Is anyone out there running RoTRL with 6 players? If so, is it still challenging? I have just started Burnt Offerings with 6 players and I want a heads up if my group will breeze through it. They are all vets and are pretty sharp.
as long as you don't go handing out bonus exp they should blow through the first few encounters... untill they fall behind in the level curve. Then expect heavy casualties as players with fewer HP than anticipated take alot of damage. This has been my experience, I am playing in a group with 6-8 people and right now we have at least one death per session. That might also be a factor of the kids I play with, no tactical abilities whatsoever and both they and I are tired of my being party leader.
I part-time DM by trading off every other book and from what I have seen, no your DM is probably not bolstering, we lost two charactrs in the glassworks encounter, although three of us rolled at least wo crit fails during the battle.
Ahh, the PC's are being set up. Thanks guys. I thought I was doing something wrong.
Is anyone out there running RoTRL with 6 players? If so, is it still challenging? I have just started Burnt Offerings with 6 players and I want a heads up if my group will breeze through it. They are all vets and are pretty sharp.
My perspective is that a party of 6 adventurers is only 1 effective level higher than a party of 4 adventurers, per the "rule of thumb" in the DMG that says, double the monsters to add 2 to the ECL.
What I do with my group is 6 is figure out their XP as if they were their current level (ie. if all 2nd level, figure it out as 2nd level), but divide by 6. Then keep an eye on the total so they do not fall more then 1 level behind the curve.
-- david
Papa-DRB
Grognard
I, too, am planning to start Burnt Offerings soon, with 6 players. I initially thought that letting them mop up in the beginning would be okay, as the XP would be diluted somewhat, the PCs will advance more slowly (which is a good thing, as I feel that the level progression in 3.5 is too quick), and it will all even out. Unfortunately, as mentioned above, I know that it will eventually lead to underpowered PCs getting their butts handed to them because, although there are a lot of them, they don't have the HP, Saving Throw mods, or BAB necessary to tackle really BBEGs.
So, do I accept that my players will be making new characters every other week or is there an alternative?
As has been suggested in another thread, I could add mooks to bring the ELs up 1 (6 PCs are about a +1 level party) and give named NPCs max HP, but then the treasure totals will be off and we'll have underpowered PCs again, and I don't relish the idea of going through every adventure, totalling treasure and re-equipping every NPC with more expensive stuff. That's why I buy prewritten modules!
Any easy thoughts here?
o
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I have 5PCs in the party that I run.
I added enough bad guys so that their xp would progress to 2nd level by the time they hit the catacombs and 3rd level when they hit Thistletop.
This entailed adding a few extra goblins in the beginning and in the glassworks, and two more extra sinspawn in the catacombs.
They did somehow defeat Erylium (crit hit from a longbow) and destroyed the runewell for the bonus xp, so they've mopped things up well.
I have 5PCs in the party that I run.
I added enough bad guys so that their xp would progress to 2nd level by the time they hit the catacombs and 3rd level when they hit Thistletop.
This entailed adding a few extra goblins in the beginning and in the glassworks, and two more extra sinspawn in the catacombs.
They did somehow defeat Erylium (crit hit from a longbow) and destroyed the runewell for the bonus xp, so they've mopped things up well.
Yes, but did you adjust treasure? As they increase level, they will be underpowered w/o additional goodies!
o
I, too, am planning to start Burnt Offerings soon, with 6 players. I initially thought that letting them mop up in the beginning would be okay, as the XP would be diluted somewhat, the PCs will advance more slowly (which is a good thing, as I feel that the level progression in 3.5 is too quick), and it will all even out. Unfortunately, as mentioned above, I know that it will eventually lead to underpowered PCs getting their butts handed to them because, although there are a lot of them, they don't have the HP, Saving Throw mods, or BAB necessary to tackle really BBEGs.
So, do I accept that my players will be making new characters every other week or is there an alternative?
As has been suggested in another thread, I could add mooks to bring the ELs up 1 (6 PCs are about a +1 level party) and give named NPCs max HP, but then the treasure totals will be off and we'll have underpowered PCs again, and I don't relish the idea of going through every adventure, totalling treasure and re-equipping every NPC with more expensive stuff. That's why I buy prewritten modules!
Any easy thoughts here?
o
As I said on another thread. This just has not been my experience. 6 players even a few levels back should generally be more powerful then 4 mainly due to more actions in a turn. I'll concede that this does assume more teamwork since benefits like the total hps in the party are only apparent if the heavily damaged fighter is actually relieved by a team mate etc.
In any case there is a possible solution. Let the XP sort it out at first and judge for yourself. If the adventures do seem to hard and you feel that you have no option but to up the XP and treasure then you can always throw in a side trek to get the PCs back up to speed and from that point on adjust the adventures to deal with the fact that you need to add more monsters and treasure. This way you might not have to adjust anything which is a win and if you do well now you know.
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I have 5PCs in the party that I run.
I added enough bad guys so that their xp would progress to 2nd level by the time they hit the catacombs and 3rd level when they hit Thistletop.
This entailed adding a few extra goblins in the beginning and in the glassworks, and two more extra sinspawn in the catacombs.
They did somehow defeat Erylium (crit hit from a longbow) and destroyed the runewell for the bonus xp, so they've mopped things up well.
Yes, but did you adjust treasure? As they increase level, they will be underpowered w/o additional goodies!
o
RotRL already seems to hand out magic goodies faster than the DMG suggests (lots of +1 magic weapons for a third level party, which should have found between zero and one.) so that really shouldn't be a problem - although if you're worried the easiest way to increase treasure in published adventures is to drop the DCs for finding the hidden stuff.
