Modules and bigger parties...

[Drawmack]

First of all, doesn't this module include a section for large party/higher level play?

I would leave the BBEG encoutners as is, completely and totally.

But I would put a preemtive encouter right before the BBEG to weaken the party. Oh so you want to see the BBEG, sure as soon as you take out his medusa body guard.

 

[Cabled]

Exactly

In my experience, the larger the party is, the easier time it will have with a single target, (almost) regardless of the target's CR relative to the APL. The reason is that the larger party gets more actions, but the single target doesn't. And actions (standard, move, full-round) are the single most important resource in D&D combat.

Think of it this way: no matter what the initiative rolls, after the bad guy acts, the PCs get 6+ rounds' worth of actions before the bad guy can do anything. That is an overwhelming advantage for the PCs.

I strongly recommend you add additional combatants to the single-bad guy battles. Even if they are only speed bumps for the PCs, they will at least buy time for the bad guy to do something impressive.

Around our table, we refer to this as "attack density", and it is often a huge and difficult to judge advantage. Work to even up the number of action the BBEG will have (through henchmen, maybe a potion of haste, etc) as compared to the party.

 

[buzz]

No, you don't need to adapt the encounters. Just make listen checks. 6-7 PCs make noise. All the monsters in the dungeon come running. encounters are fixed.

Heh.

SOME COTSQ SEMI-SPOILERS BELOW.



FWIW, my first attempt at beefing things up was turning the initial encounter at the big drow chasm into basically "drow army + gargantuan fiendish spider vs. PCs."

The result? The PCs mopped the floor with them... but it took 4+ hours to play out.

Joking aside, you can't just up the numbers... you need to strike a balance between adding some NPCs and beefing them up. Otherwise, combat just becomes really tedious and tactically uninteresting.

 

[Ian Demagi]

Large Parties

This is my problem with some of the WotC stuff , They are very tied into "the standard party of 4 thing." If they have finally put in some scaling, it is about time! Increasing the party size really beefs up the party. I agree that just adding dice,hp, stats to the monsters just lengthens the time it takes to kill them off in really does not make them tougher. Giving them some low level cohorts does not do much either.

Last campaign I used a recurring villlain to help spice stuff up. This kinda defeats the idea of buying a premade module though. Ian.

 

[jollyninja]

spoiler

I ran it with 6 party members and a hireling cleric. For the most part it worked well, the main issue with that specific adventure was the boss fights. As others have pointed out, the desparity of actions for the bosses made the first few of them a bit anticlimactic. What I did to beef them up quite a bit is pay strict attention to the environment and set some fairly unorthodox tactics based on the environment. I also started the pc's on it at level four in stead of five, which made the mooks challenging throughout. I had two near tpk's.

The partially submerged city was not enjoyed by my party, I made sure that the heavy armored party would be noticed in advance, and there was a great deal of fire on them as they rode the raft toward the buildings. they had also taken one of the outsiders (the ones that shapeshift from goblin to wolf form, the name escapes me and I'm at work) prisoner and though he was blind, he was still able to give them all kinds of poor intel which they bought totally after I gave him a sarcastic but almost endearing personality. I believe after clearing the place out, there was not a single character with more then 15 hp.

the battle of brindol was also taxing, I ran it as a rapid fire series of encounters which limited their ability to heal up, the cleric hireling ran out of spells during the red dragon fight. The end of the battle left two dead of 6 and the rest very close.

then they coasted through the rest. I beefed the encounters up slightly the rest of the way through but apparently not enough. I wish i had added more mooks to the azar'kul encounter. I didn't because of what comes after but they mowed through it to the point of having a couple rounds to bash at his protective shell before he was done his little thing, with two noshows that night. in two rounds.

The battle of brindol is clearly the hilight of the adventure for the players, i wish it had been the last thing in it with the dungeon crawl somewhere in the middle. Great adventure though.

 

[mikebr99]

I was considering running The Red Hand of Doom module.

However, I'm likely to have 6-7 PCs. Enough extra that I feel I might need to beef up some aspects of it:

Treasure will need to be increased in proportion to the number of PCs.

For encounters with large numbers of creatures, I'll keep the ratios of PCs: NPCs the same. 4 hobgoblins will simply become 6.

Single BBEGs pose more of a problem IMO. Think tacking on a level or two would make them far more lethal. Particularly the spellcasters. Leaving them as is and I think they'll be too easy.

Any thoughts or experience with this?

Spoiler!











I am currently running RHoD with a party of 6... the 7th is joining tonight.

And in most cases I did go in a increase the CR of the Baddies... for instance, the first wyrmlord (they face) is a 6th Sorcerer, so adding another level does not get him a new spell level, just more of what he already has.

All of the Dragons "grew" a little... just because I'm nasty.

an additional level of WHK's PrC does not increase spellcasting at all.

... at least I'm starting with more powerful versions of everyone, and can always fall back to the "as written" versions if it starts going terribly wrong for the party.

YMMV


Mike

 

[Bad Paper]

I thought RHoD was designed for five PCs. Whatever.

When I started my current group three years ago, there were six players, and we started with the Sunless Citadel. I went through a whole lot of anguish trying to increase the number of baddies by 50% (the end battle had like five dozen kobolds running around the map), and make sure the treasure was boosted, et cetera. It sucked. I do not recommend that at all.

One of the players left, so I've been running with five of them through the whole adventure path (the Forge of Fury, the Speaker in Dreams, the Standing Stone, et al.). It's fine if you do not change anything (except convert to 3.5, of course :\ ). The XP/CR/EL/treasure system is designed to be somewhat elastic.

In fact, I have found that having more players can work against the party, because diluting the XP means they level more slowly. If they lag a level, and the BBEG throws a save-or-die effect at them, then they are more likely to eat dirt. Nevertheless, do not fall victim to the power-creep upgrade. By the end of RHoD, you will be a wreck.

If you want to make it more difficult, then ramp up the timeline! Right now I am running my party through the Harrowing (Monte Cook in Dungeon #84). That adventure also has a timeline (though it's three days, not two months or whatever RHoD is). I have severely increased the timeline for them. If you do that, then you force your party through many more encounters per day, and it makes it more challenging.