Large Party - Scaling up the Bad Guys?


Age of Worms Adventure Path

Liberty's Edge

Pathfinder Maps Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber

I ran the first session of the Whispering Cairn last night.

First off - it was fun.

I used the mining office from WormFood in Dragon #335 as the first locale and started the session in media res with the partry fighting five stirges nesting in the tree outside. (The encounter notes in the mining office are at the end of this post - full credit to another poster here for the inspiration and design.)

The party is large with 7 players:

1 Halfling Rogue
1 Human Warmage (Complete Arcane - quite powerful)
1 Human Wizard
1 Human Scout (Complete Adventurer)
1 Human Cleric of Pellor
1 Human Fighter
1 Human Psychic Warrior (Exp Psionic Handbook)

All are currently 1st level and have explored the Mining Office (placed gobling/stirge/badger encounters per a very useful post here on the forums.) and secured a deed to the office from Tolliver Trask. The party has invested in fixing up the office, so that turned out quite well.

I have doubled the number of foes at every encounter to deal with the extra party members. Even still, the Warmage is powerful enough with spontaneous casting and a +3 to Warmage Edge that apart from the Lurking Stranglers in the Architect's Tomb,the party has not been seriously challenged so far.

The party has not yet hit any of the swarms. My original plan was to double the swarms and mad slaseher - but I am inclined to triple the swarms at this point and leave the mad slashers at double.

Still feeling my way here - but the Warmage is a very powerful class at low levels with its extra damage. Even Acid Splash is a decent attack with the extra damage.

Any similar experiences?

The Ruined Mine Office

The Yard (CR 1)

There is a twisted, dead tree that hangs over the yard. Hanging around the tree are 3 Stirges who have caught the scent of the goblins inside the mine office and are waiting for them to come out after consuming one unlucky goblin. They have been roosting for two days now and are now ravenous. They attack anyone who comes into the yard.

Stirge: CR 1/2; Tiny Magical Beast ; HD 1d10 (Magical Beast) ; hp 5; Init +4; Spd 10, Fly, Average 40; AC:16 (Flatfooted:12 Touch:16); Atk -1 base melee, +7 base ranged; -1 (1d3-4, Touch); SA: Attach (Ex) , Blood Drain (Ex) ; SQ: Darkvision (Ex): 60 ft., Low-light Vision (Ex); AL N; SV Fort +2, Ref +6, Will +1; STR 3, DEX 19, CON 10, INT 1, WIS 12, CHA 6.
Skills: Hide +14, Listen +4, Spot +4.
Feats: Alertness.
Description: A stirge resembles a cross between a bat and a giant mosquito. It has membranous bat wings, a short furry body, eight jointed legs that end in sharp pincers, and a needlelike proboscis. Coloration ranges from rust-red to reddish-brown, with a dirty yellow underside. The proboscis is pink at the tip, fading to gray at its base. A stirge's body is about 1 foot long, with a wingspan of about 2 feet.
Combat: A stirge attacks by landing on a victim, finding a vulnerable spot, and plunging its proboscis into the flesh. This is a touch attack and can target only Small or larger creatures.
Special Attacks: Attach (Ex): If a stirge hits with a touch attack, it uses its eight pincers to latch onto the opponent's body. An attached stirge has an AC of 12.
Blood Drain (Ex): A stirge drains blood, dealing 1d4 points of temporary Constitution damage each round it remains attached. Once it has drained 4 points of Constitution, it detaches and flies off to digest the meal.

The Living Room (CR 1)

The Goblins inside should hear the commotion from the Stirges and the Shaman will order his goblins to withdraw out of the main room to surprise and flank the party if at all possible. The Shaman hides in the Library/Study preparing to use his sleep spell in the ambush. If the Goblins hear nothing, they will be spread through the main floor of the house in twos.

