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Hi!
I am DM a group of six players
Human Fighter (longsword/shield)
Human Spellthief (aiming for high UMD)
Human Cleric of Wee Jas
Half-elf Druid
Human sorcerer (aiming for Sor/wiz/ultimate magus)
Human warmageI don´t see the group as extreme optimizers, but I havn´t played with them before, so I cannot really know. My question is: If I just divide XP per encounter/6, wont my group be at a disadvatage? It seems to me that a high level and acess to higher spell slots are more advantegous then being several more PCs. They will also have to divide wealth between them and so on. How do you think it will work if I give them XP as if they were a four person group? Will it be a cakewalk for them?
/cd
Give them XP as a 6 player group. That's the offset in having more players. If you have fewer, you'll level up faster and have better abilities, but each encounter will be more dangerous, and losing one character has a much bigger impact. A 6 player group has a slower level progression, but much more security in the group.
Definitely don't give 4-player XP for a 6-player group. You'll find them getting much more powerful than the encounters very quickly.
Human Fighter (longsword/shield)
Shake that player's hand for me. I haven't seen one of these at my table in ten years.
Only thing you can do is making the encounters more difficult: either advance the enemies or add 50% more in number. Thus your players will be challenged enough and still level up fast enough. Apart from that you could always put in more side treks, if you have the time. Use the background and wormfood articles to add some adventures apart from the AoW work with your players, maybe they want to have tailored adventures to advance their character background. It is your choice, depending on your time schedule. But I agree: do not give out more XP (only if you do not mind your players breezing through the AP).
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I was having some trouble with my group, which peaked at 6 players and has settled down to 5. I was finding that if I kept the encounters the same as the written material, the characters progressed more slowly and had less in their split of the treasure. They would also be in danger of being too low level to deal with encounters in the next adventure.
It is a difficult balancing act to boost the EL of an encounter to challenge 6 players without making it too tough. Rather than just boosting the CR, I suggest adding another smaller enounter to it.
EG. The adventure has a CR8 BBEG for your PC's to face off against. This is a tough challenge for four 6th level PC's, but a cakewalk for six of them. Instead of just boosting the BBEG's HD/levels, add some goons and champions, say 4 CR2's and a CR3, to the encounter. This gives the PC's a challenge at an appropriate EL, prevents a 6:1 battle where the PC's either dominate the BBEG or can't hurt him, and gives all of the PC's a chance to do something. The upped EL also increases the treasure haul, so everyone is happy.
To make sure that PCs are staying at the suggested wealth level, try auditing the characters' wealth evey so often. Ask the PC's to add up their total value of gear (adventure equipment and cash, not real estate or non-portable assets) and compare them to the suggested levels. If they are a bit low, find an excuse to boost their wealth (cash is best in this case), and if they're high (which is unlikely the way PCs spend) then reduce the flow of gold a little.
Just some random thoughts.
My group is 7 players. A couple are optimized but at least three are an RP concept design that are not fully optimized with a few selections made for flavor.
To offset the additional power curve with two more characters, I have been scaling the adventure up. However, the last adventure I did that with was A Gathering of Winds. With a large number of PC deaths in the Champion's Belt and a Gathering of Winds, the overall power level of the group had kind of faltered a bit.
We are about half way through Spire of Long Shadows now and I have not scaled the adventure at all and they are finding it quite challenging. Four characters are level 14 now and the remaining three are level 13. I expect by the end of the adventure to have half of them 15 and about half of them 14.
I had a five, later six, player group and there just were not enough EXP or GP, culminating in disaster in HoHR even though I had been trying hard to feed in side adventures to bolster the PCs.
I find that having 2 extra PCs lets you compensate for being weaker for a while, and then disasters happen. The PCs are lower level, they die more often so they lose further levels, and they are each more poorly equipped so have worse AC and saves. Eventually you get a TPK despite the numbers. In my hands, the breakdown seems to happen around level 7-9. In AoW we had a double TPK in HoHR--the PCs were not anywhere close to being able to deal with this adventure. In SCAP we had similar problems (with player and GM reversed) at the same level.
I hate trying to deal with this, personally. As a GM I would much rather just give out levels when appropriate, if only it weren't for the use of EXP as a currency for magic item creation and spell use, and to penalize Raise Dead. Running an adventure purely to give out EXP is not my idea of exciting.
In SCAP we ended up just giving out levels anyway, ignoring the effects on item creation and so forth. In AoW the player responded to the EXP/gold crisis by minmaxing fiercely, to the extreme detriment of the game. I wish I could have found a better way to deal with this, and caught it sooner.
