Effective Encounters for a Party of 7

[Aluvial]

Is there a way to calculate an effective ecounter for a party of 7 PC's? They are of various levels. I suppose you could average them at 6th level....

Using EL's doesn't necessarily do the trick.

Any advice?

Thanks...

Aluvial

 

[Ealli]

Two CR 6 critters. Maybe three CR 5. Some people like using a higher CR creature but that tends to have problems of either being beatdown by being horrendously outnumbered or killing everyone by being so much stronger and untouchable. When the party gets that large it is probably best just to increase number of opponents, and since seven is about twice as many as four, use twice as many opponents.

 

[Aluvial]

Surely there is some sort of formula I can use that will equate. It is hard to adjust encounters by just throwing more creatures at them.

If you go to high with CR's the monsters are instant killing the PC's, too many has the same chance of overwhelming one of them. Surely there is some way to get a balanced encounter out of it.

Aluvial

 

[mikebr99]

What is the party made up of.... exactly?

 

[kreynolds]

This might help.

 

[Aluvial]

A Fighter 4 / mage 2 with archery feats

A Rogue 6 (halfling) w/ dodge-mobility

A Monte Ranger 5 w/ two wpn fighting and off hand parry, couple extras

A Dwarf Fighter 6 w/ a lot of Wpn feats

A Fighter 3 / Psy War 3 who is a dice-o-matic min/maxer feat nazi

An Elf Mage 1 / Sorcerer 2 / Cleric 3 w/ scribe scroll-brew potion Knowledge-Magic Domains

An Elf Cleric 6 War and Good Domains w/ Xtra Turn and Divine Vengence


I am DMing the RttToEE Campaign by Monte Cook. We are currently just starting the heart of the adventure, The Drater Ridge Mines. Lots and lots and lots of dungeon.

Problem is that the character are walking over the encounters and I need to start beefing stuff up a tad. I just need a good system to figure out what the party's effective level is.

When I can geta good method for determining that, I will be able to design encounters around them.

I just don't know how they stack against the party of 4 which all of the charts work with...

 

[Aluvial]

By the way that encounter device is a nice siplification of the charts, but isn't that also designed around a party of 4?

Aluvial

 

[Crothian]

Ya, the charts are made for a party of four. Here's what you do. Design a Dungeon Crawl or other adventure that is heavy on the fighting. Have some ecounters CR 6, some 5, some 7, etc and basically play around with them adventuring until you get a good idea of what you need. Personally, numbers help so I think a single opponent of CR+2 (average group level +2) might be about right. Just watch out for high DRs and SRs and ACs that may be a little on the tough side.

 

[Zenon]

You should visit the boards over at Monte's website:

www.montecook.com

He's got an entire forum which is a braintrust for DM's running RttToEE.

This question has been asked over there, and the answer I agree with the most is -

Don't adjust the module. The PC's will romp over encounters in the beginning, but they'll get less XP due to it getting split more ways. Since they won't level up as fast, they won't be as high a level when they get even farther into the module.

I've seen some horror posts of DM who began adjusting the encounters up and it usually starts an upward spiral -

Adjust this encounter up
PC's beat encounter
PC's gather more XP and treasure, causing them to become more powerful.
Adjust next encounter up even more.
Lather, rinse, repeat.

 

[Aluvial]

Maybe I didn't ask the right question...


Is there a way to approximate a party's level in comparison to a party of 4?

This way I can use the charts to greater effect.


In my example I have a party of 7 who are basically level 6.

This compares to a party of 4 at 7th? 8th? 10? level.

See what I'm driving at.


Aluvial