Equivalent EL for larger parties?

[iwatt]

Does anybody have an easy rule for adjusting the EL for larger groups of PCs. what I mean is that an EL 8 for a 4 character party is challenging, but what is it like for a 7th level party. I'm not looking for an exact formula (i.e dvivide the stanmdard EL by 3/4 of Pi) but just some ballpark modifiers would be jhelpful. Right know I've just been using the normal encounters statted in the modules, but they've become kinda of easy to beat. If it helps, the composition of my PCs is:

Barb 6 Human (THW, all the cleric does is buff him up)
Ranger5 (TWF) Half-elf
Bard4/Rogue2 human
Cl6 human (War + strength)
Sorc 5 human
Ranger (Archer) 5
Sorc 4 (Aasimar)

The last two are recent additions. The first 5 just completed the Forge of fury (the bard and cleric excelled in negotiating with the roper ). Having a party of 5 instead of 4 didn't change the difficulty that much, but the few encounters I've sent their way now that they're 7 has shown that the fight are to easy.

So please help. They (and I) don't enjoy cakewalks but I like the PCs and the campaign and want to avoid a TPK just becasue a random encounter was misadjusted by my part. Also, fudging in the middle of combat also detracts from the enjoyment:

" The trolls attacking you decide to retreat because ..... because..... a patrol of rangers from the nearby town just happens to swing your way"·

So any recomendations to help me setup encounters would be apreciated. I don't really have all that much extyra time to perpare, so I can't always playtest encounters. Although the CR system does have it's flaws, it does help in designing entertaining adventures (IME).

 

[Kalendraf]

I recommend starting with this:

http://www.enworld.org/cc/fiend_factory/elc/encounter_calculator.htm

It's been an amazing tool for me when attempting to balance encounters for larger sized parties. As a general rule, I try to keep the EL of the encounter within +/- 2 of the party. -2 should be fairly easy, -1 should be somewhat easy, even is a typical balanced fight, +1 will be tougher and +2 will be difficult. When you go much past +2, you begin risking party deaths, and the +4 point seems to be the point where a TPK can happen fairly easily.

Of course each party and each encounter is different, so what one party might find easy, might be overly difficult for another. While the EL calculator is a great tool, it still needs some DM-intervention at times. For example, if your party lacked any spellcaster and just had a bunch of warriors, but the monster had abnormally high DR properties, it could make for a deadly fight but might not show up that way in the CR/EL calculations.

 

[Kalendraf]

I punched in your party's levels (3 @ 6th, 4 @ 5th - I'm assuming aasimar gets +1 ECL) and the calculator indicates they are approximately an EL 7 party (actually 7.1). Thus, most EL 7 encounters should be fairly safe. EL 6 and below stuff will be progressively easier while encounters much above EL 9 could be pretty deadly.

With a cleric, bard and 2 sorcs, they should have the spellcasting angle covered. Between the barbarian, twf ranger and cleric, they should have a decent melee presence, and an archer ranger gives them a ranged option as well. I don't see any immediate imbalance issues with the party. Thus, the numbers suggested by the calculator might hold more true for this group than some others I've encountered.

FYI, the quick ad-hoc scaling method I normally use for larger parties is to increase the number of minions on a percentage basis similar to the party size. For a party of 6 characters (50% larger than normal), I toss 50% extra minions at them. I define minions as any encounter of 2 or more identical creatures. The other option is named foes (or in some cases single monsters). These I usually increase HD or levels as appropriate. That involves more work in many cases, but isn't terribly difficult to do. For a mixed encounter, you can do both. For example, an encounter with an ogre plus 2 bugbears (EL 5.5) could be bumped by making it 4 bugbears with an ogre barbarian1 (raising to an EL 7.2).

 

[AuraSeer]

The numerical rule of thumb is that each 100% increase in party size adds +2 to the effective party level. A group of 6 is at EPL +1, eight is at EPL +2, twelve is at EPL +3, etc.

There are also a few special concerns for large parties. Most importantly, be aware that a big group is actually more fragile than a smaller, higher-level group. Since each individual has fewer hit points, one could be killed by a blow that wouldn't fell a more advanced character; and each time a character dies, the party weakens and the problem gets worse. So use caution when placing grunty, high-damage opponents.

On the other hand, increasing the party's size greatly increases its damage output, because it gets many more actions per round. Twice as many PCs means the BBEG will take twice as many spells and twice as many weapon hits in any given round; each spell and hit will be slightly less damaging, but they'll still do close to twice as much damage as the more condensed party.

Taken together, this means that when DMing for a large party, you should try to avoid encounters with a single, powerful opponent. IME either the party overwhelms the BBEG and kills him with practically no damage to themselves, or they lose a few PCs at the beginning and it spirals out of control into a TPK. It's never a very satisfying outcome. A better encounter would use a slightly smaller BBEG (not much more powerful than any given PC) and reinforce him with a number of weaker minions.

Ferinstance, in a module I ran recently, one encounter called for a solo Wiz10. The first time I tried it, I ended up with all seven PCs dead. So I changed that encounter to a Wiz8 and a handful of 5th-level bodyguards, and that worked out much better.

 

[billd91]

Personally, when running adventures against a larger party of PCs than the iconic four, I don't think of them as equivalent of a similarly sized party of higher level characters even if a calculator estimates that they are. Instead, think of them as 2 parties of characters at their own levels and create your encounters that way.
Why do I do this? A larger group of 5th and 6th level characters may calculate out to be equivalent to 7th level, but they will be more brittle on an individual level and may not have the same kind of treasure resources as the higher level group. Against creatures with DR, this can be an important point.
From 5th/6th level to 7th may not really be that much of a jump, but for lower level parties it really can be. That's when I thought this all out.
I'd rather think of the party as 2 parties of 4 characters each (or as close as I can get) and just put together an appropriate encounter for each. Then these encounters get mushed together as one to face the larger single party. It generally means more critters for me to run but none of them are at a CR beyond what a 4-PC party could handle by the general encounter construction guidelines.