Mary
I've got 6 PCs in my group. I've divided XP evenly so far (we're currently in AGoW) and thus far the group has been ahead of the curve - that is, almost too powerful, rather than not powerful enough - eventhough average party level has been 1 or 2 less than recommended for each adventure.
My Savage Tide group was recently re-tooled from 4 PCs to 6, so I did the math and it turns out it's actually quite simple to change adventures. All you have to do is:
If it's an NPC, add a level... If it's a monster advance it by however many HD it says in the back of the MM, based on it's type, to bump it up one CR (remember to give it extra feats every multiple of 3 HD, and a stat boost every multiple of 4 HD). That's all you have to do.
For exmaple... my group is 13th level. If 4 PCs of 13th level fight a CR 13 creature they get 1,200 xp each (4,800/4). And if 6 PCs of 13th level fight something of CR 14 they get 1,200 each (7,200/6).
Ta Da!
I had a five, later six, player group and there just were not enough EXP or GP, culminating in disaster in HoHR even though I had been trying hard to feed in side adventures to bolster the PCs.
I find that having 2 extra PCs lets you compensate for being weaker for a while, and then disasters happen. The PCs are lower level, they die more often so they lose further levels, and they are each more poorly equipped so have worse AC and saves. Eventually you get a TPK despite the numbers. In my hands, the breakdown seems to happen around level 7-9. In AoW we had a double TPK in HoHR--the PCs were not anywhere close to being able to deal with this adventure. In SCAP we had similar problems (with player and GM reversed) at the same level.
I hate trying to deal with this, personally. As a GM I would much rather just give out levels when appropriate, if only it weren't for the use of EXP as a currency for magic item creation and spell use, and to penalize Raise Dead. Running an adventure purely to give out EXP is not my idea of exciting.
In SCAP we ended up just giving out levels anyway, ignoring the effects on item creation and so forth. In AoW the player responded to the EXP/gold crisis by minmaxing fiercely, to the extreme detriment of the game. I wish I could have found a better way to deal with this, and caught it sooner.
Mary
Every time I see this I end up perplexed. It just does not seem possible and yet you say it happened to you. Now I was not there - I don't even clearly know which combats caused the TPKs. Still something about this just does not add up for me so I'm going to propose an alternate explanation.
Hypothesis
Your 6 player party was in fact more powerful then a 4 player party designed in the same way would have been.
A couple of things lead me to this hypothosis. You say that you where generous beyond even what the adventures gave in terms of XP and treasure. Thus I expect your 6 players where only about a level behind what they would have been if there had been 4 of them and you stuck to just the XP and treasure that the adventure gave them.
OK so what does a level gain you? Down at its essentials a bonus to hit of +1 or +2, Maybe another +1 to your AC and probably an average of another +1 to your saves. All of this is good but its just not that dramatic. I mean if we think of this as two sets of statistics combating each other this difference is just not that significant. Sometimes you also get an added spell level and thats pretty impressive - still when we are talking about the possibility of two mages using 3rd level spells every round versus 1 using a 4th level spell the two mages should be generally better then just having one.
What makes D&D combat not just two sets of statistics going at it is that people can take actions that effect the statistics. Now I've been running dragon fights recently including both 4 and 6 player groups. Because these are just arenas I've been playing with a goal to kill the players. What I have learned with my dragon fights is that the Dragon will loose nearly instantly if it looses its actions. Furthermore it can only possibly win if it can overwhelm the players ability to take effective actions. That is I need to make it so that most of the players most of the time can't try and hurt the dragon (and heaven forfend if they start doing combo's on the dragon with teamwork). The main problem is my dragon has only 1 set of actions a round while my players have 4 or 6 sets of actions. What I've noticed is that 6 players are a heck of a lot more dangerous in this regard then 4. They go more times before the Dragon, the Dragon can't catch as many of them in its attacks. they have more ability to recover from a set back. Its harder to get at the really vulnerable players etc. In other words my feeling is that when it comes to D&D combat number of actions is really the ultimate currency and 6 players have more then 4.
Now you note that after this disaster your players started making min-maxed characters just to survive and ... whoah hold up there...they just started? This is Age of Worms. By the designers own admission they make these mostly using the core books but they make them really, really, hard. Translation: If your not power gaming your dead (unless the DM is helping you out but thats a whole other issue).
So just how the heck did you make it all they way to Hall of Harsh Reflections without min maxed characters?
