XP and encounter changes for a very large party?

[Rycaut]

So I'm running my first Adventure Path and have a large group - 8 players at the moment but balanced slightly by the likelihood that for any given game night 2 or 3 players may not be able to join us.

But I have a few questions as we progress.

The group is very fun - so far no one is playing a core race and everyone has great concepts for their characters. Should be lots of fun to play with and run (we're all regular PFS players so playing non-core/not PFS legal races is especially fun for everyone).

My questions however as a DM are:

- should we use medium or fast XP advancement? I was leaning towards fast as I think that ends up being similar to the speed of advancement for a 4 person party at medium but I haven't run the numbers to confirm

- as I understand the Pathfinder XP system for a large party I should use the XP for a given CR method over adding up the XP and dividing by 8 (as the later method appears to give less XP for the characters)

- are there specific encounters that other DMs who are farther along have had to adjust for larger parties? As long as I have a group that is in terms of players at the table only 5-6 for a given night I'll probably just run as per the book. But if everyone is playing together I'm figuring I may need to add a few additional foes to some encounters to balance out the action economy advantages of the larger party? But I don't want to err on the side of making things too difficult.

(we're going with a rolled stats with an option of a 17/18 point buy if your stats don't work for your character concept).

So far with one, short, game night behind us I'm having fun with the AP and really looking forward to the future encounters and settings.

[Polytropos]

I run for a group of 7. We have a few esoteric theory crafters and a couple very basic players. I am mean. I have them on slow, so that their lower levels counteract their greater numbers. Doesn't slow them down much. Biggest problem they have is the control wizard's save DCs are too high, and he is too fast. Some untimely and misplaced stinking clouds have led to trouble. Mantle of the Black Rider spread over the group is providing a fair bit of oomph. I have actually tweaked an encounter here and there with a quick extra scrub or advanced template to add some tension.

My players also talked me into giving them an 18 point build. Sounds like yours can roll and then default to that. I would expect at least one person to have much better stats. All told, I do not expect them to be hurting for power.

[Ansel Krulwich]

Man... I keep seeing so many people doing 20 point buy here, 20 point buy there, now 18 point buy in this thread. I almost feel like a heel for giving my players a 15 point buy.

I'm sure this feeling will pass soon.

You might consider event-based leveling. Then you can just tweak each individual encounter as you see fit, adding 1 or 2 extra mooks, or throw more random encounters to use up resources and not worry about XP or deciding between medium or fast advancement or doing math. Yuck.

[Crustypeanut]

15 Point builds require your players to think far more strategically. Its not bad at all. Just imagine the poor players whose DM's gave them 10 point builds!

:P

Also I like doing math..

[Tangent101]

I've two oddities here. First, I'm moving a pre-existing group into RoW. They're between 3-5th level (one 5th level character, one 4th level, two 3rd level, and two GMPCs, one of whom I'm going to turn into the Cohort of the second GMPC when said Paladin reaches level 7). Fortunately they were already on the Medium XP track so that won't change at all.

Second, it's a low-magic game. They have no magic weapons and a small smattering of protective magic (like a couple rings of protection +1, a brooch of shielding, and so on) and I'm using the portal to move them TO Golarion. Thus they're not going to speak the language (not even Common) or anything. It should make things... interesting.

So despite their higher level, they shouldn't be TOO overpowering (especially as I'm beefing up the monsters with character levels or giving them the Advanced template to improve their power).

[Rycaut]

So far I'm not overly worried about the power levels. My players are good at building characters but they are heavily role playing focused. So while they make mechanically good characters they lead with a role playing concept.

Plus I tend to run tough encounters even without much tweaking. I'll see how it goes.

[atheral]

Well I'm running for a group of six, stats are heroic array, so the party is pretty buff, they just met the Black rider.

So far they've had it pretty easy, I'd defiantly say adding a few extra mooks or an advanced template to single enemy's is necessary unless you move them to the slow xp track to keep their levels down.

The only thing that's given them a problem so far are the traps, though for as much as it nearly killed two of them instantly the snowman was a huge favorite.

[Dathus Tomar]

Doing a group if 6 and a half(GMNPC for the newly christened Paladin who was going to go to Thistletop alone).

