Against my better judgement and social pressure, I"m going to be running Against the Aeon THrone with 6 players. Obviously this is going to throw a lot of balancing off and I'm not a game designer. Anyone have tips or advice they can give? The only thing I can think of would be to just add more enemies to each encounter.
Thanks ahead of time!
I have a couple of questions pertaining to your statement, what are your PC's class race etc
And how often will the full cast be able to play together?
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@Hurricrane:
- General advice for Against the Aeon Thone: nudge your players towards creature shapes that could be disguised as humans. This is not the great morlamaw friendly adventure path :P
For scaling stuff. You want to add about 50% more manpower to encounters. So if you have an encounter with 2 people, add a third. If you have an encounter with 4, add two more. When you have an odd number, round as you see fit, based on how they're doing. Or add a junior monster.
For bossfights, you generally don't want to make the boss stronger. This whole "the PCs have awesome action economy" theory breaks down when the difference in levels to CR becomes too great, and certainly the boss for book 1 is quite brutal.
So instead, give the boss a lieutenant. At about CR -2. So if you have an EL 5 encounter with a CR 5 solo boss, add a CR 3 flunky. Or, if your players are not having an easy time already, add two CR 1 flunkies instead.
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The general math for building encounters assumes that 2 CR X creatures are equal in threat to one CR X+2 creature. This math is only accurate when X is close to the PCs' level. So if the players are level 2, then 2x CR 1 is somewhat equal to 1x CR 3. But 4x CR 1 really isn't equal to 1x CR 5.
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@Hurricrane:
- General advice for Against the Aeon Thone: nudge your players towards creature shapes that could be disguised as humans. This is not the great morlamaw friendly adventure path :P
For scaling stuff. You want to add about 50% more manpower to encounters. So if you have an encounter with 2 people, add a third. If you have an encounter with 4, add two more. When you have an odd number, round as you see fit, based on how they're doing. Or add a junior monster.
For bossfights, you generally don't want to make the boss stronger. This whole "the PCs have awesome action economy" theory breaks down when the difference in levels to CR becomes too great, and certainly the boss for book 1 is quite brutal.
So instead, give the boss a lieutenant. At about CR -2. So if you have an EL 5 encounter with a CR 5 solo boss, add a CR 3 flunky. Or, if your players are not having an easy time already, add two CR 1 flunkies instead.
---
The general math for building encounters assumes that 2 CR X creatures are equal in threat to one CR X+2 creature. This math is only accurate when X is close to the PCs' level. So if the players are level 2, then 2x CR 1 is somewhat equal to 1x CR 3. But 4x CR 1 really isn't equal to 1x CR 5.
This is great advice, I ran AtAT recently with 7 players and did exactly this. I would also echo the general advice re Human-type character, especially for book 2.
Alternate to humanoids: seed a bunch of these in the loot for book 1.