Goblin: CR 1/3; Small Humanoid (Goblinoid); HD 1d8+1 (Humanoid) ; hp 5; Init +2; Spd 30; AC:15 (Flatfooted:13 Touch:13); Atk +1 base melee, +3 base ranged; +1 (1d6, Spear); SQ: Darkvision (Ex): 60 ft., Subtype: Goblinoid; AL NE; SV Fort +3, Ref +2, Will -1; STR 10, DEX 14, CON 12, INT 10, WIS 9, CHA 6.
Skills: Climb +0.5, Hide +6, Jump +1, Listen +2, Move Silently +6, Ride +6, Spot +3, Survival +0.
Feats: Alertness, Simple Weapon Proficiency.
Possessions: Spear; Leather Armor.
Description: Goblins have flat faces, broad noses, pointed ears, wide mouths, and small, sharp fangs. Their foreheads slope back, and their eyes are usually dull and glazed, varying in color from red to yellow. They walk upright, but their arms hang down almost to their knees. Goblins' skin color ranges from yellow through any shade of orange to a deep red; usually all members of a single tribe are about the same color. They wear clothing of dark leather, tending toward drab, soiled-looking colors.
Languages: Goblins speak Goblin; those with Intelligence scores of 12 or above also speak Common.

Dining Room (CR 1)

This room contains the “guard dogs” for the small band, 2 starving, tortured Badgers who have taken to digging into the floorboards in frustration. They will attack anything that doesn’t feed them a scrap of food and even then, will only pause long enough to eat it.

Animal, Badger: CR 1/2; Small Animal ; HD 1d8+2 (Animal) ; hp 6; Init +3; Spd 30, Burrow 10; AC:15 (Flatfooted:12 Touch:14); Atk +0 base melee, +4 base ranged; +4/-1 (1d2-1, 2 Claw; 1d3-1, Bite); SA: Rage (Ex) ; SQ: Scent (Ex), Low-light Vision (Ex); AL N; SV Fort +4, Ref +5, Will +1; STR 8, DEX 17, CON 15, INT 2, WIS 12, CHA 6.
Skills: Escape Artist +7, Hide +7, Listen +3, Spot +3.
Feats: Track, Weapon Finesse.
Description: The badger is a furry animal with a squat, powerful body. Its strong forelimbs are armed with long claws for digging. An adult badger is 2 to 3 feet long and weighs 25 to 35 pounds.
Combat: Badgers attack with their sharp claws and teeth.
Rage (Ex): A badger that takes damage in combat flies into a berserk rage on its next turn, clawing and biting madly until either it or its opponent is dead. It gains +4 to Strength, +4 to Constitution, and -2 to Armor Class. The creature cannot end its rage voluntarily.

The Kitchen/Pantry

These areas are the same, except the Pantry contains the treasures of the small goblin band: 8 pints of oil, 5 tindertwigs, 1 Flask of Alchemist’s Fire, 50’ Silk rope, 18 Trail Rations, 625 sp, 60 gp, 1 rose quartz (50gp), 3 blue quartz (10gp each)

The Library Study (CR 2)

The Shaman, Ugloop, and his bodyguards are located here, and they fight to the death. After days and days of wandering and dodging the Garrison and other dangers of the cairn hills, these Goblins have been holed up in the minig office by the striges. They are desperate and will fight to the death. Any taken alive will know nothing of the area, but they will have heard strange moaning and whispering coming from the hills.

Goblin guards: as above

Ugloop, Male Goblin Ftr1/Wiz1: CR 2; Small Humanoid (Goblinoid); HD 1d10+1(Fighter) , 1d4+1(Wizard) ; hp 9; Init +2; Spd 30; AC:17 (Flatfooted:15 Touch:13); Atk +4 base melee, +4 base ranged; +4 (1d4+1, Scimitar); SQ: Darkvision (Ex): 60 ft., Subtype: Goblinoid; AL NE; SV Fort +3, Ref +2, Will +2; STR 12, DEX 14, CON 12, INT 11, WIS 9, CHA 6.
Skills: Appraise +1, Bluff -1, Handle Animal +2, Hide +4, Move Silently +4, Ride +6,Spot +4.
Feats: Armor Proficiency: heavy, Armor Proficiency: light, Armor Proficiency: medium, Dodge, Scribe Scroll, Shield Proficiency, Simple Weapon Proficiency,
Spells Prepared (Wiz 3/1): 0 - Acid Splash, Ghost Sound, Mage Hand; 1st - Sleep.
Possessions: Scimitar; Studded leather; Shield, light wooden. obsidian necklace valued at 200gp
3 potions of cure light wounds, 1 potion of resist energy (acid).

