[PF] Traits and CR

[UndertakerSheep]

I'm gearing up to run the Wrath of the Righteous adventure path, and I have a few questions about traits. I've seen quite a few good ones while flipping through the AP's Player's Guide, The Demon-Hunter's Handbook, Champions of Purity and Ultimate Campaign.

How many traits can a character take at first level? I remember it being two, but I'm not very knowledgeable about the PF side of 3.x.

How 'game-breaking' would it be if I allowed my players to take more traits? I'm thinking about using the traits from the Ultimate Campaign for easy and more meaningful (mechanically speaking) backgrounds, and also using the traits from the Player's Guide to tie the characters into the AP's plot.

An unrelated question: I've been DMing 4e a while now, and I have completely fallen out of touch with 3.x's CR. I'll be running Wrath of the Righteous for 5 or 6 players, while the AP is written for 4 players. Has Pathfinder made scaling up encounters for larger parties easier?

tl;dr - read the questions in bold.

[Alleran]

To the first, two traits.

To the second, a trait is supposed to be worth about half a feat (which obviously varies, given that some traits are amazing and some are not so amazing). Obvious exceptions will be the campaign traits from Wrath of the Righteous, because they upgrade to feat-level or more once the PCs become mythic.

To the third, not so much, in the sense that they work under the assumption that an AP will be played by four people in a roughly-approximate "classic roles" party or thereabouts. If players optimise then they'll steamroll CR-appropriate encounters. That said, some APs are deadlier than others. Carrion Crown is I think supposed to be a nasty one (never played it personally), and the first installment of Skull & Shackles can be even worse, depending on the temperament of the party members. In general, you may want to increase the number of monsters by 50% or give them max-HP. Or both, depending on your players. I can't speak to the difficulty of Wrath, since I'm only skimming the AP books (and there are only two of them out so far) and not playing in or running it.

[Keneth]

Since traits are entirely optional, players can take as many as you'll allow. It's generally two.

It's not really game breaking to allow more than that, just keep in mind that two traits are worth about one feat, so if you give them 4 traits, it's basically like giving them Additional Traits as a bonus feat at first level.

Scaling encounters hasn't really gotten any easier. If anything, the CR system is just as broken as it's always been in 3.x (if not more), not to mention a lot of the adventure paths are tailored to a very specific type of party, and even then they tend to be imbalanced in some spots.

Personally, I go over every single encounter in the adventure path and change it to fit my own players. It does take a lot of time though, it's not something you can do efficiently on the spot.

[UndertakerSheep]

Thanks for the help guys! I think I'll just give them the Additional Traits feat as a bonus feat at first level.

The party so far is: Oathbound Paladin (Oath Against Fiends), an Inquisitor and a Cleric. All three of which are going to be build to fight Demons. It's also safe to say the remaining two or three characters will be oriented towards demon-slaying as well.

We're meeting up this Friday to make characters together, and I always help my players with optimization if that's what they want (tho no game-breaking stuff).

It sounds like I have a lot of work ahead of me, when it comes to balancing the encounters. And here I was thinking running an AP would cut down on my prep time!

[TarkXT]

AP's do cut a lot of the prepwork done. But you still need to read and prepare since they often have optional rule sets and some encounters and places change depending on palyer actions.

Also, I'd discourage too much towards demon slaying. Demons are hardly the only thing to worry about in the Worldwound.

[UndertakerSheep]

AP's do cut a lot of the prepwork done. But you still need to read and prepare since they often have optional rule sets and some encounters and places change depending on palyer actions.

Also, I'd discourage too much towards demon slaying. Demons are hardly the only thing to worry about in the Worldwound.

I'm actually look forward to seeing how my players do things completely different from the book. I love being surprised!

Thanks for the tip. My players are a bit too excited about killing demons. I'll try to keep them in tow.