soltengrabbe and 6 PCs

[Candide]

We've only just started book 2 but I'm looking ahead and trying to figure out what is needed to buff encounters. With 6 PCs, I figure I will need to unleash everything I can on them to prove a challenge. The team is 5 meleers and a sorceress with haste now(but she didn't take mythic spellcasting).

I've done away with the mass combat rules thinking them too swingy. I'll just run regular battles with the army fighting around them. Probably keeping the first army easy so as to point out how different the PCs are than before. I plan to use Scorpions stats for everything now. Thoughts on any of this?

-Candide

[laraqua]

With six players I wouldn't bother with mass combat rules either, though in my case (solo player with four characters, Dragon Age-style, he controls them during combat, I RP them), the mass combat was quite fun though ENORMOUSLY swingy. Quite rewarding when you use ambushes, as you get to feel clever, but otherwise it's either win or die. When I used mass combat, I had them fight the commander as well using the normal rules.

I found Soltengrebbe to be quite powerful but that's probably because only one of mine could hit it until it landed. It has a load of attacks and if it focuses on one character after another, it could drop them.

Alternatively, depending on how potent your PCs are, you could include one of those other fellows they experimented on but which died rather than become mythic. Say one survived. You might not want to have it attack alongside Soltengrebbe, but having it arrive a few rounds later (perhaps herald it with a bellow) and it would drive the point home.