Scaling Adventures for Appropriate Level

[Ezdorell Ex-Elven]

I recently purchased two Pathfinder Compatible adventures at GenCon--an original adventure and it's sequel. However, the original is meant for five 9th level characters, but the sequel is meant for five 7th level characters.

Obviously, when I run these adventures, I don't want to make the players take their characters back to 7th level for the sequel. I also don't want to play the adventures in reverse order. How do I "scale up" the sequel so that it won't be too easy for five characters who may be 10th or 11th (possibly 12th?) level by the time they get to play it?

If you can't answer exactly, I would appreciate if you could tell me where [i.e. in which section(s) of which chapter(s)] I can find the relevant information in either the Core Rulebook or the GM's Guide.

[DM_Blake]

Sorry to say, you won't find it.

Adventures are not mechanically scalable.

That's not to say that you can't do it, but it's not just a matter of adding a + here, and feat there. If all you wanted was one level, maybe two, a lot of it could be simulated by adding the Simple Advanced template to most of the monsters and adding a level here or there to any NPCs. It's not even hard to fake a level (by "fake" I mean you don't look up the class, add all the class abilities, and update the stat block, but instead you just give them some more HP and a bonus on attack rolls, a few new spells if they cast, maybe an interesting feat, and call it good).

But you're talking about updating a 7th level adventure to at least 12th level, maybe 13th (I'm adding one since you have 5 PCs).

That's way more than a template.

You will need to multiple the numbers of monsters by at least x4 (which adds +4 to the CR of the encounter), or by x5 (which adds +5 to the CR)so if you had a CR7 encounter with two trolls, you could make it a CR 12 encounter with 10 trolls. Or maybe 8 trolls with the simple advanced template.

That can make for some longer and more tedious fights, but it's a good place to start.

The other thing is to replace those two trolls with something else that is a CR 12 fight, like two troll berserkers (CR 11) or four troll rippers (CR 12) - both of those are in the Monstrous Codex and you can find their stats online in the SRD.

If the adventure has NPCs, you'll need to add 5-6 class levels to keep them at a challenging CR. That pretty much means a full rewrite of their stat blocks with all their new HP, attacks, defenses, saves, CMB/CMD, feats, skills, and abilities. There isn't a really quick way to do this, but if you have the NPC Codex you could just grab some appropriate level NPCs from that book - use the names and descriptions that are in the adventure, but use the stat blocks from the NPC Codex.

You could avoid adding a bunch of class levels by giving the NPC some monster friends. An CR 8 boss NPC could be bumped to 12th level by adding three troll berserkers.

Sorry, it's going to take some work.

[DM-DR]

A few easy adjustments (without looking at the two adventures):

• If an encounter has a single monster, hit "copy+paste" (2 of same monster = CR+2, 3=CR+3, 4=CR+4).
  
• You can add simple templates with easy play rules (Advanced is CR+1) to encounters with single or multiple opponents. If multiples of the same monster, give them all the same template for an even CR boost (5 monsters that equal CR 7 can be given advanced twice across the board to make it a CR 9 encounter).
  
• For the BBEG battles, you can add class levels or advanced templates (or a minion).
  

I don't have very many third party adventures (zero of anything published within that last year), but if it is something I have I can try to bump everything for you.

You will find most of what you need for increasing the CRs of encounters in the Bestiary and designing an encounter in the Gamemastering section of the core rulebook,(don't have mine on me as reference, but here are some prd entries: Advancement, Designing Encounters

EDIT: DM_Blake ninja'd me while I had a customer >.< But like he said, you are in for a bit of work.

[Ezdorell Ex-Elven]

If it helps, the adventures are Zombie Orpheus Entertainment's "The Mask of Death" (9th level) and "The Shadow's Dungeon" (7th level).

In my original post I only said that the PCs could be 10th, 11th or 12th level by the time we get to The Shadow's Dungeon because I haven't tallied up all of the possible XP from The Mask of Death. They could very well still be at 9th level by the time they get to The Shadow's Dungeon. I don't know.

I suppose, if it depends on what level the PCs are by the time they get to The Shadow's Dungeon, then I could probably figure it out from the advice already given. I'll just have to find this thread again whenever that happens--not even sure when I'm going to be running The Mask of Death, much less The Shadow's Dungeon.

Thanks for the help.