overtuning things in 2nd edition
Yeah, it definitely sounds like they could use help based on how things are going. Based on their performance and the threat they've found so far maybe the watch will actually give them some support in the form of some tailored magic items to bring them closer to the expected wealth/level.
It could also serve as an opportunity for some training/tactical advice like how tripping/grabbing/otherwise debilitating powerful single threats may be more useful than just trying to damage race, or that retreating as a group when things go south can be a completely valid strategy. I find the most dangerous encounters are usually when the party triggers multiple fights at once or against bosses with huge stats hopefully balanced against the numbers advantage for the party.
Finally, you could try make things easier from your side to match the party's capability. Make sure to hand out hero points more often to encourage their use in re-rolling important checks while still leaving some to prevent death. Play the enemies tactics down, make some bad plays that leave them exposed in exchange for very temporary benefits or for personality reasons. There's also even further options like dropping the Weak template on enemies or omitting them every once in a while if your party is still really struggling (while still giving the original XP/milestones).
Best of luck to your party!
I'm DMing the last bit of book 5 right now.
I would say our group is doing fine. We had a big problem with that creature inside the armor in book 2, and we had our first death in those catacombs too. We had our second death at the end of book 3, with the boss rolling maximum damage at a critical hit against the sorcerer.
What I did to circunvent that awful process of cops looting people, the precint gave them gear according to table Party Treasure By Level.
The Ofalth was a tough fight. The Menagerie was tough for such low level characters. The Hotel end fight was tough.
We have a six man party, so that is helping. If you're doing this with a 4 man party, you must be having a hell of a time, especially if you have no combat healing.
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I watched a podcast that gave very good advice that im currently applying to me group of 4 new players to Pathfinder and that is to globally apply the weak adjustments from Bestiary page 6 for players that arent as high tuned, you can always ramp it up later if they find it too easy.
I think I prefer my method of just raising the characters level by 1. Pretty similar effect (raising a level gives a little more to the characters, especially at some levels) but less work on the part of the GM :-).
That was actually my first way of dealing with it, however with new players this puts them at level 2 when they havent been able to understand how to cope with combat at level 1, accelerating their learning curve when they are already behind the curve. I upped their level to 2 after the owlbear at the zoo, and I am paying for that mistake in that i made it actually too easy for them that they havent learned how to make themselves better, i just made them that way. Each to their own of course.
I watched a podcast that gave very good advice that im currently applying to me group of 4 new players to Pathfinder and that is to globally apply the weak adjustments from Bestiary page 6 for players that arent as high tuned, you can always ramp it up later if they find it too easy.
I think I prefer my method of just raising the characters level by 1. Pretty similar effect (raising a level gives a little more to the characters, especially at some levels) but less work on the part of the GM :-).
Yeah, this is one of the problems I see with the system. The difference between level 1 and 2 is huge. It was maybe more pronounced, at least HP-wise in 1st edition, but nontheles...