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Message: <blockquote data-quote="arscott" data-source="post: 2984641" data-attributes="member: 17969">the dungeon is built for a party of four 2nd level characters (EL 6).  You're running it with a party of three 4th level characters (EL 7).  That's not enough of a difference that you couldn't just run the party through the adventure straight.  It probably won't be quite as challenging, though.  Of course, your three level party might be missing an important character.  You likely don't really need a rogue, and wizards are only indespensible after 5th level or so.  But if you're missing a tank or a healer, you might have better luck running it as-is.Your party is of a higher level than what the adventure suggests, but has fewer characters.  That means that you're probably better off beefing up each opponent rather than adding more combatants to the mix.  While your 'positive level' idea isn't that bad, +1 attack and damage and +5 hp doesn't really come out to a full +1 CR.Advancing monsters by HD isn't really that much harder to do than adding the positive level, and the advancement rules provide a general guideline of how much you need to add to raise a CR.  Plus, by raising HD, you prevent the monsters from being turned/dazed/put to sleep too easliy, and keep the Save DCs for their abilities challenging.  To save time, you can just swap out monsters rather than advancing them.  If the adventure has a CR 5 devil, just sub in a CR 6 devil from one of your monster books, rather than doing all the math to advance the CR 5 one.For fighter and rogue types, (and monsters that are best improved by the addition of levels in such classes), you can either choose to add one level of an associated PC class, or two levels of warrior for that +1 CR bump.  Go with whatever's easier and whatever makes a more interesting opponent.For wizards, clerics and the like, it gets tricky.  A wizard isnt' really going to be improved by anything but more levels in wizard (or a wizard PrC).  Ditto with the other caster classes.I know that this seems a lot of work, and it kinda is.  But in practice, mucking about with the monster's stats as you read through the adventure isn't that much more difficult or time consuming than just familiarizing yourself with the monster's stats on a readthrough, and you should be doing that anyway.  Heck, I tend to improve my DMing just by spending the time to convert an adventure's monsters from the old statblock format to the new one.</blockquote>

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