The Second Story

Is the same as the text, with the caved in roof. 5 more Stirges up here, roosting and waiting for the goblins to emerge.

The Basement (CR 2)

A DC 7 Listen check will notice that there are ominous squeaking sounds coming from below, made by a nest of 5 Dire Rats, hp 5 each, Monster Manual pg 64, who have laired in the ruins of the basement. Also a number of non-combatant baby dire rats blindly root about a nest on the south wall, with a couple of badly decomposed bodies. The nest also contains a box, nestled under the debris, requiring a DC 10 Search check. The box contains an Elixir of Swimming, a scroll of Burning Hands a scroll of Animate Rope, 340 sp, 82 gp, a masterwork, and an ivory bound ledger worth 125gp.

Dire Animal, Rat: CR 1/3; Small Animal ; HD 1d8+1 (Animal) ; hp 5; Init +3; Spd 40, Climb 20; AC:15 (Flatfooted:12 Touch:14); Atk +1 base melee, +4 base ranged; +4 (1d4, Bite); SA: Disease (Ex) ; SQ: Scent (Ex), Low-light Vision (Ex), , ; AL N; SV Fort +3, Ref +5, Will +3; STR 10, DEX 17, CON 12, INT 1, WIS 12, CHA 4.
Skills: Climb +8, Hide +8, Jump +4, Listen +4, Move Silently +4, Spot +4.
Feats: Alertness, Weapon Finesse.
Description: Dire animals are larger, tougher, meaner versions of normal animals. They tend to have a feral, prehistoric look. A dire rat can grow up to 3 feet long and weigh over 60 pounds. Combat: Dire rat packs attack fearlessly, biting and chewing with their sharp incisors.
Special Attacks: Disease (Ex): Filth fever - bite, Foritude save (DC 11), incubation period 1d3 days; damage 1d3 temporary Dexterity and 1d3 temporary Constitution. This save is Constitution based.


7 players!! Gadzukes! My hat goes off to you guys who can handle more than 5 players. Right now I have 3 PCs in my group and I'm having difficulty finding another good player. Five is my limit for DMing.
Nice set up at the mining office SW. Thanks for posting the adven.

Dark Archive

Firstly, I'd not worry too much about the absolute size of the party -- I prefer 6 or 7 PCs, and think 4 is definately too few given the lethality of the published adventures.

In my experience a larger than expected party is much less of a problem than a higher level than expected party -- a breadth vs depth thing. The party is more likely to have the right skills and abilities to advance quickly at any given point, without getting access to higher level abilities that would eneable them to act in ways unanticipated by the adventure writer -- no need to worry about dimension door a couple of levels "early".

To my mind it looks like a decent mix of characters -- but for this sort of thing (eg party balancing) I tend to regard characters as filling one or more roles rather than being particular classes -- heavy fighter, light fighter, scout, divine, utility arcane, combat arcane, etc.

On this basis, and given that I'm not familiar with the "psychic warrior" (or any psionic material) I'd say the only thing that looks to be missing is a backup healer -- someone to use divine scrolls/wands/etc when the cleric's on -9HP.

Lastly, although the warmage is quite effective in combat, that's about all that he's good at -- his non-combat spells & abilities are few and far between, so even if he shines at times he's unlikely to outshine the party the rest of the time, at least after 1st/2nd level. His main thing is damage dealing -- a couple more HP or improvements to touch AC will slow down the rate at which his enemies fall before him.

Also, he wants decent stats everywhere -- CHA for his spells, INT for the edge, DEX for ranged touch & missile attacks, and even though his armour & HP are better than a wizards they aren't good enough to get away without reasonable DEX and CON.

