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So some friends of mine want to start playing pathfinder. None of them have played 2e before. One has played 1e in a heavily modified home game, two are veterans of GURPS and nothing else, and one is completely new to role-playing but wants to play badly. When I laid out the APs I could run for them, they all universally voted for ‘the circus one!’
None of them are min-maxers and I have a feeling it’ll take a while for them to grasp optimal 2e tactics. This combines poorly I feel with some of the nastier fights in the book. Heck me and my veteran players had a PC death to that nasty wasp swarm at level 2 and we used some pretty good tactics and had solid builds. Some of the fights in this book are just nasty and I don’t want to drive my players away by killing them off to some random throwaway fights or whatnot. So I have decided to rework some of the encounters in the book so that they are more newer-player friendly, and I’ll share them here. The plan is to stay as close as I can to the original vision of the encounter, and if I do alter the encounter, have the same amount of XP.
Chapter 1: Murder in the Center Ring.
-Most of the encounters under the first performance are fine. The Two drunken Brawlers might be a bit tough, but if they start really hiring the PCs just apply the weak template to them. Remember they attack nonlethally, so even if the PCs are ‘defeated’ they just come to a few hours later.
A2-Ringmaster’s wagon shouldn’t need any adjusting
A3- Bardolf’s wavon-Shouldn’t need any changes, remember the bear stops attacking after 2 rounds. If it is really knocking around the party, consider removing its grab ability.
A4-should be fine, though poison can be nasty. Since these vipers were used to commit murder recently, you could decrease their venom DC by 2 and say it is because they haven’t regenerated their venom yet.
A5-Should be fine. If you need to make it easier reduce the DC to detect the trap by a few.
A6- Should be fine, two CR 1s vs a party of adventurers
A7-The big problem with the cockatrice is that a failure and a crit failure (pretty easy at level 1 when the DC is 20) and you are permanently petrified, and no one is going to be able to buy/afford a greater salve of antiparalysisnat level 1. The easiest way to handle this is to just say that being petrified wears off after a day no matter what (no roll) or that it wears off when it the cockatrice is dead. Or you could simply replace it with 4 large rats or some other CR-1 creatures.
A8-No change needed.
A9-When I played through we didn’t have too much trouble with her, but we may have just gotten lucky. A CR +2, plus a CR =party level (and a swarm at that) and a CR -1 should be tough, but not a lot of her abilities are offensive and her melee/ranged attacks are pretty weak. If she is giving the party the business just apply the weak template to her.
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Looking at the book some more: regarding the initial anticipation of 15, that seems pretty darn steep to me. To meet a goal of 15, that means that EVERY act must get at least two successes and one act must get three (with that -10 penalty). Seems a bit high for level 1s. Sure the clowns can help a bit but as the acts go one the chance of critical failure goes up and up. And that doesn't even count the chances of a critical success which ratchets the anticipation up further. I'd say a starting anticipation of, say, 12 is much more manageable, even maybe 10. Thoughts?
For a easy mode i agree with what you are saying, but concerning the Antecipation of the first show, it is no big deal if they did not manage it, the later shows on would be easy to do it.
Also i advice that you put a tag of spoilers in the title of the thread.
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My group failed the first show and critically succeeded all following shows. There's nothing much to be lost from failing the first show, so it's not really a problem unless your players are allergic to failure. It's also somewhat reasonable that the first show is the hardest because the members of the circus of wayward wonders just escaped the celestial menagerie, nobody really knows what they're doing, and probably the most experienced veteran gets killed right before the opening act.
An alternative you could try instead of tweaking all encounters is to have the PCs be one level higher than the recommended level. It saves a lot of GM prep time and the AP will definitely be easier. If you later think the PCs can handle tougher fights, you can delay their level-up so their level matches the recommended level.
I didn’t change everything, just a few fights. A lot of the changes are just ‘apply the weak template.’ The cockatrice which effectively has a one crit-save permadeath, the wasp swarm at the mill, those are the kind of things I am looking to change.
