Hey i am starting LoF with a group of 6. I was thinking placing extra monsters so the CR would match APL, but i am not sure if it is a good ideer.
Any got helpful tips on what to do? I realy wish to play with 6
I was in the same boat in Howl of the Carrion King. Adding a mook or 2 to the big brawls earlier in the mod should work out. Make sure to use the fast XP progression, and if the party starts to lag behind, throw a couple wandering monster fights at 'em. Once they start part 3 of Howl there'll be no problem challenging them with difficult fights, assuming they haven't optimized to the hilt.
Zo
|
I too have 6 players and all I did was maximize creature's HPs. This seems to have worked pretty well so far. We're on Jackal's Price and combats take as long as i would expect them with 4 players and the same creatures with average hps, and there have been many tense moments since I started maximizing hps. The first half of HotCK they mowed through the gnolls, and while they still beat them soundly with max hp, it wasn't nearly as fast.
Contributor
|
I would leave the early encounters as they are and see how the party fares. 6 level 1 PCs are still not that effective. Adiding 50% more monsters to encounters is a good way to go too, though it really depends on your group.
I'm running this AP for a group of 8 right now and we're at the beginning of The Impossible Eye. They are about a level behind where the books recommend and it's working out that they need about 150% of the nuimber of monsters listed.
I've been running it with 5-6 players with some of the community Pathfinder conversions of NPCs. Honestly, it depends on what your group is like and what you're going for.
Certainly you can add some mooks to encounters and/or increase the HP of enemies; that and/or slapping the Advanced template on some things has served me pretty well in terms of being able to tweak up difficulty a bit without getting crazy. You also can pick slightly smarter tactics for NPCs than those listed -- in a few cases they're seemingly intentionally crippled by their listed tactics. Those things have all worked well for me.
Mostly, though? None of the PCs in my group are especially optimized. None are Tier 1 classes. Most have done things that aren't tactically smart for RP reasons. All those things being the case, I haven't needed to change much to provide a challenge and some casualties. There are a few things, especially in the first few books, that can realistically kill a character almost no matter how big the party is.
I'd say you'd need to know your group and go from there.
I'd say you'd need to know your group and go from there.
I'm in nearly the same situation. I have 6 full-time players, but sometimes there are only 5 there and sometimes someone has to leave early. For this reason it is important for me to be able to look at an encounter and judge a modification on the fly for 5 or 6 players.
I'm also running a group that is far from optomized, and are 12-point buy characters. And many "lower tiered" classes.
A lot of it has to do with feeling as well. If there are 4 gnoll patrols in the book, I may run them against 6. But, if I'm down to five players and they've been beaten silly (or one or two PCs are beaten silly), then I may leave it at 4.
I plan on running the Side Trek adventures in the LoF modules or whatever they are called these days. And throw wandering monstors in.
I imagine moddying on the fly is a bit like a chef who has done it for years. Eventually you get a feeling for what and when to add to the dish and what and when to take away.
I run 6 players as well. The party tends to be about a level behind where they are supposed to be and that seems to balance it out just fine.
Utii,
I have the same sort of problem. In my currently on hold game, I'm running for 8 players and through excellent role-playing and actually tithing to Almah 10% of the monetary tresure they've found to date, they've gotten the merchant princess to permanently assign three of the mercenaries to them as guard/scouts.
As a result, I've had to flesh out these three as full stat characters. They're about a level behind the PC's at this point and by player decision, the NPC's are getting full-share treasure and exp from any encounter they actually participate in)
With an 11-way split of the exp, I going to have to really bulk up the available exp in order for the PC's to have a fair chance at the Battle Market.
We've cleared the lower town ruins (B1-B7) at this point, and started to make recon moves of the Battle Market and the buildings that surround it.