As is often the case, the warmages efficacy against the swarms will depend on the choice of spells -- burning hands and hail of stones are the only first level warmage spells that are going to be much use against swarms, so you probably don't need to go overboard there as swarms are notoriously tough anyway!

Finally, warmages run the risk of sinking all their feats into ranged combat, further restricting their versatility.


Don't scale up too much. The swarms are particularly deadly. I scaled up Shackled City because the party has more PC's than I anticpated and includes a centaur wizard and a half-dragon cleric. As it was, Kazmojen and his howler was almost more than they could handle.

Instead of doubling and tripling stuff, add a level to creatures here and there.

If later on they're still too powerful, you can always adjust, but when you double or triple stuff, it's really easy to make it too challenging.

Liberty's Edge

Pathfinder Maps Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber
GreenGrunt wrote:

7 players!! Gadzukes! My hat goes off to you guys who can handle more than 5 players. Right now I have 3 PCs in my group and I'm having difficulty finding another good player. Five is my limit for DMing.

Nice set up at the mining office SW. Thanks for posting the adven.

My limit is 8. I won't go higher than that.

My preferred # is 5-6.

Liberty's Edge

I realized that somtimes it's just enough to give the given creatures full hit points!


Dryder wrote:
I realized that somtimes it's just enough to give the given creatures full hit points!

That's good advice, Tom...sometimes the simplest solution is also the best.

Liberty's Edge

Pathfinder Maps Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber

Well - we have a great difference of opinion on this point. The crunch of numbers in the game does not support the view of just increasing hit points of the critters as being a reasonable answer to scaling an encounter.

Take the wolf encounter in Whispering Cairn. As written, that is three wolves, 9, 9 and 20 hits each.

A wolf's max hit points is 20 (2d8+4).

I could increase the hits on two lesser wolves also to 20.

Or I could double the wolves present, 9,9,9,9,20,20.

The threat level presented by a party of 7, (including a warmage with an Int of 17) is about double the threat level of a party of four - easily.

In combat, the lethality of a party is represented by three factors:

1 - the amount of damage they can deliver in a round;
2 - the amount of damage they can take before being rendered unconscious (or dead);
3 - the speed with which they can deliver the damage above.

When you scale up a party of 4 to a party of 7 - add in the warmage edge, and consider that the players are all very experienced players, increasing the hit points by 11 each on two wolves is a paltry challenge.

The primary reason lies in the initiative system and ranged fire. A party of seven will have - on average - 4 attacks going before the wolves can attack. They also have the ability to deliver attacks at range - when the wolves do not. In addition, the more attacks you deliver in a given round - the more likely it is that a critical hit will emerge.

Being PCs controlled by intelligent players - they will concentrate their fire on one wolf to bring it down first and move on to the next.

By increasing hit points without increasing the # of targets, there is a disproportionate increase in the damage dealing power of the party without increasing the ability to deliver damage in a given round by the wolves. The result is that the wolves die quickly and the "threat" presented is not doubled. The combat lethality is not appropriately scaled.

In the combat with 6 wolves as outlined above, the halfling was damaged and retreated, the cleric of Pelor was tripped and threatened by an alpha wolf.

That's as far as the wolves got. The PCs slaughtered the alpha male and female wolves and that was about it for the wolves. Two broke and ran - the other two were slaughtered the next round.

If I had only increased the hit points of the wolves, by adding - in effect - two more alpha wolves, the wolves would have died in two rounds, possibly three - and no threat would ever have emerged from the beasts at all.

Liberty's Edge

Sure, but I didn't say it works for all situations.
But sometimes that's just the thing to do.
On the other hand, it totally depends on where you face the wolves (to take your example). If there's no chance for a ranged attack, things look different again.
Using full hit points is no guarantee, but it can be enough.

Of course, adding levels, or creatures (or changing the environment!!!) can be much more effectiv!

Liberty's Edge

Pathfinder Maps Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber

Well that's true as well. There are times when doubling the creatures has no real effect.

