I've got an unwieldly herd of potential players here all excited for me to run Jade Regent. I just ended up running a Pathfinderized 7-player version of Legacy of Fire, only one person from that doesn't want in on this, and there's a good 5 or 6 more people who have been waiting in the wings for if I ever have an opening. Now, obviously, I'm not going to try and upscale everything for a 12 person party, but I'm looking at at least 6 if not more.
Upscaling LoF has taught me that my go-to method of doing so leaves something to be desired (and tends to create some really cramped fighting conditions) so... anyone out there feel like saving me the trouble?
It would be a huge weight off my shoulders if anyone happens to have a list of monsters/levels/treasure they added for a group of n players, or the head counts/treasure piles it left them with.
Barring that, any cautionary tales would be appreciated. "Don't just double the monster count in here, this fight tends to flow into a narrow hallway!" "Better add more caravan NPCs so everyone can pair off with someone in chapter 3!" "Giving 2 more levels to this boss lead to a TPK!" Stuff like that.
Thanks in advance.
Any other tips would be appreciated to. I seem to recall once hearing something about someone wishing they'd nudged their players towards certain exotic weapon proficiencies. I assume katanas, anything else?
I have some jambled notes for the hungry storm if you are interested. For the most part I add the advanced template and add about 50% more monsters to all encounters, but my party of five are very experienced players with optimized characters and excellent system mastery so it might be a bit much.
I also have an item of my own creation I gave to my players which allowed them to learn the katana proficiency for free as long as they had he time and determination to do so.
Send me a mail @ mortagon@hotmail.com if you are interested.
I can give you approximate WBL which is handed out in modules three to six. Knowing those numbers should help you adjust WBL for more players.
I'll get to it after I get out of work.
Totally forgot it yesterday evening and now I'm back at work. ^^ I'll try to get to it this weekend, that's a safer timescale.
I have some jambled notes for the hungry storm if you are interested. For the most part I add the advanced template and add about 50% more monsters to all encounters, but my party of five are very experienced players with optimized characters and excellent system mastery so it might be a bit much.
Upscaling piles of cash and common items, doubling the head count on random mooks, those are easy enough to do on the fly. I was more concerned about unique NPCs that it wouldn't make sense to just give identical twins to, and unique bits treasure needing lesser accompanying items. The best fix there is to scratch-build sidekick NPCs and add new special gear in. Someone having beaten me to the punch with that would make for a huge huge timesaver.
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I have a group of six in Jade Regent (currently mid-way through JR3). I have made significant adjustments up to now, but two notes:
(1) My group does not have a true arcanist; they have a bard and an alchemist.
(2) Only about half my group are fairly skilled optimizers, and even they aren't power-gamer optimizers.
The lack of a true arcanist is only now beginning to hurt them, so I'm gradually ramping down my upward adjustments to encounters. (For instance, in the last session I didn't increase the strength of Vegsundvaag or a frostfallen mammoth encounter at all, and both encounters still resulted in a PC death (due to major tactical mistakes in both cases).)
The changes I made through JR1 and JR2 were basically these:
(1) I applied the advanced simple template to mooks.
(2) I did minor rebuilding of major NPCs and monsters, generally keeping the same CRs but making them leaner and meaner. For example, certain feats -- for instance, those that are good only once per day -- are significantly stronger choices for PCs' foes, and certain feats are just either particularly bad or particularly good in general. To the extent I was able to and keep the NPC's concept intact, I ruthlessly swapped these.
I have some jambled notes for the hungry storm if you are interested. For the most part I add the advanced template and add about 50% more monsters to all encounters, but my party of five are very experienced players with optimized characters and excellent system mastery so it might be a bit much.Upscaling piles of cash and common items, doubling the head count on random mooks, those are easy enough to do on the fly. I was more concerned about unique NPCs that it wouldn't make sense to just give identical twins to, and unique bits treasure needing lesser accompanying items. The best fix there is to scratch-build sidekick NPCs and add new special gear in. Someone having beaten me to the punch with that would make for a huge huge timesaver.
I haven't made any sidekicks, but I have scaled up named npc's with more levels and gear. I usually just add some mooks to the boss encounters to make them more memorable. For sidekicks may I suggest the premade npc's from the gamemastery guide and the npc codex? You could also borrow npc's from other adventures and AP's. I do this all the time and with some reskinning my players never know the difference.
Alright, here are the approximate treasure values in modules 3 to 6. Assumption is that every magic item and non-magical equipment gets sold for 50% market value and gems/art objects for 100%:
The Frozen Storm (7-10): 144.000 GP
Forest of Spirits (10-12): 254.175 GP
Tide of Honor (12-13): 230.206 GP
The Empty Throne (13-16): 654.505 GP
Caveats for the last module:
- 13-14: 172.180 GP
- 13-15: 366.605 GP
Those last numbers are just in case someone wants to do the same as me and stretch out the timescale of the last module a bit. I personally think it's ridiculous to compress this very long-duration AP into a week in the last module and thus deprive the party from exploring Kasai properly and getting ready for the final confrontation. Also, inciting rebellions should take longer and require better planning, something on the scale of one or two months at the least.
Handy stuff, thanks. Also...
Why can't anybody else in this massive group GM? This many players is unworldly for an AP.
Out of the good dozen or so prospective players here, 4 people besides myself are running games of their own, which also pack in an average of 7 players each, with some overlap, which I'm using to pare things down to a semi-sane count. Basically though it's just a combination of "this giant herd of people really likes the way I GM" and "everyone really wants to play this specific AP, but nobody else is willing to go snag the books/spoil it for themselves."
So yeah, it's just this weird, big, hyper-enthusiastic crowd. About five of the players are prone to creating elaborate illustrations for the highlight moments of every single session.