What I've been doing is adding +1 or 2 enemies to encounters, or change tactics. Example:

Minor campaign spoiler, but whatever:

Korvous or whatever the name of that bloody Goblin with three arms was summoned to join a Sinspawn after the group alerted the two Sinspawn, and the Alchemist ran from his Sinful Bite, being afraid of going toe-to-toe with it. Caused me to really run through party healing resources at the time, but it was worth it for them to get a taste of what'll happen if they're dumb.

Read ahead from where your PCs are and play it by ear, really. Max HP on everything is a good start.

Thistletop spoilers:

Maxed out Ripnugget's HP and changed his Commandos to Rogues. The Rogues went down quickly, but Ripnugget was a pain for them. VERY close to a TPK here, and I barely touched the encounter.

Until you hit Thistletop, everything will be experimentation. Double up the number of Goblins. Make them all Fighters instead of Warriors with Power Attack+Weapon Focus Dogslicer as feats.

[Rycaut]

Uhm Dathus - good advice if I was running Rise of the Runelords... but I'm running Reign of Winter (playing in Rise of the Runelords - just finished those encounters actually)

[Tangent101]

I did similar to Dathus for Runelords.

With RoW, I've given the sprites extra levels in fighter, and turned the Elemental encounter into something nastier by adding a third elemental and making them bigger. I'm also making the early Zombies Advanced zombies and having Rohkar's Raiders be 2nd level fighters (and Rohkar a 4th level cleric). While they're not a hard fight for 3rd level PCs, it will build up and slowly whittle the PCs down.

Admittedly, I'm not only dealing with a larger group, but also with higher-level characters. In your case, either doubling the enemies or giving them one extra level would probably suffice.

BTW, how do you handwave away missing characters? I usually would run them as NPCs in that situation myself.

[Rycaut]

Well we haven't yet met more than once - so the first time I just didn't have the new characters join the group (assuming rightly as it turned out that they party would return to the village before finishing exploring the magical winter)

In the future I'll see how much of an issue missing characters will be - my assumption is that with a large group we will frequently have someone who can't make it. I'll try to end each session somewhere where a missing character can rejoin the party and another character might be able to logically miss a session - generally I hope to avoid running people's PC's as NPCs or have them run by players other than their primary player. If it can't be avoided I'll ask players to double up - but likely also ask that they keep things simple with the missing characters - i.e. don't take crazy risks and keep their actions to something simple and in character. Luckily I think with the size party we have someone will be able to fill any given role for a given session if needed.

[Googleshng]

First off, every AP (aside from the ones that used 3.5 rules, which you'd want the fast track for) uses the medium track.

That said, I've run an AP and change for a group of 7 players, and played in a couple with 6. Basically, there's two ways to go:

Option A: Multiply monster counts. If there's normally 4 goblins, there's 6 goblins.
Pros- No needing to tweak stats or worry about complications from doing so. Math tends to be easy.
Cons- Maps and initiative queues get really crowded, anything that effects multiple targets kinda defeats the whole idea.

Option B: Liberal use of templates. Specifically, the Simple Advanced Template. i.e. give all monsters +2 to literally every die roll and +2 HP per HD. This increases their CR by 1 which generally works out perfectly for a group of 6 players (CR2=150% of the XP as CR1, CR4=150% of CR3's, etc.). Doesn't technically work if you start with an even CR, but if you just give every PC 1/4 of all XP yields and up the CR accordingly, that works out.
Pros: This actually works beautifully for 6 people. Things have just enough extra defense to stretch combat out some, and pack a nice punch. Upping the CR of everything by 2 in this fashion works out perfectly XP wise no matter where you start. Cons: Tossing 2 +1 CR templates/+2 CR one/the same +1 twice can potentially push ACs into need-a-nat-20 territory and saves to only-fail-on-a-1. Also, solo boss type encounters die with a huge party focused on them no matter what, so for them, you usually want to make the difference up with a sidekick and/or some mooks instead.

And then of course there's option C: Split this supergroup into 2 groups of 4 running on different days or something.

[Ansel Krulwich]

Tangent101 wrote:

BTW, how do you handwave away missing characters? I usually would run them as NPCs in that situation myself.

I usually have the missing player's character around and available but not in combat. He or she can act as lookout or pop open locks or whatever it is they're built to do.