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Okay... I'm sure there's something about it in one of the books, but I can't find it.
I've just joined a new gaming group, which will have 6 players.
I'm trying to figure out how to bump the CR of encounters to keep them challenging, but not turn them lethal.
Dungeon does a fine job of scaling the adventures based on party level, but I can't find anything about scaleing based on size.
Any help?
I think you're right, Logos. I can't remember seeing any official rules source, but I know there are some min-adventures for download over at the WotC site and some of them use a phrase similar to, "For parties containing a total of 18 levels" or some such.
Yes, like the whole CR system, it's far from perfect, but it's pretty good for guesstimating.
Here is how I understand it. A party of 8 should be able to handle twice the number of creatures of the appropriate CR. Two creatures have an EL of CR+2. (p.49 DMG) So I would say a party of 6 would equal CR+1. The earlier exqample would work fine. When you get to higher levels you might have TPKs. 6 10th level would then have a CR 15 creature and might not even be able to hurt it. At 20th level you would have CR 30.
Nice Mr. Orcus, we're all friends here.
Note I am not saying you will have TPKs. But you will be pushing ELs into the very difficult range.
Yes, at the lower levels, adjuting due to large party size works well. I can say from experience that at high levels (even in the 10-13 range), large party size starts to fall apart as a balancing factor for the increased CR. Numbers just aren't enough of an advantage when you're dealing with things of that power.
Contributor
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I play with a rather large group (14+ players on average, sometimes 20), so I have a few considerable scaling issues.
The first is that I have a lot of players, the second is that I'm often unsure how many players might show up on game day, and the third is I'm not sure what classes will dominate the game on that day.
I've found using monsters with higher CRs (even though the math plays out on paper) turns into a real problem, especially if its got DR or SR or other things that lower level characters cant touch.
For an encounter with a critter whose CR is equal to the average character level, I usually have them fight four or so more of them than the number of player characters (give or take a few).
For a more powerful opponent, I reduce their numbers accordingly, usually by calculating the average number of attacks that I expect the party as compared to the number of rounds it would take a party of four to drop the critter. For example it takes a four person 1st level party about 3 rounds to drop a CR 1 critter (about twelve attacks), so a party of twelve would more or less drop that same critter in one round(depending on its special abilities.)
I play with a rather large group (14+ players on average, sometimes 20), so I have a few considerable scaling issues.
Holy crap. *BOGGLES*
How long do your combats take?
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Yes, at the lower levels, adjuting due to large party size works well. I can say from experience that at high levels (even in the 10-13 range), large party size starts to fall apart as a balancing factor for the increased CR. Numbers just aren't enough of an advantage when you're dealing with things of that power.
I normally run groups of around 6 players and I agree with Baramay and Saern here.
The only thing that I would add is that with larger groups the best way to increase the CR is by adding numbers (quantity) of the same CR range rather than increasing the CR range for each character. The downside of this is that combat takes quite a bit longer, but you will typically have fewer TPKs (from my experience).
The Encounter Calculator on the Hypertext d20 SRD site adjusts for any number of PCs.
The easiest suggestion I can think of is to "add an extra opponent for every two" whenever possible. So if four PCs are taking on 8 kobolds, increase it to 12 kobolds for your 6 players. The CR system can break even following the formulas if you use higher CR foes instead of additional lower CR foes. (That's because picking a higher CR single critter will tend to bump things like AC, which can make critters nearly impossible to hit.)
A different alternative is to add an extra critter of CR -2 for each additional PC beyond 4. That way each PC is more likely to have something of their own to smack. (So if the book encounter is 2 CR 3 critters vs. a party of four 3rd level PCs, add a pair of CR 1 critters to the encounter for your 6 PCs.)
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I agree with Baramay's assessment that a party of 6 characters should roughly equal a party of 4 PCs of one higher level. But, I will also join on the cautionary bandwagon and note that it easy for things to get out of hand....
People have already warned about a higher CR monster being too tough, and this is often true at lower levels, but higher level play sees the opposite issue- +1 CR does not compensate for the sheer power of two additional PCs.
For example, I am currently running Red Hand of Doom with six PCs, and as I look ahead, I have the option, in one chapter, to replace a particular evil outsider with a more powerful one (let's say bony to barbed ;)). But, if I make this switch, my monster still only gets one round of actions, while my PCs get 2 more than "expected" and the outsider will still go down pretty fast. In the end, it's better for me to go with two "bonies," as they still have the ability to lay some hurt on the party and grant the GM 1 action per 3 PC ones, rather than one "barbed" outsider.
I've had some pretty big combats, due to me adding 50% of a monster group in some cases (I've had twelve tough hobgoblin archers at one point, and that was only 1/2 of the enemy team), but the balance has been a good challenge for the party and no one feeling like they're at a loss for targets.
Yeah, pretty soon my group will meet each other (everybody that is, there are already small groups that I've been doing sessions with, like two guys at a time.) and I'll have an 8 PC party...I'm definitely going to run into balance issues, and already have with npcs in the mix, but I started the game off pretty hard, and the players came through, earning buku experience points. Since I'm running Ghostwalk, I'm not exactly too worried about accidently killing a player, especially since I have 8 PCs, the worst thing about it is that I would have 9, but the guy hasn't called me and I don't feel like calling him and telling him that the party doesn't really need ANOTHER Rogue (ranger/rogue is in the party) in an undead heavy campaign.
I've been pretty generous in the magical item department, cept for the ghost monk that I'm hesitant to reward in such a manner since he's a bit of a munchkin, he honestly says that he NEEDS items that increase his ac and strength (he has a strength of 18 and a wisdom of 16).
Sure if he wanted to get in the thick of it, he'd need a better AC, but that just isn't the party placement for the monk...
but I digress.
I've found it useful, or maybe it reduces difficulty too much, to stagger the entry of the enemies, sure it mucks with initiative having new combatants or what is effectively a second encounter right after the first...and this has kept my pcs alive versus higher CR creatures.
Again, the SRD Encounter Calculator has been very useful. I wouldn't calculate XP without it. I might modify the number significanly, but for getting the base number, it works great.