You should definitely do some modification. Lady-J's solution will mostly just impede martials. Just add an extra enemy here and there—for six players, enemies should increase by about half again. Avoid single-enemy encounters whenever possible. And add extra gold when they do fall behind.
I played through the first four books of RotRL with a party of 5-6, the GM did not increase loot, and often added a few more minions to encounters. We steamrolled though most of it after we hit our stride part way through book one.
Based on my limited sample, I would think most encounters should be boosted a bit, and bosses definitely need more goons.
Well, yes, Tempest, that is what Java is saying. Obviously, not enough goons were added. :P
The Kobold has it correctly. As someone stated upthread, the level of optimizing in the group is a major factor as well, but any encounter you do not change will be too easy, based on my limited experience. I have heard of a few encounters in Runelords that are viewed as potential TPKs, not my experience with a 6 person party.
|
So... you recommend adding more goons/boosting... after your experience from steamrolling encounters that had more goons added?I played through the first four books of RotRL with a party of 5-6, the GM did not increase loot, and often added a few more minions to encounters. We steamrolled though most of it after we hit our stride part way through book one.
Based on my limited sample, I would think most encounters should be boosted a bit, and bosses definitely need more goons.
The problem I ran into running RotR was that there was a fine line between too easy and too hard. The party would generally roll face through everything right up to the point where things suddenly got dire. Honestly the most effective method I found was to make encounters more narrative (e.g. Decide at what points you're going to let the party triumph). It takes a lot of the chance out of it, for good or ill.
|
|
^Agreed
I have two groups with 5 PCs each. I tend to max out HP on enemies. If there is a solo encounter I might add some push over minions just to make sure the solo gets in a round or two before dying.
That's a big one. The 1-on-1 fights in the first modules are pretty weaksauce even with a party of 4. When you've got 6 players the action economy is too one-sided
|
Apart from the very helpful pdf GM Rednal linked, you should also be aware that this topic is at least partly discussed by the Core Rulebook in chapter 12 - Gamemastering.
Generally, if you're running the ecounters unchanged with more players, that means that they'll get less XP from it, slowing their advancement rate. That alone might make it harder for them on higher levels, as will the fact, that the'll have to share the loot and so probably fall behind the standard wealth per level value.
Depending on the optimization/experience level of your player's though (and Java Man already commented on it) that might not be sufficient, especially as having more players means that the action economy get's changed heavily in the PC's favor.
There's an example in the CBR about how to calculate the encounter budget according to the party's APL, and that's what I do in my games as well. Mainly I calculate the sum of XP every player in a 4-player group would get from an encounter as run in the book and multiply this value by the actual number of players in my group. Then I spent this budget to give the monsters in question a higher CR and/or to add more monsters to the encounter. I prefer the second for reasons of action economy. You can basically do the same to increase the value of treasure found.
This way, you basically don't change the advancement speed of the PCs and ensure that they'll find enough treasure to meet the target values of the character wealth per level table.
I try to be flexible about it according to the specific group I run the game for but this mainly is it. I have often found that this is enough that I'm sometimes afraid of having done too much already, because more opponents might mean that it'll take the PCs longer to take them out AND gives the opponents more opportunity to cost them ressources, but as said, depending on the group that might still not be enough to put up a real challenge for them.