adjusting challenges for larger parties

[npiccini]

I have a situation in my gaming group that warrants an examination of challenge rating that I was hoping to get advice on. I have begun running the Age of Worms adventure path from Dungeon magazine, but the party I am running it for has six and sometimes seven PCs. Attempting to run the adventure without modification is a joke, espeically with three/four of the characters as tanks. They literally got trhough almost every encounter without any threat of death.

In larger groups like this, does the DMG give any guidance on adjusting encounters to better suit? A typical Dungeon magazine adventure does a good job tellingyou how to adjust for higher LEVEL parties but not larger parties. Am I correct in assuming the challenge rating system is ideal for parties of four characters? If anyone else has handled this problem, how have you dealt with it? furthermore, how do you then adjust treasure levels to make sure the whole party's wealth will be commiserate with their level?

 

[Evilhalfling]

monte cook has a great artical on his site about running with larger parties (as many as a dozen!)
but the advice boils down to: add more monsters. It works better than raising the CR directly.
when in doubt thrown in 1-3 to a pack or add a (nother) bodyguard to leaders.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I've tried raising CRs in the past, and it simply doesn't work. An army of ants is going to pull down a single critter, no matter how big it gets (until you get to the stupidly higher CR stage). Although it's more of a pain to adjudicate, definitely add more stuff to the mix instead.

 

[BryonD]

Evilhalfling is correct.

I almost always run for a party of 6 chars.
If you go with higher CR threats you sometimes get into challenges the party can not deal with.

Simply scaling the number of opponents works nicely.



Of course it can be perfectly fine to throw over powered encounters at the party as well. But your question seems to imply a context of "balanced" encounters.

 

[BryonD]

I've tried raising CRs in the past, and it simply doesn't work. An army of ants is going to pull down a single critter, no matter how big it gets (until you get to the stupidly higher CR stage). Although it's more of a pain to adjudicate, definitely add more stuff to the mix instead.

That is also true.

It tends to come down to can the over-CRed threat get a big boom off before the vast over-numbering of attacks takes him down.
Either way it comes out less satisfying than generally desired.

 

[Jolly Giant]

If I understand correctly you're using a campaign module suited for your group's average character level and you have 6-7 PCs. Next time, look for module suited for the "party level", as I like to call it.

What I do is add together the ECL of all PCs, then divide by 4 (since CRs are set with a party of PCs in mind) to find the "party level". My campaigns are made with the "party level" in mind, not the average PC level. It works out ok with 3 to 6 PCs, but with 7 or more PCs you'll probably need to subtract a little from the calculated party level.

 

[MerricB]

I have a situation in my gaming group that warrants an examination of challenge rating that I was hoping to get advice on. I have begun running the Age of Worms adventure path from Dungeon magazine, but the party I am running it for has six and sometimes seven PCs. Attempting to run the adventure without modification is a joke, espeically with three/four of the characters as tanks. They literally got trhough almost every encounter without any threat of death.

Seriously, the Age of Worms requires no modification. The lesser XP the party gets compensates; they'll soon be one level behind the adventure, and then things will be fine.

If you do want to make it more difficult, more monsters in preference to tougher monsters.

(I've run the first 8 adventures of AoW with 6 PCs, and it hasn't been easy for them).

Cheers!

 

[npiccini]

monte cook has a great artical on his site about running with larger parties (as many as a dozen!)
QUOTE]

Id be interested in reading this article. Do you or anyone else know of its location? Im sure Monte Cook has a website but finding an article that specific seems like it would be awfully difficult.

Thanks for all the advice but my only follow-up question is, if you just add more monsters or bodyguards, doesn't that effectively up the CR already? I guess that was my thought right off the bat. When I added three dire wolves to the three already there, was it still a challange rating 3 because of the number of PCs I have? Or did the addition of three wolves up the rating?

 

[TheBladeOfEilistraee]

Increasing the challange rating is, as others have already put it, not worth the effort.
Just add a couple of hundred really tough monsters (legions, upon leagoins, upon legions of hobgoblins does not count) and you should be fine.

When I played AoW, I found that to be the soullution to all my problems....at least in the RPG gig

 

[CsonTep]

http://www.montecook.com/arch_dmonly27.html

http://www.montecook.com/arch_dmonly28.html

http://www.montecook.com/arch_dmonly29.html