D&D 5E Scaling Phandelver for 6 PCs

[Tormyr]

I have been running a campaign of 6 players in an adventure path since April. Solo monsters that are not legendary creatures can have lots of problems against a party (especially of 6) in 5e. I have learned to put at least something else in the encounter whenever possible storywise. In this case, not much lives nicely with a nothic except maybe another nothic. I would recommend doing something Chris Perkins has suggested in the past on his blog. As the DM, don't commit all of your forces to the fight at the beginning. If the party has trouble with it, things do not get too hard. If the encounter is turning out to be too easy, you can bring in reinforcements partway through the encounter. Now, you have to put at least 1 nothic into the encounter. If the party struggles, leave it at that. If they are cruising through the encounter, add another nothic when it becomes evident that things are too easy. While the encounter as designed on XP budget is designed to be moderate for a 4 character party, having a range of 1-2 nothics in the encounter gives you between an easy and challenging encounter by xp budget. By adjusting on the fly, you can keep the difficulty for the party somewhere in the middle. If it is to easy, you can make it harder. If the players are making a hash of it or things are just right or on the hard side for them because of the dice, you keep the second one out. The players never know one way or the other.

 

[drjones]

I'll be running Lost Mine of Phandelver on Sep 6 with six players, and the module's designed for 4.

I have zero experience scaling a published adventure and could use some tips from more experienced DMs.

Increasing the challenge for a group of monsters is straightforward -- just increase the number by half to challenge six players rather than four. It's the solo critters that have me worried.

For instance, the nothic (p.60) is Challenge 2 and worth 450xp. It has AC 15 and 45 HP. I figure if I increase the AC by 4 to make it 20% harder to hit and increase the HP by half, so 67 HP, it's likely the same challenge. Would that formula work in general for solo critters?

Assuming the challenge is equal, then the xp are just scaled for six, so 675xp total.

Any advice would be awesome, thanks!

I ran three sessions so far with a group that is unsteady, 3 players, 4 players and 6 players. For 6 I just added one or two monsters to some encounters (every other one, where they fit really). But I kept the nothic as-is mostly but I played it as a lurker mostly intent on getting the PCs to trigger a trap.

With 3 pcs I changed nothing, and they got beat up but did fine. It probably helped that they were level 3 by then.

I would be a little wary of just increasing mob sizes by half. If you roll init for the monsters as one, you will need to fudge their actions otherwise if they get the drop on the players 6 goblins focus firing on one PC instead of 4 goblins could easily mean a dead character. Bounded accuracy makes the math different in ways I don't think we have a great handle on yet. Be ready to fudge during the game (more monsters run in, some choose to flee early etc.) based on how things go.

I'd also be wary of defense/hp upgrades, that sounds like it would make fights longer but not necessarily more fun. Maybe boost hp but not defense, YMMV.

 

[jgsugden]

The basic rules have some guidelines for encounter scaling (DM section, pgs 56 - 58). Use those. It is something that takes a moment to figure out, but getting an idea for how these recommendations work will help you eyeball it in the future.

 

[Herobizkit]

I know this is going to sound trite, but why are the players fighting the Nothic at all?

As I understand it, as the PC's approach its lair, it bombards them with mental requests for food. Sure, it happens to eat flesh... but how many corpses did the players make on the way there?

But really, a quick and fast idea is to either add one (or two, if they're less than 1 CR) extra "weakest" creature per extra person in the party, or add one "strongest" creature. Optionally, do both if the PC's outnumber the opponents in the encounter.