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Message: <blockquote data-quote="udalrich" data-source="post: 5292536" data-attributes="member: 53796">A party of six at a given level is about as strong as a party of four one level higher, so you need to increase the difficulty of the encounters to compensate.Your party is 50% larger than the standard, so you will generally want to increase the number of monster in the encounter by 50% to compensate.  This works better increasing the level of the monsters for two reasons.  First, the extra strength of a larger party is because they can take more actions and have more options available.  They can make six attacks per turn, which is more chances to hit and more possibly failed saves.  Even a monster than can kill a party member in one turn will likely be killed by the party, because it can only take one action each round.  Multiple foes generate more actions, which can both inflict more effects on the party and divide damage among party members (which helps them survive).Secondly, a single higher level foe may have abilities that the party cannot overcome at their level, since the foe is intended to be fighting a higher level enemies.  For example, a <a href="http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/bralani.htm" target="_blank">bralani </a>is a CR 6 outsider.  As such, it should be difficult challenge for the party, but one they should (by CR calculations) be able to defeat.  However, it has SR 17, which means that the spell casters won't be able to affect it most of the (rather than about half the time for a sixth level party).  It also has fire and cold resistance 10 and electrical immunity, so many spell that get past the SR still won't damage it.  Additionally it has DR 10/cold iron or evil, which the party almost certainly cannot bypass at second level, so the fighters will also be doing little or no damage to it.  Add a 100 foot fly speed and the party will probably have trouble making attacks against it unless it chooses to come into melee.Looking at the actual encounters, they were probably lucky against the wolves.  That is equivalent to a EL 3 encounter for a standard party of 4.  I'm suspecting that either the surprised the wolves or the encounter started at range.  If the encounter started with six attacks from the party or a round or two of ranged attacks, the wolves were doomed.  If not, did the wolves move to flank or attack the party members who were not wrapped in steel?  Wolves are intelligent animals and should attack like a coordinated pack.The deinonychus is a lesser example of the danger of a single, high level foe.  It can basically always make 4 attacks around, either with a full attack or a charge and pounce.  The three secondary attacks will likely miss a well-armored PC, but if it started on the rogue and the wizard (or rolled well), 1d8+2d3+2d4+10 is probably enough to drop a 2nd level player in one round.</blockquote>

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