Add to the fact I havent run a game in 8 years or so and then never in Pathfinder.
Ive got a group of 8 lvl 4 players. As it says in the core book that the APL for a group of 6+ is APL +1. I ran my first group, the party killed everything that was CL 5 or 6 handily. The only thing that even gave them pause was a CR 9 encounter).
Is the APL +1 per character above 6 so my APL would be 6, so for a challenge the CRs should be around 7 or 8?
Also; am I right in assuming that when figuring out the total CR of a group of creatures it goes like the following:
Hobgoblins are 1/2 CR. 12 Hobgoblins are CR 6 (1/2 * 12)?
Also; when figuring XP; a in game NPC joined the party to help, making the group 9. Should I split the xp 9 ways instead of 8 or shouldnt npcs impact xp?
First, I'll say two things: First, running a game with 8 characters can be very unwieldy; players may have to wait a long time before their turn comes up in combat. It might be a good idea to split your players into two 4-character groups.
Second, when making encounters for the group, try to use multiple slightly lower-level creatures rather than a few high-level creatures. Even the basic CR system suffers a bit from what is often dubbed action-economy (a single monster of an appropriate CR gets 1 round's worth of actions per turn, while 4 PCs get 4 rounds of actions per turn), and this becomes worse with more PCs.
Onto the questions at hand:
The APL of a group of 8 characters would be 2 higher than if they were 4 characters of the same level. So in your case, the APL would be 6.
For an APL 6 group, CR 6 encounters would be fairly easy (the group should be able to handle 4-5 such encounters before needing to rest), while CR 7-8 encounters should be challenging, and CR 9+ encounters should be hard (possibly resulting in multiple characters dead or very low on hit points).
To determine the encounter CR for multiple creatures, the easiest thing to do is combine their individual XP values and comparing the total to the CR chart.
For your example: One hobgoblin is worth 200 XP, so 12 of them are worth 2400 XP. This value is equivalent to a CR 6 encounter.
(So in this particular case, your method worked. Most of the time, it wouldn't have. For instance, two CR 8 creatures are worth the same amount of XP as a CR 10 creature, making them a CR 10 encounter rather than the CR 16 you would get by adding their CR's together).
Ah thats what that chart meant.
1 creature CR
2 Creatures CR +2
3 creatures CR +3 and so on
Take CR system with grain of salt. The difficulty of encounter depends on many factors not represented in CR. Although if you read entire encounter rules they mention you should adjust for these.
Some players **highly** optimize their characters/play, others not so much. Some combinations of characters/spells/abilities are extremely synergistic, Or devastating vs certain monster types, in certain situations etc.
As you run your group you'll get a feel for their strengths and weaknesses. Give them some encounters that play to their strengths and some that challenge their weaknesses. Keep it varied. It is extremely boring and unsatisfying for every encounter to be same level of difficulty. Some should be walkovers, many easy, several tough, and few (endboss) very hard. It sounds like that's exactly what you had.
The effective APL of your group is +1 once you hit 6 players, and I believe that it would become +2 once you hit 9 players. You're just a hair below that.
Dealing with particularly large groups is particularly hard. Not only do you have trouble keeping everybody focus, moving quickly, and enjoying their fair share of screen time, it's difficult to challenge the party without killing party members.
My recommendation if you're dead-set on moving forward is to continue challenging the party with encounters suitable to their new EL, but when you start bumping into the encounters of CR APL +2 or +3, steer away from using single monsters. These have access to effects your players will not be capable of dealing with, and / or tend to just kill PCs that they full attack.
Also, auras and area effects are really good for challenging particularly large parties; as is taking just one of the monsters in an encounter and switching it out with a spellcaster of an equal CR so you have more flexibility over their tactics than just 'attack with falchion or attack with javelin.' Large player groups tend to have too many spellcasters to effectively challenge with nonmagical mooks, even if the CR system implies otherwise.
But once again, I'd recommend simply trimming down the group. If you've just started the game, this may fix itself since a couple people tend to drop out in the first couple of weeks of a game. Besides, it'd probably be difficult for a GM to schedule a gaming day with eight players and any kind of acceptable schedule.
njharman wrote: Take CR system with grain of salt. The difficulty of encounter depends on many factors not represented in CR. Although if you read entire encounter rules they mention you should adjust for these.