Consider if the corridors are too narrow - an enemy creature without a ranged attack is left out of the fight to be engaged later.

He's just useless meat in the fight until his brethren fall to make room for him.

That is the time where a combination of both increasing hits and # of creatures is a more appropriate way to scale the encounter.


I have a fair sized table as well and was interested in looking on what effects this would have on my campaign. I really did not want to worry about scaling things. Part of my DMing philosophy involves leaving things as they are in the fantasy world. Essentially I'm willing to trade some play balance for veracity.

Anyway I created a table in which I made some basic presumptions. I presumed that regardless of the parties size they would encounter five CR 2 encounters then five CR 3 encounters then five CR 4 encounters etc. until they reached 10th level. What I wanted to know was how many more encounters a larger party would need to have before they made levels.

Now the above presumptions mean that the party is, in general, dealing with a small number of hard encounters. I did this because I found that most adventures in Dungeon essentially follow this pattern. There is not enough room in the magazine to make 14 EL 1 encounters to get a party to 2nd level, instead one gets something more like five EL2 and EL3 encounters.

I can't post a table. When I finally get around to buying thumbscrews I'll force my business partner to give me private space for gaming stuff on our server but until then I'll just write out some of the highlights I found.

Essentially I found, of course, that larger partys gained levels slower then smaller ones. No suprise here - but it was not much slower. You add roughly 2 extra CR X encounters per added party member in terms of gaining levels. Furthermore the larger parties had huge swings in experience gained. Essentially they'd not be getting much experience because there were to many of them and then they would suddenly get 'paid off' when they met that higher CR encounter. Suddenly they where just cleaning up on the fact that 3rd level characters had taken down a CR 7 monster - even if there where 8 of them they where still really raking in the experience.

So the system is self correcting even for larger party sizes. If the characters are not making as much initially they still won't be left that far behind simply because they'll earn the bonus for facing higher CR encounters while they are still at lower levels. Essentially there is a 'pulled up by the bootstraps' effect for larger parties - the larger the party the more pronounced the effect.


What this means in terms of the Age of Worms AP presumably is that you don't actually have to adjust at all. The party won't be 3rd after Whispering Cairn but they'll probably be 2nd and they will start to keep up more in the later adventures.

Liberty's Edge

Pathfinder Maps Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber

Well - XP does not trouble me so much as that is an award a DM can fudge - by awarding less or giving more as the situation demands.

Particularly when it comes to giving more - awarding "story points" or bonuses for solving puzzles or good roleplaying - all of these are easy tools for a DM to use to deal with that issue.

The problem with scaling encounters to deal with a stronger party is far more basic: if you fail to scale the encounter, you will not challenge the PCs appropriately and your module will be a cake walk.

The entertainment value of your game will suffer. Seeing as we are playing a game and we are talking about "fun" - it doesn't get much more basic than that. That is not something that can be addressed by awarding bonus XP here and there or "solved" by ignoring it.


Steel_Wind wrote:

Well - XP does not trouble me so much as that is an award a DM can fudge - by awarding less or giving more as the situation demands.

Particularly when it comes to giving more - awarding "story points" or bonuses for solving puzzles or good roleplaying - all of these are easy tools for a DM to use to deal with that issue.

The problem with scaling encounters to deal with a stronger party is far more basic: if you fail to scale the encounter, you will not challenge the PCs appropriately and your module will be a cake walk.

The entertainment value of your game will suffer. Seeing as we are playing a game and we are talking about "fun" - it doesn't get much more basic than that. That is not something that can be addressed by awarding bonus XP here and there or "solved" by ignoring it.

But thats the beauty of it. It won't be a cake walk for long at all - in fact, due to the way Dungeon adventures are designed, with a small number of extremely tough encounters, it won't be a cake walk at all. What your really get is a kind of ramp up - the first handful of encounters are a little easier for a larger party so there is less chance they actually die in their first fight - look at that beetle encounter again, for 4 1st level characters made strictly by the rules and with a DM that is not fudging the dice or giving them bonus cure light wound poitions at start thats one friggen tough encounter - I give the monsters 25% chance to actually kill a player outright right here, something no DM probably actually wants to happen as players get mad if you kill them when they've only been playing for half a single session.

