[PF] How to make Carrion Crown different?

[Dissonance]

So I've just started running Carrion Crown AP a few weeks ago and we are not that far into it. (They have been doing a lot of research and haven't even wandered anywhere near Harrowstone yet.)

But even now I can tell that fights are going to be a bit one-sided. The party is:
- Ranger (optimized; ranged and melee; knows what he's doing)
- Alchemist (kind of optimized; ranged' doesn't know what he's doing)
- Bard (not optimized; Skillmonkey; Doesn't know what he's doing)
- Cleric (optimized; Has run CC before and uses that knowledge; Knows EXACTLY what he's doing)
- Monk (optimized; but fairly basic; doesn't know what he's doing)

So far the party has been doing a lot of information gathering. (Bard's been MVPing it everytime he shows up.) The ranger and monk have been running amok (hah) in the little combat they've done. Alchemist got his chance in the spotlight by grabbing one of the informations (and the 400 xp) that the group missed.

They aren't the problem. The Cleric however, is. He's metagamed since start, pushing objectives and (sometimes forcefully) guiding the party.

I've asked him to stop, and he has toned it down a bit. It hasn't stopped him from speeding from objective to objective and connecting the dots for the party.

I want to know what kind of things I can do to throw him curve balls while keeping it challenging for the rest of the party.

[137beth]

Okay, it looks like you have two issues: combats and metagaming.

For combats, there are a lot of fairly easy solutions, and other people will likely chime in with theirs, but here is my favorite: 101 not-so-simple monster templates (http://paizo.com/products/btpy8q2j?101-Not-So-Simple-Monster-Templates). The templates are simple enough to apply them on the fly, to almost any monster. If you are willing to increase the CR by two or three, there are thousands of combinations of templates in that one PDF. Apply one or two of them to various monsters--now you've thrown off the metagamers in combat, since the monsters have different abilities, and the encounter is more challenging.
Note, you do not need to give extra xp for the templated monsters if you don't want to--particularly in a pre-published adventure, the writers assume that the PCs are leveling at a particular rate, and if you give out extra xp for monsters you enhance, they may get ahead in levels. That's okay if that is what you want, but if you want to keep them on par with what the adventure expects, don't feel bound by how much xp you're "suppose" to give.


The issue of the cleric metagaming out of combat is somewhat trickier. It's one of the many reasons I avoid published adventures if possible. The 'best' way to eliminate the predicament is to completely rewrite the entire adventure, negating any metagame knowledge the cleric might have.
However, considering that you currently are running a published adventure, you probably want to handle it in a way that is easier than writing a complete campaign from scratch. One thing you could try is to change names. Who was the murderer, Joe or Sarah? If the cleric knows it was Joe, then change everyone's name. Now, who was the murderer, Amy or Catherine? The cleric's player doesn't know ahead of time:smalltongue: Change some of the descriptions of the NPCs too.

Also, play with space and details a bit. If the module says that location A is to the left and location B is to the right, switch them. Don't do it all the time, but enough to dissuade metagaming.