Let's say your running an adventure model designed for 4-6 players of level 4. If the DM has less than 4 players at his table and feels like he should have the players start at higher levels to compensate or else they'll get demolished. How would one calculate a good level to compensate them at.
Generally you'd be better off adding a sidekick NPC. Increasing levels risks bringing in abilities and features the module didn't account for. Especially raising the party from level 4 to 5, as happened earlier in the campaign my group's other DM runs. At that level, martial characters are suddenly twice as effective due to Extra Attack, and casters get game-changing spells like Fly, Counterspell, Dispel Magic, and Fireball. Yet despite those huge gains, the party is also left relatively squishy since they have fewer people to take all of the enemies' attacks. Overall it becomes very swingy.
Let's say your running an adventure model designed for 4-6 players of level 4. If the DM has less than 4 players at his table and feels like he should have the players start at higher levels to compensate or else they'll get demolished. How would one calculate a good level to compensate them at.
If you don't want to deal with extra characters and don't want to change the encounters, a party of 3 at level 5 should be fine, the 4-5 bump is very large.
I agree with Bob having the party at a higher level can cause issues because they might have abilities not expected in the module and some levels are a much bigger step than others.
Instead I would lower the monsters. Against groups that is easy, if the module has 5 enemies change it to 3. It there are 6 bring it down to 4. Against single enemies or a boss and minions lower the hit points of the boss. If the players are struggling to survive bring things down mre , if they are finding it easy make it closer to the module value.
If you're concerned about the party, then you could:
1: Use maximum hp instead of rolls or average, IE a level 4 fighter (10+3d10+4xcon) instead just has 40+4xcon. For oneshots, this is an easy way to reduce their squishiness.
2: Give them a feat or an uncommon magic item. This will boost their effectiveness somewhat.
3: drop the hp of the monsters a little. If something has 25hp, drop it to 20, for example. this will make the monsters a little easier, and less likely to steamroll the party.
4: just give them each a health potion.
5: Use the heroic rules which let you use an action to heal with your hit dice, so they can buff themselves mid-combat and make it through without being so confined to rests.
My tendency in such a situation would be to adjust the encounters to suit the party. The players have no idea what they will encounter, nor whatever level range is involved, so the players don't know what to expect and will never notice if the encounters are adjusted.
I'd also add that a level range of 4-6 is pretty unusual just because of the significant change of effectiveness for most classes at level 5. A party of 4 level 4's is very different from a party of 4 level 6's while the difference between 5-6 is relatively small in most cases. Something designed so that a group of 4-6 level 4s could succeed would likely be easy for 3 level 5s or 6s.
Anyway, my preference would be to adjust the encounters or add a friendly NPC before bumping the character levels up, unless it is just one shot where the character level doesn't really matter to the players.
I'd also add that a level range of 4-6 is pretty unusual just because of the significant change of effectiveness for most classes at level 5. A party of 4 level 4's is very different from a party of 4 level 6's while the difference between 5-6 is relatively small in most cases. Something designed so that a group of 4 level 4s could succeed would likely be easy for 3 level 5s or 6s.
When I said 4-6 I might characters not levels...
But overall I appreciate y'all's advice, I'll just lower some encounters to compensate.
Try to remove some of the action economy of the enemies, ie how many attacks they are making per round. Just lowering HP usually isn't enough because the enemies will still be putting out the same amount of damage until an enemy dies.
Some "knobs" you can use to adjust -HP -# of Enemies -Having enemies join the combat later as "reinforcements" -damage die/avg damage (sometimes you just need to lower an enemies damage a little)
As people have said, just upping the PC levels is a bad idea. PCs don't scale linearly, they make big leaps in power at certain "tiers of play".
I'd also add that a level range of 4-6 is pretty unusual just because of the significant change of effectiveness for most classes at level 5. A party of 4 level 4's is very different from a party of 4 level 6's while the difference between 5-6 is relatively small in most cases. Something designed so that a group of 4 level 4s could succeed would likely be easy for 3 level 5s or 6s.
When I said 4-6 I might characters not levels...
But overall I appreciate y'all's advice, I'll just lower some encounters to compensate.
Sorry, rolled a 1 on reading comprehension. :) ... though the principles are the same whether the issue is levels or number of characters. :)
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Let's say your running an adventure model designed for 4-6 players of level 4. If the DM has less than 4 players at his table and feels like he should have the players start at higher levels to compensate or else they'll get demolished. How would one calculate a good level to compensate them at.
Generally you'd be better off adding a sidekick NPC. Increasing levels risks bringing in abilities and features the module didn't account for. Especially raising the party from level 4 to 5, as happened earlier in the campaign my group's other DM runs. At that level, martial characters are suddenly twice as effective due to Extra Attack, and casters get game-changing spells like Fly, Counterspell, Dispel Magic, and Fireball. Yet despite those huge gains, the party is also left relatively squishy since they have fewer people to take all of the enemies' attacks. Overall it becomes very swingy.
If you don't want to deal with extra characters and don't want to change the encounters, a party of 3 at level 5 should be fine, the 4-5 bump is very large.
I agree with Bob having the party at a higher level can cause issues because they might have abilities not expected in the module and some levels are a much bigger step than others.
Instead I would lower the monsters. Against groups that is easy, if the module has 5 enemies change it to 3. It there are 6 bring it down to 4. Against single enemies or a boss and minions lower the hit points of the boss. If the players are struggling to survive bring things down mre , if they are finding it easy make it closer to the module value.
If you're concerned about the party, then you could:
1: Use maximum hp instead of rolls or average, IE a level 4 fighter (10+3d10+4xcon) instead just has 40+4xcon. For oneshots, this is an easy way to reduce their squishiness.
2: Give them a feat or an uncommon magic item. This will boost their effectiveness somewhat.
3: drop the hp of the monsters a little. If something has 25hp, drop it to 20, for example. this will make the monsters a little easier, and less likely to steamroll the party.
4: just give them each a health potion.
5: Use the heroic rules which let you use an action to heal with your hit dice, so they can buff themselves mid-combat and make it through without being so confined to rests.
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My tendency in such a situation would be to adjust the encounters to suit the party. The players have no idea what they will encounter, nor whatever level range is involved, so the players don't know what to expect and will never notice if the encounters are adjusted.
I
'd also add that a level range of 4-6 is pretty unusual just because of the significant change of effectiveness for most classes at level 5. A party of 4 level 4's is very different from a party of 4 level 6's while the difference between 5-6 is relatively small in most cases.Something designed so that a group of 4-6 level 4s could succeed would likely be easy for 3 level 5sor 6s.Anyway, my preference would be to adjust the encounters or add a friendly NPC before bumping the character levels up, unless it is just one shot where the character level doesn't really matter to the players.
[Edit: Misread the OP post ... ]
When I said 4-6 I might characters not levels...
But overall I appreciate y'all's advice, I'll just lower some encounters to compensate.
Adjust the encounters, not the PC levels.
Try to remove some of the action economy of the enemies, ie how many attacks they are making per round. Just lowering HP usually isn't enough because the enemies will still be putting out the same amount of damage until an enemy dies.
Some "knobs" you can use to adjust
-HP
-# of Enemies
-Having enemies join the combat later as "reinforcements"
-damage die/avg damage (sometimes you just need to lower an enemies damage a little)
As people have said, just upping the PC levels is a bad idea. PCs don't scale linearly, they make big leaps in power at certain "tiers of play".
Sorry, rolled a 1 on reading comprehension. :) ... though the principles are the same whether the issue is levels or number of characters. :)