Scaling for large parties

[Dingleberry]

I'm be co-DMing an extended weekend session in a month or so, and we're trying to find a published module to use. The problem is that the group will be large: 9 PCs, probably starting at 3rd or 4th level. How would you scale that to published modules? For example, how would a party of 9 3rd-level PCs fare in a module designed for a party of 4 5th-level PCs?

If it helps, we're running 3.5 and sticking to core rules; the group is all experienced players and good friends, but only a handful of us have played a regular campaign in years, so it's likely that we'll mostly keep things relatively simple.

 

[aboyd]

Wow, imagine that. I run a campaign of 3rd & 4th level characters, and there are 8 players if everyone shows up. In addition, they usually have 3 pets and 3 hirelings. Going around the table to do a single round of combat can take 45 minutes, if I don't keep it tightly controlled. Sometimes we use a 3-minute or even 2-minute timer to try to keep each player's turn short.

Anyway, these guys will decimate a 4th level module. Right now they are running through the Cage of Delirium module, which is intended for 4 to 6 characters, level 6 to 8. It's too easy so far, although they haven't come across the spectre yet. If it level drains successfully for a couple of rounds, it'll kill at least 1 character, because they don't have a lot of levels to lose. The problem is that the spectre has no allies to take hits, which means it'll be completely surrounded and taking 8 hits per round, minimum. Even a strong single character cannot withstand that many opposing actions for long.

My favorite way to gauge how appropriate a module is, is to enter the # & level of characters into the encounter calculator, along with a representative encounter from the module. For example, I just entered into it that I have 7 players at ECL of 4, plus 1 player at ECL of 3. Then I entered the spectre stats on the right side (1 monster with a CR of 8). I hit the calculate button, and it tells me two important things. First, under the "Difficulty" field, it tells me the encounter will be "very difficult" but it doesn't say it will be deadly. That's imperfect -- I will probably manage to kill 1 of the 8 characters if I try hard enough. However, it's generally accurate. A CR 8 monster without level drain would probably be dispatched by my crew with no problem.

Anyway, there is another box that is really important. On the lower left side is the "Effective Party Level" field. That field says my PCs are effectively a level "5.9" party, or basically the equivalent of 4 6th level adventurers. So a 6th level adventure should be about normal for them. Of course, when I did this little calculation just now, I didn't enter in the animal companions nor did I enter the hired mercenaries. If I did, the character level would be closer to 7, which starts to explain why most encounters in the Cage of Delirium module -- which aren't as tough as the spectre -- are not much of a challenge to them.

Anyway, assuming your players are competent at D&D 3.5 edition, and assuming that the encounter calculator is correct, your 9 3rd level characters are just a bit tougher than a group of 5th level adventurers. So they should get through a 5th level module probably OK. I'd guess that if the CRs are all 7 or lower, no characters will die. If the module has a CR 8+ enemy, they'll be walking a fine line between success & failure.

EDIT: I should also add that more than a few people on En World have made the assertion that characters with stats hovering around the 32 point-buy or better are effectively a level more powerful than the typical 25 or 29 point-buy characters. So if you're letting them have high stats, you might expect to find that they are slightly more capable than projected. Slightly.

 

[Herzog]

how would a party of 9 3rd-level PCs fare in a module designed for a party of 4 5th-level PCs?

don't do this. As aboyd illustrated with his spectre example, you may end up with 'killing' encounters that should be rated as 'difficult' at most.

Instead, run a 3rd lvl adventure, but increase the number of opponents to match the Encounter Level. (Unless the number of opponents would increase beyond the number of characters. see below)

As a generic rule, when scaling encounters, I always compare the number of opponents to the number of characters.
If there are more opponents than characters in the party, and I need to increase the EL (because there are more characters than anticipated in the module) I increase the individual CR of the monster.
If there are less opponents than characters in the party, and I need to increase the EL, I increase the number of monsters.

Most modules will have encounters with one, two, or three monsters at a time. This means most of the time you will be increasing the number of monsters to match the increased size of the party. However, sometimes you run into the encounter with the 12 kobolds. In that case, either replace the kobolds with a slightly better creature, or even better, add some class levels to them. (rogue levels on your kobolds will make your characters squirm!)

