D&D 5E Party size and level variance in 5e

[Lanefan]

In the "magic items in 5e" thread in news, during a discussion about the fine-tuning of math over the various editions, [MENTION=54877]Crazy Jerome[/MENTION] noted:

Nothing in the ranges makes nearly as big a difference as having 1 or 2 extra or less characters, for example.

This got me thinking: one thing 1e (and 0e and 2e) could handle was a pretty wide variance in party size without things breaking too badly. Most 1e modules give quite a wide range when suggesting party size, as in "from 4-8 characters ...". But 3e was specifically designed for a 4-character party, and 4e for a 5-character party - and varying from those numbers by more than one can really upset the math. (I've seen this in action; in the 3e campaign I played in our average party size was about 8-10, this threw the CR-EL system for a real loop)

As for level variance, again 1e modules usually gave a suggested range, assuming the party would have internal level variance. I've found lately, though - particularly with 4e modules - that while they give a level range (e.g. Keep on the Shadowfell's 1-3 range) it instead means it's designed for them to all go in at the low level in that range and all come out at the high.

I think the game should be flexible enough to handle internal level range in the party, and to handle parties of varying size. It's been done before; it can be done again.

Lan-"the last few Sundays have told me a party of 18 4th-7th level characters is tough to challenge"-efan

 

[the Jester]

I would put both of these things- enables different party sizes, enables wide level ranges (and thus enables starting every pc at 1st level)- on my list of design goals for my Platonic ideal version of D&D.

 

[Li Shenron]

I would certainly like both, but I think variable party size support is more important, because it will affect how many groups can play. You can't nicely kick someone out of your gaming group because you're too many, and you can't always find an extra player, so IMHO D&D really need to support parties as small as 2 PCs (or even 1) as as many as possible (I'd say at least up to 8).

Variable level comes second for me, although some variance (let's say at least 2 levels difference) is important, but more than that it's rather a nice-to-have feature than a must-have.

 

[dkyle]

Varying party size in 4E is trivial. You just have an XP budget per player per encounter. And the treasure system scales as well.

I can't really speak to modules (since I've never used them), but considering how simple 4E encounter design is, it has to be trivial to adapt the printed encounters on the fly.

 

[Lanefan]

Varying party size in 4E is trivial. You just have an XP budget per player per encounter. And the treasure system scales as well.

Treasure is trivial anyway, a DM can always lob in more or less as she sees fit for her game; and as it's (usually) up to the players how it gets divided the players have only themselves to blame for any imbalance caused by unfair division (I've seen this happen).

As for the XP budget idea, I haven't run enough (converted) 4e modules yet to know whether x-amount of XP always translates into y-amount of challenge for a given party regardless what particular opponents make up those XP. I have learned, however, not to try and pre-guess how lethal a 4e module encounter might be to my parties, as they often seem to play out differently than they read.

I'm just finishing up running "Marauders of the Dune Sea" converted to 1e, and a couple of encounters in there that I thought would be really tough ended up manageable, while one in particular I thought would be straightforward almost wiped out half the party.

I can't really speak to modules (since I've never used them), but considering how simple 4E encounter design is, it has to be trivial to adapt the printed encounters on the fly.

Depends how touchy the math is, I suppose. I mean, if an encounter with 8 foes is set up for a party of 5, if I've got 10 in the party does simply doubling the foes' numbers still work? It certainly gives the foes more opportunity to spiral on a few PCs if they're smart enough to think of that; and I find that depending on what the foes are and-or have going for them just straight doubling (or going by ratio) can wobble even in 1e's coarser math. 2 dragons are more than twice as deadly as one, for example...if they're smart.

I know in our 3e game where the party was usually huge (compared to design) the DM had to do all kinds of messing with CR to find us a challenge that would *be* a challenge but not slaughter us; he usually got it right, give or take, but there were a few occasions where "run away" was pretty much the only option.

Lanefan

 

[GX.Sigma]

Since 5e is going to have rules for hirelings (0-level employees and mercenaries) and henchmen (fully-fledged NPC party members), I should hope the adventure building guidelines have lots and lots of wiggle room.

Presumably they'll have something that says "a party member of X level is good for Y amount of XP per adventuring day", and you can fiddle with that (or not) as the situation warrants.

 

[Yora]

How a larger or smaller party performs depends entirely on what creatures the DM has fighting them. I think every RPG allows parties of any size.

 

[Lanefan]

How a larger or smaller party performs depends entirely on what creatures the DM has fighting them. I think every RPG allows parties of any size.

Every RPG *allows* parties of any size but how well is each RPG *designed* for them? Even within D&D the different editions have given different experiences when trying to run a party that is, for example, twice or three times as big as the designers had in mind. Never mind that each edition has been designed with a slightly different standard party size in mind (1e was 6-8, 2e I'm not sure, 3e was 4, 4e was 5).

From what I've seen I'd say 1e was the best (but still far from perfect) at handling very large parties, but the flip side is it's quite possibly the worst at dealing with a party of 1.

