Calculating effective party level

[Quartz]

Cross-checking against TessarianDM's group, I get an EPL of 17.3 for Cheiromancer's system.

 

[Jack99]

So, my party of 3-14th, 5-13th and one 10th level characters has an ECL of 29.25 and not the 15.5 as calculated by the penpaperpixel.org Encounter Calculator? That just sounds way too high, considering that they have a hard time with encounters in the CR 20 range. When I plan encounters using the 15.5 figure that the Encounter Calculator gave me , they seem to be more appropriate challenges for the level (a little low from a "use up 25% of party resources per encounter" standpoint, but I can work with that).

The encounter calculator I use is at penpaperpixel.org/tools/d20encountercalculator (sorry, not computer literate enough to post a link ). I believe there are others out there that are available for free (search for d20 encounter calculators). It has definitely reduced my encounter planning headaches.

Hmm yeah, not really well thought out. Sorry about that. I usually just eyeball the encounters, and was trying to be helpful. Guess I should have given it some more thought before I posted it.

/hangs head in shame.

 

[Li Shenron]

Calculate average normally, use normal EL for 4, then multiply the number of monsters proportionally.

Ex. 6 PC instead of 4? Create the encounter with normal CR or EL, then add +50% more monsters.

Works fine except for single BBEG, which cannot easily be multiplied

 

[Hussar]

Li Shenron is wise. You should listen to the words.

With larger parties it's always better to use more critters than bigger ones. While a large party does have lots of firepower, individual members don't have the staying power of a higher level character. So, if you simply plonk down a bigger critter, instead of two PC's getting chewed, you get one PC dead as a full attack will drop him in a single round.

Makes BBEG fights a bit trickier, but, instead of using a bigger boss, just include lots of mooks. Makes for a slower fight usually, but, also usually more interesting as different tactical issues come into play.

 

[gnfnrf]

When trying to determine an appropriate encounter level for a party, the formula for the effective party level is fairly simple if there are 4 characters -- you take the average of the 4 character's levels and determine the effective party level. How is the formula different for parties that are not comprised of 4 characters?

I use the same rule as for ELs. Double the PCs = +2 effective party level. Since most parties don't come in multiples of 4, I interpolate logarithmically.

Thus, take the average party level then add (excel code for clarity) LOG(N/4, 2)*2, where N is the party size.

This works well for parties in the 5-8 range. I haven't tried it for small parties or very very large parties.

I also third the single foe problem with balancing large party ELs. They are either too fragile or two powerful, sometimes both at once.

--
gnfnrf

 

[blargney the second]

Li Shenron's given the best advice so far.