Well back to my hypothesis
I submit that you got this far without the lack of min maxing killing the party because, up to a point having six characters masked the fundamental weakness of the individuals in the party.
Having 6 characters versus 4 at 1st level is clearly and obviously more powerful. After all no XP has yet been handed out - its just a larger group. Lower level characters that are not min maxed are not that much weaker then then their min maxed counter parts. Oh there are exceptions where min maxing has been taken to extremes (Halfling fighter with short sword versus Half-Giant tripping machine) but in general min maxing at 1st level won't give you much more in the way of hps, AC or plus' to hit. The same is not true at higher levels. Every level you add in which min maxing is not performed makes the possible spread of things like to hit and saves larger. By 8th level this can be a huge spread. Min maxed characters might have as much as +6 or more to their saves compared to their less focused peers and much more powerful combat capabilities.
I suspect that if you had taken 4 characters with the correct XP and treasure and choose not to min max them they'd have never gotten past Three Faces of Evil. My bet is that it was the fact that there where 6 of them that made this feat actually possible but by the time you hit Hall of Harsh reflections - well the fact that your characters, all of them, where now significantly behind in things like saves and combat capabilities finally resulted in it no longer mattering how many of them there where - sort of like the reason it does not matter how many goblins a 10th level fighter faces. The goblins are so weak that their numbers just don't help.
First off, thanks to Zid for this thread, and Mary and Jeremy for their thoughtful posts.
I have seven PCs, and they are just about to end Whispering Cairn. It took them seven weeks (including the upcoming game, where they have to whack the Wind Warriors to be done).
I was worried about this very issue (the appropriate awarding of XP and treasure). Thankfully, one of the posters to this very board has put together XP and Item spreadsheets. I have found these to be of great use. They are available at www.RPGenius.com
Generally speaking, at the end of each Module, you should expect the PCs to be a certain level.
Module – Expected level by completion according to Module text.
WC – 3
TFoE – 4?
EaBK – 6
HoHR – 9
TCB – 10
AGoW – 12
SoLS – 14
TPoR – 16
LoLR – 18
KotR – 20
ItWF – 21
DoaNA 22?
TFoE and DoaNA don’t specifically say what level they expect the players to be by the completion of the module, and DoaNA says that it is for 20th level characters. So there are some discrepancies.
The spreadsheet I mentioned calculates all the XP for all the encounters and divides them by the number of party members (4-7). So you can see what effect having more or less party members will have on XP and level gain. The spreadsheet assumes that most parties will be 5th level by the end of TFoE, and 7th by the end of EaBK. EaBK seems to be regarded as the cakewalk of the AP, and the difference between the actual XP gained by that time and expected party level (by the designer) may account for some of this.
The spreadsheet is filled out only through HoHR, but using the guidance of the earlier mods, one can certainly continue using the spreadsheet (I certainly will).
After playing the first mod, I can definitely say that having more bodies in the party made a difference. They were able to take Kullen’s gang, which I wasn’t expecting without a high body count, and they played smart enough to deal effectively with the traps and encounters at the Cairn. I did run a side quest at the mining office before play began, and gave them some additional role playing xp. They will all be third level by the time they fight the Wind Warriors next week. I could have easily added a level to Filge, and perhaps had more skeletons to buy time for Filge to cast spells. As it was, he was dead by the third or fourth round, even after having all the time in the world to prep (Mage Armor, Spectral Hand and False Life all up).
The key, as Jeremy points out, is that the party needs to be a certain minimum level to play the scenarios (the recommended level according the mod seems correct to me), but that the encounters need to be tougher to give large parties an adequate challenge.
The CR 1 bump for all encounters seems a good solution to me – even though it provides more XP, there are more players to distribute it to, as was pointed out. As long as I continue to make sure that the PCs receive enough XP to be the appropriate level for the mod, I think we will be OK. You will absolutely need to vary this by encounter - some encounters are tough enough as it is, some will need a CR2 bump or more.
As for treasure, the chart in the DMG about expected treasure per level is your friend. I use the item spreadsheet to track who got what – this will allow me make sure everyone gets appropriate treasure for their level. If you total up all the available treasure in WC, for example, there is more than enough for seven players to have the amount they need for third level (though not by much).
In summary –
Use spreadsheets to manage XP and treasure, so you know how much the PCs will be getting, and plan accordingly.
For larger parties, make sure they are the minimum level requested by the mod, but jack the opposition up in number or levels to provide an adequate challenge.