This method will also ensure that when you're running into the fact that only half of your group showed up (and that will probably happen once or twice) you can easily balance your encounters by reducing the number of opponents again.... (For ease of use, reducing the number of kobolds in the abovementioned encounter after having added the rogue levels in anticipation of the full group is preferred to having to remove some rogue levels on the spot....)

Now, if you're dead set on running 5th lvl adventures with your 3rd lvl group, take head of my earlier warning: single monster encounters will probably prove to be of the save-or-die kind: They either hit the monster with some lucky rolls and kill it before it can do damage, or it takes a couple of characters with it.....
Remember that higher level adventures will probably contain higher level monsters, occasionally with immunities or AC's the characters won't be able to bypass on their low level!

Edit: @aboyd: You shouldn't include animal companions in your calculation of effective party level. They should be included in the power level of the Druid or Ranger. (that they man not be is a question of class balance....)
Whether you should include the mercenaries depends on how much they cost, and whether you keep to the wealth-by-level standards. If you do, and the price of the mercenaries is 'reasonable', the mercenaries are a substitute for magic weapons and armor, so they should not count. (Note: this all from a RAW perspective. I can vividly imagine that your calculations are more accurate than the RAW one would result in )

 

[frankthedm]

how would a party of 9 3rd-level PCs fare in a module designed for a party of 4 5th-level PCs?

It really depends on what creatures are being used. Single High damage foes will cut the PCs down left and right, but if the encounters are based on groups of foes, it can work.

In general, more foes of lesser caliber are a better choice with bigger groups. Foes that are powerful individually will be killed swiftly as the group wisely decides to focus on them. big number soof foes help make sure everyone has something to kill.

[IMaGel]http://www.enworld.org/forum/attachments/d-d-4th-edition-rules/33057d1206025063t-room-sizes-classic.gif[/IMaGel]You want PCs fighting their foes, not fighting each other for elbow room. Remove some walls, widen some hallways, but keep plenty of rubble for cover and some hindering terrain so the players don't have it too easy focus firing and dog piling thier foes.

Thankfully D&D has no shortage of burrowing horrors that make dungeon remodeling easy and semi plausible. Reduce a good portion of the walls to difficult terrain, leaving a few functioning pillars and blamo, instant oversized encounter area.

Also have backdoors that let foes circumvent body blockades the players create. Tactical placement is well and good, but used too often it makes encounters static.

 

[irdeggman]

Years ago I asked the sage via e-mail somethign similar and Skip replied to the effect that a good rule of thumb would be to calcualte the average party level and then add +1 for every 2 PCs (rounded up) above 4.

Now - you need to be real careful on the individual CR of creatures used though. Sometimes while the CR would be about right their individual immunities would make them way too powerful. Things that require spells of 2 levels higher than anyone in the party could cast would be too difficult to have.

So it still requires a substantial amount of "eye-balling" to get it right.

I do agree with the consensus though - the party will wade through the module as written without breaking a sweat.

In general you are better off avoiding single high CR monsters and insted use more lower leveled ones to make things work out better.

 

[Dingleberry]

Thanks, all. It's been a REALLY long time since I've run a group larger than 4, so your comments are very helpful.

I'm specifically looking at using either "The Red Hand of Doom" or "The Sinister Spire" (neither of which I've read in great detail yet) - any specific opinions about how either of those would work for a large but lower-level party? Or any recommendations for a published module that would work better?

 

[Michael Silverbane]

My suggestion would be that, since your group is slightly bigger than the size of two normal parties, just use twice as many monsters. When it says that there should be one critter, put in two. When there's four, put in eight.

Also, in addition to frankthedm's advice about opening up your encounter areas. I would also consider allowing two medium or smaller sized critters to share a space without penalty, and to allow large or larger critters to share up to one-quarter of their space with no penalty. This will allow you to squeeze more folks into a smaller area so that all of your rooms don't have to be quite so large.

