So, I will soon be running a Skull and Shackles game, and I'm curious about what kind of changes should be made to the AP to account for a party of 7-8 PC's. Any and all suggestions, specific and general are welcome.
Thanks. :)
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Ugh, man that's an undertaking. The best idea I can come up with without altering the AP is self is forgo exp. I know that sounds crazy but that way the party will only level when you tell them too that way if they prove to be too powerful in any given situation just keep them from leveling until they seem a bit too squishy.
Should I do anything with the number of NPC's on the Wormwood or Man's Promise (pre- and post-capture) since it seems that they might just flat outnumber the enemy pirates in the final encounter and have a severe edge in numbers alone in the taking of the Man's Promise.
Should I do anything with the number of NPC's on the Wormwood or Man's Promise (pre- and post-capture) since it seems that they might just flat outnumber the enemy pirates in the final encounter and have a severe edge in numbers alone in the taking of the Man's Promise.
In similar threads involving 6 people, I think they said it would be a good idea to add more underlings per encounter (one more for each PC or something like that).
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Currently I'm not running Skulls and Shackles so as far as that goes I'm not sure on numbers or what the encounters are like. I'm just speaking from experience that nixing EXP may be the easiest way to go that way you have more control of how powerful the PCs are.
@Jabborwacky
Although this may work for big encounters I def wouldn't do this all the time. It'll make combat far to cumbersome. At the moment if you have time Nakteo I'd go through and make every encounter 1CR harder if you still want the party to level naturally from EXP. But if you do go with the idea of leveling them whenever you feel it's appropriate I wouldn't change the encounters that much. Mainly because it may seem like your party may outnumber a BBEG but if he's 4 levels ahead of them it's might be too hard for them to handle if you add anything extra.
An easy solution would be to increase the number of "simple" npcs by 75% and to max the hp of the "named" npcs.
That should work out OK for most situations.
If you want you can also add some extra nameds npcs once in a while to beef some fights up or to change an easy fight to a demanding fight.
All very interesting ideas. Thanks y'all. :) If anyone has any more ideas, don't hesitate to post.
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I'll second the "don't track XP" suggestion. It will avoid numerous potential problems.
Yeah another example of how this can work in a DMs favor is if you want to add any side missions or plot lines. Like for instance in Kingmaker there are tons of modules that work perfectly for that game unfortunately since most of those modules level parties of appropriate level you can't really run them alongside an AP... Unless you take away experience. This way you have way more freedom with encounters in the game itself.
Hrm...you could also have Scourge take a cruel shine to one group, playing it against the other. For example, the second-day encounter...*one* of those groups is going to be late! :P
Hrm...you could also have Scourge take a cruel shine to one group, playing it against the other. For example, the second-day encounter...*one* of those groups is going to be late! :P
Interesting, tell me more. o.o
I'm sorry, I was a little rushed when I posted that last. I'm interested in further ideas along those lines, and I'm curious about how that might manifest over the first 20 days.
Oh, I hadn't thought it entirely through, really...anyone else like to help me on this one?
If Scourge makes it clear that he's favoring one group over another, then you could use the NPCs to kick up a bit of envy of group #1. Meanwhile, group #2 is getting it harder and probably getting the nastier chores. Let group #2 take a few more of the plot points, while group #1 maybe gets to gather more of the information (and do some of the sneakier things). Meanwhile, they could play games against each other in the evenings, etc.
A lot of what happens would seem to depend on how the groups decide to act. Group #1 might decide to lord it over group #2, and they become real rivals...or group #1 might decide to be kind and secretly go about healing group #2 at nights from the extra abuse, share information, etc.
At some point, start picking individuals from each group and assigning them the same tasks, so that they have to RP a bit together. (This will come off much better if it's a Pbp game, I think.) Ah, and then when Scourge tries to have the one PC killed in the bilges, make one of the 'thugs' a member of group #1 - who has to decide whether to go through with it or defend the guy from group #2.
With so many PCs, you might also drop a few of the NPCs, such as Conch and Cog. For that matter, would it be ridiculous to have PCs roll Diplomacy checks against one another and RP the results?
Hmmmmm, I will certainly look into thinking on this. Thanks bunches!!! :)