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ShortQuests -- Pocket Sized Adventures! An all-new collection of digest-sized D&D adventures designed for 1-2 game sessions.

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="doomwh" data-source="post: 2043323" data-attributes="member: 25672">I currently am part of three gaming groups. We are all playing 3.5, I'm a player in two and GMing one. One of the groups I'm a player in has six PC's while the other is currently hosting five PC's. The one I'm the GM for is three and sometimes just two strong. The common theme among these games is that none have the magic number"four" PC's. In fact I've rarely been in a party with four characters and I've been playing since 80.The DM guide just glosses over increasing EL of an encounter or cutting it down some and just doesn't seem to be enough examples of how a GM can make adjustments due to party size. You'd think by now we'd be able to accuratly challange PC's but that is not the case. Either the encounter is too easy (in particular when your dealing with one creature with the correct CL) or we nearly get crushed and GM looks frustrated by the encounter. When I've been GMing I have found myself having to change the encounter as we are playing to either save the characters or make things a little more challanging. Its not the players fault and I don't have the time to run six mock battles just to see how it goes. I was wondering if any of you could give me and my friends advice on scaling the encounters due to party size. Or maybe Dungeon could run an artical with some examples and different solutions any writers or GMs have come up with. I'm not looking for hard numbers just advice on what works for you. I remember making adventures in the old days (2nd edition)and I don't recall these inconsistancies in the balancing of the game. I love the 3.5 rules and know its a better system especialy if you have five players (one GM and four players), but this is rarly the case in our campaigns. Well any help or advice would be appreciated, and I'm sure some space in Dungeon for this topic would be welcome.  I also posted this on the paizo message boards so if your reading this again I apologize.Thanks</blockquote>

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