And finally, remember that combats with that many participants are going to take quite a while, so you may not be able to fit as many into each session. Consider stacking the odds slightly against the player characters in order to make up for this.

 

[aboyd]

First, a general comment. I've read the responses so far, and I agree with the consensus that you want to avoid any high-CR monster with special immunities or abilities that cannot be beat by 3rd level characters. However, I don't agree that it means that you should just take a 3rd-level module and double all the enemies.

As someone running a campaign with lots of people in it, I can tell you that you end up with player boredom as 9 people wait for 1 DM to take an extraordinarily long turn running all the extra monsters. They're already waiting maybe a half-hour each just to get their 3 minutes of spotlight, so dragging it out longer seems... less than optimal.

Maybe if you were to deliberately debilitate the extra monsters so that they were like 4th-edition mooks (is that what they call 1-shot enemies?) then it might make sense. The players hit 'em and they fall -- fine, things keep things moving. But I'm not sure that would be much of a challenge for the players.

I really feel that a better approach is what you appear to be doing. Take a higher level module -- not too high, don't go crazy -- and then nerf the 2 or 3 set-piece encounters that are supposed to be super-hard. The other "normal" encounters will simply be overpowered as a troop of 9 adventurers overruns the module.

I'm be co-DMing an extended weekend session in a month or so, and we're trying to find a published module to use.

OK, you have maybe a 3 day weekend. Got it.

I'm specifically looking at using either "The Red Hand of Doom" or "The Sinister Spire" (neither of which I've read in great detail yet) - any specific opinions about how either of those would work for a large but lower-level party?

I doubt people are typically able to complete Red Hand of Doom in a weekend. Even a long weekend with 12 hours of play each day will not suffice. So expect to hack the storyline down or else truncate "in medias res" as everyone goes home before the denoument.

Anyway, I own RHoD and I've been through it as a player, partially. It's going to be too hard for 9 3rd-level adventurers. This is because it's intended for 6th level characters at least and your 9 adventurers count as 5th level characters at best. This means even the run-of-the-mill encounters will start to be scary, although maybe a handful of weaker encounters will be OK.

There is a dragon with a flyby attack pretty early in the module. Because your characters won't have flight yet, the only real way they will be able to take chunks out of the dragon's hide will be to stand near characters under attack and ready actions for when the dragon comes near. They can bow-shot it too, but this will just plink away its hit points so slowly that everyone will be eaten before the encounter ends.

There is another encounter with a bugbear cleric & minions that he raises from the dead as you kill them. This turns an OK encounter into a deadly encounter, because it is essentially 2 encounters back to back with no time to get healing.

Also, the Red Hand of Doom is doubly-dangerous even for appropriately-leveled characters because it is highly compacted timewise. So there is little time for the players to craft magic items or even search out magic items that might help them to compensate for their lack of levels.

Having given you all those warnings, I'd still do it if it were me. But I would just remove every dragon completely, I'd knock off 1 enemy from each encounter, and I might try to not read ahead so much or do... something that would cause me to play the enemies sub-optimally. I mean, I might not use all their special abilities, or I might not engage in all the best tactics, etc.

If you play it dumb, they might survive to the end.

Be sure to level them up between each chapter. Don't leave them at level 3 all the way through the whole thing. They'll be slaughtered by the later parts if they don't get to catch up somewhat.

 

[Dingleberry]

Thanks again. For clarity: I certainly wouldn't expect to finish RHoD, or maybe even the Sinister Spire - and the players would be fine with that.

 

[concerro]

I'm be co-DMing an extended weekend session in a month or so, and we're trying to find a published module to use. The problem is that the group will be large: 9 PCs, probably starting at 3rd or 4th level. How would you scale that to published modules? For example, how would a party of 9 3rd-level PCs fare in a module designed for a party of 4 5th-level PCs?

If it helps, we're running 3.5 and sticking to core rules; the group is all experienced players and good friends, but only a handful of us have played a regular campaign in years, so it's likely that we'll mostly keep things relatively simple.

The best way to do it is to split the party into two groups for purposes of designing encounters. This method works quite well.