Advice for balancing for my Party Composition (DM)


Curse of the Crimson Throne


Hey everybody! My group just finished our Hell's Rebels campaign and are about to start Curse this coming weekend. I'm super excited, and in finishing my preparations I wanted to ask for some advice about my party's composition before we get started! Any help would be appreciated.

My party consists of:
Half-Orc Paladin of Shelyn who uses a glaive, because it's Shelyn's favored weapon. I don't know much about her intended build, but I imagine it will be standard 2H build with some combat reflexes feats.
Tiefling Alchemist with the grenadier archetype, intending to use bombs and the wings discovery to fly out of melee range; he's mentioned wanting to develop simulacrum as well.
Aasimar Sorcerer who intends to build for blasting for the most part. Played the wizard in our Rise campaign, so I know how he plays a caster; he's going to compete with our alchemist for number of explosions.
Tielfing Barbarian with a 2H weapon and a bite attack, intending to go Lunar totem and flavor rage as a werewolf type tranformation. Very cool idea, very simple build for the most part. I'm hoping to get them to use a greatsword or falchion so somebody is able to use Serithial.

Is there anything I should be looking out for with a composition like this?


I would definitely say healing is going to be a problem for this party. Yes, ye olde wand of CLW Band-aids will keep them going through the actual HP damage, but there's lots of disease, stat drain, and other negative effects that simple Cure Wounds spells won't be able to fix.

They do get a "free" cleric in Book Five to tackle Scarwall, in the form of Laori Vaus, but there's not a lot of that in Book Two when they're getting slammed by Blood Veil. They may need a bit of help with recovering stat drain there if they keep bombing their Fort saves and picking up the plague over and over again.


The Paladin can take remove disease mercy at level 6, which is right they should realize they really need it. The sorcerer could cover healing with the right bloodlines (celestial or unicorn). Same with the alchemist, but it will really reduce their intended use.

In general it sounds like it should be a fairly balanced composition, without too much adjusting needed for balancing. They have a AC tank in the paladin, HP tank in the barbarian, and two ranged dps characters so any melee encounters should be that drawn out.


My party has a full time cleric in class only. He mostly cast buffs and the few limited damaging spells. My point is the group is doing fine, they have to wait to get ability damage healed. Does not seem to slow them down much honestly.

That party is pretty stacked, most fights will be over before they start.


I should also clarify I meant that melee shouldn't be drawn out. They honestly have a pretty good blitz party.


Thanks for the tips everybody! Yeah, I think they're going to be pretty stacked in the damage department, but I can see where the healing falls short. The alchemist has been talking about taking Healing Bombs or Spontaneous Healing+Healing Touch, but with all the other discoveries he is talking about I expect it to fall to the wayside. I suppose if they really need it they can adapt. Our sorcerer is going to be Star-soul bloodline, so no dice on him being the healer.

As for the blood veil, I think the combo of the paladin being immune and getting the remove mercy, and delay disease on the alchemist formulae list, should be enough to get them through but it'll probably be a close one. They will definitely be leaning hard on the paladin for healing.

After my last campaign with a gunslinger, I'm a little nervous about the alchemist targeting touch AC, even with the lower BaB. He has also discussed wanting to take the TWF chain and Fast Bombs to throw even more. I think this is in part because of seeing how strong the gunslinger was targeting touch AC. Right now I'm just hoping that I can keep him in AoO range so he doesn't get to full attack without any consequences. I don't really know any other ways to challenge a touch-attacker.


Something to keep in mind with the alchemist is that his bombs are elemental damage and that he has a limited number of them. He will probably have more than he needs on any given day, but he *can* run out of them on an extended adventuring day unlike the gunslinger who will never run out of bullets unless he really fails to keep track of them. Likewise, while nothing I know of is resistant or immune to lead, the alchemist will eventually run into trouble when the fire-immune devils show up - unless he takes a discovery to turn his bomb damage into acid or frost, which he probably will but certain creatures also have Resist 10 or Immunity to Cold & Acid as well. Intelligent creatures who are aware of the alchemist's existence (like Ileosa) will take precautions to ward themselves against the elements that the alchemist favors, using both Resist Energy (Resist 10, 20, 30) and Protection from Energy (essentially giving them another health bar against the alchemist as it negates all the damage until removed completely).

