[JosephBlackly]

OK.

So, I'm closing in on game time with a few buddies of mine, and I'm struggling with the adventure I have in front of me. See, currently, the party only consists of two individuals... A rogue and a bard, both halflings... And I have no idea the general power of said characters.

I know how much it would suck if I end up killing off these two in the first flippin' adventure. I would also prefer not to make it so easy that they can just walk through the whole thing. So, I've kinda placed before myself the three best options my failing mind can think of. Feel free to give your own suggestions of what I can/should do... I need all the help I can get right now.

1) Party NPC
I have a lot of stock characters of about the same power level of my PCs that I may use as a "helper" of sorts. This initially seems like the best option, however, as I've heard on these very same forums before, it is very difficult to both play and DM at the same time. I know this, as I've tried it before. It didn't turn out SO badly, since my players at the time were total noobies anyway and didn't notice or care... Not that anyone should hold that against them or anything.

2) Find Extra Player(s)
I think this is the ideal choice for the situation. However, with most of the friends that might want to play, uh... Scattered throughout the world now, this may prove to be difficult. I have a few people in mind that might want in on it, but I'm still struggling with a means to get everyone together. Physically, this is all but impossible. Online wouldn't be so bad if I could find an online RPG program that would work right! I don't know how many I've tried, but I'm starting to get frustrated.

3) Start Small and Work Up
The final logical solution to the problem, it would involve more or less eyeballing the encounter levels and CRs, scaling the crap out of them, and seeing how my pair of halflings fair. After seeing what they can easily deal with, throw progressively harder things at them until the difficulty is roughly where it should be. This would take some amount of time to do, however, and I don't even know where to start. Hell, I had a hard enough time dealing with my last group... The only reason they had any problems at all is because they argued with eachother a lot... While trying to be stealthy.

[Raven Bloodmoon]

Personally, I'd start with Option 3, and start you eyeblling at 1/2 the normal EL sinc eyou have half the players. Remember to also take into consideration a potential lack of healing. Make pit stops for healing more available unles your bard took the appropriate spells to avoid this pitfall.

While you are doing Option 3, you can also be scouting out more players, which would really help bring the game into balance.

Also, you left out Option 4: Let each player run 2 PCs. While it is more difficult for a player to do this, it shouldn't impact the game horribly if they are good RPers. Also, it instantly gives you your 4 PC-party.

[Dthclaw]

Yep. Raven made the big points, though I'll chip in 2 cp for ya.

I've found that for each player over four, you should increase EL by ~1/2 an EL point. Though I've never had to test this for under four, I suspect that that should give you a decent 'eyeball' point for dealing with such a small party if you decide to leave it at just the two players

[JosephBlackly]

Thanks for the insight, guys. Raven basically summed up what my most probable course of action would be... Roughly halving the ELs/CRs while looking for other players. It's the slow way of doing it, but I'm sure Spin will understand.

As for Raven's option 4... I don't see why that would be a bad idea. My players are very good RPers, and I don't imagine they'd suffer any for playing more than one PC at a time. I know Hunter was playing three or more characters at once before our last DM had to give up the game. I'll run that by them and see if they think they can do it.

...Each of them making another character would give me some more time to finish the adventure. I'm pretty far behind, methinks.

[RedSlayer]

Well, I have some experiance playing with a small amount of players, so I'll try to help out what I can.

You have a very specialized group, and there is very little hope of using the CR system in place. While you could go by ECL, you are not going to have the bases covered by an average party, and therefore it will generally not give you everything you would like. Thankfully, the rogue and bard generally have very good synergy. However, combat is going to be harder to handle, as they are both generally very frail. Look for a lot of intrigue or stealth-adventures, or at least opponents that are humanoids. With a small party, run-of-the-mill or standard adventures generally do not work, because the party can't cover the bases they would need.

1. This can be done, tho it depends what you want to do. If you want to have an NPC travel with the party, just make sure that you don't steal the spotlight from anyone in the group. However, I would recommend having perhaps an NPC ally who doesnt travel with the party, but will supply them with things that they need/use. For example, a friendly cleric who supplies the party with healing for free and potions at reduced prices when they visit him would greatly increase the survivability of the party, as well as provide someone the PC's carea about. Your party should have Use Magic Device available, so dont be afraid to give them helpful magic items. Your party is more equiped to handle things than say, a party of a barb anad a fighter, because both the rogue and bard could use enough of the standard magic items to emulate some missing class abilities. I'd recommend a friendly cleric or artificier for this purpose.

2. There is one program I have used in the past and is actually quite helpful. "OpenRPG" is a web-based program that gives players and DM's a number of options, and I'd highly recommend it. It's free, and fairly simple to use.

3. I'm not sure how small you'd want to start, but just try and highlight the natural abilities of a rogue and bard. Social situations are great for this, as well as anything that requires a bit of subterfuge.

Not sure if ya'd want any other advice, but thats what I got