Hi everyone.
Migrating from an heavily houseruled 5E to PF2E and I have a question about PF2E Experience Point awards.
If the party is composed of six PCs, but the encounter is built for four PCs, is it OK to me to not add additional monsters to the encounter, but award fewer XP to each PC for the encounter?
Suppose that the party of six PCs had an encounter worth 40 XP for a four PC party. Would it be OK to award each of the six PCs 26 XP?
4 x 40 = 160 XP
160 XP / 6 = 26 XP
Yes, that is what I do. However, (4/6)(160 xp) = 26.66666 xp rounds up to 27 xp. My campaign has a party of 7 PCs, so I use a multiplier of 4/7.
However, I do not adjust story awards, such as experience points for finishing a mission. Missions are about accomplishments rather than risk.
Thanks. Much appreciated.
Thank you for the reminder concerning Milestone levelling.
Suppose that the party of six PCs had an encounter worth 40 XP for a four PC party. Would it be OK to award each of the six PCs 26 XP?
4 x 40 = 160 XP
160 XP / 6 = 26 XP
Not a fan personally, it ignores the whole point of the EXP system scaling based on difficulty of the fight (which is why budgets at each difficulty level are adjusted by different amounts per character)
It would make more sense to subtract the character adjustment from the exp value twice imo.
So 40 would become 20. This is more in line with how the system asks you to do it when it comes to budgeting.
The quickest way to handle this at the table would be Encounter's total exp multiplied by 0.5 for a party of 6 or 0.75 for a party of 5.
Personally I would just use milestone leveling unless the adventure was particularly sandbox in nature.
Two additional characters will make even a +4 extreme difficulty fight pretty easy (past the first couple of levels). Action economy is still king.
Thank you.
This seems like the best answer.
Not a fan personally, it ignores the whole point of the EXP system scaling based on difficulty of the fight (which is why budgets at each difficulty level are adjusted by different amounts per character)
Sometimes an encounter needs to be expanded to maintain the intended difficulty against a large party and sometimes an encounter should be left unchanged.
Imagine that the party is on a mission to steal a MacGuffin from a temple of Asmodeus in Cheliax. The MacGuffin is not valuable and not stored in a vault. It sits on a shelf in the high priest's office. The entrance to that office is flanked by two ordinary guards. These guards are not special; in contrast, the guards on the vault are 2 levels higher than the ordinary guards. If I encountered that scene in a module, then I would not add a third guard against a 6-member party. The guards on the high priest's office are more a stealth or deception challenge than a combat challenge: how can the party steal the MacGuffin without alerting the temple?
Let me also elaborate on adjusting combat challenge for a large party.
Imagine that the module had an encounter with 2 Hobgoblin Archers creature 4 against a 3rd-level party. That would be a 120-xp Severe-threat encounter. Against a 6-member party, the obvious adjustment is to increase the number of archers to 3. In most cases, that would work. However, suppose the party has a low-AC low-hp elf wizard. Hobgoblins hate elf wizards (at least they did in Pathfinder 1st Edition). So all three will start by shooting at the wizard, damaging him 50% more than the module expected. The wizard might drop unconscious before the melee characters reach the archers, forcing the cleric to retreat to the wizard to heal the wizard. If the enemy might focus all their attacks on one party member, then the individual party members are more vulnerable in 6-member party against a larger foe than in a 4-member party against a standard foe.
Likewise, the simplest way to balance the XP of a single enemy against a 6-member party is to give the the enemy an Elite Adjustment to raise its level by one. Yet be careful, for a single enemy is likely to focus on a single party member due to the action economy.
Usually the most stable way to increase an enemy force to the appropriate XP is to add minions. The 2 Hobgoblin Archers could gain 3 Hobgoblin Soldiers creature 1, 60 more xp, rather than 1 additional Hobgoblin Archer, also 60 more xp. Then the soldiers could protect the two archers from the larger party, but more importantly, they will be less able to gang up on the elf wizard.
The larger tactics could also favor the party in other ways. A larger party is more versatile. A 6-member party facing skeletons with Resistances cold 5, electricity 5, fire 5, piercing 5, slashing 5 is more likely to have a party member, such as a monk, who deals bludgeoning damage. And the longbow archer in the party will have more time to sheath his bow and pick up rocks to throw at the skeletons. Larger parties are better able to exploit enemy weaknesses or negate enemy strengths.
The quickest way to handle this at the table would be Encounter's total exp multiplied by 0.5 for a party of 6 or 0.75 for a party of 5.
I presume that has a typographical error and should end with "0.75 for a party of 7."
Action economy is still king.
Tactics are the new king. I have sent hobgoblin armies with 14 units against my party of 7 and the action economy did not save the hobgoblins.
Sometimes an encounter needs to be expanded to maintain the intended difficulty against a large party and sometimes an encounter should be left unchanged.
Sure? but I am not talking about changing it, I was simply addressing that encounters get budgets based on difficulty for larger parties, so simply dividing the exp doesn't respect that.
I presume that has a typographical error and should end with "0.75 for a party of 7."
No? A moderate encounter is worth 80 exp normally, additional PCs are 25% (20exp) of that budget so the system expects you to up the encounter to 100exp. So the system expects a PC to be equivalent to 20exp for the moderate difficulty, if you don't want to change the encounter, awarding 60exp and accepting the moderate encounter is actually a low encounter is more accurate to the impact of the player.
A low encounter for a party of 5 (scaled) is 75exp budget (awarding 60exp) for instance.
Tactics are the new king. I have sent hobgoblin armies with 14 units against my party of 7 and the action economy did not save the hobgoblins.
Sure? But I am not talking NPCs, I am talking players vs encounters that aren't being scaled up to match them. Hence the +4 encounter vs 6 players example.
It was tying illustrate my specific scaling point, not making a general balance comment.