At higher levels, I would be more worried about the paladin completely obliterating monsters in one round with Smite Evil, particularly if he goes for an archery build.


Yeah, the party actually cover's each other's weaknesses pretty well, at least in combat. Paladin and Barb are good vs single target and can get overwhelmed unless they are blowing a bunch of smites, but an alchemist with precise bombs can just clear out anything around the paladin with a blaster sorcerer, when they get to Trinia, assuming they take her but who doesn't, they just get even better at what they already do. (That said, I have had Trinia die in one hit to a Greater Shadow in Scarwall, so ymmv depending on how she gets build for how much the party needs to hard protect her.)

I will also say that for the most part, the AC in Crimson Throne is pretty abysmal, even for several boss enemies, so unless you are planning to rebuild some stuff anyway, targeting touch shouldn't be as far ahead or behind as targetting normal AC is for a barbarian (with rage and maybe accurate stance) and paladin (with juicy smite to attack). That said, a way that you can maybe slip some resistance into play to soft nerf the alchemist if he really needs it: assuming the party lets Rolth escape, I imagine it would be totally within his character to hound the party, figure out where they are going before they get there, and "provide" the opposition with magical resistance in the form of spells or even rings of resistance on random creatures that would never have a ring normally (e.g. the Red Ravager). Once the party becomes wise to these extra magical abilities or extra rings in odd places, give them some perception checks to notice a scraggly, middle aged creeper wizard escaping the scene before the next combat.


Good point about the energy resistance and limited bombs, and I love the idea of Rolth creeping around to buff enemies for revenge. Yeah, I see your point about the Paladin; she is probably going to be the most powerful party member with her smites. Thankfully she will not be an archer, but a glaive build, so she'll still be stuck at melee range, albeit reach. I have never played with a reach build, so I'll be interested to see how that works out.

Good point about the general AC awesomenessdog, it doesn't look like anyone in the party will have much trouble hitting in this campaign. Oh well, I was planning on tweaking a lot of named NPC's to better challenge my party anyway.


Any alchemist worth their salt takes force bombs as soon as they get them. That bomb pretty much nullifies any resistance a monster may have. In a previous campaign we had an alchemist with fast bombs yata yata yata, he held them for big monsters/fights and relied on his bow for most combat. He was truly brutal.

One way to get around them is to give enemies deflect arrows or other similar abilities, ind wall, protection from arrows etc. Puts a real damper on them, but they get bitter very fast…trust me.

In my eyes, alchemist is a slightly over powered class. I had a 9th level NPC villan alchemist vs my 14th level party and he put them on the ropes immediately. Area damage levels the playing field pretty fast.

But Awesomness is right, it is a very accommodating party.


Fickle Winds is also only a 5th level spell and doesn't require the tactical predicition/controll that a wall spell does, and would completely negate the bombs instead. Rolth can also cast this as soon as the party meets him so...

edit: Technically it's only a 30% miss chance, but with the 1d4 force instead of 1d6 of regular bombs, that should at least bring his dps to tolerable levels.


Yup fickle winds, made go look through my old notes to see if that was the spell I used against my alchemist PC

I had forgot about mirror image and tower shields as well.


Tower Shields are really only useful for the grey maidens, and that's *if* @Max wants to nerf their attack value (from the -2) and offensive capabilities round over round for immunity to a direct attack from a bomb. Mirror image also doesn't save you from that much, when you still get hit for splash damage on an image which can be still a lot (at level 11, assuming 11 (6d6+5int) damage on splash with 6 attacks (2 base bab, 2 twf fighting, 1 rapid shot, 1 haste, you do a guaranteed minimum 66 damage on just the primary target).


Oh man, fickle winds, I hadn't considered that. That's a really good defense against the alchemist, I'll have to keep that in my back pocket. Definitely for bosses like Rolth. Would you happen to know if a bomb that misses because of something like Fickle Winds or Deflect Arrows scatters in a random direction like normal?

