D&D 5E Scaling Battles: How? (Princes of the apocalypse)

[Tyranthraxus]

Hi,
Im currently running Princes the Apocalypse for a 7 player group. We are currently about to hit the Circle of the Scarlet Moon . My Group range between level 5 and level 6. 3 6's and 4 5's. Now from my understanding the modules are written with 5 players in mind.

Cant someone direct me on how I could scale this particular section to 7 players.

(Im most cocerned about the areas past the Burning Man).

This was what I was going to do

H1 Courtyard: Normall 2 Eternal Flame Priests ( was going to make it 3)
H2 Wicker Man: Just keep the 1 Fire Elemental
H3: Increase 3 Hell Hounds to 4 and 2 Eternal Flame Guardians to 3
H4: Scaffolding . 2 Eternal Flame Guardians to 3
H5: Upper Entry Chamber: 2 Eternal Flame Guardians to 3, 1 Azer to 2 Azers
H6: Downward Path. 5 Magmin to 7 Magmin
H7: One Eternal Flame Priest. 2 Eternal Flame Guardians to 3 Guardians
H8 : Elizar Dryflagon. Keep as is (BBEG)
H9: Bats in the Attic. 4 Giant Bats becomes 6 Giant Bats.


Could someone please look over this and see If Im on the right track?

 

[S'mon]

Have you read the DMG scaling advice pages 82-83? In particular Party Size pg 83. It looks like you should (a) increase monster budget by 50%, then increase budget again for party size multiplier. But the system is more designed to let you reality check your set encounter than to build up. Overall it looks as if the party size multiplier and the monster numbers multiplier cancel out, so that increasing monster numbers proportional to increasing party size (here +50%) works.

BTW my own preference is generally to run adventures as written, let the PCs have some easy low-xp victories, and soon the PCs will be lower level than the adventure 'expects', balancing their greater numbers.

Edit: Your biggest issue will be with the two lone BBEGs, who get a budget multiplier of x0.5 vs large
parties. This means that to keep the challenge up you need to give the BBEG a hench-monster
worth half the XPV of the BBEG.

 

[Warmaster Horus]

You should know your party by now. I'm usually one to overclock the encounters then scale back if necessary.

 

[Celtavian]

I usually look at it as a percentage. If I have 7 players, that's 40% higher than the recommended five (I usually work with 50%). I boost the numbers in all encounters by about 50%. If the encounters are reasonably well designed, this should increase the challenge and necessary xp by enough to keep the pace the adventure intended. If you have big bosses, add minions worth about 50% more xp to work with the boss. If you want to make solos challenging, boost their hit points and damage output by roughly the same percentage. If the damage is going to one shot players, add an extra attack that you can direct at another player to boost the damage. It's how I like to do scaling when I know the baseline numbers the module was created for and my group exceeds that number. It allows me to not only provide a sufficient challenge, but to ensure the xp pacing stays on track.