Most DM's, including myself, will advise you to start this campaign with 2nd level characters. In some places they may seem a little overpowered, especially if there are 8, but they'll need to be 2nd level in order for some of them to survive. I've run through most of it with 6 players that started at 2nd level and I've had to run filler adventures to get the PC's up to par later on. There have been some easy fights, but way more tough fights and quite a few deaths. If you're worried about their xp then I'd add a creature to some encounters, or an easier way is to just have the PC's level when they need to in order to be on par with what the adventure expects.
Truthfully, the first couple of adventures (especially the gauntlet that is 3FoE) can be really challenging. Many of the encounters in TWC feel like they "seperate the men from the boys" (I mean that in the nicest way possible), in that parties that don't consider the possibility that their tried-and-true dungeon delving approaches (such as wizard uses magic missile, fighter attacks w/greatsword, etc) will suffer. The first encounter is the most pure example possible, IMO. 3FoE is one of my all-time favorite adventures, because it forces players to use their resources effectively and push their abilities as 3rd-level characters to the limit.
However, I believe that the thrill in these adventures lies in the challenge. With 6-8 players, even at 1st level, they will breeze through the first adventure (mostly). My rule of thumb for determining effective encounter levels is to assume the listed encounter level is for a party of four adventurers. For each adventurer you add or subtract, add or subtract an equal number from the EL of the encounter. This should give you a more accurate figure for the challenge at hand. If you feel this number is too low, then I would suggest ramping up the difficulty a bit. (Scaling the adventure is a marvelous resource for this, and is at the back of most of the articles in a sidebar.)
My suggestion is to start the campaign with 1st-level characters. Even if the characters are ones your players played in a proto-adventure for context/background to the AoW AP, combat (and there's lots of it) will be more rewarding if it's more challenging. As for the players, well, I never like to turn any friend who wants to play away from the table. If you can handle that many players, by all means let them enjoy this great AP. The experience will work itself out in time; D&D's experience system is great in that it balances itself out over time. On the other hand, you may want to choose key encounters to bump up in difficulty, to accentuate the significance of those fights earlier on.
Altogether, good luck, and enjoy!
If a DM (myself) were to run the AoW campaign, starting with a group of 6-8 level 2 PCs, would it be safe to say that I could go through and increase the EL for each encounter by +3?
Starting at 2nd level will be self-correcting, and may be needed with the difficulty of some of the early encounters. The extra PCs may warrant an increase of +1 or +2 to ELs, but it's a tough balance to maintain. You'd be better with increasing the numbers encountered in most cases than with making each monster tougher.
Mostly, how difficult the AP will be depends on how effective the players are at tactics and teamwork. An on-the-ball group would be able to do well with four 1st level PCs using 25 point buy and core rules only.
I agree with Dragonchess Player. Don't bother making the wolves into Worgs or anything like that. Its a lot of work and is actually not necessary.
If you divide the XP the players get from the wolves etc. by all the players you'll soon see that the players are not gaining a ton of XP here. Sure the encounter might not be that tough but this won't take that long to correct.
Roughly by the end of whispering Cairne the players are expected to be 3rd heading for 4th level. Your players will probably be 3rd. By the end of Three Faces of Evil Players are expected to by 6th level. Yours might make 5th - which means the challenge level is now going up. Blackwell Keep is usually considered particularly easy but your players - being more numerous but less high in level might have more trouble. By the end of it the AP expects an 8th level party - your players will be maybe 6th and will be very challanged through the rest of the AP.
Your players won't continue to drop, you get more XP for beating a monster with a CR higher then the parties average level, at some point that bonus XP will roughly equal the number of extra players so that the players will remain roughly X numbers of levels behind what the AP expects.
With a 6 player party the party drops roughly two levels behind what the AP expects and then levels off. I've not done the math with an 8 player party but I expect you drop 3 levels behind what the AP expects and then roughly level off. With 8 players there may be a bit of a cyclical movement with the players alternating between 2 and 3 levels behind the expected one for the AP. Essentially they fall to 3 levels behind but then are earning XP quickly enough that they climb back up to only 2 levels back - but this reduces how much XP they gain nad they eventually drop back to 3 levels behind the AP, which of course increases their XP and they start to climb back toward only 2 levels behind etc. etc.
Notice that this is essentially the same thing as increasing the difficulty of each encounter. Instead of you making the encounters harder the players advance a little slower earlier on and the encounters themselves naturally get harder faster then the players get more powerful. In the end the encounters are still harder because the group is larger its just that you don't personally have to sit down and advance every monster in the campaign. This is a good thing - not only does it save you work but also it keeps the story intact as the designers wrote it - there is less danger that you'll introduce a creature that you belatedly realize does not make sense.
