Howdy ...
I am planning to start Burnt Offerings with 6 1st level characters, which isn't much different than the standard 4 character party (as opposed to the only other thread I could find about scaling, which involved 4th-5th level characters).
I have 2 questions:
1) Is there any official advice on scaling Burnt Offerings to work for 6 instead of 4 PCs? I could do it myself, I think, but it would be nice if I didn't have to do all the work.
2) Is scaling really necessary? I know that Dungeon adventures needed to be scaled because, as one-shot adventures, they had to be an appropriate challenge right away. RotRL, however, provides time for the XP system to balance things for me. With 6 PCs, XP will be more widely distributed, meaning slower level advancement, meaning that by the middle-end of Burnt Offerings, or so, the adventure should be balanced again. This means that things will start off easy, but I feel like that might be okay, given the story. On the other hand, this diluting of XP might lead to an underpowered party as we reach higher levels, since 6 4th level characters are not necessarily as powerful as 4 6th level characters (certainly 20 1st levels are not equal to 1 20th level). In which case, it might be necessary to beef up encounters just so there's enough XP to level everyone appropriately, or I might need to write side adventures for XP, but how often? I'm tempted to use the CR table to determine the party's "level," but I'm not sure it applies in that way. Does anyone have any thoughts about this?
Thanks,
O
I'd let the XP system sort it out for you. They'll have an easier time at first, but only a little easier.
The Swallowtail Festival might take longer to play out, and the PCs can take on more of the attacking force themselves, but after that it should settle down.
And you can actually assign one haunt per PC when the time comes, which those of us running for smaller parties won't.
|
I have five players I just started. Counting up the XP, I realized that the PCs are supposed to have accumalated exactly 1000 xp each by the time they rescue the kidnapped damsel. I decided to simple add in an extra 1000 xp worth of goblins (7 regular goblins, 1 extra bard). I added an extra goblin to each of the first two encounters and will add a goblin bard and an extra goblin to the "big" festival fight. Finally four goblins in the factory will nicely finish things off. (Or maybe one extra goblin and a goblin dog in the factory)
In my experience, with five players, if the fights are too easy the players get a little bored. On the other hand, when the fights feature more powerful opponents, if the PC levels are not high enough it is very hard to predict how the fight will go. Sometimes the number of PCs makes it even but sometimes the power of the villain requires the PCs to have high enough spells/powers and the PCs get stomped.
|
I would suggest letting the game flow be determined as you play. Some encounters won't need changing at all. There may be some where you may wish to add an extra goblin or two. One way to make it a little more challenging but not change the numbers is to just give the monsters more h.p., I know that doesn't address the x.p. issue, but sometimes you don't want your party to cakewalk a certain villain for instance. There are so many factors that come in to play here it is hard to say solidly what you should do in your situation. I recommend being flexible and ready to make sure the party is having a good time thats the most important thing in any campaign. If down the road you find things may be getting away from your group you can always throw in a side trek to get them back on track with where you feel they should be. I know Paizo has fleshed out the area enough that there are plenty of potential adventures in Varisia!
I'd let the XP system sort itself out. Generally speaking I think you'll find that 6 characters two levels back are slightly more powerful then four characters. Because of the way wealth scales they should be a little better off financially then their wealth by level indicates though not significantly so.
While a 20th level character is far more powerful then 20 1st level characters its not true that 4 20th level characters are particularly more powerful then 6 18th level ones. In fact I think you'll find that 6 18th level characters are actually more potent then 4 20th level ones and this is more or less true at every level.
When push comes to shove the real currency in D&D when it comes to power is number of actions that can be performed in a round and 6 players can perform more then 4.
Your players should probably be paying a little more attention to boosting their saving throws then maybe a 4 player party because this is really their only major Achilles Heel in this regards. They'll have more actions every round and will have more total hps (though each individual character will have less), On average they should be able to put out more damage then a 4 player party even if their a little behind on things like spells (two casters each casting at a spell level lower should still be more effective and do more damage then one caster each round - 2 6d6 fireballs is more damaging then an 8d6 fireball for example).
Hence their only real significant danger is that their saves tend to be a bit lower and saving throws can be such a major factor that they should spend higher then normal gold to keep them more inline with a higher level party.
As a DM your going to have to keep an eye out for a handful of spells and special abilities that might be really detrimental to a party a few levels lower. There are spells that say stun PCs that are 2 levels lower then the BBEG but will paralyze for 2d6 rounds a PC thats 4 levels lower then the BBEG. These are uncommon and I can't think of any bad guy in any AP so far that could do that but keep an eye out for this nonetheless because having 1/2 the party stunned for a round is an annoyance, having 1/2 the party paralyzed for many rounds is a TPK.
In my experience your not going to run into a situation where the adventure assumes you have a spell you don't have because of the PCs level. These are not designed absolutely assuming that there is a mage and the mage for sure did not multi-class. That would be bad design of the AP. It is probably designed to assume that a 12th level party can fly or teleport but I think you'll find that 6 10th level characters will be just as likely as 4 12th level ones to have picked up these abilities. In general more players means more versatility in the party because their simply covering more bases. Hence I think your golden.
