DMing for a lot of low level PCs

[Rowan]

I was wondering if anyone could help me. I'm going to be DMing a party of six or so PCs. I'm glad to enough PCs, but I'm having trouble designing adventures. When they all get to second level they will have a combined level of 12 and an average level of 2. Now a monster with even a CR of 10 would eat them alive, while a monster with a CR of 2 would just lay down and die. I know I can put them up against a bunch of low level monster, but that can get old. So, where is the happy medium? What single CR level can I pit them against and give them a challenge without ending in massive amounts of PC death?

[Paul McCarthy]

A lot of it depends on the players, Rowan. If they are low level and haven't played D&D before, then they are not going to get through the nooks and crannies an experienced player starting off on low level again would. Are they familiar with the rules and Player's Handbook? Why not get some adventures that would seem to be appropiate and give them a shot at it. If they do poorly you can give them each second chance at life(don't tell them this) after they all die the first time and you can gauge their ability while they play the adventures. That's what I always did. No needs to be too harsh at the start, they are learning just like you.

[Greg A. Vaughan]

My game typically runs large on the number of players (as far as problems go, a pretty good one to have I think), with players of varying experience levels. What I generally do is increase the EL of an encounter by 1 for every 2 extra party members. So if the EL 4 encounter is intended for 4 party members I increase the difficulty to EL 5 for 6 party members of the same level. That way the encounters in the adventure stay in balance (there are still easy encounters and difficult encounters, but they remain commensurate with the party's abilities). It's just a rule of thumb I use and, of course, it doesn't fit every situation, but if I need to tweak things further because the players are having too easy a go of it I just push more encounters between rest periods. That's one of the beauties of the game, time is really subjective when you're the DM keeping track of it.

I hope that's some help. :)

[cwslyclgh]

generaly if the party consists of 6-7 members I treat it as having an average party level of 1 higher then the actual average party level when designeing adventures for it.

[Myrddin]

In my game there are 5 to 6 players per session, and I have found that considering them as a party of 4 and a party of 1-2 to be best when determining encounters. Chucking higher CR monsters at them as "a group of 6" is more of a challenge for the players but it really screws up the level progression (read as: it goes too fast!!). Better to just add one or two enemies of the appropriate CR than make the challenge a higher CR. For example, When your party gets to 2nd level, keep the CR 2 challenges at a CR 2, just throw in one or two more of whatever they are fighting. That way when the XP is split, your individual party members vs. the CR (+ one or two extra enemies) will still get the same XP that a party of 4 vs. the same CR (without the extra enemies) would receive. If the CR they are fighting against is ONE creature, at say CR 2, give it 2 CR 1 helpers of the appropriate type. Keep in mind your extra 2 players means an extra 2 attacks, so unless you want your monster to go down in the first or second round, having a few lower level allies for the baddies means your characters have to divide their attacks until the lower level guys are taken care of. This helps keep the XP progression more in line with what the rules intended for the iconic party of 4. Good luck.

[Rowan]

Thanks everone, that does help, but unfortunatly I've just had 2 players ditch, so I have to re-write all the adventures I've made so far. Oh well, whatcha gonna do?

[Taricus]

Kinda late, but I just take the total lvls and divide by 4 and round down. So, in that case, at first lvl, it'z no biggy (6/4=1)... 1st lvl characters are pretty weak as it is, so you can just use normal encounters. At 2nd lvl (12/4=3), you'd want to use EL3 encounters. The only thing is that you have to watch the creature stats alot more. A grick (because of dmg reduction) might be too much for a party of 6 2nd-lvl chars, but a mephit will be an appropriate challenge.

For xp, u just use the normal formula. Just take the avg. of all the character lvls. (I've noticed, unlike Myrddin, that using this will cause the xp to be okay, but will cause the treasure to raise. The converse is true of the opposite. If you have less characters and use this, their xp will be normal, but the treasures will fall behind. So, u'd want to watch that.)

[Lothar]

What my DM did, was put us in a situation of meenlocks attacking a town. We had to figure out what it was, and it was basically a big puzzle. There was no way we could hack and slash our way out of it. I really enjoyed it. It was a skill based part of the campain rather than a cliché hack and slash senario. I had a lot of fun.

[Arjen]

For calculating what base EL to use for a party with more or less than 4 members I use the same method used to calculate EL from CR. If one CR 1 creature is EL1, than 2 CR1 creatures is EL3 (doubling the amount of creatures adds 2 to the EL rating). An encounter with 1 CR1 creature is EL1, 2 CR1 creatures is EL3, 3 CR1 creatures is EL3 and 4 CR1 creatures is EL5 (as noted in the DM's guide this will run askew when extrapolated).

So a party of 4 1st level PC's an EL1 encounter is the basic encounter, for a party of 5-6 1 st level PC's an EL2 encounter is basic and for a party of 7-8 1st level PC's an EL3 encounter is basic. The last example works better when the EL3 encounter consist of multiple lower CR creatures than 1 Cr3 creature. The lone CR3 creature might be brought down by 8 1 st level PC's as quick as by 4 3rd level PC's but there will be a higher chance of dead PC's for the party of 8 1st level PC's.

Then again, I must say that when I design, use or adapt adventures the encounters can deviate very from the basic party EL, some encounters can be overcome very easily ( the "one fireball" or "one round of great cleave" encounters) or are very, maybe too, hard (the "why aren't you running yet" encounters). I have explained the real possibility of the last encounters to my party and it keeps them on their toes.

Arjen

[Joe123]

Rowan wrote:

I was wondering if anyone could help me. I'm going to be DMing a party of six or so PCs. I'm glad to enough PCs, but I'm having trouble designing adventures. When they all get to second level they will have a combined level of 12 and an average level of 2. Now a monster with even a CR of 10 would eat them alive, while a monster with a CR of 2 would just lay down and die. I know I can put them up against a bunch of low level monster, but that can get old. So, where is the happy medium? What single CR level can I pit them against and give them a challenge without ending in massive amounts of PC death?

Rowan,

email me at [e-mail]. I’ll give you a table that you can use to work out the appropriate EL for a party of any size. It follows the principle for example that an EL 1 encounter is an appropriate encounter for a group of four 1st-level PCs. The beauty of the table is that you can use it to work out the appropriate EL for a group of any size.

(As an example, suppose you have six players playing 2nd-level PCs. An appropriate combat encounter would be EL 3, which should, on average, use up about 20% of the party’s resources. Using another example, suppose you have three players. The party consists of two 8th-level PCs and a 7th-level PC. The appropriate EL would be EL 6.).

If anyone else would like the table, just email me.

[Draamal]

Actually I've done this a lot. Try to stick to using many low CR creatures instead of a single CR creature that matches the party. The added benifit of this is that if some of your party skips on you all you have to do is subtract some baddies.