D&D General What is your experience with party size in Waterdeep Dungeon of the Mad Mage?

Silam · Mar 25, 2026

Hi,

I’m planning to start a DotMM campaign soon. I’ve only read a couple of levels yet and it looks pretty brutal, but still I wonder if a smaller than recommended party could pull it off.

Let’s assume the players have fairly good work ethic and will clean up each level as best they can. If they do, then they should get more XP than required to reach the recommended (XP) levels for each (dungeon) levels.

And if they’re a smaller party (let’s say 3), then they could split the XP among fewer participants, thus gaining even more each, and leveling up ahead of the expected progression.

But all in all, it still seems iffy.

The characters would be built with 2024 rules but I haven’t decided yet if I’ll use 2014 or 2024 monster stats (which may or may not affect the difficulty level given the slight power inflation of 2024).

I welcome your comments! Thanks!

pogre · Friday at 8:29 PM

The composition of your party will really matter. A divine healer and a PC with access arcane magic seems essential to me.

I would use some NPCs with their own goals to help the party through some of the rougher sections, but I don't think that is strictly necessary.

I have run my group all the way through the dungeon and it remains one of our favorites.

Benjamin Olson · Friday at 11:38 PM

I haven't played it, but my guess would be 2024 characters will mostly hit above their weight-class against 2014 monsters, so I would recommend starting an undersized group against those, and maybe swapping in the (usually a little beefier) 2024 monsters if they are steamrolling things.

Healing is more generous in 5.5 (both spells and hit dice recovery), which seems particularly relevant in a megadungeon, where wearing down party resources over many encounters is usually pretty endemic. At least if they have a healer and/or are getting frequent short rests they will simply have more HP resources than an equivalently sized 5e group.

Silam · 2026-04-04T03:29:55+0100

pogre said:
The composition of your party will really matter. A divine healer and a PC with access arcane magic seems essential to me.

I would use some NPCs with their own goals to help the party through some of the rougher sections, but I don't think that is strictly necessary.

I have run my group all the way through the dungeon and it remains one of our favorites.

Thanks for sharing! Healing sure seems essential

... I'm thinking secondary healers might be important too, or at least have everyone stocked up with potions, as it seems iffy to have a single point of failure on the one hospital in that dungeon

I'd be curious to hear what party composition you had when you did it (when you DM-ed, if I understood correctly?) and whether you ran it with 2014 or 2024 rules.