Hey gang!
In September, we are starting the Council of Thieves AP!
My buddy who is running it (thanks DG!) is letting us run with 25 pt buy, and we will have 5, maybe 6, players. So we will have a real good edge on the baddies.
The interesting part is that with 5-6 players, we will take a hit (33%)each on XP cause we are dividing it up 6 ways instead of 4.
So, my questions are (no spoilers please):
1. Should he run the AP as is?
Less XP but a party of 6 3rd level characters is more powerful than a party of 4 4th level characters.
2. Should he increase #'s of mooks to increase the challenge to keep us on par with the level of the AP?
This increases the XP, thus making a party of 6 more powerful.
3. Other suggestions?
a party of 6 characters is generally considered to add 1 to the APL (i.e 6 4th level characters is considered to have an APL of 5). I would adjust by increasing the EL of most encounters by 1 by adding extra enemies or advancing the monster or NPC a bit.
My two favorite ways to handle larger parties is to increase the number of mooks by about 50% or drop the simple advanced template on everything in the encounter.
Each will add about 1 EL to the encounter. You can even use a combination of the two in the same encounter fairly easily once you get a hang of how advancing EL works.
Our gaming group is typically 6 or more players at a time. Here are some things that I do to keep encounters challenging.
1. With 6 players I increase the CR of all enemies by 1 and add up to 25% more enemies, but reduce enemy HP by 25%. This has worked really well for me as the encounters remain challenging, but the reduced HP prevents combat from becoming a grind. Challenging encounters have enemies with one hero point each.
2. With more than 7 players I find that I bump CR of enemies by 2, and add one or two additional enemies at full HP. The problem of adding many more enemies is that the time to complete one round of combat gets way too long, and players get bored between actions. I have GM'd groups of 9 players and I don't recommend it. 6 is perfect for this guy.
3. I have a combat management program that automates new initiative rolls every round. I find that this tends to give foes an extra round of actions on average than with a static initiative order.
4. No leadership feat (cohorts) when we have more than 6 players at the table. Players that are time hogs at the table are told to pre-roll attacks/damage on a sheet of paper that is witnessed by another player or they simply run out of time and their turn is skipped. Better be faster next round! All casters are expected and required to know their spells. Looking up a spell during one's turn is a big no-no in a large group.
The first two items should keep the party on track in regards to xp and treasure. The second two are more for my benefit when managing a larger group.
I would also caution that single big bad guys are less effective when going up against parties of 6 or more. Use with care! If you make the big bad guy (BBG) tough enough to challenge 6 heroes by itself, it will usually be able to nearly one-shot individual players with a decent roll. A solution would be to keep the BBG unmodified and add some minion-type enemies to harass the group and split their attacks.
When I am running a game with a new party I like to run a "stress test" early on to see if I need to make other minor adjustments to encounter design. The stress test usually involves waves of enemies that keep attacking until two party members are unconscious. I then will review the combat to determine if what I think is challenging is actually appropriate for party composition. Since the classes that the players choose can drastically alter their effectiveness in combat encounters, I think the test is a valuable tool. For example if your party of 6 has one paladin, and two clerics, you may need to bump up the CR of encounters to compensate for the massive amount of healing that the party has at their command.
Best of luck to you and your group. As mentioned above, parties of 6 are a blast!
Hey gang!
In September, we are starting the Council of Thieves AP!
My buddy who is running it (thanks DG!) is letting us run with 25 pt buy, and we will have 5, maybe 6, players. So we will have a real good edge on the baddies.
The interesting part is that with 5-6 players, we will take a hit (33%)each on XP cause we are dividing it up 6 ways instead of 4.
So, my questions are (no spoilers please):
1. Should he run the AP as is?
Less XP but a party of 6 3rd level characters is more powerful than a party of 4 4th level characters.2. Should he increase #'s of mooks to increase the challenge to keep us on par with the level of the AP?
This increases the XP, thus making a party of 6 more powerful.3. Other suggestions?
I have run this campaign with 7 players. He will definately want to tailer the campaign to the group. A group with many players needs to help the GM also to make the game fun. I had players run mook/mindless enemies and keep track of initiative, etc. There is a fine line with buffing these encounters and tpk. He will want to often add more monsters, but also just reading about the monsters may add to their deadliness as several have abilities that will be missed if they are just full attack machines. Adding the advanced template works sometimes. Some enemies in this campaign are so weak as to be laughable, adding a stronger enemy in with them is a nice route. Wealth in the campaign is outrageous, he should reconsider the 25 point buy, I did 20 and had PC's that were super powerful.
... increase the number of mooks by about 50% or drop the simple advanced template on everything ... .
I'll second that - maybe +2 EL because of the generous point buy.
My group consists of 6 PCs and 2 cohorts; so it's a tough challenge for me as GM. ;)
Update:
I'm still playing the Human Ranger (Urban Archtype, switch hitter build)and all the other players are keeping their classes...and have decided to play Halflings...
Yes the LotR jokes are flying.
Player #6 is going GNOME...and is still deciding on class.
So...me and 5 widdle guys...guess who is gonna be the primary target in the first round in every fight...sigh...
Four Halflings in a Cheliax urban envrionment, that's quite a challenge!
I did 6 players with 25-point buy and they walked through it, even when I bumped the EL by one or two. I was much better off tweaking AC and their to-hit to something in the midrange of the party's highest attackers and highest AC folks. Get the EL too high, and it's tpk-land because nobody can hit. It takes some balancing.
Of course, the poorer attackers were casters and knew darned well to stay out of melee.
Don't forget treasure as appropriate. I found my guys liked a real mix of encounters, too. I'd toss a couple dozen mooks at them for a slaughterfest, then have a seriously difficult encounter to challenge them. Your GM can also do wonders with terrain and surprise in CoT.
I would go with 20 pt buy; possibly even 15. Otherwise, the judge will have to adjust all the encounters. While that can be done, it begins to defeat the point of an AP in the first place if you have too much of that.