D&D 5E Converting mines of phandelver for 7 players *Spoilers*

[Angelflavor]

I'm about to start Dungeon mastering in 2 weeks. I'm using the starter set, but I have 7 people who want to play. I was wondering how to scale up the difficultly while keeping the feel of the campaign the same and not over whelm the map.
I was wondering if I'm been doing this right or if not, I'm open to suggestions. I'm wanting to make sure the CR is still mostly the same.
Here's what I have so far.
Spoilers
Encounter 1 Goblin Ambush: 4x Goblin 1x Goblin Boss
Encounter 2 Goblin Blind 3x Goblin
Encounter 3 Kennel 3x Wolf 1x Dire Wolf
Encounter 4 OverPass 1x Goblin Boss
Encounter 5 Goblin Den 6x Goblin 1x Goblin Boss
Encounter 6 Twin Pool Cave Klarg the Bug Bear Chief Ripper the Wolf

 

[Nemio]

Someone named Asmor made a cool encounter builder that should help you with this.
Check out his post on Reddit

http://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/2ikkgc/introducing_koboldclub_updates_to_my_encounter/

 

[DocSun]

Here is what I have been doing and I have between 6 and 8 players for this game. I made sure every creature had MAX hp as determined by its Hit dice, this gave a little more survivability. I threw in one or two extra monsters in low encounter quantities just so the numbers we a little more even matched (example that first ambush had 6 goblins instead of 4.

The thing that helped the most was I put a non really time limit on the game. I made it clear that the black spider was moving faster then the party was and if they could not catch up to him he might have harnessed the magic in wave echo cave and become too powerful to stop. Once they figured this out from hints dropped and captured monsters who were questioned they rushed to wave echo cave. skipping some of the more exp boosting side quests.

They also did not want to take many long rests unless the magic users were completely empty because they worried the Black Spider would become more powerful (he wont; at least not by more then an HP boost and perhaps legendary actions. but that false time limit created a sense of urgency. That alone made the fights more even as they were rarely at full rest, they were rushing and forgetting to make checks for danger on ceilings and getting attacked by dropping ozes and stirges.

My Group seemed to love the pressure but your millage may vary.

 

[Nebulous]

Here is what I have been doing and I have between 6 and 8 players for this game. I made sure every creature had MAX hp as determined by its Hit dice, this gave a little more survivability. I threw in one or two extra monsters in low encounter quantities just so the numbers we a little more even matched (example that first ambush had 6 goblins instead of 4.

The thing that helped the most was I put a non really time limit on the game. I made it clear that the black spider was moving faster then the party was and if they could not catch up to him he might have harnessed the magic in wave echo cave and become too powerful to stop. Once they figured this out from hints dropped and captured monsters who were questioned they rushed to wave echo cave. skipping some of the more exp boosting side quests.

They also did not want to take many long rests unless the magic users were completely empty because they worried the Black Spider would become more powerful (he wont; at least not by more then an HP boost and perhaps legendary actions. but that false time limit created a sense of urgency. That alone made the fights more even as they were rarely at full rest, they were rushing and forgetting to make checks for danger on ceilings and getting attacked by dropping ozes and stirges.

My Group seemed to love the pressure but your millage may vary.

My players *kinda* had a time frame, but it was based on "We gotta rescue Gundren the dwarf before Black Spider kills him." Which is still quite an artificial source of incentive as they barely knew the dwarf.

 

[janosicek]

You can use the encounter adjustment script I wrote here:
http://haluz.org/lmop/index.php

I believe it is EXACTLY what you need

 

[DocSun]

You can use the encounter adjustment script I wrote here:
http://haluz.org/lmop/index.php

I believe it is EXACTLY what you need

Wow that's kinda neat. Good work.

 

[Angelflavor]

You can use the encounter adjustment script I wrote here:
http://haluz.org/lmop/index.php

I believe it is EXACTLY what you need

This is Exactly what I needed. Thanks!

 

[Angelflavor]

janosicek I hope you do this for the other official Adventures too! This was very handy

 

[janosicek]

BTW My original post was here:
http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?398799-LMoP-Adjustment-Calculator

But not many people noticed before it scrolled away...

What other adventures would you like to add? Hoard?

 

[SirAntoine]

The hit dice rule is what I use. The total levels of the PC's shouldn't be lower than the total hit dice of the monsters in an encounter. I hope that still works in 5th Edition.