please help a desperate gm. pf

[Exirtadorri]

so i am about to run a rotrl for my group. The group is pretty bad about making decent characters. i am going to sit down with them and have a chat about basic optmizing and not taking shield spec and carrying a greatsword.

Ok so what i told them was im running it as written and i wont pull punches. i will however use the tactics listed for the monster even if it a dumb idea to me.

what i need from you guys is advice. to try to compensate for that lack of decent character building i want to give them an extra feat and three or four traits. i also want an idea of how i do stats to make them feel like they have to earn their victory even though im handing them so much to start with. i have also tossed around giving them extra starting wealth.

any ideas or comments or suggestions are welcome and wanted. thanks in advance guys.

[Ryulin18]

Give them 20 point buy. That should help them build and stay alive.

[Jack_Simth]

Have them all bring three characters at the outset, and have reasonably generous character replacement rules - e.g., a dead-and-lost PC comes back at the level and wealth of the survivor with the lowest XP total. They'll get a lot of practice building characters, they'll see what got their characters killed, and sooner or later they'll get something that's about on the power level of the module.

[Exirtadorri]

Ok a 20 point buy sounds good.

My group has a rule...once all the original characters die its time for a new game.

Have either of you played all the way through? Id live to know what classes will be worthless... like if there is a lot of close quarters dungeon crawling the the mounted archery type is out.