Questions to the powers that be; will a party of five, using the mythic rules in this AP, throw the adventure too far out of whack? How should I compensate for an additional character?
Thanks.
One additional character shouldn't (in my opinion at least) throw things off badly. It will slightly slow the level progression, but not tremendously so and once they have Mythic tiers, they'll be slightly less squishy. ;)
Mostly it seems it's six characters where things get a tad iffy and you'd need to increase hit points and the like. That said, feel free to fudge hit points on the fly for the monsters so that they last longer if they seem to be dropping too quickly.
Creative Director
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Yeah; the game is robust enough that it works about the same for 4 players as it does for 5. Once you hit 6 players, you'll want to start adding additional foes into encounters to keep the action economy balanced (so the players aren't taking too many more turns than the enemies).
Another option: Wrath of the Righteous has a VERY robust cast of recurring NPCs. If you want to have some players take on the roles of some of these NPCs and play them instead as characters, you can keep things pretty under control while enhancing the storyline.
I'll say a bit to the contrary: A fifth character definitely skews the power balance towards the players. It isn't as noticeable at the lower levels, but around level 9-12 it begins to definitely show. I've run with five players for a lot of years now (six by this point in the group where I always GM) and have just had the opportunity in the last year to see how differently it plays with four players.
And the difference is telling, in the group with four players we struggle constantly and always feel endangered, while the feeling of the group of five (now six) is much more "Eh, let's kick in that door and kill some monsters". And believe me, I am already extensively upping the challenge there at the higher levels from what is shown in the AP. Doesn't matter, the better action economy of the group trumps even higher CR's.