Essentially speaking there is not a whole lot of difference between scaling encounters up so the bad guys are more powerful and allowing the PCs to be a little weaker and not scaling the bad guys. In each case your essentially trying to adjust the difficulty of an encounter to be appropriate to your players. The big difference is that, if you scale up then you have to do all this extra work on something your players are not going to notice that much. For your players its not going to make much difference to them if they fight an EL 8 encounter with 6 6th level PCs or if they have 6 8th level PCs and you scale an EL 8 encounter to an EL 10 encounter. It will pretty much seem the same to them but in the second case you had to spend an hour scaling this up so it makes a big difference to the amount of prep time you have to invest.
Better to save yourself the work and if you really want to invest extra time into the AP do so by making really pretty hand outs, getting pictures of the monsters to show your PCs, or working on the NPCs personalities or other 'at the table' enhancements you might think of. All of these things your players will really notice and appreciate compared to simply scaling encounters.
Creative Director
|
Scaling the Adventure sidebars used to be in EVERY Dungeon adventure, but as time wore on, I think they grew less and less useful. Their main strength early on was to show players new to 3rd edition how easy it was to scale adventures; this was the first time the game really let monsters advance in hit dice and take character levels with rules to support such choices, after all, so doing that wasn't always an obvious choice for GMs. Also, in the early days, there were VERY FEW 3rd edition adventures to choose to run, so the Scaling the Adventure sidebars were trying to make the adventures more applicable over wider ranges.
That said, the more I worked on Dungeon, the more I realized that there's more to scaling adventures than just changing hit dice or adding levels. Certain core powers PCs gain at specific levels (flight, teleportation, speaking to the dead, etc.) make some adventures just not work at some levels. Scaling things in those cases often requires extensive rewrites, and even then that's sometimes not enough.
ANYway. Sorry for the digression.
I agree that the best solution is to just play the adventure more or less as is, and let the XP system work it out. Keep in mind that even though you have more PCs, each individual PC is still going to be the same strength. Bumping monsters up in power is a good way to have unexpected player character death.
The best way, I think, to compensate for large parties is to simply add in more mooks. In an adventure's major fights, there's usually some sort of helper monster in there or nearby; just add in a few more of them. Adding hit points to boss monsters works too; it doesn't really increase the lethality of their moves, but it DOES let them take more hits in combat. Adding more hit points is in a lot of ways just a stealthy way of adding more mooks to a fight without actually having to add more combatants.
The best way, I think, to compensate for large parties is to simply add in more mooks. In an adventure's major fights, there's usually some sort of helper monster in there or nearby; just add in a few more of them. Adding hit points to boss monsters works too; it doesn't really increase the lethality of their moves, but it DOES let them take more hits in combat. Adding more hit points is in a lot of ways just a stealthy way of adding more mooks to a fight without actually having to add more combatants.
This sounds about what I've been doing. I have a game with six players, and I'm adding a few mooks here and there, and it's working out just fine. For important named combatants, I've been maximizing their hit points - in exchange, I divide the xp total by four and give it to all six, as opposed to just dividing by six. Also, very special combatants get to use the critical hit deck (usually 3-4 per module).
Thanks for all the input.
I spoke to my players today, and we discussed the current adventure we are playing, "Shattered Gates of Slaughtergarde." We have only 5 players, and the GM let the XP work itself out. In the first chapter of the adventure, we pretty much cakewalked since we were essentially overpowered. Now, as we're finishing up, we're finding ourselves woefully underpowered, due mostly to the fact that we mostly lower level than we should be at this point.
I agree that adding thugs for the BBEGs provides a reasonably challange and (more importantly) additional XP so the party levels appropriately. I also like the idea of maxing out named NPCs' hp, so they don't get swarmed and killed in one round. It seems, however, that if I increase the XP awards by adding more thugs, I need to increase the treasure to keep 6 PCs at their appropriate treasure level. Is this a big enough deal to make adding treasure worth my time? (Particularly given that I don't like the "each goblin has 2d6 gp" approach.)
O
Thanks for all the input.
I spoke to my players today, and we discussed the current adventure we are playing, "Shattered Gates of Slaughtergarde." We have only 5 players, and the GM let the XP work itself out. In the first chapter of the adventure, we pretty much cakewalked since we were essentially overpowered. Now, as we're finishing up, we're finding ourselves woefully underpowered, due mostly to the fact that we mostly lower level than we should be at this point.
I agree that adding thugs for the BBEGs provides a reasonably challange and (more importantly) additional XP so the party levels appropriately. I also like the idea of maxing out named NPCs' hp, so they don't get swarmed and killed in one round. It seems, however, that if I increase the XP awards by adding more thugs, I need to increase the treasure to keep 6 PCs at their appropriate treasure level. Is this a big enough deal to make adding treasure worth my time? (Particularly given that I don't like the "each goblin has 2d6 gp" approach.)
O
If your going to be adding more to th adventure you should be raising their wealth as well as their XP. Also keep in mind that your PCs are being shorted about 50% on their XP so your going to have to add enough that they gain a full level for every two that the adventure gives them. This is a lot of extra adventuring. Your not likely to make this up with some bonus mooks unless you add a lot of mooks. The EL of every encounter needs to be raised by 2 or you need to add extra encounters to make up for those that are not so raised.