[3.5] New Dm need tips and suggestions for high lvl party

[zilios]

So a group of friends used to run the Savage tide AP years ago, but due to real life issues the dm and one player had to go and they've never played since. It recently came up again and they all sounded really excited and nostalgic about it so i volunteered to DM the end of it.

The party left it off at level 17 in the abyss. Ive already found another player to be the 4th player. Now the 2 issues i need help with:

The 3 'core' players are very low OP as far as i can tell. They have a wizard/lorewalker, the main damage dealer is a single classed 17 lvl rogue and apparently the party's weakest link has been the 17 lvl cleric. The 4th player is more of an optimiser/power player so i m gonna really be keeping a close watch on his character creation, after all the whole point of bringing this campaign back is to make the core party into the badass heroes and i dont want anything overshadowing them.

What would you recommend for a 4th party member then, keeping the above in mind? Something that would play to their strengths and assist them but will not by any means overshadow them?

My second issue is that i have never dm'd before, and ive never even played dnd at such high levels. So dms that have dmed high level games, or even have dmed savage tide all the way, what should i look out for? How do encounters play out? What can i do to keep it as entertaining as possible for the players?

[flappeercraft]

So a group of friends used to run the Savage tide AP years ago, but due to real life issues the dm and one player had to go and they've never played since. It recently came up again and they all sounded really excited and nostalgic about it so i volunteered to DM the end of it.

The party left it off at level 17 in the abyss. Ive already found another player to be the 4th player. Now the 2 issues i need help with:

The 3 'core' players are very low OP as far as i can tell. They have a wizard/lorewalker, the main damage dealer is a single classed 17 lvl rogue and apparently the party's weakest link has been the 17 lvl cleric. The 4th player is more of an optimiser/power player so i m gonna really be keeping a close watch on his character creation, after all the whole point of bringing this campaign back is to make the core party into the badass heroes and i dont want anything overshadowing them.

What would you recommend for a 4th party member then, keeping the above in mind? Something that would play to their strengths and assist them but will not by any means overshadow them?

My second issue is that i have never dm'd before, and ive never even played dnd at such high levels. So dms that have dmed high level games, or even have dmed savage tide all the way, what should i look out for? How do encounters play out? What can i do to keep it as entertaining as possible for the players?

As for dealing with the powergamer and the 3 core only guys, I would either convince the powergamer to limit the power of his characters or allow the 3 others to rebuild to some extent their characters. They can rebuild however they want while the concept is similar at the very least or they make new characters if they want to.

A tip for DMing, think flexibly as they might not do what you expect them to so don't plan how exactly you want sometbing to go but use guidelines instead and if they need it try help them slightly along the way.

[Ualaa]

Since it is an adventure path, I'd take a good look at the previous segments and in 'cliff notes' form give an overview of what had happened previously.

That will get the group kind of ready for what is happening. It may not be exactly the way their story went down, but in general it will summarize what has occurred, and will be useful for the new guy.

Ideally, the new guy is going to be equally optimized to the others, as a similar level of optimization is ideal; no one a lot stronger than and no one a lot weaker than the others. Sure, a bit of power difference is going to occur, but the less the better.

Taking the time to look over the abilities of each of the existing players is going to be important. You want to know what each of them can do, but also to give each of them the opportunity to shine in the spot light. It wouldn't matter if one of them can inflict 500 damage in a round, while the others are at 50 damage in a round -- at least not for spotlight time. Give everyone the chance to be the focus, and to excel when it is their turn to shine. Maybe the more optimized guy gets to kill things a bit faster, and if that is what she/he wants to build, fine.

Since it is an adventure path, read it through at least a couple of times... maybe once casually to get the flavor and once again in depth to understand what has happened and what is in action. Read the final stage that you'll be interpreting/presenting several extra times so you know what is supposed to happen and when. That way, when the party throws a wrench into the mix, you'll know what should happen to keep the adventure on track. The party is going to throw things into the works, and it is your job to move things forward regardless.

Don't be afraid to change things a bit. If the party has no means of dealing with a threat that requires AoE (example swarms), and there are swarms... you could run it as it is presented, but you can also modify it to replace the swarms with something that the party can handle. You can also introduce an NPC or five that aren't in the adventure, purely because they'll add to the experience. Maybe you'd like to DM in the future, and one or more of those could be re-occurring within your own game down the road.

In general, if you want to make a battle more challenging, use the action economy. If the final battle has a single CR 22 creature, you could make it substantially harder by going with a CR 20, plus two CR 18s, which would be a similar encounter level, but now with three sets of actions instead of one. If you want to make something weaker, you could change a race (or whatever) to have reduced hit points or perhaps a vulnerability to whatever element your party wizard is specializing in. I'm not sure if you want/need to increase or reduce the difficulty, but knowing your adventure and the characters is going to give you and idea of that.