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I'm going to be running Hell's Rebels for 5 people, and wanted a little input on how to help them keep up in levels, and provide a decent enough challenge.
Right now, I'm between two ideas, one simple, the other a little more work, but some fun.
The first one would be to just up the ante on the ap, so like in some fights where there are multiple enemies, just add an extra enemy or two (roughly 25% more enemies) This way the ratio of pc's to enemies is maintained, and hopefully it'll keep things a little more even.
My second idea is to come up with my own events for each book, similar to the 'adventures in magnimar' stuff in Shattered star, something that can be implemented from the onset, providing some more encounters for them to have, stretching the books a little bit more, and even providing some additional treasure for them to split.
What do you guys think? I'm also up for any other suggestions, so fire away!
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Personally, I'd leave things as they are for the first level or two, mostly because those levels suck and are the most swingy. Once you get to 3, though, the party's is now flush with coin and options, so you'll have a better idea how the opposition will fare against them.
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There actually is an easy way to determine how many extra foes to include in a fight - divide the XP reward by 4, and then use the result as the XP value of the addition. This can also be used for solo boss encounters to give them a cohort helping them out. Edit: However, as Misroi pointed out above, the first couple of levels can likely avoid beefing up encounters. Players tend to be fragile at that point.
(Actually, that raises an interesting question. Seeing that the Leadership Feat provides a cohort, would said Cohort not provide any XPs to the players seeing it was provided as a result of the NPC's build? Summons don't provide XPs either so there is some justification for adding a Cohort without giving XPs for it by swapping out one Feat...)
Guide to Creating Challenging Encounters
That thread is fantastic and I've been using the ideas therein for several campaigns now when faced with 5, 6 or even 7 PCs. I don't use it for every encounter (since I believe that shear numbers should be worth something of a benefit to the PC group), but I've found it to be an incredibly handy aid.
At least until level 3, I've found not adjusting published treasure to work all right.
I'm running for an experienced group of 5, so I'm tweaking things up in most areas.
The odd extra enemy, a little bump in hp/damage for some of the monsters, etc.
I also shamelessly steal the 'legendary action' mechanic from 5e to help balance the action economy issue for single boss fights. I give Lieutenant fights an extra action, and major bosses an extra 2, at different initatives.
It does depend on your party. Class mix, system familiarity and RP vs Crunch bias will all move them up and down the power scale.
Best advice is to start slow and see how easy they find the fights, especially at low levels where it's easy to overbalance and players have little to no ability to recover from a death or a bad encounter.
If everyone is having fun, great. Otherwise, a gentle tweak upwards until you're happy with the combat balance is best. Try adding a level or two to the bad guys before upping the numbers, because extra bodies will slow down the combat turns. But given your party have 25% more actions per turn, sometimes you'll just need to give the bad guys some reinforcements to even things up.
Talk to the players too. While it's tempting to be an omnipotent GM, a casual chat and a bit of player feedback can be invaluable in getting the right tone for the campaign in the early days.
I am also running for 5. I have so far not found the difference to be too much trouble. We've been through Fair Fortune Livery, the Wasp's Nest, the Tooth Fairy encounter and the encounter with Vendalfink as well as a couple random encounters.
I usually like to not give XP and level as the game indicates but the problem with doing that this time is that the Rebellion rules include XP awards at certain levels. Since XP is woven into the subsystem, I decided to use it.
Since XP is moving slower due to 5 PCs, I have been transparent with the players and they know they're going to level slower. They also know that this will require them to spend some time looking for random encounters to level up on occasion.
I pre-roll randoms, am studious about including appropriate loot for them and try to add little story cues to them, so this isn't an issue so far. My advice would be to just have them "look for trouble" when they're on the cusp and need a bit more XP.
One handy tool for solo boss encounters is a simple Mythic template: Mythic Agile. The most important thing it does is give the enemy one additional full action at +20 Initiative. And yes, that means a spellcaster could cast two spells a round (or three with a Swift spell).
It can also significantly boost smaller encounters - I once had four Mythic Agile Skeleton Champions give an adventuring party a significant run for their money - and the party had Mythic themselves.
I'm GMing for 5 characters (with different levels of experience) built with 25 points.
I'm increasing all the CR in at least 1 (adding more minions or rising bossses level).
So far the game is ok.
An easier method is to just take all the enemies and add +1 to each of their stats. This raises an opponent's stats to a 25-point build. (Don't believe me? Take the "traditional" 15-point build of 15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8 and add +1 to each stat. Then look at the point-build. Monsters are built assuming they are facing a 15-point build.)
As for the 5th character, if you divide the XPs of an encounter by four, you have the number of XPs needed to balance out the encounter with a fifth player. Often it's as simple as adding one extra mook into an encounter. But it also can mean taking an NPC and adding a cohort to the mix... which can help with the tendency Paizo has of having a lone big bad vs. the group. Giving that boss encounter a minion or two to help counter the party's action economy is quite useful.