Quickleaf
Legend
We had an epic battle last night, the 1st level PCs fought off 20 minions, 2 krenshar, and a 5th level elite knight. At one point it looked close, but the battle quickly turned as the PCs burned up their daily powers. It was an awesome fight (5th level), with half the PCs down to 1 or 2 healing surges, one PC getting knocked unconscious, and lots of suspense. Each PC in the 7 person party got 215 XP + 100 XP (for completing the major quest).
Even though the first game session they only earned 300 XP (for a total of 615 each), I let them gain 2nd level. I'm trying to maintain a rate of advancement of 1 level every 2 sessions... The reason being that this heroic-tier campaign is meant to take the PCs to 10th level by May and we play about twice a month. So, August is level 1, September level 2, etc.
It dawned on me that even once we really get into the swing of 4th edition, in our 3-4 hour sessions we're probably only going to complete 3 encounters. Things just move slower when there are 7 players at the table.
In order to maintain my desired rate of advancement I'm going to increase the difficulty of each of those 6 encounters. So the difficulty of encounters would look something like this (where L is the level of the 7-person party):
Standard (L)
Hard Standard (L+1)
Very Hard (L+3)
Hard Standard (L+1)
Hard (L+2)
Boss (L+5)
Does this seem like a reasonable way to pace my large group? How do you manage experience and encounters for a large group, by the book or do you have your own system?
Even though the first game session they only earned 300 XP (for a total of 615 each), I let them gain 2nd level. I'm trying to maintain a rate of advancement of 1 level every 2 sessions... The reason being that this heroic-tier campaign is meant to take the PCs to 10th level by May and we play about twice a month. So, August is level 1, September level 2, etc.
It dawned on me that even once we really get into the swing of 4th edition, in our 3-4 hour sessions we're probably only going to complete 3 encounters. Things just move slower when there are 7 players at the table.
In order to maintain my desired rate of advancement I'm going to increase the difficulty of each of those 6 encounters. So the difficulty of encounters would look something like this (where L is the level of the 7-person party):
Standard (L)
Hard Standard (L+1)
Very Hard (L+3)
Hard Standard (L+1)
Hard (L+2)
Boss (L+5)
Does this seem like a reasonable way to pace my large group? How do you manage experience and encounters for a large group, by the book or do you have your own system?