I'm considering running this soon, but I'm going to have a large number of players. I understand the encounters are balanced for 4 players, and I'm much more likely to have 6 or 7.
Do I need to do anything to scale up the encounters? Is it as simple as doubling the monsters involved in most cases? Or is it the case that the party will just level slower than average, and will balance themselves by running through the adventure at a slightly lower level with more players?
All APs are scaled for four characters at a 15 point ability buy. With six or seven characters you will have issues. I have run an AP, with four characters and once with six characters myself, so some advice:
First, THIS thread is the Kingmaker six player conversion thread with links to all the documents. Alexander and the others give reasons for how they converted the various chapters and encounters. Give it a look for some good ideas.
Second, do NOT let them lag behind. By the time you get to the third or fourth chapter and later, the characters will be two to three to more levels behind. Where this hurts, especially, is with spell casters as the chapter authors gear encounters to specific levels. Suddenly, the wizard/sorcerer/cleric/druid/etc. can't cast Dispel Magic and a moderate encounter becomes near impossible (for example).
Third, add more low level mooks, rather than super amp up the BBEG. Too much BBEG and you TPK the group. Mooks just slow the party down, rather then out right kill them.
-- david
papa.drb
ps. Even though I do keep track of XP, in a spread sheet, I level up via GM fiat, rather than by total XP. My guys know this and know that I am not out to screw them over, so they are OK with it.
Wait, APs are designed for 15 point character builds?
I must have missed that somewhere.
That could be why my guys are walking over some of these encounters.
Wonder if I can get them to rebuild at 15???
-Erich
Contributor
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With larger groups you don't always have to modify the adventure in any significant or work-heavy way, just think 'how could this encounter be more challenging'.
I have six players with a 20-point build, and they quite often get into trouble with the encounters without me needing to do much except change the tactics of some of the creatures or the weapons they use. For instance, I had the ants in Shards of Sin come out of the mounds all at once instead of one per round. It looked like the battle could go either way but the PCs eventually prevailed.
As far as XP goes, I'm adding up the awards and giving each of the PCs a quarter of the total as if they were a standard-sized group.
Half again as many PC's is equivalent to a +1 CR. There are several methods you can employ.
1) Increase the number of monsters or opponents by 50%.
2) Add a class level to their opponents.
3) Apply the Advanced Creature template to their opponents.
These are the simplest methods. You could also add other templates, such as fiendish, if it better fits the encounter.
The only issue with 6 or 7 is in 'dungeonering'.
Despite the corridors being pretty wide the party are going to get in each others way fairly often
The party I have just GMed session 6 too has 6 PCs and a mount
I think that allowing the PC's to lag in level invites a TPK when they hit some of the more dangerous monsters (my 6 PC's lost half their party dead or permanently insane to an encounter in Curse of the Lady's Light).
Instead, I recommend that for most of the encounters you be willing to scale up the numbers of opponents. If there are three in the book, give 'em four or five. When the opponent is a single foe, give that foe an extra level or the Advanced Creature template -and- place some minor mooks in support.
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One thing you have to keep in mind is economy of action.
If you just make the adversaries more powerful without adding more adversaries, the players will still have more actions than intended, and it won't work out like you'd like.
The Kingmaker reference is a good resource. He usually beefed up adversaries by adding advanced template and increased the number of creatures in the encounter by 50%. His target was to create an encounter that awarded 150% xp of the original encounter.
Just keeping the ecounters the same and relying on slower leveling doesn't work real well either. One reason is the same economy of action. Having 2 more characters' worth of actions will have much more of a power up effect than them being a level lower will have a power down effect. When you get to later books of the AP and the PCs get even farther behind, you're going to really run into trouble when things like SR start coming into play.
If you want to run an AP with 6 or more players, there's really no substitute for putting the time in and adjusting the encounters. If you're not willing to do that (and it does add a lot to prep time for you), then I suggest scaling the group down.
