Solo Campaign Idea

[Krazzman]

Hello again,

I am currently planning on running a Solo-Campaign with my wife.
She is going to play a Berserker-ish Character and we concluded to playing Pathfinder(rulesystem) in a Deadworld-esque (AFMBE) Golarion.
So far she thinks about going Barbarian//Cleric, Barbarian//Oracle, Barbarian//Druid or Barbarian//Inquisitor for being a Barbarian and being able to heal. My recommendation so far was Inquisitor because spontaneous, more skillpoints and Judgements/Bane.

For Race we will use the Advanced Race Guide to enhance a Human similar to how Alice is Better Faster Stronger in the Resident Evil movies or an outright new one. I am aiming for around 20 RP.
Also I said that since she will be running around Solo most of the time we will use Gestalt rules, full Hitpoints each level and PB 25 (Pathfinder) as well as starting on level 3.

At first I wanted to let it be an E6 game but I am unsure.

My main questions about Solo adventures:
How can and should I plan an encounter?
How should I plan and use Treasure?
What should NPC's be able of and how invasive should they be? Basically if she hires an rogue, how good should he be? (Nearly useless like the rogue in Conan the Destroyer? Or More like Subetai in Conan the Barbarian?)
How can I make it Bloody/Brutal without overpowering her, giving her quite good chances?

And I'd like input on the following current rough idea of what the story shall be about:
In a mad attempt to help Pharasma stop/slow down Groetus, mad "ex-"followers of Pharasma sacrificed hundreds of Atheists. But in their madness they could not forsee what Horror they would Unleash in the Boneyard. Instead of being a way to push Groetus back they formed into an unliving abomination that damaged the Boneyard and thus hurled parts of it unto the material plane. Bringing forth an undead plague, never seen before.

What I want her to deal with:
new forms of undead. Crazy followers of Urgathoa (responsible for the above). War against the Undead and crazed inquisitions that try to gain wealth and power through claims of "undeadtry" [similar of how the churches accumulated wealth during the witchburnings in europe].


So any recommendation/piece of advice is welcome... thanks in advance. If I need to clarify something please tell me.

[Krazzman]

The rough character/race outline is finished.

Barbarian//Inquisitor. Archetypes not included as we are still looking them up also still missing God/Ideal on the Inquisitor side.

Race is a "human".
Basically her race gives her: Darkvision (60ft), Fast Healing 1, Improved Initiative, DR5/silver, 2 times a +2 flexible to a stat and some other minor goodies.

Any recommendations? Is there a WBL system for pathfinder? I can only find a Wealth-By-Encounter system in Ultimate Equipment.

[kalasulmar]

Pathfinder WBL would be 3k at 3rd level.

[Bickerstaff]

Never played or DM'd a solo campaign before, so I can't really recommend anything.

However, just for future reference: HERE (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/character-advancement) is where you can find Pathfinder's WBL chart.

Or if you have an aversion to the SRD (or just feel like cracking open the physical book), page 397 (or maybe it was 399?) 399 of the Core Rulebook should have it.

[John Longarrow]

The 4 major items to give extra attention to in a solo game...
1) Action economy. Normally a party gets to take a BUNCH of actions per round. This allows a party to deal with multiple enemies, use BFC, and pull off combat maneuvers that just won't work for a solo game.
2) Save or Suck spells go from being a real pain for the party to being TPKs. Blindness, Charm Person, Paralysis, ect... are all "You don't survive" situations when there is a party of 1. With undead having a lot of save or suck abilities this gets very nasty.
3) Party roles. Normally you have a party face, a trap finder, healer, tracker, etc.. With ONE player you can't fill all of the roles as effectively.
4) encounters are not balanced for parties of 1. The easy "Orc" that faces a 1st level party can be a very nasty fight against a lone character.

Ways to mitigate these problems would be
1) Higher base stats. This makes it a lot less likely a single encounter will tank her.
2) Drop the CR of encounters by 3 or 4.
3) Don't throw her into encounters she doesn't have the resoures to handle. This can often be done by using a "Quest giver" of some type (mystic dreams, ancient sage, what ever) that directs her towards encounters she can deal with but that would be hard for "Level appropriate" groups. This could mean that she is going mostly against beefy tank undead instead of more balanced encounters.
4) Extra saves VS save or suck spells. If she is hit with paralysis or a charm, give her a save each round rather than "Oh, crap! You failed, game over"
5) Try to avoid the obvious DMPCs that would otherwise be backup. If you do want to have tag alongs, give her a cohort that she can build out as she likes.
6) Mission-centric adventures. Just like most classic pulp stories, rather than doing the classic dungeon crawl where you run around searching for things, give her a pretty linear path that she should be working down. This can help you ALOT in making the game flow without having it drag out in a hack and slash fest. As an example, rather than exploring the ruins of castle Aaarrrrrghhhhh, she is going in to rescue the trapped cleric within. After doing some recon (sneaking, gather info, divining, what ever), she finds out where the cleric is and can work out a plan on how to get the cleric out. Once she's worked out something like "Climb the wall at noon (when the Orc guards are sleeping), go along the top to the north west tower. Force the door, take out the guard(s), then head down to the ground entrance. Cross the courtyard while staying in the shadow, then head down through the secred door that XYZ revealed to the dungeon. Take out the jailor, grab keys, and grab the cleric. With cleric in toe, go back the way you came".

