D&D 5E "Determining Party Strength" in "Harried in Hillsfar" and "Shackles of Blood"

I have both Harried in Hillsfar and Shackles of Blood, which I download for free through Dragon Magozine. I was pleased to see that both had a section on Determining Party Strength, and recommendations for adjusting the adventures based on that calculation.

There's only one problem: in both pdfs, the numbers are missing the Determining Party Strength. For example, Here's part of the Shackles of Blood table:


3-4 characters, APL less than Very weak
3-4 characters, APL equivalent Weak

APL less than what?
APL equivalent to what?

APL is "Average Party Level"

Does anyone have a copy with a complete/correct table? Do the copies from DMsGuild have the same issue?

Each adventure is optimized for five PCs of a particular level. The optimal party numbers are always written in bold in the Introduction and in "Adjusting the Adventure" section.

"Harried in Hillsfar" is optimized for a party of five 1st-level PCs.

"Shackles of Blood" has a copy/paste error, so the intro says that it's optimized for five 3rd level PCs, while the Adjusting the Adventure section states that it's optimized for five 1st level PCs. I'd go with the former.

With that in mind, you then compare your own party's APL to that of the optimal APL stated in the adventure to determine party strength.

You compare the APL to the level that the adventure is designed for.

Harried in Hillsfar is optimized for a party of five 1st-level characters so you compare your APL to '1'. You can't actually have an APL less than 1, so the "APL less than" lines aren't going to apply but if your APL was 2 or more you would look at the "APL greater than" lines in the table.

Suppose you a party of two 2nd-level PCs and one 1st-level. You have 3 characters and the APL is 2 which is greater than 1, so you take the line "3-4 characters, APL greater than" and it tells that the party strength is "average" so you don't need to adjust the encounters.

(edit) Ninja'd

Thanks. I understand now. The explanation in the adventures could have been clearer--or better yet a column added to the table. But, given the rather poor editing I've seen in both modules, that's not terribly surprising. Disappointing for a "professional" product, for all that I like the adventures and think they will prove useful.

No worries. And I agree. It could've been a lot clearer. I only knew the answer because I'd asked the same question myself just a few weeks ago on the AL forum.

Each AL adventure is geared towards a certain Average Party Level of five adventurers.

If your party is lower level and/or has only 3-4 members, it is considered "weak" or "very weak".

If your party is higher level and/or has 6-7 members, it is considered "strong" or "very strong".

Otherwise, your party is "average".

Then, throughout the adventure, guidelines are given to AL DMs to make encounters easier or more difficult, depending on whether the party is weak or strong. If it's average, you run it as written.

That's all there's to it. No wait: the most important bit!

This is a part of the Adventurer's League rules. But as a private DM you don't need to follow it, any more than you had to do something special when, back in the day, you read "This scenario is for level 8 characters" and thought "my players can handle that".

All the details are only there to provide AL players with a somewhat consistent experience. But you the DM know your players. You know if they can handle the heat or not.

And if they can't and have to run away, well, that might be a problem in a 4 hour slot for players who have driven to their local gaming store just to play and must leave at a predetermined time, but it might not be a problem for you and your players, since that might just make things more interesting and raise the stakes.

So you might want to run that APL 8 scenario for your four-man party of 6th level characters without modification, since you all like to play rough. Or you can't be bothered to add more monsters to an adventure just because Bob and Sue turned up and you're now seven players instead of five.

Or, you're interested in learning more about how to "weigh" encounters, and you read those APL instructions with interest.

Either way, point is: if you're not running the module in tournament play, don't sweat it - you can safely ignore all the details.

Thanks,. I wasn't worried about "following the rules," so much as understanding the scaling. My son wants to introduce his friend to dnd, and we are likely to only have 3 players for that game, none terribly experienced. The scaling options in the AL games will be very helpful, now that I understand how it works.