I am looking at adding a 5th play to the Adventure Path EC. Can someone point me to what I need to know to make changes or any short cuts in doing it. I am worried with the tight math it could be hard to work it with redoing a whole lot.
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I'd only worry about this if it becomes a problem after you begin. The baseline difficulty is sufficient that its unlikely the AP will be trivial even with a fifth character, unless your players are extremely familiar with the system and optimizing their actions.
If it does prove too easy for your specific group, then I would add lower level threats (party level -2) to encounters as appropruate to the encounter according to the encounter guidelines.
I have a party if 6 and they still get tossed around on occasion. You might give some extra HP to solo monsters to help them last just a tad bit longer if adding monsters would make it more awkward. You know your party best though, so I'd say it depends on how well they deal with the threats presented.
Are you and the players new to the system, if yes, just run it as written to start with while they learn.
If no, just adjust the encounters as it is really easy in PF2e and works well. It is in the CRB GM section and really quite straightforward.
If the new group gets better, adjust then. But in my experience as new people will be making awful tactical decisions like just standing and trading blows with higher level foes, this can take a little while.
Oh and avoid elite adjustments at very low levels or when they are already +4 above party level. The extra crit range makes foes more dangerous than they should be imo. At least until the party knows the system well and how to manipulate the odds to their favour consistently.
If the new group gets better, adjust then. But in my experience as new people will be making awful tactical decisions like just standing and trading blows with higher level foes, this can take a little while.
Party comp is also super important.
I've run AoA for two groups, one with 4 players and the other with 5 - and most encounters are easier for the 4 person party, because they have a Bard.
The math modification from a Bard affects relative difficulty by a lot.
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Four or Five PCs is the assumed norm so you shouldn't have to do much at all to tweak things beyond maybe adding one additional piece of Treasure that matches their role every 3-4 encounters.
If they're consistently creaming every encounter though I would suggest adding an extra one or two goon NPCs as enemies to help even out the Action Economy disparity.
In addition to what folks are saying above, I would just say that it is super easy to adjust encounters in 2e. Check out pgs 288 & 289 in the core rulebook, and pg. 6 in Bestiary 1.
Great thanks for all the input. Also fast input
I will run it as is, keep the Elite info on an index card next to me and if they are making it through too easy, I will boast the next solo monster to Elite to test them.
The input about the bard makes sense and happy someone said something. I had a player who wanted a lizard man bard, so I asked him to play something else.
I just knew the math was super tight compared to 1e, and I knew the AP take a little work to get going. I like second edition cause that work seems less and I am so busy I want to keep the work load for this game to a minimum.
Thanks again.
I had a player who wanted a lizard man bard, so I asked him to play something else.
I don't think I'd have gone that far, so much as kept it in mind as you go.
The only class I'd reccomend a player play something else would be Alchemist, unless they really want a system mastery challenge as Alchemists are actually a struggle to get to work right.
Nothing else is so far out of whack it can't be adjusted for.