Rappan Athuk Party Ideas

[Private]

Hey Playground,

My gaming group and I are about to set out on an epic adventure: Rappan Athuk (Pathfinder Version). According to the adventure, it is designed for a party of 6 players. Unfortunately for us, we've only got 3 players. Our question is: What is the best way to keep our power level similar to that expected in the dungeon. A few ideas that we've had are:

1. Have 3 characters who stay approximately 2 levels higher than typically expected.

2. Have 3 players who each run 2 characters at the expected level.

3. Run 3 Gestalt characters (Idea has already been banned by the DM)

These are just the ideas that we have had, but we are certainly open to other suggestions. In fact, they are encouraged.

The main point is that we typically feel that we make good characters, and we actually want to see if our skills are good enough to take on the dreaded Rappan Athuk. The main goal is to have a party composition as close to what was intended by the designers as possible so that our results are as accurate as possible. Thanks for the help in advance!

EDIT: Also, our party make up for just 3 characters would probably be a Summoner(Synthesist), Bard(Archeologist), and a Cleric.

[Acanous]

1: You absolutely must have a rogue. Certain roguelikes can substitute, but you NEED trapfinding.
2: You absolutely must have a Wizard. Not a Sorceror. There's a trap on level 9b, for instance, that only arcane casters with high intelligence can detect. DETECT. It traps you in permanent temporal stasis and your entire party just wiped without knowing how.

Also there's a lot of differing effects by area, you'll need feather fall and aterbreathing and freedom of movement and resist elements and fire resistance etc. etc.

3: You need a cleric or something else with turn undead.

Everything else is optional. I've run this before, people get all mad at you during character creation when you tell them the pary needs Xyz, but they get MORE mad later when the 2 fighters and 1 barbarian are getting schooled by *Environmental* effects and can't do anything about it.

Aside from that, Rappan Athuk is a lot of fun, both to play and DM, although I suggest printing out the maps (You're getting the PDF from the kickstarter yes?) to make for easier map access. It really sucks having to navigate from the map to the room description and back. Having them both on-hand and easy to see is important.

[Private]

Thanks for the insight.

We aren't SUPER concerned about party make-up, but more so how to play the adventure fairly with only 3 players. Since it is designed for 6 players we are trying to balance the party so that we have an power level equal to that of 6 players.

Any suggestions on that front?

[Acanous]

Really, the encounters aren't that strong until you get past about level 6. Even then, most of the encounters are with hordes of low-CR things. The badguys aren't very optimized for battling PCs. It's the traps, the environment, and the lack of a magic-mart that is going to really hurt your party.

Resting places are also not too common. They exist, but unless the DM flat-out tells you "This empty room is safe to rest in" you could be risking random encounters.

Rope Trick is great.

Anyhow, three PC's shouldn't have much trouble with it- my party actually split up several times on the fire layer, and only when they got to the golden bridge was there a serious problem.

That said, if you're going with three people, a Summoner is really not a good idea. Usually they'd make up for their lack of spell selection with a good UMD check, but in this case, that's not going to be a very sustainable option. Bard is a good option, though, especially if he takes Weird Words, he can fill in for your blasting quotient by level 6.

If you go "Everyone playing 2 PC's", sure, keep the summoner and add maybe a Barbarian for the physical skill checks. The Bard can add a Rogue, and the Cleric can pull double duty with a Wizard.
If you go everyone 2 levels higher, you will very much want to swap the Summoner for a Wizard.