I'm pretty sure I saw a thread here at some point about the relative merits of scaling or not scaling for a larger party, but I can't seem to find it easily, and I'm tired and need to go to bed. So I'll take the lazy way out and just ask again :-)
Here's my situation. I started out a Savage Tide campaign with three PCs. I built a non-combatant Healer (Miniatures Handbook) as a DMPC to shore up that party role. I took the original group through a 1st level side adventure as an introduction and as an opportunity to get them a little ahead of the curve for the beginning of the campaign.
Long story short, we have since had three other players join. No one has been interested in playing a healer type, so we still have the DMPC. We're about to go into the Bullywug Gambit and I have 3, 4th level characters and 3, 3rd level characters plus the 2nd level Healer. I originally thought this adventure was going to be tough - possibly fatal. Now I'm thinking that it's going to be a walk in the park.
I'm trying to decide if I want to scale it up at all. I feel that with the elastic nature of 3.5 XP, if I start scaling this thing now I will be scaling every adventure through the whole campaign. Part of me is thinking that it might be best to let this be a little easy, and then eventually the players might be a bit behind the curve level wise, but their increased numbers might even things a bit.
They're also a very choppity-choppity, hackity-hackity party with what amounts to 5 (of 6) combat oriented characters. I'm afraid that might come back to bite them in the butt, but that's a different post.
I'm trying to decide if I want to scale it up at all. I feel that with the elastic nature of 3.5 XP, if I start scaling this thing now I will be scaling every adventure through the whole campaign. Part of me is thinking that it might be best to let this be a little easy, and then eventually the players might be a bit behind the curve level wise, but their increased numbers might even things a bit.
That's right. Start scaling now, you will be all the way through. What I would recommend doing, is leaving the "mook" encounters as is, but scaling the boss guys up 1 or 2 CR. Should still give them some tough battles, while saving you a stack of work. And I find I usually need to rebuild the "boss" guys anyway, to account for higher PC stats, wider book choice, and the generally ordinary builds of most NPCs (One of absolute things that drives me up the wall with most published adventures).
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I'm playing RotRL with eight PCs, and I have chosen to scale. I'm doing this for a number of reasons, mainly connected to increasing the fun of the players. Firstly, the campaign says explicitly that the PCs should reach level 15 or so by the end, so I think it is only reasonably to allow that. Levelling is faster, so the players get more of a sense of achievement. And combat is more challenging - the opening few encounters would have been eight PCs against four or so goblins otherwise. That is not much of a challenge, which might seem a bit easy, and some PCs might not even get a chance to act lower down the initiative order. All this (I hope) gives the PCs more to do and more involvement.
The only downside is that the DM has more work to do, but I personally think that this problem is overstated. If you have published material, you have stats. I mainly tend to increase the number of mooks, since they are easy to add (you have stats for four goblins - well, you also have stats for eight goblins too) rather than making the mooks tougher. They are mooks, they are there to be killed, so I don't see the point of making it tougher for the PCs than necessary, plus all the reasons I point out above. So the only one you really need to work on is the BBEG, who I would increase CR by 2 (given that I have twice the number of players).
I have also not slavishly followed the encounters as written - in fact, I have often split them up into several successive encounters, rather than a single big one, to make it a little more manageable. Also, I've often redesigned the maps slightly to accommodate a bigger party, and let everyone interact with the enemy, so it tends towards big open spaces with the odd obstacle.
You could scale up the difficulty, but it probably won't be needed. The Bullywug Gambit is a bit of a meatgrinder, so even with the extra PCs, the party will probably still be challenged. The level differential will self-correct as your group plays through the AP (since the XP will be split among more PCs).
I agree with much of what's been said. Do what you gotta do. The AP is a guideline, and a good one but let's face it every dm and party is a little unique.
I have my work cut out for me too--I have to keep the flavour of it and start it off as a high level adventure. Think of THAT.
I have my work cut out for me too--I have to keep the flavour of it and start it off as a high level adventure. Think of THAT.
Oy! That'll be a challenge.
Thanks for all the advice. I've already been adding a bit here and there as we go, and my players are having a blast, so I guess I'm doing all right. I'll just have to see how it goes as the path develops.
Also, I've often redesigned the maps slightly to accommodate a bigger party, and let everyone interact with the enemy, so it tends towards big open spaces with the odd obstacle.
I'm currently running the SCAP with eight players, one of which is playing a beastmaster with a dire ape & a tiger, and the maps have been a huge limitation. Too many 10x10 rooms with a 5' wide hallway leading up to them. Granted, that's how people build buildings, but nobody wants to be behind the dire ape, because they can't see the fight; nobody wants to be in front of her, because there's people up ahead who need their arms pulled off... scaling up the bad guys in number would necessitate a change in map scale, which I'll do in my next campaign if needed.
Levelling is faster, so the players get more of a sense of achievement. And combat is more challenging - the opening few encounters would have been eight PCs against four or so goblins otherwise. That is not much of a challenge, which might seem a bit easy, and some PCs might not even get a chance to act lower down the initiative order. All this (I hope) gives the PCs more to do and more involvement.
Note that the slower leveling is a very short term problem. You won't level slower once the PCs drop a level or two behind. Essentially instead of gaining two levels in the first two adventures you'll gain one in each and then level about the same speed as normal.
Your right that the encounters might be a bit easier but as has been pointed out - these adventures are pretty brutal. I don't think the players will really notice that their all that easy instead what they will notice is that the adventure difficulty scales up fairly quickly toward really friggen hard.