Adjusting encounters for 6 players

[Fluxway]

Hello! Greetings for Argentina here! Im going to start playing "The Lost star" in a few days as Dm, and I have all ready, except for the extra enemies that I should add to the encounters, because my party has 6 players. I cant understand the system that the Bestiary proposes for balancing the encounters, I quote "For each character in the party beyond the fourth, include additional creatures worth an amount of XP equal to the Character Adjustment value for your encounter on Table 5."
I just dont get it. Sorry if my request is a little dumb, but would you mind giving me some aid or examples? I would be very grateful. Thank you in advance!

[Kerobelis]

Fluxway wrote:

Hello! Greetings for Argentina here! Im going to start playing "The Lost star" in a few days as Dm, and I have all ready, except for the extra enemies that I should add to the encounters, because my party has 6 players. I cant understand the system that the Bestiary proposes for balancing the encounters, I quote "For each character in the party beyond the fourth, include additional creatures worth an amount of XP equal to the Character Adjustment value for your encounter on Table 5."

I just dont get it. Sorry if my request is a little dumb, but would you mind giving me some aid or examples? I would be very grateful. Thank you in advance!

I do not know the exact rules, but 6 characters is 50% more than normal, so I would add 50% more monsters. 4 goblins, becomes 6. 6 centipedes becomes 9.

For single monsters, I would just add 2 more minions (level 0 monster) of the appropriate type. Like 2 goblins join the big boss at the end.

No idea about trap rooms or treasure (treasure shouldn't matter as it is a one off).

[Fluxway]

Kerobelis wrote:

Fluxway wrote:

Hello! Greetings for Argentina here! Im going to start playing "The Lost star" in a few days as Dm, and I have all ready, except for the extra enemies that I should add to the encounters, because my party has 6 players. I cant understand the system that the Bestiary proposes for balancing the encounters, I quote "For each character in the party beyond the fourth, include additional creatures worth an amount of XP equal to the Character Adjustment value for your encounter on Table 5."

I just dont get it. Sorry if my request is a little dumb, but would you mind giving me some aid or examples? I would be very grateful. Thank you in advance!

I do not know the exact rules, but 6 characters is 50% more than normal, so I would add 50% more monsters. 4 goblins, becomes 6. 6 centipedes becomes 9.

For single monsters, I would just add 2 more minions (level 0 monster) of the appropriate type. Like 2 goblins join the big boss at the end.

No idea about trap rooms or treasure (treasure shouldn't matter as it is a one off).

I will do that then! Thank you very much!

[Darth Bass]

This is listed in the Playtest Bestiary.

In fact I wrote an adventure using these adjustments to test the system.

If you look on pages 22-23, it shows you how much XP an encounter has. Monsters give certain amount of XP for their level.

You can find the adventure here and see where the adjustments are. I made it adjustable from 2-6 players in total on a table.

[RobRendell]

Fluxway wrote:

I quote "For each character in the party beyond the fourth, include additional creatures worth an amount of XP equal to the Character Adjustment value for your encounter on Table 5."

I just dont get it.

In addition to the advice above, I'll point out that each room in Doomsday Dawn lists its expected difficulty. For example, room A1 (Slimy Cistern) says "Trivial 1" at the top, room A2 (Mudchewer Central) says "High 1", etc. That indicates the row of table 5 on page 21 of the Bestiary that the encounter was designed with.

So, I believe what you're meant to do is:

For A1, the "Trivial" row of table 5 says Character Adjustment is 10 XP. You have two extra characters, so that's 2 x 10 = 20 XP more budget for the encounter. Looking at Table 4, you can see that 20 XP is what a creature at the party's level - 2 is worth. Your party is level 1, but there's a special rule in the "Choosing Creatures" section on that same page that says that level 0 creatures count as party level - 2 for 1st level characters. So, you'd need to add one level 0 creature to the encounter... perhaps a Giant Centipede could emerge from the refuse once the fight starts.

For A2, the "High" row of table 5 says Character Adjustment is 20, so with your two extra characters, that's 2 x 20 = 40 XP more budget for the encounter. As Kerobelis says, you can add 50% more goblins (party level - 2 = 20 XP each) to use that budget.

Note that the rules say that while you add or remove creatures to/from the encounters to accommodate different party sizes, the XP rewards remain the same. Everyone gets 40 XP for a Trivial encounter of their level, everyone gets 80 XP for a High encounter of their level.