Number of Players in Carrion Crown?

[Tyler Gibson]

I am going to start GMing a game of Carrion Crown. I am worried about running this with 5 PCs without scaling everything up. The PCs aren't optimized or anything, and they have a Paladin, Sorcerer, Druid, Range, and a Cleric. Do you think i can do it without scaling all encounters up?

[ciretose]

Tyler Gibson wrote:

I am going to start GMing a game of Carrion Crown. I am worried about running this with 5 PCs without scaling everything up. The PCs aren't optimized or anything, and they have a Paladin, Sorcerer, Druid, Range, and a Cleric. Do you think i can do it without scaling all encounters up?

You shouldn't need to scale encounters, as they will be loot and XP deprived and that will balance it out.

[Blackbot]

I'm GMing HoH at the moment without scaling the encounters up, and I give XP as if there were only four players.
Up until now I did not experience any problems - some encounters get steamrolled, others give them some problems. If I ever feel I go to soft on them I will simply scale up the HP of the monsters a little bit (3/4 instead of 1/2 HD each level or something) and see how it turns out. Up until now they are prone to shoot themselves in the foot anyways, so it balances out quite nicely.

[Pan]

I have 5 optimized players. I am doing fine so far by keeping them a level behind in the advancement track. I don't need no stinking experience points.