pacing experience and large groups

Quickleaf · Aug 20, 2009

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?

Hjorimir · Aug 20, 2009

I have seven players in one of my campaigns, so I know just what you mean. Honestly, this is what I do and it works great.

Determine the treasure parcels that need to be ditributed over the course of the level to keep game balance in tact
Take experience points and thrown them out the window
Make encounters designed for fun and entertainment
Level at the speed of plot (once I make sure to deliver on #1, above), meaning level them when I feel good and ready
Profit

It sounds like you have a goal/schedule you want to keep. So just make it happen and don't sweat the small stuff on the way.

Jhaelen · Aug 20, 2009

Hjorimir said:
I have seven players in one of my campaigns, so I know just what you mean. Honestly, this is what I do and it works great.

Determine the treasure parcels that need to be ditributed over the course of the level to keep game balance in tact

Take experience points and thrown them out the window

Make encounters designed for fun and entertainment

Level at the speed of plot (once I make sure to deliver on #1, above), meaning level them when I feel good and ready

Profit

It sounds like you have a goal/schedule you want to keep. So just make it happen and don't sweat the small stuff on the way.

I'm also going to have seven players and I approve of that list! I decided early on I didn't want to track xp to avoid having to use filler-encounters.

S'mon · Aug 20, 2009

Quickleaf said:
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?

My group has 5 or 6 players. I'm avoiding any goal for how much XP should be earned at any particular time - I'm running an open/sandbox setting rather than a plot/rail-based story path. XP is determined by PC accomplishments.

That said, in the last session the 1st level PCs got over 500 XP each (including 100 quest XP) as they got through 4-5 fights (depending on how you count where 1 ends and another begins) in a slam-bang 5-hour session.

If you want your PCs to level up about every 2 sessions, but want XP to still be based on achievements, I suggest increasing awards by 1.5 (possibly excluding minions, many of whom are worth too much - qv zombie rotter). The game seems to level most groups every 3 sessions. With 7 players, also be generous on quest XP.

S'mon · Aug 20, 2009

My impression with 4e is that hard encounters will *not* by themselves increase rate of advancement. Where in 3e offense scaled faster than defense, in 4e defense scales faster. This means that 1 hard encounter worth 900 XP can take longer to run than 3 easy encounters worth 300 XP each. The result - hard encounters actually slow down advancement.

If you want fast advancement and epic fights, you might consider halving all monster hp, keeping XP awards the same, and using 150% or 200% of standard XP budgets to build encounters.

DEFCON 1 · Aug 20, 2009

I'm in agreement with Hjorimir in just throwing XP out the window. If you want two sessions per level, then just award them two sessions per level, regardless of what the encounters look like. And don't bother trying to "make up" for the extra XP awards by increasing the number of monsters in an encounter, you'll just make things more difficult for anyone.

If you really feel you need to have some sort of numeric XP base upon which to award your players levels (or if they want to keep track of their XP because its like an award in its own right)... then I'd suggest you create a new Advancement table that just lowers the XP requirement to go up each level. This way you can keep a solid track of genuinely earned XP in each encounter (and which your players can also keep track of on their sheets), but you also can set your bar at whatever height you need to get them up a level every two sessions or so.

Its much easier to adjust a single point in the leveling curve (the XP Required for Next Level Total) than it is to adjust multiple points along it (The XP Given By Each And Every Monster In Each Encounter Until Next Level).

Quickleaf · Aug 20, 2009

Yeah, I've got no problem doing the leveling by feel, the thing is we've just started playing 4e, but I've got a suspicion that the encounter math breaks down for larger groups, that a "standard 7-player encounter" actually plays out as easier than it would for a "standard 5-player encounter".

In other words, is it necessary to bump the challenge of encounters for larger groups beyond what is proportionately needed?

Jhaelen · Aug 22, 2009

Quickleaf said:
Yeah, I've got no problem doing the leveling by feel, the thing is we've just started playing 4e, but I've got a suspicion that the encounter math breaks down for larger groups, that a "standard 7-player encounter" actually plays out as easier than it would for a "standard 5-player encounter".

In other words, is it necessary to bump the challenge of encounters for larger groups beyond what is proportionately needed?

I've been thinking about this, too.

I guess it depends on the actual composition of the encounters.
Judging from my 3E DMing experience with a group of 9 players (yep!), you'll need to have a high enough number of individual enemies to keep everyone occupied.

Further, at least some of the mooks need to be threatening enough that ignoring them will hurt - you don't want everyone to focus on the biggest threat (if indeed the encounter includes something like a 'boss').

Finally, using multiple waves should counteract some of the advantages a large group has.

I'd love to hear more about that from someone with actual 4E experience, though