I'm running a Red Hand of Doom campaign with 7 PCs and some extras (animal companions and cohorts) right now, and I'm finding that I have to BOTH advance the main bad guy in any encounter AND roughly double the number of mooks. The problem with just advancing CR of a single opponent by one is the "number of actions" problem mentioned above. Your bad guy has deadlier attacks but still only gets to use them once around. Your PCs have 50% more actions to focus on a single guy. Problem with advancing the bad guy's CR more than one is that you will start killing characters with more frequency, just to provide a challenge to the party. Doubling the number of mooks keeps some of the party occupied with secondary bad guys, and gives everyone something to do--often six or seven PCs in a battle with one bad guy can't even engage him because there's not space.
For the APs, just giving out levels and giving PCs to a certain percentage of the XP that they would normally need to advance to that level for item creation is a good idea. I'm not running my AoW that way, but I've thought about it. As it is, my PCs are a bit behind in XP coming out of AGOW--fortunately I've got some good encounters planned between that dungeon and the next to compensate.
The key, as Jeremy points out, is that the party needs to be a certain minimum level to play the scenarios (the recommended level according the mod seems correct to me), but that the encounters need to be tougher to give large parties an adequate challenge.
That is not really the conclusion of my post except at the extremes that simply won't be encountered by the players.
Fundamentally the question I was trying to address boils down to the difference in raw AP defeating power between a 4 and a 6 player group.
Think of this like an experiment. Since we are on a message board its essentially a thought experiment informed by our individual subjective experiences at the game table.
Back to the Experiment model:
We have two groups. Each group is built in an identical manner. They all have the same point buy for stats, the same access to splat books etc. The only difference between the groups is that one is made of 4 characters and one is made of 6 characters.
Now contemplate what would happen to each group if it where run through Age of Worms completely by the book. The DM makes absolutely no modifications to the AP whatsoever to compensate for larger or smaller groups or more or less treasure. The players get exactly the amount of XP the adventures award them and get to divy up exactly as much of the treasure the AP awards them.
Which group is more powerful? Which group is more likely to do well in the AP?
Ultimately it seems that there is a fair spread of opinion on this topic with Mary and myself holding the most divergent points of view.
Mary's position can be summed up, more or less, as:
The 4 player is more powerful. Each individual character will have more treasure and therefore more powerful magic items and each individual character will be higher level and therefore have better saves and a better chance to be able to effect the enemies.
My position pretty much is:
The 6 player group will be more powerful. While each individual character will be slightly lower level (if you run this with a spread sheet you should find that a 6 player group will eventually fall about two levels behind a 4 player group - after that they hold steady). But the total number of hps in the group will be much higher. The enemy will have to spread their attacks among a larger group and, maybe most importantly the players will have 50% more actions in a round.
Each individual character will have about 25% less treasure but this is not as dramatic as it seems. This is because magic items scale upward dramatically and not linearly. A sword +3 is more expensive then two swords +2 so all 6 characters should be only be slightly behind the power curve in terms of their magic items.
So comparing the two hypothetical parties in terms of magic items the 4 player party might have 4 swords +3. But the 6 player party is not so far behind them. For roughly the same price the 6 player party will have 2 swords +3 and 4 swords +2. In reality at the table one might compare the two characters and find that one of the characters in the 4 person group had a Sword +3. Cloak of Protection +2 and Armour +2 while his poorer counterpart in the 6 player group would be armed with a Sword +2, Cloak of Protection +2 and Armour +2. Mostly the same but the richer character could afford to have something that was a bit better.
So what does this mean at the table? Well if you agree with Mary's philosophy the DM needs to provide side treks to insure the players are more powerful so that they don't die against one of the big nasties. While if you subscribe to my philosophy the XP situation essentially works itself out. There is no need to actually modify anything because the players, while initially being too strong, will eventually be level appropreate due to the fact that the XP system is essentially self balancing.
First off, let me say that I am sorry for taking so long to reply. I am starting to get spoiled by message boards that send you email notifications.
Second, let me apologize for not paraphrasing you correctly, Jeremy. I have taken people to task for doing just that in the past, so it a little embarrassing to find myself doing so as well.
I think I see your point now – Mary is saying that adjustments need to be made, while you are saying that the situation is self-correcting, because the larger group will have less treasure, and lower levels, at least in the long run.