If your feeling unhappy that you now have all this free time that you don't have to dump into updating monsters then might I suggest you assuage your guilt by perusing the Age of Worms message boards looking for really great ideas other DMs have put forward and pump sweat and tears into adapting the best ideas for your campaign - your players will appreciate this a lot more then advanced monsters. Their not really going to be able to tell the difference between them at 6th level fighting a CR 8 monster and them at 8th level fighting a CR 8 monster that you advanced to CR 10. In each case a monster is a monster. But if you pump those hours of prep time into the story line, the NPCs, players handouts etc. your players will really notice that kind of touch - so put your efforts into the kind of things your players will actually notice and appreciate, thats my advice.
There aren't any rules for it and your players won't know. If you think it will make the encounters more enjoyable then bump up the hit points. I still don't think you'll need to adjust much, but you know your players.
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Hello all!
I don't want to sound totally ignorant. But...
If a DM (myself) were to run the AoW campaign, starting with a group of 6-8 level 2 PCs, would it be safe to say that I could go through and increase the EL for each encounter by +3?
**Slight Spoiler WARNING**
For example, the first actual encounter is with three wolves. Would making this first encounter consist of three worgs be a worthy increase in CR?
I plan on running a campaign as described above, but I am wondering if increasing the EL +3 is too much, or not enough.
The details include adding templates to *almost* every NPC, increasing class/PrC levels for all NPCs, advancing/templating monsters when possible, exchanging feats for NPC/monsters to be more combat-oriented, possibly maxing HP for NPCs/monsters, rolling stats for NPCs/monsters, etc. I know a lot of the changes I am thinking of making are looked at negatively for the most part...Especially rolling stats, and maxing HP. I already have quite a bit of experience playing through the campaign arc. (Had to stop playing because I moved back home from college) And for my character anyway, it was a walk in the park. I don't want that to happen for anyone in my campaign.
Any help would be most appreciated.
Mechanically, an increase of the EL by two will double the xp rewarded, by one would increase it by 50%. I would work on that as a baseline for adjusting the encounters. This works the same for CRs too. I would do a mixture of simply increasing the number of foes (easy, but not such a challenge for the PCs) and increasing the levels of any key NPCs (harder). I would also think about the space they fight in (some encounters might be a bit cramped for all PCs to easily engage the enemy if there are more that four) and consider completely revamping some encounters, rather than just tinkering with them.
I still say ignore the problem until it self corrects but if your certain that adjusting the encounters is how you want to handle this then 8 2nd level characters are roughly in line with a 4th level party.
2 Worgs is a CR 4 encounter so in theory that should be something of a challenge.
That said there are ways that PCs can gain more power then their level would suggest.
Whats your point buy? Anything above about 28 probably is a +1 level adjustment, especially at low levels.
If you have given the players access to a large number of splat books and their using them to improve their characters (especially if they have access to PHB2) then thats roughly another +1 level adjustment.
Beyond this just having large numbers of PCs can make players pretty potent depending on the circumstances. Actions are the real currency of D&D and 8 players has a lot of actions in a round. You might get away with something like a EL 6 encounter depending on what made up the EL 6. It starts getting real dangerous to use something like a Troll becuase it will concentrate on one PC and kill him (then probably die as the other 7 PCs lay into the Troll) so here your safer with something like 12 Orcs or maybe 3 Worgs. Note though that increasing the power of the encounters increases the PCs haul in XP thus increasing their level. Go down this route and you'll need to adjust every encounter of the campaign.
They might be more powerful than their level suggests.
The group (now 6 PCs) consists of the following:
- Elf Swordsage 2: 17/17hp; AC 20; Str [14], Dex [18], Con [12], Int [14], Wis [15], Cha [12]
- Gnome Rogue 2: 17/20hp; AC 16; Str [13], Dex [17], Con [18], Int [16], Wis [15], Cha [15]
- Human Crusader 2: 22/22hp; AC 19; Str [17], Dex [13], Con [18], Int [17], Wis [16], Cha [16]
- Halfling Dragonfire Adept 2: 23/23hp; AC 18; Str [11], Dex [18], Con [16], Int [14], Wis [14], Cha [16]
- Shifter Barbarian 2: 28/30hp; AC 18; Str [17], Dex [17], Con [17], Int [10], Wis [16], Cha [9]
- Half-Giant Psychic Warrior 1: 15/15hp; AC 16; Str [20], Dex [11], Con [18], Int [16], Wis [16], Cha [13]As you can see, they are spread across quite a few books in terms of race/class. I don't know what you mean about PHB2, unless you are referring to the retraining rules...
I went with rolling for stats (I don't much like point-buy), which didn't seem to be a problem at the time. [5d6, dropping the lowest 2]
It's not so much a matter of having over-powered PCs, it's more the dice being against me...
