Any tips on scaling some of the encounters? I am doing the Death House as I have 6 new players that are doing DnD for the first time. thanks in advance for the help
Wow, nine is a lot of players at one table. Don't envy you trying to juggle that. Death House especially can be a real character killer anyway so I'd be loath to increase the CR of the monsters or increase their attack power but obviously you don't want everything going down quickly before everyone has had at least one attack so probably the easiest would be increasing the hit points to maximum and maybe boosting the AC by a point or two to make them harder to kill while keeping their ability to kill players the same. The other option is include more of something such as 5 ghouls instead of 4, you can even do this as waves of re-enforcements so the players only face a certain number at a time but more come in if the fight is proving too easy which again increases the difficulty to kill the monsters without increasing their ability to kill back.
The other thing I've found really helpful when running big player groups like that is Matt Colville's advice that encounter balance doesn't end when initiative is rolled, instead feel free to change monster stats on the fly based on what's happening. Increase or decrease their HP, suddenly decide that a monster that hasn't gone yet is actually a boss with twice the health and a higher armour class, bring in re-enforcements or have monsters retreat if you think there's not enough or too many. The base assumption of the game is parties of 4-6 so it's balanced for half the people you have and as a result it will be tricky to make every encounter as balanced as you might like without mid-combat tweaks
CoS is a seriously brutal campaign straight out of the can. Death House can easily wipe a party of accomplished adventurers proceeding with care and caution. Since you have mostly new players who are unlikely to have a great understanding of their own abilities, many of the strategies and tactics experienced players bring to the game or the monsters they face, you should prolly see how things progress to decide whether or not you even need to upscale anything at all. I second the notion that adjustments are better made on the fly, mid-encounter.
Any tips on scaling some of the encounters? I am doing the Death House as I have 6 new players that are doing DnD for the first time. thanks in advance for the help
Wow, nine is a lot of players at one table. Don't envy you trying to juggle that. Death House especially can be a real character killer anyway so I'd be loath to increase the CR of the monsters or increase their attack power but obviously you don't want everything going down quickly before everyone has had at least one attack so probably the easiest would be increasing the hit points to maximum and maybe boosting the AC by a point or two to make them harder to kill while keeping their ability to kill players the same. The other option is include more of something such as 5 ghouls instead of 4, you can even do this as waves of re-enforcements so the players only face a certain number at a time but more come in if the fight is proving too easy which again increases the difficulty to kill the monsters without increasing their ability to kill back.
The other thing I've found really helpful when running big player groups like that is Matt Colville's advice that encounter balance doesn't end when initiative is rolled, instead feel free to change monster stats on the fly based on what's happening. Increase or decrease their HP, suddenly decide that a monster that hasn't gone yet is actually a boss with twice the health and a higher armour class, bring in re-enforcements or have monsters retreat if you think there's not enough or too many. The base assumption of the game is parties of 4-6 so it's balanced for half the people you have and as a result it will be tricky to make every encounter as balanced as you might like without mid-combat tweaks
CoS is a seriously brutal campaign straight out of the can. Death House can easily wipe a party of accomplished adventurers proceeding with care and caution. Since you have mostly new players who are unlikely to have a great understanding of their own abilities, many of the strategies and tactics experienced players bring to the game or the monsters they face, you should prolly see how things progress to decide whether or not you even need to upscale anything at all. I second the notion that adjustments are better made on the fly, mid-encounter.
Wow thank you so much, this helps a lot!!!