Some players **highly** optimize their characters/play, others not so much. Some combinations of characters/spells/abilities are extremely synergistic, Or devastating vs certain monster types, in certain situations etc.
As you run your group you'll get a feel for their strengths and weaknesses. Give them some encounters that play to their strengths and some that challenge their weaknesses. Keep it varied. It is extremely boring and unsatisfying for every encounter to be same level of difficulty. Some should be walkovers, many easy, several tough, and few (endboss) very hard. It sounds like that's exactly what you had.
Ive imported (over the course of the last month or two) the campaign book "The Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil" into Pathfinder and this is what theyre running.
The way its gone thus far was they encountered what would have been an ambush of 12 Hobgoblins (CR 6), but their scouting rogue got lucky and noticed half of their number. They engaged those, while the other half flanked them and attacked from the other side. It was a good fight, and they won. The next fight was far easier as it was 5 Gnolls (CR 5) AND their scout rogue (again) got a lucky roll, saw the Gnolls patrolling along the path they were walking on, and an ambush was set up. They killed the Gnolls in the surprise round.
The next fight was 6 giant frogs (CR 6). 4 or the frogs were seen, two werent, and they ended up getting the drop on the two rogues. That fight went well, the Halfling Oracle was almost swallowed, ran out of the frog's range, and into the courtyard of a moat house they were near. What he saw had him running, screaming back out (lol).
They finished the frogs off as the halfling ran out screaming "dragon!!!"
In the courtyard, there was a Young blue dragon (CR 9). When they moved into the courtyard, it moved into the building itself, away from them (it was following something else). The party found two dead bodies (bit of treasure) then moved in after it. The dragon, when they entered the room, was looking at a door, away from them. One of the party was going to parley with the dragon (he knew Draconic), and another of the party just charged it lol
During the fight there was some confusion on my part as to how the multiattack feat worked, so I worked it how I thought it did (I was wrong, we'll pretend the dragon had been previously wounded then but Ill remember that in the future) and the fight was a bit easier than it should have been, but the guy that charged it was dropped to negative hp. Our Cleric combat medic archetype (its actually a really good one) dove in and saved him.
Damage was spread around pretty evenly, but before the dragon got its breath back, it was dead. It was the last fight on the session and more or less became the "boss fight". It was helped in the challenge by the fact I dropped at least 4 crits (one confirmed).
Yep, you don't need Multiattack anymore. A creature with multiple natural weapons uses them all at its full Base Attack Bonus. If it has Secondary natural attack, those are made at a -5; and if a creature attacks with manufactured weapons and natural attacks, the natural attacks are all considered secondary.
I played the CRPG of the same name -- lots of fun. I enjoyed that I could get in over my head by traveling this way or that, although I was a little disappointed that I seemed to miss quest options by taking what seemed like it would be a secret path.
Granted, since players don't always realize they should run away until too late, maybe surprise horrible encounters isn't as acceptable on the tabletop as it is on PC : )
I was worried when I was making it because of the infamous nature of the campaign, its fairtly famous for being one of the hardest campaigns made, and later on there are more than a few roll or die moments but its easily avoided by proper application of common sense lol
I cant split the group, as we only play MY game on an every other week schedule. Theres another game played on my off weeks that I play in. Splitting the group either goes with the problem of having half the group doing nothing while the other half plays, then they switch, which wont be a workable solution, or running one group every other other week, which isnt a workable situation with the makeup of the group. Four of the group are together and come at the same time. Of the other four, two carpool with me, the other two are together and live near the shop.
This is also a problem for trying to pare back the group to something more manageable. If one of the four were to be removed, the other three would likely go as well, leaving me with too few to continue. Add to that that theyre all friends and Id feel like a dick telling any of the other two that they cant play just because I cant balance it right (IE Id feel like a failure because I couldnt hack it, and likely end it myself.)
I dont have the option of having a co-DM because one of our number who also DMs is too busy with work to do so right now and in fact had to quit the other game because of that, one of the other DMs is also too busy with work right now to do anything other than play, and the other DM is running another game and cant handle running two at once with work etc.
SO Im running it with 8 and trying to make it work as best I can. There are a couple who are relatively unreliable so they may drop off over time anyways.
Also; the NPC question. Should a NPC joining the group make it 9 or shouldnt they impact XP?
Its been better than 5 years since I even RAN my own game, little bits like this have dropped off my brain in the interim
Like I dont THINK they should but I really cant remember anymore
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