Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="MW Turnage" data-source="post: 1166589" data-attributes="member: 7250">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.</blockquote>

Verification