First time gamemaster question


Advice

Sovereign Court

Hello All,

I'm new to Pathfinder and I will be running Hollow's Last Hope for my son and his friends.

The module states that it is for 4 1st level characters. What would I need to do to make the module fit for potentially 6 characters?

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Ariadan


In general, bumping up the number of enemies (and treasure) by 1.5 would make things fit. For instance, if there are 2 goblins in an encounter, make it 3 instead.

For named NPCs and other solo enemies, you could add a few lower-level minions to the encounter (2-3 minions about 3 CRs below the main enemy). Just enhancing the power of the solo enemy rarely works well, due to the party getting so many more actions than the enemy.

Grand Lodge

I agree with Are and add that it's good to leave everything open; don't put anything in stone. If it calls for 2 goblins and you make it 3, if you need to add 1 more in the middle of the fight for fun, do it. If, in the middle of the fight, 3 seems to be too many, make one of them die too easily.

This is good not just because you've got more than 4 PCs (that's really no big deal -- seriously, how many groups out there have exactly 4 PCs?) but because you guys are all new to the game. It's important to leave some room for error, room for a learning curve. And maybe, [i]maybe because of the age of the Players. It's possible that, depending on their age, they'll approach each encounter differently than adults.

Sovereign Court

What does CR stand for? Also, is it too much to expect college freshman to think like adults? LOL

Silver Crusade

Ariadan wrote:

What does CR stand for? Also, is it too much to expect college freshman to think like adults? LOL

Challenge Rating. Well, as a college freshmen, how much booze is being consumed? That'd be my determining factor.

Grand Lodge

I said "maybe."

You said "son and friends."

Grand Lodge

According to most a CR 1 means that 4 1st level PCs can win the fight pretty easily. A CR8 means 4 8th level PCs.

I think it's like, 4 fights of an equal CR before the PCs start running low on resources.

Of course, this is all design theory. It's only relatively accurate. Your mileage will vary.

Typically, a decent fight is one or two CRs higher than the APL (Average Party Level). A really tough fight would be APL + 3.


Ariadan wrote:

What does CR stand for? Also, is it too much to expect college freshman to think like adults? LOL

Age has little to nothing to do with 'thinking' like an adult in the scope of an rpg. I have seen some of the most childish ideas and in game actions from some of the oldest people i have gamed with.

In terms of scaling the encounters, the bump things by 1.5 is a good rule of thumb, but the actual suggested method is to bump the CR of the encounters up by 2 (the number of extra players). The method for determining (and thus editing) challenge rating is in the game mastering section of the rules. Basically if an encounter is CR 4 for instance, with 6 PC's for roughly the same difficulty you want it to be CR 6. If its CR 5 you want it at CR 7. In order to increase to that Challenge Rating (CR), you need to add monsters to it untill the XP totals for all the monsters add up to the higher rating.

Dont forget to also scale up the treasure and story awards as well. You dont want your players with less gear facing tougher encounters, since the included gear and story awards are set for a standard 4 player party.


In my experience adjusting for the number of players can be tricky since all players are not equal nor are all characters, obviously. If the players are relatively inexperienced try just going with things as written for a session, or at least for a few encounters. If it seems too easy you can scale up for the next time you play. That assumes, of course, you are going to be playing over several sessions. If that's not the case I would strongly recommend a "practice" encounter or two using the above suggestions for scaling the CR. THat will give you a chance to get used to running combat, a chance to see how things are going to play out, and the players will get a chance to see how their PCs work.

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