SSAP help- 5 PCs + NPCs

[nogoodscallywag]

My group is in the middle of Ch. 2 Serpent's Skull.

I've got 5 players- 3 Rangers, melee Rogue, and a Fighter w/ Archer archetype.

Included in this is an NPC from Chapter 1 and now another from Ch. 2.

The players are mopping the floor against everything except spellcasters, who give them a bit of trouble. I know the challenge is made for an APL of a party of 4, but I'm not sure how to adjust the CR in the challenges.

I did my own adjusting in Ch. 1 at the end by adjusting the CR up 1 level, but the end encounter they nearly perished. I've kept the +1 CR adjustment for Ch. 2, but they're really kicking ass and it isn't a challenge. I hesitate to push the CR up by 2.

Anyone else had any experience with this?

I've also encountered something I think may be a problem in the future- they don't seem to be amassing treasure like they should. They have missed out on two big takes by poor decisions, but even then they seem very light in gold and items. I'm sure the extra party member to 5 takes away some of the written loot.

[NobodysHome]

I'm running for 6 players (all but one kids), and I've just been setting the enemies to max HP and it works well -- the enemies don't hit any harder, but they certainly last longer.

The first few encounters of Book 2 are ridiculously easy. There are 2 encounters later on that are potential TPKs. With your party makeup, I'd be very worried about those. In fact, with your current party makeup, I would be utterly astonished if you don't get some PC kills playing Book 2 as-written. As the AP goes on, you get more and more situations where, "Stand there toe-to-toe with the bad guys and out-DPS them" doesn't work well.
Honestly, look at your party: FOUR full-BAB attackers! Their low-level DPS is going to be off the charts, and they're going to be annihilating things. Once they start encountering flying casters who use Darkness or Fog Cloud, what are they going to do? Even creatures with DR are going to start giving them trouble, as they don't seem to have anyone to give them decent buffs or protections.

I noticed the massive lack of wealth as well, to the point that I started putting in "special items" because my party had missed so much loot. My general rule of thumb is, "If the party's having an easy time with encounters, then their gear is fine, WBL be d***ed."
Starting in Book 4, the loot drops start getting silly. They just got around a 50,000-gp drop from a fairly easy monster. So I think it's another AP where loot comes in bunches. But yeah, all the way through Book 3 my PCs were well below WBL.

An example:

I just laughed when my party ran into 24 charau-ka warriors and thought, "What can they do? They're just low-level monkeys!"
48 thrown rocks (and well over 100 points of damage) later, the party realized that sometimes, you just need a "Boom" spell.

[Gark the Goblin]

Similar situation, but with an all-caster party instead of mostly-martial. (Ok, one's playing an Iron Caster fighter, but that in no way functions like a martial.) 5 PCs, 2 NPCs, and Jaji can make for some hella easy encounters. I'm running most encounters at CR+2 right now (about halfway through Racing to Ruin), and they've been dangerous but we haven't had any deaths yet. With your party makeup (you have what, one caster?), CR+1 is probably a safe bet. I'd recommend adding more monsters, or giving existing monsters more hp, over advancing monsters, because the things your party will have trouble with are versatile monsters. My party just got nearly trounced by the faction agents in Kalabuto, but your party will likely survive that and then suck against the Spirit Dancers. And Bodies on the Riverbank will likely be deadly as well, since they're below WBL.

Speaking of which, yeah, you've gotta add treasure to this adventure path. PCs start out poor and they don't get much richer, which is all the weirder for an AP that's nominally about exploring lost ruins. I made the items from Nkechi's tasks into magic items (pearl is a pearl of power, ercinee feather grants feather fall and some other stuff), and I've added treasure elsewhere - the Blue Warrior got a helmet of alluring charisma, while the dire vultures roosted on the tomb of some Zura cultists, which contained some mildly cursed weaponry (e.g. a keen rapier that constantly bleeds when removed from its scabbard). The cleric/barbarian professes to have no interest in money, so I've been improving her starting gear at spiritually important events. You can probably just add a random roll on the minor magic item table, or double the amount of all coinage discovered, and achieve a similar result.