D&D 5E Scaling the 5th Edition Starter Set

[Daelkyr]

So tonight I'm going to be running my first session of the Starter Set. And the group has tried to cram as many players as possible at the table. What was once a party of three has grown to a party of 6. I've handle this size before, but this is my first time running 5e.

Is the adventure written to handle 4 players as the default? Is there a quick and easy way to increase challenge size? I didn't really follow the end of the play test so I can't fall back on that info. Any help would be appreciated.

- Josh

 

[Abstruse]

They designed it for parties of 4 in mind with a party of 5 having an easier time and a party of 3 having a harder time. You may want to add in a couple of extra goblins to the first few encounters until you get the feel of the difficulty. Like if the encounter has 3 goblins, make it 4. If it has 6, make it 8 or 9. Greg Bisland ran about 90 minutes of the adventure for a group of 5 and talks about scaling a little in the Q&A that follows.

 

[was]

In addition to adding a few monsters, you could increase their hp from average to closer to maximum.

 

[Abstruse]

In addition to adding a few monsters, you could increase their hp from average to closer to maximum.

And a +1 to attack or something. I just tend to focus on adding more monsters tends toward my playstyle, which is throwing hordes of minions so the players get to bask in taking on mobs and slaughtering them.

 

[Daelkyr]

Okay. I'll increase the regular monsters by 1 to 2 and max out the hit points of the boss monsters.

 

[Abstruse]

Okay. I'll increase the regular monsters by 1 to 2 and max out the hit points of the boss monsters.

I might not go so far as to max out boss monster HP. Depending on the boss, that might be going a little overboard. But I mean it's not like the players will know how many HP he has left, so you can fudge it on the fly to keep them alive another round.