IMO, even with a one level bump, some of the fights seem unfair. For example, I don’t think a few extra hit points and a +1(or +3) bonus to reflex/fort saves are going to help the party against the wasp swarm, which is grossly under-CRed in my opinion (let’s face it, multiple DC 21 saves per round, able to hit multiple creatures a round, resist 7 to bludgeoning/piercing? And they aren’t going to know enough to buy acid flasks.). Some people vehemently disagree that the wasp swarm is under CRed, but I’m not going to throw that at a party of sub-optimal complete newbies, even if they have a +1 to their fort save and 8-10 extra HP
Yeah, swarms can be rough if you just stand in them and don't think to spread out/run away.
Letting new players know the general mechanics of swarms like usually being resistant to physical attacks, swarm mind, and weakness to area/splash damage seems like a good idea. Then if the party looks through their abilities and realizes they don't have much to handle any swarm right now, maybe they'll like the idea of retreating and coming back later more prepared.
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Yeah, swarms can be rough if you just stand in them and don't think to spread out/run away.
Letting new players know the general mechanics of swarms like usually being resistant to physical attacks, swarm mind, and weakness to area/splash damage seems like a good idea. Then if the party looks through their abilities and realizes they don't have much to handle any swarm right now, maybe they'll like the idea of retreating and coming back later more prepared.
I uh, I mean I've tried telling them some things, but they have mostly ignored me. Some things you just need to learn by doing. And that wasp swarm seems like an unfair second test. But there was a big ol' thread on this already so I'm going to ask that we don't repeat it here.
Sure, I was mostly trying for an adventure design/running the game angle on swarms rather than whether a wasp swarm here's balanced or not.
If your party would be rewarded for their builds in this encounter (lots of area damage, having an alchemist), then it seems worthwhile to keep if only to show off weaknesses as a mechanic. My party had two evocation wizards at that point and they seemed to enjoy obliterating the wasps with their burning hands.
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First session went okay. There were some really unlucky rolls (our Inventor failed to overdrive her device three times in a row) and they got annoyed when the main villain backed up against a cart and I didn't allow the rogue to phase through the cart to sneak attack her, but overall, not bad. They are still getting a handle on the rules, but they seemed to have fun. I skipped a couple of encounters that were just there for XP and not for leveling up because we are using the milestone system and not actual XP so there was no reason for them to fight the water mephits or the trap around her camp.
I have a fair amount of free time on Tuesdays-Fridays (couple hours each day when work is super slow) so I'll get to work on reworking chapter 2.
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Okay, Chapter 2 fixes:
Old Lin’s Orchard-No change, a CR 2 and 2 CR0s should be fine.
B1) replace the swarm with 4 giant worked bees
B3) No change
B5) Maybe no change? The spider venom can be nasty so maybe reduce the DC by 2?
C1) No change
C2) Not sure here. Our group never fought her. Her haymaker seems nasty and the ability to just lay people out with stunned 5 seems harsh. Also the DC seems really high. You can’t crit succeed except on a nat 20, as even a 16 con Barbarian will only have a +9 fort save at level 2. Any suggestions?
D2) Our group didn’t have much trouble with him but I have heard other groups did. Unfortunately there are no real good replacement demons to sub out. Any suggestions?
D3) I’ve noticed a distinct lack of magic weapons in this book. Replace one of the rewards for a fundamental +1 runestone that the priest was planning to apply to his crossbow in a ceremony during an upcoming Abdar holy day.
D5) Again, we had some trouble with this, though we didn’t have a dedicated healer and the group I’m GMing does. But the group refuses to use the cold iron pick to make the fight easier. . . I don’t know. Maybe apply the weak template?
D6) No change.
E1) The swollen whole thing might become problematic. Maybe reduce its Athletics check by 2?
E2) Our group didn’t have too hard a time with these guys, but then again we have a champion and they don’t. Maybe play up the fact that they will use their breath weapon on each other, or assume it takes
The most amount of time to recharge their breath weapons.
Performance duel: really not fond of the rules here as it assumes every PC ha performance. As it stand only one of our PCs does, and he picked it up at level 2. Dunno how to rewrite it, any ideas?