Best way to beef up encounters: Higher CRs or larger numbers?

[buzz]

I'm running CotSQ for 7 PCs. It's built for 4. The players have requested that the encounters be beefed up a bit.

So, what's best? To keep the number of creatures in the listed encounters the same, but make them tougher, or to simply add more creatures to compensate for there being more PCs? Or some combination of both? Or does it not matter?

Hmm... I suppose I'll need to give them more treasure, too.

 

[Infiniti2000]

My advice is to NOT boost encounters. Eventually, things will even out, including for large parties. At worst, instead give monsters better than average hit points, more advantageous terrain, better tactics, etc., in order to make the individual encounters tougher without resorting to giving out more XP (which would then require more treasure). You would need to spend A LOT of time modifying the entire module to compensate for this, possibly to some disastrous consequences unless you do a lot of fudging.

 

[Jdvn1]

I'd go for a combination of both. More creatures will make it more difficult, but higher CR creatures might be more interesting.

And you could use the standard treasures from each creature, too. I had a GM that didn't know that existed.

 

[Ranes]

In the first instance, I'd do something along the lines Infiniti suggests. Don't forget elite arrays, too. If that doesn't seem to make too much of an impact, I'd raise the number of foes per encounter before resorting to higher CRs. Note that, if I increased the numbers, not all the opponents would have elite arrays/more hp. Whatever else, I'd pay special attention to terrain, tactics and other environmental conditions.

 

[mikebr99]

I'm running CotSQ for 7 PCs. It's built for 4. The players have requested that the encounters be beefed up a bit.

So, what's best? To keep the number of creatures in the listed encounters the same, but make them tougher, or to simply add more creatures to compensate for there being more PCs? Or some combination of both? Or does it not matter?

Hmm... I suppose I'll need to give them more treasure, too.

Hey...
I added levels to the Drow, and others (unique monsters etc.) with character classes. And added numbers to the regular monsters. but YMMV

Mike

 

[Goolpsy]

higher Cr = more treature (most of the time), More monsters = bigger advantage for area effects etc. So u could do a mix, remember that a cr 7 encounter is suppost to take 20% of the characters spells/HP/resources this mean, that the encounter doesn't have to be tough.
I guess your player/players just seek a better challenge every now and then
If you increase EVERY encounter, you might make it too strong total. If you do nothing it might be too easy for them.

My suggestion is, first of all, be sure to have more than 1 encounter each day.. (preferable) unless its a big encounter. Each encounter will keep getting harder as they run out of resources for the day. So only increase the number of monsters or their CR in one of these encounters per day.

 

[jgsugden]

Just be careful in raising CRs. I saw a DM toss a Hezrou (CR 11) against an 8th level party with 10 characters (PCs plus cohorts). The Hezrou used its CL 13 Blasphemy, paralyzed the entire party and it resulted in a TPK.

 

[buzz]

FWIW...

I kept the encounters as-is at first (save for converting to 3.5; look for a full conversion from me in the fall sometime). Unlike previous campiagns, we were thus whizzing through a bunch of encounters per session, which I really liked, honestly.

It was the players who thought this was too easy, and were concerned that the overall lower XP per PC would mean slower advancement, and thus, even kept as-is, the encounters at the end of the campaign would start getting too tough. Ergo, they asked that I beef up the encounters. These seemed like legitimate complaints at the time.

The funny thing is that I'd always heard that CotSQ was a TPK adventure, so I figured having a larger-than normal party would even things out. I guess my players want a killer dungeon.

 

[Stalker0]

I think more monsters are better in general....I've found with bumping creature's CRs you often get:

1) An awesome monster that gets wiped out
2) An awesome monsters that wipes you out.

Larger numbers of weaker creatures can often be run from easier.

 

[noeuphoria]

Just from personal experience (I've been playing in a converted Nights Below game for the past 18 months, just finished the ENTIRE THING), the 2 hardest encounters we fought in there were against groups of 3-5 monsters of similar CR to us. There were a couple times that the party had to fight CR 23 monsters when we were level 18 or so, but since it was our party (5 chars) vs 1 BBEG, we almost always were able to wrap it up in 4-5 rounds with good tactics. Whereas those group fights were typically drag-out affairs taking 10-20 rounds, often with 2-3 PCs dying.