CRs and Large Parties

[LoneWolf23]

Well, my online campaign is going well... We've been getting a lot of prospective new players, and the PC group is now well beyond a part of 5-6... I may have to start refusing players after the last batch of three additional players, though.

In the meantime, I find myself having to reconsider my adventures' Encounter Levels, as CR 3 encounters (like my PC's average level) don't seem sufficient anymore.

Should I raise my ECLs?

 

[BryonD]

Well, my online campaign is going well... We've been getting a lot of prospective new players, and the PC group is now well beyond a part of 5-6... I may have to start refusing players after the last batch of three additional players, though.

In the meantime, I find myself having to reconsider my adventures' Encounter Levels, as CR 3 encounters (like my PC's average level) don't seem sufficient anymore.

Should I raise my ECLs?

CRs officially assume 4 characters. Many people, myself included, question the validity of this assumptions, as well as the accuracy of its implementation.

Setting those issues aside, typically you will need to increase the EL if the party is larger.

While it is very much a case-by-case matter, I would strongly encourage you to increase ELs by scaling up the number of opponents.

Increasing ELs by using higher CR encounters can cause problems by throwing SRs out of whack, hitting the party with higher level spells, etc.. These things may not seem significant (and frequently they will not be). But they can be very significant. Increasing number of opponents is more safe.

I run a party of 6 (from L1 to 13 so far) and it works for me.

 

[S'mon]

Should I raise my ECLs?

Yes, (you mean EL not ECL BTW) but be very wary of using individual monsters with a CR higher than the party. A party of 8 level-3 PCs should be able to handle an EL 5 encounter easily (ie treat the party as 5th level not 3rd), but if that encounter is 1 CR 5 Troll or Ettin it's likely to kill at least 1 PC before going down. 2 CR 3 ogres is far preferable as a routine encounter. 4 CR 2 bugbears or 8 CR 1 gnolls would also be reasonable. For tough encounters, EL 7 would be about right - 4 CR 3 ogres or 8 CR 2 bugbears should be dangerous but probably survivable.

 

[MW Turnage]

CRs officially assume 4 characters. Many people, myself included, question the validity of this assumptions, as well as the accuracy of its implementation.

Setting those issues aside, typically you will need to increase the ECL if the party is larger.

My recent 3.5 campaign started with five PCs, with a sixth joining in towards the end, all at the same level. My players could easily handle combats with ELs 2-3 levels higher than the DMG would suggest. For example, a party of 4th level characters should be able to handle an EL 4 encounter with only about 20% resources lost (spells, hit points, magic, etc.). An EL 4 or more levels higher than the party's average levels should effectively be a TPK.

However, my PCs were able to handle ELs 3-4 higher fairly easily. They didn't have much in the way of combat magic save for one PC (a Paladin with a holy sword and a medium armor with heavy fortification). They worked together well but weren't using anything I'd consider superb tactics; the opposition was about the same.

At first, I was just using the party's average level to scale EL. Even EL+4 's were too easy. I decided to scale it up one for the fifth character (a rule of thumb I picked up on a thread here), and then one more for the Pally's weapon and armor. Still too easy. By the time the sixth player joined in, they could handle combats at an EL+8 range and still win.

I strongly suspect I'm handling something terribly wrong. I'm at a loss as to what, though. Perhaps I'm making a fundamental mistake when it comes to CR/EL. This is only the second time I've had a 3rd edition campaign (and first with 3.5) so maybe I'm just using bad tactics from a system standpoint.

Pointers to good discussions of CR/EL and tactics would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Erratic K]

CR: toughness of a monster

EL: encounter level, difficulty of an encounter. (basically a combination of monsters and extenuating circumstances like ambush and the like).

This is my experience:

5 players (say avg 4th level party): can take a single CR 5 monster or other EL 5 situations if they are rested. If not rested or with full selection of spells, they usually can't or have problems. This becomes worse at lower levels and a little less true at higher levels.

6 players (say avg 4th level): can take a single CR 5 monster or other EL 5 situation almost anytime (unless they are mostly out of spells or HP- so I'll say if they are at least 50% prepared). CR 6 is possible when fully rested, but you have to look out for immunities the party cannot beat. EL 6 made of several CR 4 creatures is usually okay.

more than that- the problems get worse- any given character will have a tough time with a single monster of CR equal or higher than their level. So often you have to use higher numbers of reasonable CR creatures. You also want to mix in some show off encounters (where the EL is lower than the party so the party can be successful).

Everynow and then a Party level + 2 Encounter when rested is doable (it is like a boss or a plot changing monster). With 6 characters they might be able to handle a EL of +3 over their party level when rested (but any one character having to stand up to a single CR 7 monster when they are level 4 or the like has good chances of dying quickly on just a couple poor rolls).

By the way, my examples assume default wealth. Magic items can skew the results quite abit. So will heavily combat optimized parties. Parties that are not combat optimized will have problems. I also find that heavily multi-classed groups can have problems with creatures of higher CR than party level (usually because the CR assumes a party with a wizard/cleric/fighter of level equal to the monsters CR)

-E

 

[Norfleet]

The real problem with CR and ELs is that they assume way too much about the party facing it, and only rarely are the assumptions entirely valid. With all the possible variables in a party, boiling them down to a single number beforehand is going to produce very wonky results. Personally, that's why I'm a proponent of after-action analysis: The other CR, casualty ratios. A much more accurate picture of the level of challenge a party had in an encounter can be had by analyzing the casualty ratios of the parties in question: An encounter of appropriate level is supposed to consume 25% of a party's resources: Partymembers are resources, so an encounter of "appropriate" level should claim a quarter of the party as casualties, either temporarily or permanently. Whether or not the casualties are healed and sent back into action immediately or not is immaterial to whether or not they became casualties in the first place.

 

[heimdall]

Try to increase the numbers of little baddies and see how the players respond. If they handle it well, then reduce the numbers but slightly increase the CRs of the individual monsters and keep tweaking until you can get an accurate read of what they can handle. CR is okay as a general rule, but it's not THE rule.

I'm not a big fan of CRs for most of the reasons already mentioned. It really depends on the players, their experience, and how they work together. I've run groups where based on the CR rules they should have been in for a lot of problems but they were extremely efficient and organized in handling foes and were successful.

My current group appears to be slightly worse than what the DMG suggest as a satisfactory CR, and that's with 5 (soon to be 6) characters. Then again, they've only been gaming together a couple of months and I know that plays into it. Last Tuesday they cooperated well on an encounter for the first time so hopefully the CR will change.