I agree with everything Lex said except the last paragraph. I've found it relatively easy to adjust on the fly in nearly all cases. I only really re-do the boss fights. Most often four Gray Maidens can just become six Gray Maidens with no need for a lot of adjustments.
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Well, it turns out that it's rare for all six of my players to show up. Four is the most common and occasionally five. So what I opted to do instead is run the encounters as written and adjudicate a little in favor of the monsters at times. When awarding XP, I divide the XP award by four and give that much experience to the entire party. That way all the characters stay where they're supposed to be level-wise and saves me a lot of work. The group's more interested in figuring out the story than the fights themselves anwyay.
I'm taking over running this AP in the transition from book 2 to 3. The number of players we have varies from week to week, but is pretty stable at about 8 players (one of whom used to be me). The ex-GM may be joining us as a player (he hasn't read ahead).
As I haven't had copies of books 1 & 2, I can't say for certain how he scaled previous encounters, but there must have been significant alterations (2 Glass Golems for instance). So far we've had, I think, 5 PC deaths and a few encounters that have come close to TPKs. And it's been great fun!
So reading what's been said so far, I think I'll scale as follows:
Single creature high CR encounters will get an advanced creature template or a class level, and simply better tactics.
Mobs will get more members, and better tactics where appropriate.
Or I might just leave them as is, like the Halflight path encounter at the start of Asylum Stone!!
Thanks for all the advice upthread.
I'm running Shattered Star for 5 PC's with a 25 point buy. The party is pretty well balanced(witch, oracle, rogue, fighter, barbarian)
They were just rolling through the early portions(Sections 1 & 2 of Shard). But level 1 characters are a bit fragile, so I was ok with that. I've started to add pieces, to both keep them at appropriate levels and add a bit of challenge.
We haven't gotten too much farther, but the most recent combat ratchetted up their tension about possible death.
They entered the crow, and moved past the initial engagement by crushing the first tower girls they met. I added some traps between that encounter and the platform which they failed to disarm(3 arrow traps). I added 4 skeletons in the niche room. After the witch was KO'd twice, they finished them and left to lick their wounds/level up.
The party spoke w/ Natalya who warned them that the Tower Girls would rally if they saw them coming. Stealth checks were promptly failed. So the party finds the tower girls waiting for them in area B15. Karisa warns them to leave, they refuse. Battle ensues with Karisa, 2 donkey rats, 2 advanced donkey rats, & 7 hidden Tower Girls. The party survived with a few knockdowns, but no death & completely out of spells.
Our last session ended with the party exiting the Crow with 2 captured Tower Girls in tow.
Now, there's no way Ayala is leaving herself undefended. I'm figuring that a selection of returning tower girls and some hired thugs should do a fine job softening them up. They were also warned she had a lover, so adding a 2nd level fighter should make her a more challenging opponent.
So, do these changes sound reasonable? I'm not pushing it too far?
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Okay,
I did not read the whole thread but the first few posts.
I have always played APs with 6 players. I have not adjusted anything but I also try to play each encounter to the fullest most of the time.
I do not use experience points at all anymore with APs. I just level them up when the AP says they should be leveled up.
That said - in the two current APs I am running (Serpent Skull and Carrion Crown) the death toll is very high. There is only one surviving starting character in both campaigns.
In Carrion Crown the survivor is one who fled from a fear effect and kept going while the rest of the group died in various ways.
In the other group it is a spell caster who has not usually been threatened as most characters have but at least twice he almost died.
Light SPOILERS
Not only that but in Serpent skull I have one Player who is on his third or fourth character. Sometimes circumstances got him and other times he died through either a mistake or bravery. One character died going back to save another character who then escaped; one character died at the hands of another character who could not figure out a way to comply with a charmed command of "Protect Me" without killing the other PC (even though I told him he did not have to actually attack the other PC about three times before he did), and once to a Froghemoth when he was down levels from a vampire encounter.