My own experience with D&D is that there is much need for access to certain spells at certain levels. A party with a wizard who is fifth level has a significant edge over the same party with a fourth level wizard, and so on. If we extrapolate the numbers between a six player party and a four-player party, the party with the higher levels will have a increasing edge in spell level acquisition. I haven’t run the numbers for the entire AP, but using the spreadsheet I mentioned (go get it right now, at www.RPGenius.com) You can see that by HoHR, the difference in XP between a four-player party and a six-player party (I have seven players, so pity me) is already 52,788 to 35,192 or 10th level to 8th level – already a two level difference and very nearly a three level difference, as you need only 55,000 for 11th level – I can only extrapolate further and assume that this difference will grow even more significant as time goes on – and the major difference between 8th and 10th is access to 5th level spells. And this is only a third of the way through the AP.
I concede to you the point that larger parties are far more capable than the basic four person composition – no matter the spell access. But I still prefer to have a party with the access to the required spell level for the mod. I know at least some designers will expect and assume that party will have access to certain spells, and that this will be reflected in the mod. At the very least, I would advise DMs to be sure to examine the next mod run in the path, and see if the players will absolutely have to have such-and-such spell, and get them access to it via a scroll or some other such device from an NPC.
First off, let me say that I am sorry for taking so long to reply. I am starting to get spoiled by message boards that send you email notifications.
Second, let me apologize for not paraphrasing you correctly, Jeremy. I have taken people to task for doing just that in the past, so it a little embarrassing to find myself doing so as well.
Its all good.
I think I see your point now – Mary is saying that adjustments need to be made, while you are saying that the situation is self-correcting, because the larger group will have less treasure, and lower levels, at least in the long run.My own experience with D&D is that there is much need for access to certain spells at certain levels. A party with a wizard who is fifth level has a significant edge over the same party with a fourth level wizard, and so on. If we extrapolate the numbers between a six player party and a four-player party, the party with the higher levels will have a increasing edge in spell level acquisition. I haven’t run the numbers for the entire AP, but using the spreadsheet I mentioned (go get it right now, at www.RPGenius.com) You can see that by HoHR, the difference in XP between a four-player party and a six-player party (I have seven players, so pity me) is already 52,788 to 35,192 or 10th level to 8th level – already a two level difference and very nearly a three level difference, as you need only 55,000 for 11th level – I can only extrapolate further and assume that this difference will grow even more significant as time goes on – and the major difference between 8th and 10th is access to 5th level spells. And this is only a third of the way through the AP.
I concede to you the point that larger parties are far more capable than the basic four person composition – no matter the spell access. But I still prefer to have a party with the access to the required spell level for the mod. I know at least some designers will expect and assume that party will have access to certain spells, and that this will be reflected in the mod. At the very...
I've not personally checked out the math on the XP spreadsheet at RPGenius but I simply can't see how its possible for a 6 player group to drop more then two levels behind a 4 player group. The XP table in the DMG is following a pattern, or algorythm. Its a bit messy in some cases because of rounding and because XP awards for for 1st-3rd level characters are don't differentiate. That said once your past the first few levels its just not mathematically possible to keep dropping. I'll give three examples from the DMG following the math.
Example #1
4 10th level PCs vs. a CR 13 creature earn
= 9000 /4
= 2250 each
6 8th level PCs vs. a CR 13 creature earn
= 14400 /6
= 2400 each
Example #2
4 12th level PCs vs. a CR 14 creature earn
= 7200 /4
= 1800 each
6 10th level PCs vs. a CR 14 creature earn
= 12,000 /6
= 2000 each
Example #3
4 14th level PCs vs. a CR 16 creature earn
= 8400 /4
= 2100 each
6 12th level PCs vs. a CR 16 creature earn
= 14400 /6
= 2400 each
Notice that in every case the 6 player party actually earned slightly more then the 4 player party. Consider as well that each character in the 6 player party actually needs to earn a little less XP to gain their next level. What should happen is they slowly gain on the 4 player party until they are only 1 level behind - but then they earn a fair bit less and they rapidly drop back to two levels behind where the system starts up again.
With 7 players you dividing by even more but the CR bonus for being 3 levels behind is huge. I'd think the less XP needed to make another level would still hold things in check but if it does not then the players won't be 3 levels behind for very long at all as they'll rapidly close the gap from the extra XP they earn in their next encounter only to very slowly start falling behind again and so it goes throughout the AP.
In any case I don't see how its mathematically possible for players to be falling behind (in a 6 player group vs. 4 player group) if they earn more per encounter and need less to level. It would seem to me to be a mathematical impossibility.