I had considered making the Grey Maidens tower shield specialists (the archetype, it drops the -2 but they lose weapon training, and they get to add shield to touch AC), but they still lose a lot of damage just to counter one player. Admittedly when I wrote up the palace guards I got them to 28 AC (30 with shield wall), and their touch AC was 18 (not super high, but the cover/concealment is the big reason to take it.) I'll still probably hang onto the idea in-case the alchemist turns out to be a real problem, but for the moment I'll probably leave them be.


Because it gets deflected up, I would say it probably just gets launched so far off that it harmlessly explodes away from anyone else (likely into any ceiling). That said, RAW would still be you roll spread and it only misses by one (still inflicting minimum damage with a save).

Another option for the grey maidens, at least the mid level ones, is the extend the bulwark teamwork feat, which lets them group up (as they already would with shield wall) but when they have a line of maidens behind them, they can give half their armor bonus to the ones in the front line as a circumstance bonus, which still applies to Touch AC. The maiden doing this loses her armor bonus to AC however, leaving them open to flanking or reach/ranged weapons, but a single feat into the Mobile Bulwark can still counter any ranged attacks (at the cost of only 1 attack per round).

(I also give the grey maidens +1 natural armor when they have the toughness feat, which I believe they do by default, to account for the heavy scarring of their training.) So maybe you can give them the tower shields, not give them the archetype, and spend some of their feats into mobile bulwark style, progressing them by one in the style for each stage of grey maidens they are (basic, warden, palace guard).

As a Human Fighter, the level 3 variant (if you don't raise any of them any levels) could have Weapon Focus, Shield Focus, Toughness, Mobile Bulwark style, Shield Wall. Level 7 (warden) adds weapon specialization, Extend the Bulwark, Mobile Fortress, and preserve their skill focus (intimidate) or dazzling display (if they take the intimidate armor training) for the backline guys doing EtB. Finally the level 9 (palace guard) just adds improved critical and Mobile Stronghold. Of course, if they are a few levels ahead, then you can start to add back the missing feats that take away from the grey maidens main focus for their back up capabilities.


For healing, my group recently finished Crimson Throne and the only healing we had was the witch, and it was more than enough.
(Group was kitsune rogue, human unchained barbarian, half-orc witch, catfolk fighter)


No true wizard or cleric, very interesting.


Warped Savant wrote:

For healing, my group recently finished Crimson Throne and the only healing we had was the witch, and it was more than enough.

(Group was kitsune rogue, human unchained barbarian, half-orc witch, catfolk fighter)

That is a lot of martial classes! I guess I shouldn't be surprised; my last group was Gunslinger, Rogue, Monk, Bard, it can happen sometimes (But the bard also permanently died and was replaced by a Cleric, so YMMV.) How did they do with just the witch for spellcasting? Did they have to fall back on Use Magic Device a lot? I feel like some kind of divine character is really really useful (and somewhat necessary) in some parts of this campaign, at least from what I've read. Especially with how much ability drain/damage spam there is.


The damage/drain exists, but for the most part, by the time it gets really bad and to the point that it's a standard part of the game, not just an occasional hit, you have Laori to fill in for any cleric you might be missing.


MaxTheDM wrote:
Warped Savant wrote:

For healing, my group recently finished Crimson Throne and the only healing we had was the witch, and it was more than enough.

(Group was kitsune rogue, human unchained barbarian, half-orc witch, catfolk fighter)
That is a lot of martial classes! I guess I shouldn't be surprised; my last group was Gunslinger, Rogue, Monk, Bard, it can happen sometimes (But the bard also permanently died and was replaced by a Cleric, so YMMV.) How did they do with just the witch for spellcasting? Did they have to fall back on Use Magic Device a lot? I feel like some kind of divine character is really really useful (and somewhat necessary) in some parts of this campaign, at least from what I've read. Especially with how much ability drain/damage spam there is.

Oh! It's worth pointing out that the fighter was archer based and the rogue was the scout archetype (because the barbarian was really bad at supplying a flank.)

The witch mostly used hexes to debuff enemies rather than using spells in combat. He chose a Healing Patron, so lesser restoration, remove disease, etc were all available to the group.
I don't recall them using Use Magic Device a lot, but I could be wrong. (Healing Hex was the main thing used to heal people. I don't think a CLW wand was used often.)

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