Hi
Heh..topic is bit weird, but I want to know if DMs got knowledge how larger than 4 parties XP will be shared. After blackwall keep most players werent even near of level 7. We are playing with party of 5 and there will be additional member so soon we will have 6th PC. Should I add some monsters or just give some extra xp from encounters? What are your options about it. My party tries avoid conflicts at few times, so they likely miss some XP.
-Gildur
I have a party of six players, too. Until yet (Dourstone Mine finishing the temple of Hextor) their are 4 3rd level charakters and 2 4th level. I think a good value. In Whispering Cairn I added some monsters. In TFoE I give them some extra xp for solving some problems without fight. In fact, I believe their are not enough possibilities to earn xp in Encounter in Blackwell Keep to reach 7th level. Maybe you can solve the problem with a sidetrack adventure before the group reached the free city.
This isn't too standard... BUT. I ditched XP for this campaign, I figured since it was a path I would just follow the suggested levels. They just gain levels whenever I tell them.. at the beginning of the adventure they are the level that they are supposed to be, sometimes they gain a level half way. I must say that it has been going a LOT better than I thought it would. Less book keeping for me, and just as fun for the players. I have had to use an alternate system for the one char who makes items, but other than that it has gone quite well.
Don't worry about it.
5 6th level pc's have 30 combined levels
30 / 4 = 7+
Your average party level is still 7, so you really don't need to change the next adventure. If one of your players fails to show up though you might have a problem.
Hi
Heh..topic is bit weird, but I want to know if DMs got knowledge how larger than 4 parties XP will be shared. After blackwall keep most players werent even near of level 7. We are playing with party of 5 and there will be additional member so soon we will have 6th PC. Should I add some monsters or just give some extra xp from encounters? What are your options about it. My party tries avoid conflicts at few times, so they likely miss some XP.
-Gildur
This will help you immensely in calculating who gets how much XPs per encounter:
http://www.d20srd.org/encounterCalculator.htm
I've run from 8-14 players; I got used to just doubling the encounters from SCAP, but I've had to dial back as they progressed and took some losses in the group. Running 9 players now, I pretty much run the material as written now, because its written for 4 characters of 14th-16th level and the party members only average 12th.
M
Don't worry about it.
5 6th level pc's have 30 combined levels
30 / 4 = 7+
Your average party level is still 7, so you really don't need to change the next adventure. If one of your players fails to show up though you might have a problem.
That logic isn't going to work very well, especially not when the 6th PC joins the group. It'd work okay on a case by case basis for 5 PCS, but it breaks down even further the more PCs you add or subtract from the "standard" 4 PC party. It also further deviates from the adventurer writer's expectations the higher level the campaign gets.
1. You really have to go over it on an encounter by encounter basis. An adventure might say it is for 5th level characters, which with a standard party means 20 character levels total, right? So if you have 5 x 4th level PCs, or 6 x 3rd level PCs, you come close to the total character levels recommended for the adventure, but you fall flat when it comes to character abilities.
Those more numerous, but lower level, PCs won't have the abilities that the adventure's writer assumes.
Which means the fighter will have less BAB and HP than expected. The Rogue will have a lower skill point maximum, and might miss out on the nice synergy bonuses and sneak attack dice as well. And everyone is going to be missing out on Saving Throw bonuses, which become critically important at higher levels.
And when the trend (especially in AoW and Eberron, IMHO) is to have fewer encounters than standard, but to have those encounters be more challenging (higher average CR than standard), than that level or two that the fighter or rogue is lacking could very easily push the encounter from being challenging to being embarassingly lethal.
Perhaps more importantly, the spellcasters will be missing out on those higher levels of spells, and if the example 5th level adventure assumes the PCs can and will use basic 3rd level spells like Dispel Magic, Fly, Fireball, Magic Circle of Protection vs Evil, etc... well, the more numerous lower level spellcasters just can't do it, and the party gets screwed. Its even worse when looking at divine casters, since the adventure might assume that the party can and will use spells like neutralize poison, death ward, etc vs the appropriate enemies... and without them, the encounters become even tougher, compounding the issue of the fighter being outclassed to begin with, etc
And depending on how you are awarding loot, this could easily compound the above issues. If the more numerous, but lower level, PCs have the gear appropriate for thier individual levels, you could easily get into a situation where it is expected that the PCs might have access to a certain type of item (Ghost Touch weapons, curative scrolls, etc for example), and they don't. Which again makes the encounter tougher than originally written.
