Playtesting with more than 4 players

[Cervante]

So I've found myself with a slight problem, I have a group willing to playtest but we have more than 4 people. Does anyone know how they plan to handle this or should we just use multiples of some characters?

 

[slobster]

First of all, according to the interview here at enworld:

Jeremy Crawford: Here's what to expect in the packet . . .
Five pregenerated characters
The Caves of Chaos adventure
A bestiary to accompany the adventure
And rules of play, both for players and DMs

So you get five characters. Beyond that, maybe they'll say something in the packets, but I would assume you just double up on a character or two. Maybe you could mix and match racial features and skills to differentiate them somewhat.

 

[billd91]

I hope to be play testing with six, so if I've got to double up., I will.

 

[Sunseeker]

I imagine any number higher than 1 may have double characters. I realize the test is intended to showcase a theoretical party of good composition, but at the same time, it must reasonably accommodate multiples.

If a party of all rogues chews through the playtest twice as fast as a normal party, there might be issues. If throwing an extra wizard into a normal party causes an appropriately adjusted adventure to crumble into ruin, there might be an issue.

So, ideally you'll double up, and playtesting with 6, 2 fighters, 1 wizard, 2 clerics and a rogue will be just as good as a fighter, a rogue, a wizard, a cleric and some 5th class.

 

[Connorsrpg]

I have been pondering this myself.

We intend to play this at a little long wekend 'convention' of our own and I am not sure exactly how many players we will have, but it will be at LEAST 6.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

I fully plan to reverse-engineer what the characters get from class, race, theme, and background, and mix-n-match to make a few extra combos.

But it might be "safer" just to play with a couple of twins in the party....

 

[shamsael]

The play test packet includes two different clerics, differentiated with domains to be a melee character and a spell caster.

Thinking back to the pre-3E era when two fighters were basically identical anyway, or back in 1E and earlier when rogues couldn't even customize their skill progression, I don't think it would be a huge problem to just have two people run mechanically identical characters.

 

[Lwaxy]

Yeah my group of interested players would have been 11 lol

But as they aren't really willing to sign up with wizards I am not really willing to bother

 

[Morrus]

Looks like some folks will get to offer feedback on the ease of scaleability, then!

That's a good thing, I think. It's probably better that it's tested by groups of varying size.

 

[Scribble]

Looks like some folks will get to offer feedback on the ease of scaleability, then!

That's a good thing, I think. It's probably better that it's tested by groups of varying size.

Depends what they're testing for I'd think.