This will then let you work out what she will face, make sure your not walking her into a death trap/slug match, and let her feel like she's a classic hero who's beating the evil overlord (even without facing him directly).

For the record, Solo games can be really fun. They can also be really hard on the DM as they are so very hard to balance. You have a lot more leeway in making a challenging but not lethan encounter with a party. You can also come back from a character death in a party a lot easier.

[Krazzman]

The 4 major items to give extra attention to in a solo game...
1) Action economy. Normally a party gets to take a BUNCH of actions per round. This allows a party to deal with multiple enemies, use BFC, and pull off combat maneuvers that just won't work for a solo game.
2) Save or Suck spells go from being a real pain for the party to being TPKs. Blindness, Charm Person, Paralysis, ect... are all "You don't survive" situations when there is a party of 1. With undead having a lot of save or suck abilities this gets very nasty.
3) Party roles. Normally you have a party face, a trap finder, healer, tracker, etc.. With ONE player you can't fill all of the roles as effectively.
4) encounters are not balanced for parties of 1. The easy "Orc" that faces a 1st level party can be a very nasty fight against a lone character.
I feared that there was more to think about. Thought about Party Roles and Save or Suck spells and such but the other 2 I happily ignored...

Ways to mitigate these problems would be
1) Higher base stats. This makes it a lot less likely a single encounter will tank her.
Thought about giving her PB 25 to play with. Should I raise that? How high? 30? 35?

2) Drop the CR of encounters by 3 or 4.
In terms of what? I doubt you mean treasure or XP but do you mean he effective range of Encounters (normally party level +4) should be a Party level +1?

3) Don't throw her into encounters she doesn't have the resoures to handle. This can often be done by using a "Quest giver" of some type (mystic dreams, ancient sage, what ever) that directs her towards encounters she can deal with but that would be hard for "Level appropriate" groups. This could mean that she is going mostly against beefy tank undead instead of more balanced encounters.
The things I wanted to do first is build her up against some soldier mooks and maybe some normal zombies/skelletals to see how hard she hits/good she survives.

4) Extra saves VS save or suck spells. If she is hit with paralysis or a charm, give her a save each round rather than "Oh, crap! You failed, game over"
Like the new way of Hold Person works?

5) Try to avoid the obvious DMPCs that would otherwise be backup. If you do want to have tag alongs, give her a cohort that she can build out as she likes.
Ok, figured that one out myself but for the case she hires someone or in case her questgiver gives her a guide (of the sewers for some secret entrance stuff)... I will remember it.

6) Mission-centric adventures. Just like most classic pulp stories, rather than doing the classic dungeon crawl where you run around searching for things, give her a pretty linear path that she should be working down. This can help you ALOT in making the game flow without having it drag out in a hack and slash fest. As an example, rather than exploring the ruins of castle Aaarrrrrghhhhh, she is going in to rescue the trapped cleric within. After doing some recon (sneaking, gather info, divining, what ever), she finds out where the cleric is and can work out a plan on how to get the cleric out. Once she's worked out something like "Climb the wall at noon (when the Orc guards are sleeping), go along the top to the north west tower. Force the door, take out the guard(s), then head down to the ground entrance. Cross the courtyard while staying in the shadow, then head down through the secred door that XYZ revealed to the dungeon. Take out the jailor, grab keys, and grab the cleric. With cleric in toe, go back the way you came".

This will then let you work out what she will face, make sure your not walking her into a death trap/slug match, and let her feel like she's a classic hero who's beating the evil overlord (even without facing him directly).

For the record, Solo games can be really fun. They can also be really hard on the DM as they are so very hard to balance. You have a lot more leeway in making a challenging but not lethan encounter with a party. You can also come back from a character death in a party a lot easier.

The hard parts are the things I worry most about. Through Inquisitor, even with low charisma, she can still be a face, tank, healer and frontliner.

I thought about E6 so she can accumulate far more feats than otherwise possible but I am unsure about that.

[John Longarrow]

As she is looking for a barbarian/caster, I'd give her stats that she will like. Say Str 16, Dex 16, Con 18, Primary casting 16, other two 14? This will make her very survivable, especially at lower levels. It also means she will really stand out as "Heroic".