If you follow the "Total Character Level" system, be prepared for many encounters when your PCs are outclassed, which translates into more deaths and a much higher chance of TPKs. Which also will probably translate into a higher player frustration level, but that might just be the bias from my own personal experiences shining through.
2. The "Total Character Level" system breaks down the other way too, if you have a party of only 2 or 3 PCs versus the standard 4. I'm not going into detail on this, since it wasn't the type of scenario the original poster was asking about, but you can easily invert my examples from above to see what I mean.
3. I've almost never played in a standard 4 players + Dm campaign, and I've found from both playing and DM'ing with non-standard amounts of PCs that you really have to go over the adventure as written and compare each encounter vs what your PCs can actually do. Some will be fine as is, but most will need minor tweaks or perhaps need to be altered in a major fashion. The Scaling the Adventure sidebars in Dungeon are a good guide for tweaking the AoW adventures like this.
I've found it best to keep the party at the character level recommended for the adventure, and then increase the number, rather than the CR, of the average encounter. Of course when it comes to encounters like BBEGs and traps this doesn't work, but adding a few more mooks to suck up hits and a level or two to the BBEG works pretty well in most cases. And when it comes to traps, you can either increase the CR (and lethality) of the trap a bit, or you can go with a "Defenses in Depth" approach, and add an extra trap or two in a logical manner around critical points to keep it challenging.
This isn't too standard... BUT. I ditched XP for this campaign, I figured since it was a path I would just follow the suggested levels. They just gain levels whenever I tell them.. at the beginning of the adventure they are the level that they are supposed to be, sometimes they gain a level half way. I must say that it has been going a LOT better than I thought it would. Less book keeping for me, and just as fun for the players. I have had to use an alternate system for the one char who makes items, but other than that it has gone quite well.
I like this system as well, especially for a campaign like AoW.
Perhaps more importantly, the spellcasters will be missing out on those higher levels of spells, and if the example 5th level adventure assumes the PCs can and will use basic 3rd level spells like Dispel Magic, Fly, Fireball, Magic Circle of Protection vs Evil, etc... well, the more...
I would like to point out that there is a flaw in your theory here: If you only have a Sorceror in the party who doesn't get 3rd level spells until 6th, it hampers the party even more. As Sorceror is a core class from the PHB, I would hope that adventure writers would take this into account and allow for non fighter/wizard/cleric/rogue parties.
I'm having to take this into account, as my party's arcane power is not only a sorceror, but a sorceror who is deliberately avoiding all the 'boring' spells like Fireball and so on. (She got an awful lot of use out of Ghost Sound in the grimlock section of 3FoE, for example.)
Those more numerous, but lower level, PCs won't have the abilities that the adventure's writer assumes.
Which means the fighter will have less BAB and HP than expected. The Rogue will have a lower skill point maximum, and might miss out on the nice synergy bonuses and sneak attack dice as well. And everyone is going to be missing out on Saving Throw bonuses, which become critically important at higher levels.
That was exactly what I was thinking about. I might add some extra monsters if they get proper levels and maybe some extra loot, since sharing loot to 6PCs doesn't work to me (since loot is generated to 4 PCs). So far body count has been quite normal. 3FOE was killer adventure. Few of my players are realy min/maxing their characters, so probably even lower level won't be big problem. Like Talion wrote before, save,bab and skills are crucial in certain points of AP.
-Gildur
i really like the idea too, but i have characters with ecl.
I have a HUGE group, I just throw in extra monsters, and extra levels to baddies.
I have had to use an alternate system for the one char who makes items, but other than that it has gone quite well.
Details!