5th player xp / combat rewards and CR increase (no spoilers please)

[Lord Phrofet]

My DM is running Carrion Crown for our group's first ever Pathfinder game (after years of 3.5). We had a 5th person join and was wondering if there was any guides to increasing the rewards and difficulty of the module that I could send to her. We are still doing Haunting of Harrowstone at this point but she plans to run the entire module (something I am looking forward to!). Thank you for any help you can offer.

[wraithstrike]

One extra person normally does not matter all that much. The XP chart even suggest giving the same XP out whether you have 4 or 5 people. She could add a monster that is 2 below the party's APL to some fights if she thinks it really matters though.

[Windspirit]

Or just up Monster HP's to 3/4 or even full, if the group isnt challanged enougth.

[King of Vrock]

Setting monster hps to max is usually what I do for 5 PCs as well. Treasure shouldn't be too bad, though you could through in a little extra now and again to even it out (extra potion or scroll, another gemstone, etc.).

--Vrock & Key

[Pan]

Its pretty challenging as written. This AP seems to be a little more deadly than average. That could just be a misread on my part. One option is to not change anything and use the advancement track in place of experience. Just a suggestion. I don't like using experience points myself and love the advancement track feature of the APs.

[Grulgotha]

For my campaign/AP(s) we are often with 5 people. I went with keeping everyone a level behind where "the book" states they should be (we don't bother with keeping track of XP) and everything works out well.
One addendum: I keep everyone a level behind AFTER the first book in an AP.

[Josh Hodges]

Pan wrote:

Its pretty challenging as written. This AP seems to be a little more deadly than average. That could just be a misread on my part. One option is to not change anything and use the advancement track in place of experience. Just a suggestion. I don't like using experience points myself and love the advancement track feature of the APs.

I'd say it's a bit more challenging, yes. We've had three deaths so far in a group of six players by book 2. All three of them come down to tactical blunders, but all except the first were in encounters I hadn't even scaled up for the party because they've been struggling in general.

[Silthe]

It also depends on party make-up. I'm running a group of five PC's through Harrowstone right now and while there haven't been any deaths yet, it's only because the players are playing very smart and extremely cautious. They have no divine caster so no Channel Energy which means all undead fights are done the old-fashioned way. Healing is done by the bard and the alchemist, which isn't bad but isn't great either.

I've found that either using several optional encounters more than once helps increase the tension and up the party's XP, or just dividing the xp by 4 instead of 5 will keep the leveling at the correct pace.

But yes, I agree that this AP seems harsher than most. I'm not going to say deadlier, just that they seem to expect players to be a lot more cautious than normal since a few bad dice rolls can turn things ugly very quickly.