In terms of the needed spell level. Occasionally I suppose the designers might assume that players have access to something but thats not my feeling in general. Instead what I see occurring more often is that the designers assume the players don't have access to something until X level. A good example of this is the problem with flying PCs in one of the early STAP adventures. The adventure presumes the players can't fly and therefore must go through the encounters as written.
It'd be bad game design to assume that the players wizard has not multi-classed, especially considering how popular prestige classes like Cerbermancer and Msytic Theurge are - and these all knock you a spell level back.
I agree that something like 5th level spells vs. 4th level spells are more potent - but not more potent then two mages casting 4th level spells. Any comparison on raw damage output makes it clear two mages with 4th level spells just do more damage. The utility and problem solving spells are probably better from a mage with 5th level spells but even here - being able to caste spells with team work is really pretty potent - solid fog from mage #1 followed by cloud kill from Mage #2 in the same round means the bad guys have no reaction time in order to get up stuff like freedom of movement to deal with the effects. My experience has been that player character mages working in teams is brutal. Dropping two fireballs on a group can just devastate them - especially enhanced ones.
Maybe more potent in my experience is that mage #2 gains information from what mage #1 just did. As one moves into the higher levels the enemies tend to have layers of defenses meant to stop a high level mage from nerfing them at the outset. Thats essentially how the game balances mages vs. other classes. But almost nothing is good against everything - the 4 player party essentially faces the problem that their mage, half the time casts spell X and finds out that it just does not work and the mage failed to effect the combat for a round - this is a big deal when combats can really turn sour in only 1 or 2 rounds. Here though mage #2 now knows that the bad guys have X defense in place and can choose a different spell. So if a creature turns out to be immune to fire Mage #1 does not effect the bady that round but mage #2 knows to follow up with cold - if SR is the problem (as it so often is) mage #2 can choose spells that don't have SR etc.
OK I popped over to RPGenius and downloaded the spreadsheet. Pretty neat but its flawed.
Mainly it presumes that players are a static level through out the entire adventure. So in HOHR it presumes that a 4 player group is 7th level - for the entire adventure until at the end they are suddenly 10th level. Thats not how this works. They are 7th level until they turn 8th, at which point they earn less in every encounter until they turn 9th and then they earn less still until they turn 10th ... but they probably won't get enough to turn 10th since they earned significantly less XP then what the spreadsheet indicates.
I suspect that if you followed this system for a few more adventures you'd notice that the situation started to get really extreme. The 6, 7, and 8 member parties would now be quite a few levels back and would suddenly be calculating the whole adventure as if they where very low level and earning scads of experience. Its the same pattern as one gets by working out each individual encounter at each level but with much more dramatic pendulum swings taking place over the course of whole adventures instead of over individual encounters. I don't recommend following this table; players should earn XP at the level they are not at the level they started an adventure at.
One variable to consider in these calculations is what the group does when a PC dies. I know of three responses: (1) try to Raise the old character, (2) make a new character 1 level lower, (3) make a new character at the same level. Options (1) and (2) can be very hard on a larger but lower-level PC party, as they drain still more levels. With option (3) I think it's a lot clearer that the big party will do well.
My practical experience agrees with the conclusion that the PCs will, if nothing is done, probably end up 2 levels lower than expected and stay that way. I just disagree that this is okay. It was not fun for us either time it happened. A group which is willing to min-max more than we were would probably not have this problem.
One thing to watch out for, if you have a larger group at lower level, is spells like Blasphemy: the lower level can put the PCs into the range where this is a no-save TPK.
Mary
Just as a point of reference, my party has 6 PCs, and with the exception of one wizard who joined after the first session, and an Aasimar PC that used the buy-in option to lose his level-adjustment (so he's about 2000 XP behind right now), everyone else hit level 5 at the end of TFoE, after killing the Ebon Aspect.
The only changes from the modules as written are that I had the abandoned mine office occupied by a band of Goblins led by a 4th level Adept, and since the encounter with Grallak had a couple of descrepencies in the description (3 or 6 Grimlock guards, depending on what you read), I made him have 3 guards that were Warrior 2.
My understanding is that most of the adventure path modules, and dungeon modules in general, sort of assume a party of 5 or 6 PCs. If they seem to be having an easy time with it, I would recommend tweaking an encounter here or there, either adding additional low level mobs, or making small advancements to bigger creatures. You can also try adding more Ad Hoc XP - for example, give some Ad Hoc XP if they bring back enough evidence to have Dourstone and/or Smenk arrested.