Hello all, I am The Squirrel Ninja!!
I am about to run my first AP and it is RoW.
I know the recommended party size is 4, which is what I posted in the recruitment thread.
I am going through the sorting process and I have it down to 5 strong candidates whose character concept and background would be a great fit for the story, and I have some things I could tie in to help them feel more connected.
IF I were to go with 5 PCs for the AP, what are the recommended tweaks that should be made?
Thanks! - SN
Too bad no one responded to this, I am in exactly the same boat. Running this as my first AP, have a five person party. I was planning to adjust the CR by 25% to account for the extra player, but I haven’t started to look things over in any detail yet.
There's a couple things you can do.
First, if you want quick-and-easy, just maximize the hit points of all of the encounters. This gives foes a little more lasting power against the party while not significantly increasing the time of encounters.
Second, you could just add one extra foe for various situations. If you have a summoner like Radosek, have his Summon Monster spells just maximize the number of foes brought in - thus he'd have 6 small Ice elementals assisting him against the PCs.
But honestly, maximizing hit points is the easiest way to deal with this. And depending on the classes chosen, you might not even need to change things up at all - if none of the PCs are a primary caster (Wizard, Cleric, Sorcerer, or Oracle) then you'll find the group is less devastating in combat.
Ah, I like the max hp suggestion. I’ve got a barbarian, Rogue, paladin, ranger and wizard. Not the most balanced of parties, but they are all pretty experienced players (except the wizard, heh).
I’m also going to try running skill challenges from Everyman Gaming. Hopefully that’ll add some extra trouble for them to deal with. But I’ll definitely use your idea for max hp.
+1 for maximizing hit points and an occasional extra enemy or two as appropriate. I've been running Reign of Winter for a 6-person not-crazy-optimized party, and these two strategies have hit just the right balance between challenging the party without threatening to kill them *too* often. The nice thing is, they're easy to change mid-stream if a fight ends up being unexpectedly way easier or way harder than expected.