Another aspect to making large parties viable is combat has to be efficient; as a combat that grinds with 4 PCs is going to really grind when scaled up for 10. In fact, I'm partway through running an example of this right now: our combats aren't the most efficient but we usually get even the big ones done in well under the hour; but one of my parties right now has 18 characters in it, and they're up against 8 Shambling Mounds with all their funky defenses and damage reduction (check yer 1e MM, you'll see what I mean) - wiped out the back half of last session and they're still only about half-done. Longest combat I've run in many a year, but fun watching how all those characters try to interact and function even vaguely as a team.

Lanefan

 

[steeldragons]

I'll just add my voice to Lanefan's original post. I would very much like to see 5e be able to handle groups of 1) various numbers of PCs and 2) variable levels of those PCs within the same party. Though, in addition to 3) if you prefer X style of play/Y type of "balance"/or whatever other reason, generate a party of 5 PCs "only", who are all, always, at the same level of experience.

From my limited experiences with online games, here on ENworld, it seems to top out in manageability at 4 or 5 characters. And leveling is,, more or less, at the same time...or very close (within 1 level of each other).

For the tables, my best and longest running groups have been anywhere from 4 to 7 or 8. Sometimes, with the occasional temporary addition or casual gamer coming in for a part of the adventure, getting up to 10 or so...I recall one "holiday weekend marathon" where we had about 15 people for a limited [not "one shot", technically, but this single weekend] shot".

Wow that was nuts. But tons of fun.

Level ranges, generally, stayed within 2 of each other...maybe occasionally 3 as the thieves jumped ahead of most spellcasters for a limited period of time.

There was never "Hey no fair! They're 5th level and I'm still 4th!" or "How come they get to be 4th but I haven't made 2nd yet! This isn't 'Balanced'!" It was just the way it was...and we had fun doing it.

Thankfully, as the op notes, the adventures were written and designed that you would have these discrepancies and written with the idea that it was entirely possible for you to have a party of a couple of 4th levels, two 5th and maybe a 6th all in the same party at the same time. Could the 6th do more and last longer? Yes. But you played your character to the hilt of your conception and everyone got by.

Even with homebrewed adventures, I don't really ever recall jumping more than 1 level or maybe 2 (if a really long arc) over the course of a single adventure. IOW doing a "for levels 4-7" module usually meant everyone was coming out at 6th or 7th, maybe the top would be 8th, depending on what level you'd started.

I see no reason this can't be duplicated and presented as, not only possible, but encouraged.

Naturally, there should be multiple "rules" offered (in the DMG I would imagine) for How XP should/could be doled out (what actually constitutes XP for the players) and/or (for those who don't want to use XP at all) different ways you can "level up" your group without the use of XP (i.e. "Adventure's done, you all survived/succeed. Everyone is now level 3" or what have you).

So, as I envision it, you could have one group playing 5e with 6 or 8 PCs of a 2-3 level spread and another, easily, could be just 3 or 5 PCs all of the same level, leveling up all at once/at the end of each adventure (or whenever the DM says so). And, even, vice versa (larger groups leveling simultaneously, smaller groups leveling at their individual rates/XPs).

But, yeah. Hopefully, this'll all be covered/offered in the 5e DMG and, as for [how I view] just about every single other element of 5e, everyone gets to play how/what they like.
--SD

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Varying party size in 4E is trivial. You just have an XP budget per player per encounter. And the treasure system scales as well.

I can't really speak to modules (since I've never used them), but considering how simple 4E encounter design is, it has to be trivial to adapt the printed encounters on the fly.

Yes and no. Yes, you can simply change the budget, and the game scales quite well in expected results. What it doesn't do, is scale well in the time of play and the nature of that play.

For example, as one who usually runs large parties, I've noticed that somewhere, usually around the sixth or seventh player, there is a drastic drop off in attention if you use cyclic initiative. That is, strictly from the math, you would expect cyclic initiative to take a linearly increasing amount of time to go around the table, based on the particpants (adjusting for individual analysis paralysis and the like). However, once you cross the "boredom line" on that linear increase, people stop paying as much attention, and this in turn increases the time it takes.

This is a problem that D&D has seldom addressed well, though in AD&D people probably didn't see it, because the upper limit was higher. Not many people ran for 6, 8, 11, and 15 people. I can attest that the same cut off is there in AD&D, just up around 11 or 12 people. (It varies somewhat by DM, too, of course.) One reason was the simpler nature of low-level AD&D, and another is the side-by-side initiative means that the bottleneck is not action resolution but communication between DM and players. So it's not an accident that the problem start hitting hard at about the same max (12) as can have a long, productive business meeting or sit around a table.

I think the answer is that every time some designer feels the needs to write a sentence such as: "This works better for N people." or "The expected average is N players." .... that should be taken as a sign that there is something off on the underlying design. Design it to scale by participants (and by level of participants), and it will. It merely constrains the design in ways that might not matter to people that think 4-6 players + DM is Thor's gift to gaming, heretics be damned.

I'm sure that there are parallel issues in the 2-3 player area, but I can only guess what they might be, rarely having run that way, and never by choice. DM + solo player is such an odd bird, I hesitate to say whether that can be readily and seemlessly included or not.