For lower CR, remember that a CR 3 OGRE is balanced against a party of 4 3rd level character. While the scaling isn't exact, since 4 ogres would be a CR 7, assume she should be balanecd at about 6th or 7th level to an ogre. This should be a case where the ogre will maybe get a hit in before she drops it (should be about 25% of her HPs) so that should be fairly balanced.

Save or suck spells get very hard to balance with a single player since being held/charmed/paralyzed can mean the bad guys can kill her quickly if she makes a couple bad saves. This can be a real downer in a single player game. You may want to make sure she is immune to many/all of these prior to facing them just to avoid problems.

I haven't played in a 6E game, so I can't comment on if/how it would make a better fit for what you are looking for. In a normal game melee centric builds start getting left in the dust around 7th level because they can't handle all of the magic and specials that monsters start bringing. If she goes as a primary caster and dips barbarian that may work for a standard game. This is especially true when she's a few levels higher than what is 'expected' for a given monster.

[Krazzman]

As she is looking for a barbarian/caster, I'd give her stats that she will like. Say Str 16, Dex 16, Con 18, Primary casting 16, other two 14? This will make her very survivable, especially at lower levels. It also means she will really stand out as "Heroic".
This Array would be Pointbuy 57. But I will use it. As I said Barbarian/Inquisitor is fixed but Inquisitions and Archetypes are not so far. Barbarian will probably be a Totem Warrior Superstitious Barbarian or similar. The Inquisitor probably a Heretic as I think it would fit.

For lower CR, remember that a CR 3 OGRE is balanced against a party of 4 3rd level character. While the scaling isn't exact, since 4 ogres would be a CR 7, assume she should be balanecd at about 6th or 7th level to an ogre. This should be a case where the ogre will maybe get a hit in before she drops it (should be about 25% of her HPs) so that should be fairly balanced.

Save or suck spells get very hard to balance with a single player since being held/charmed/paralyzed can mean the bad guys can kill her quickly if she makes a couple bad saves. This can be a real downer in a single player game. You may want to make sure she is immune to many/all of these prior to facing them just to avoid problems.

I haven't played in a 6E game, so I can't comment on if/how it would make a better fit for what you are looking for. In a normal game melee centric builds start getting left in the dust around 7th level because they can't handle all of the magic and specials that monsters start bringing. If she goes as a primary caster and dips barbarian that may work for a standard game. This is especially true when she's a few levels higher than what is 'expected' for a given monster.
Keep in mind it's a Gestaltgame. Means she basically has only her Ref as weakness and maybe her Spell allotment.
Currently I think she will most likely face other humans and [The Undead] and she starts at level 3.

Another question came up while reading through Inquisitions/Domains...
For example the Anger Inquisition gives a Rage at level 6 of Inquisitor Level -3 that stacks with Barbarian Rage. This one would be off-limits as it is a Dual-Progression, which is not allowed in Gestalt, right?

[Krazzman]

And we started it.

Currently she is level 4. The Introductionary parts gave her around 6000 Gold pieces of Wealth so she is quite on WBL in that area.

She also got to meet and engage with the probably most friendly undead she could find (Dhampir Weaponsmith and Jiang-Shi Seal Mage).
To give her something akin to the "Unlimited Blade Works" ability from the Typemoon-verse or Erza Scarlets (Fairy Tail) Magic. Her weapon arsenal is: MW Greatsword, MW Bastardsword, MW Truesilver Zabimaru (light Einhander, 10ft reach, deadly) as well as a Composite 1 Shortbow. And a MW Agile Breastplate.
Zabimaru is bound to her and through that she can call/dismiss it as a move/free action.

The "Plothook" she follows is going to Isarn to look for traces of her family.

I have some ideas for other possible things going on in the city as soon as she settles there...
Doomsday Cult
Zombie Siege
Civil War
Murderer on the loose
Necromancers inside the city
Human(e) meat supply
Empowering/repairing/reinforcing defenses

But I'm still working on the specifics.

The Seals are currently Weapon Bloodseals and Storage Seals.
Weapon Seals cost 500 GP for Einhander and Double for Two-Handed Weapons.
Storage Seals work like a Bag of Holding except 40% cheaper and 20% more effective. But she can't afford one of those... yet.

Her Feats are Raging Vitality, Improved Initiative and Two-Weapon Fighting (Houseruled to everytime she would strike with her Mainhand Weapon she can strike again with her Off-Hand).

Still thinking about how she should advance after reaching level 6. Until level 6 everything is normal... afterwards it needs more than exp to unlock the next level but she can buy Feats for exp similar to E6. Thinking about 2000 xp per feat...