After Whispering Cairne the self correcting nature of the system has had a chance to work its magic and all bets are off. By the point your larger party enters Three Faces of Evil its probably got about as much chance of a TPK (which is to say its got a pretty good chance) as a smaller party simply because a smaller party is 3rd going on 4th while a larger one is 2nd going on 3rd.

My point is that while any DM can modify it all they want - there really is no reason you have to modify it at all. The system is self correcting and will insure that the adventure is challanging for your party so long as you give the system enough time to self correct.

Essentially its inevitable - larger partys get less XP then smaller ones hence they gain levels slower meanwhile , on average, over the course of the AP every encounter they face will be tougher then the last encounter. Pretty soon they will reach encounters that are about the right toughness for a party of their size and when they do they will also notice that they seem to suddenly be getting more experience - from this point on they will move up levels at about the same speed as smaller higher level partys because they will gain levels but the toughness of the encounters will be greater to compensate.


How would y'all advise modifying treasure for a larger group?


One issue you can run into with the bigger party is that if you don't increase the numbers of monsters and the directions the monsters come from you can end up with half the party in the back lines forced to do nothing more than lob ranged attacks in many encounters with no risk to themselves. This tends to get tedious and boring for those players.

There is also more to consider with a large party than just encounter difficulty. When the designers create the dungeons they are thinking of a party of 4, so many of the encounter areas will be physically too small for a bigger group, and you end up in a situation where half the party is left out of the action just because there isn't adequate space for them to interact with the encounter.

Personally, I think you do need to increase the numbers of monsters in many of the fights, so that you can threaten more PCs, but you may also need to look at increasing the space of the encounter areas.

For example, in Three Faces of Evil the Grimlock tunnels have some fun encounters, but the tunnels and caves are fairly small and tight. If I were running it with a large party I would consider enlarging some of those spaces and adding in some extra branching tunnels and such. Then I'd wait until the entire party to enter an area before have grimlocks burst out of hiding spots and various side tunnels, so that they can come in at the party from all sides and force all the PCs to be threatened and engaged in the action.

This will make for more interesting combat, but it will take longer, so if it were me I'd edit out some of the less interesting encounters that they really just put in to shore up the xp they need to hand out each adventure. Instead of those I'd shoot for less frequent but more epic combats. When you do run a fight make it a big nasty one. For instance in the Vecna temple of TFoE I'd leave out the maze part since I found it annoying to run, and I would make the lab and chapel area one big encounter area/fight (the module sets up to be multiple smaller encounters) with waves of reinforcements joining the action.

Another way to threaten the large party is with AoEs. Do things like add in an extra wind warrior or two in the tomb, and have them fly around spamming their sonic line attacks while the others go into melee. Extend the range of their sonic line attacks so they can nuke more PCs at once. Having the PCs be forced to roll saves keeps them on their toes and is fairly easy for a DM to run.

You might even consider having the players do all the dice rolling. It can be a long time between player turns with a big group, so if they are rolling defence tests as well as attack rolls it can keep them more engaged outside their turns. The other benefit is it frees up mental space for the DM that gets wasted on math, and you can spend more time focusing on monster tactics, rping. It basically works like this: instead of adding 10 to AC and having the monster roll against them to hit you do the opposite. For example a goblin that has +2 to hit, now requires a DC 12 defence test (10+2= 12), and the thief he is attacking no longer has a 16 AC. Instead he has an AC of +6. Thus when the goblin attacks the thief rolls a d20 adds 6 to the roll and that is his defence test. If he gets 12 or better the attack misses. If the thief rolls a 1 on his defence roll the goblin threatens a crit (assuming an attack with a 20 crit threat range) and he must roll as second defence check to see if he suffers a crit. Essentially, in this mode of play AC becomes another type of saving throw.

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