Wow.
They did bribe you with a crap load of bear, yes? I mean you got something out of this surely? Cold hard cash maybe?
OK I don't know what a shifter is so I've not worked out his point buy.
The Elf Swordsage is the closest to reasonable with a point buy of 38. Thats extraordinary (The NPCs in the campaign have point buys of usually 25 for reference here) but in this party just being better then any elf alive is nothing to write home about.
The Halfling Dragonfire Adept has a point buy of 47
The Half Giant has a Point buy of 51
The Gnome has a point buy of 54
The human is the most astounding with a whopping 67 point buy. Thats just...wow
Umm.
Half-Giant, eh. Lemmee guess he enlarges a lot and uses a spiked chain and loves tripping. If so that level adjustment +1 is a lie. Its more like +2 for that build as its just so phenomenal.
OK usually I'd advise letting the system self correct but here thats a really bad idea. The system can't be allowed to self correct. The system thinks their 2nd level their not. A wide range of books including the generally powerful Tomb of Battle is worth about +1 in level adjustments and their stats are at least +2, +3 for that human (which is to say if I made a race that gave an average of about +4 or +6 to every stat we'd probably decide that race warranted a +3 level adjustment).
So if the system self corrects it thinks their second but their more like 5th level but without quite as good hps. As they go up in level they'll get around the hp problem since most of them are getting at least an extra +3 hps per level off that con score.
Essentially if you take say a fighter and work out what you get for gaining a level you'll find that this comes down to about another +1 or +2 to hit, maybe another +1 to damage, +1 to AC and +1 to your saves. This is not exact but statistically you can work it out and its in this ball park.
Your PCs are picking up +3 or more to all their saves from the stats, same with their bonus to AC, hits and damage. Even their hps will eventually be great.
OK your going to decide if your a kind DM or not. If your a nice guy your going to have to upgrade each encounter keeping in mind their strengths and weak points and just work to keep this all balanced through reviewing every encounter and trying to make sure everything is all balanced. Keeping such powerful characters alive while making most of the fights a nail biting challenge is going to be really hard but presumably it could be done.
I'd not do this myself. Its a phenomenal amount of work and I don't feel I could evaluate every special ability of every monster with my party in mind and manage to make them all work out nicely. I'd go with 'The DM is an asshat' solution.
Essentially I have this situation myself but not quite at this extreme. I screwed up and let my players get a 36 point buy which is powerful and they have access to lots of books (though not very powerful Tomb of Battle).
Basically your PCs are roughly 5th level and their are a lot of them. If you cut their XP in 1/2 that will knock them back 2 levels and having 6 PCs will knock them back at least two levels. They'll hover around 3 or 4 levels behind what they should be for this AP.
Well this should get you something that resembles 'balanced'. Now by resembles I mean its kind of like balanced. Its not really balanced because it tends to veer to the extremes. They'll chop through some encounters with ease and in others will be obscenely hard.
The result will be player deaths. Now I'm an a#~*%%# and when a character dies I put a little skull sticker on my DM screen and am happy for the rest of the day. If you don't want them to die this just won't work.
Otherwise maybe you can let the XP sort itself out which puts them back 2 levels and then enhance the bad guys. Give every bad guy a stat boost of something really good like +8,+6,+6,+4,+4,+2. Give them all max hps. Swap out bad guy feats and spells freely and replace with the most min-maxed options you can think up.
Evaluate how this is going and adjust the XP reward up or down by 25% increments (it may be easier to think of this as pretending that their all 1 level higher or lower when calculating XP from the DMG) in order to try and compensate. If their having too much trouble (unlikely) this will knock them up a level and if its to easy this will knock them down a level.
Also your party is unbalanced. I don't think that Adept is really either a cleric or mage. Your players are going to be just phenomenal between 4th-8th level (most bad guys do hp damage and you kill them by doing same) but their in trouble after that. from 10th on the bad guys make you make a saving throw every round and the party counters with a cleric to fix the broken PCs and a mage to deal with the rapidly deteriorating situation (teleport, solid fog, wall of force etc.). The fighter still smacks the bad guys but its the mage who makes sure he can get at the bad guys in order to do this and the cleric who makes sure that he has something up to stop the save or die effect thats going off every round.
Yeah - your players are unbalanced in terms of power and unbalanced in terms of party make up. Thats going to make for a pretty wild ride.
They'll be too powerful early on and then from 4th-8th their going to be outrageously too powerful at around 10th if this is still the make up their going to seriously start having problems without dedicated mages and clerics. Sometime around 15th level if not earlier the lack of at least one of a dedicated mage or cleric will probably make success nearly impossible.