In order to make the exp issue work for 11 PC's and NPC's, the group has made several side-trips to sites in the surrounding region. They've already been to the following side treks:
- The Pesh Fields, where they killed the dust digger on night 2, before the gnolls tried to kill Oxvard on night 3. The gnolls were almost commic in their attempts to summon the beast. Wisely, the PC's used a scroll of silence 15' to cover the noise of the fight. The even buried the digger back in it's hole and smoothed over the area. The gnolls tried everything they could to get the digger to surface, even to the point of picking up big rocks and dropping them near the poor cleric.
- The Old Shrine, where I ran the excellent Set Piece encounter.
- One Day 5, the whole team happened to be back at the Monestary healing up from the Shrine when the harpy makes her flyby. The ranger was on guard and she carries a crude spyglass (part of the players original equipment). The ranger alerted the whole camp that a "huge bird" was headed thier way and the initial round of missle attacks was significantly more than the harpies 31 hit points. Because of her death, I added a twinn-sister harpy to the Battle Arean, just so I could run the harpy encounter there.
- On the next day, they were scouting the road that runs through the hills north of town, as the ranger was sure that's where the harpy had came from. Needing an encounter, I quick stated a heavy wagon drawn by six oxen and protected by 10 bandits (W1's and 2's) lead by a disreputable 1/2 orc merchant (T4). The wagon contained slaves destined for the Battle Market. It was a close fight, but the players survived and rescued the six slaves (all Com1's for now, but I plan to make one a replacement character if I need one).
- A small band of gnolls (not associated with the tribe at the Battlemarket) Four gnolls leading two pack hyeanadons. They were comming down from the mountains to trade, and ran into the party as they were checking out some of the un-occupied buildings around the battle market. The PC's got the drop on the gnolls, and after an entangle spell and a silence spell, the poor gnolls didn't stand a chance. The hyeanadons were tougher, but the PC's managed to use their guides and plenty of archery to complete the kill.
I'm running 7 players. Remember that Pathfinder PC's are more capable than 3.5e characters of the same level. The solution I've hit on is to first upgrade the NPCs to Pathfinder (either in advance, or if on the fly, by simply adding +2 to everything and tossing in an extra 10 hp).
I echo the idea of not making the initial encounters much more difficult; let your PC's be heroes together. Once you've let them shake off the dust, then here's what I'd do (and what I do): Where the fight is with mooks, I just add a proportional number of mooks. Keeps the fight about even.
Where the fight is with a single, named bad guy (the giant vulture, Kardswann, Xulthos, whomever), I maximize their hit points. That usually works out okay.
early on dont do much, once you get to kelemaranne just add more gnolls. I really think it was gnoll lacking from what expected.
Once you get to battle dome dont add anything that was hard enough as it was!
|
We have eight as well. I thought about doing a 15 point buy, but instead did a 20. Most characters are pretty average, but my witch did decide to drop a 20 into their prime stat, and he's paying for it with a 7 strength and tens in the rest of his physical stats.
I'm not sure what will happen when the group hits the gnolls, not a lot of front line characters. In the Fire encounter in Howl, it took 4 PCs and 4 NPCs to move the wagon away from the fire before it lit up.
We have eight as well. I thought about doing a 15 point buy, but instead did a 20. Most characters are pretty average, but my witch did decide to drop a 20 into their prime stat, and he's paying for it with a 7 strength and tens in the rest of his physical stats.
I'm not sure what will happen when the group hits the gnolls, not a lot of front line characters. In the Fire encounter in Howl, it took 4 PCs and 4 NPCs to move the wagon away from the fire before it lit up.
hah! no one had any strength? too funny.
|
|
We have eight as well. I thought about doing a 15 point buy, but instead did a 20. Most characters are pretty average, but my witch did decide to drop a 20 into their prime stat, and he's paying for it with a 7 strength and tens in the rest of his physical stats.
I'm not sure what will happen when the group hits the gnolls, not a lot of front line characters. In the Fire encounter in Howl, it took 4 PCs and 4 NPCs to move the wagon away from the fire before it lit up.
So after 2 sessions with 8 people, we had a session on Tuesday night with 6 people. Went noticeably smoother as they finished off the monastery. 8 might be too many people...
It is. 4-5 is the sweet spot. 6 is okay.