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Is anyone out there running RoTRL with 6 players? If so, is it still challenging? I have just started Burnt Offerings with 6 players and I want a heads up if my group will breeze through it. They are all vets and are pretty sharp.
I've just started running RotR with a party of seven PCs. I'm only into the second session (they've done the festival and the monster in the closet). I added 50%-75% to the goblins at the festival and they largely breezed through it (though I pounded the crap out of a fighter that got caught in the beguiler's sleep spell).
They've made 600xp so far (with up to 100 bonus xp from getting their character backgrounds turned in on time). I suspect that by the end of Glassworks they'll be pushing 2nd level.
I did start them out with double normal hit points (D&D is too randomly lethal at 1st level), but they know they're not getting any more hp at 2nd level. I'll be giving them 1/2 HD + 1 hp at every subsequent level -- I remember a post from someone saying that below-average hp hurts players worse than above-average helps them, so I don't mind them being a bit heavy on hp. It'll help their survivability when they fall a little behind the level curve anyway.
Honestly, almost all of them are serious D&D vets, going back to 1st edition and a lot of RPGA play, so despite efforts on my part to limit the power levels I expect they'll easily be able to handle APL+2 encounters. They might struggle a bit with APL+4 encounters but they should still be able to handle them.
EDIT: their not they're
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Yes, but did you adjust treasure? As they increase level, they will be underpowered w/o additional goodies!o
Yes. I adjusted the treasure. Gave them more money so that they could buy more magical goodies to their liking (consumables, weapons) and stay with the power curve (bad tactics notwithstanding). We'll see if it worked. They've just entered Thistletop.
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I also found the first part of Burnt Offerings was quite easy on the PCs. Goblins die easily and fast, and having them fool around the battlefield doesn't help them survive very long.
I think that was a little intentional of the author, to make things look easy at the begining, to let PCs have a little laugh and let the town believe the threat is not realy that serious. It will get harder in part 4 of the adventure, if you play the monsters/alarm well.
I prefer not to get hung up on awarding XP so much--if the PCs need to be a level higher for the next stage of the adventure, just say "time to level up." If they are underpowered in terms of magical goodies, sprinkle what they need on some corpses or in some treasure chests.
As you can see, I'm about "let's have a fun adventure", not so much about "did they earn it?"
Perhaps it's my D&D upbringing (when I started second edition was out, but my DM was of the oldschool mentality, where the concept of an elf having a class was new and innovative), but I try not to get too hung up on the experience and treasure number crunching. For a while I was, and I noticed something...I was spending more time worying about exactly how much treasure I was going to be awarding compared to experience, crossreferenced to current party level, that I was never ready when I said I'd be ready, so we weren't playing. My advice, play with rules that your familiar with so you have a good idea what your party can and can't handle (it's a lot easier to guage just how much crap a party consisting of an assassin from Green Ronin, a warmage from Complete arcane, a favored soul from Complete Divine, and a samurai from Oriental Adventures can handle if you own all those books and are familiar with the classes rules), and try to keep an eye on what's going on in your campaign. Last session they walked through the scary evil necromancer and his ghoul bodyguards huh? Well, was that because the cleric got a lucky roll on his turn undead check and cleared the ghouls out first turn, or did the party come in particularly prepared, at full hitpoints and spell slots, or did you forget to use the necromancer's items/spells, or was the necromancer and ghouls just too week of an encounter for your party level?
Always keep a few ideas on side trek type adventures handy, try to keep an eye on how reinforcements could arive to save the parties rump in a bad situation, or change a breezy encounter into an actual challenge. Also, realize not every encounter needs to pe of the appropriate level. Some fights the party should walk (or probably run) away from, and others should make them feel like all this work of leveling their characters up is accomplishing something. Your party get whalopwed pretty good by that pack of gnolls a few levels back? Give them a random encounter where they fight a similiar encounter level worth.
*shakes head* yeah, straying off topic just a touch huh? My bad...six is actualy a pretty good number to have in my opinion. You get one of the main adventuring builds, pluss two more bodies to have back up and/or oddities. If you don't mind, what's the make up of your party? That could make a huge difference...Back in second edition we had a party of about seven fighters, all of which died while trying to investigate a giant well out in the middle of nowhere...
I'm playing a group of 5 right now. They are very tactical and the monsters rarely touch them. The glassworks was kind of hard of them, cause the goblin did do heavy damage to the paladian. For some odd reason, the party made him the main tank despite the fact he was wearing light armor and no shield.
Armor Class is better then Hit Die folks.
Generally I agree that AC is better then hps but you do have to balance this with offensive power. Wielding weapons two handed is significantly more devastating then one handed variants. The Shield Bonus to AC is definitely sweet but there are a lot of ways to up ones AC and not as many ways to up ones chance to hit and damage. Its a bit of a balancing act IMO with certain kinds of characters benefiting more from the offensive potential (Barbarians particularly work well in the heavy offensive role) while others are better off going sword and board.
I prefer not to get hung up on awarding XP so much--if the PCs need to be a level higher for the next stage of the adventure, just say "time to level up." If they are underpowered in terms of magical goodies, sprinkle what they need on some corpses or in some treasure chests.
As you can see, I'm about "let's have a fun adventure", not so much about "did they earn it?"
Nothing wrong with this style at all but there is something almost addictive about getting XP. Its like a compulsion to eat the dots in a game of Packman.
So sure it can be skipped and your not going to loose any story this way but for some players you might be missing out on something that, irrational as it is, gets them excited every week.