New player&DM here again. Running my first campaign using Lost Mine of Phandelver. All my players are new to D&D 5e and I’ve only played a few online sessions. In either case we have 7 players in our party and I’m fairly certain the campaign is made for 5.
Now with this official content is there a calculation to determine how to increase opponents during encounters. But more importantly how do I scale for XP. I know the campaign gets players from Level 1 to 5 and that’s kind of our mission with starting with it. But my fear is that the math won’t add up for all 7 players if I keep the XP suggestions as is. What are some best practices with this?
As for scaling for XP, I wouldn't. I would keep the suggested level progression and instead scale encounter difficulty (which would of course scale XP too). You can read the following to get an idea about how to scale encounters:
Alternatively you could ignore the relationship between XP and # of monsters and just correct for it. What I mean is this: Make the encounters as hard as they need to be for your party, but keep the XP amount listed in the book the same. Then figure out how much it was supposed to be per character for a party of 4 or 5, and award that to each character.
Simple example: On pg. 19 it says "Divide 400 XP equally among the characters if the party defeats the ruffians." OK, for a party of 4 that is 100 XP each. So just give your 7 players 100 XP each. Is that more than the total in the book? Yes. So what? The book expected you to be giving about this much each, so do that.
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WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
As for scaling for XP, I wouldn't. I would keep the suggested level progression and instead scale encounter difficulty (which would of course scale XP too). You can read the following to get an idea about how to scale encounters:
Alternatively you could ignore the relationship between XP and # of monsters and just correct for it. What I mean is this: Make the encounters as hard as they need to be for your party, but keep the XP amount listed in the book the same. Then figure out how much it was supposed to be per character for a party of 4 or 5, and award that to each character.
Simple example: On pg. 19 it says "Divide 400 XP equally among the characters if the party defeats the ruffians." OK, for a party of 4 that is 100 XP each. So just give your 7 players 100 XP each. Is that more than the total in the book? Yes. So what? The book expected you to be giving about this much each, so do that.
Divide suggested XP by 4 (Sug XP \ 4 = xp per player) I like that
LMoP nets around 28200 XP, assuming all optional side-quests performed successfully, and the optimal resolution to each encounter (capture not kill the casters, kill the dragon, etc...). The only way to get to level 5's XP requirement of 6500 is with a party of 4 (a party of 5 is 1000XP shy of level 5 at the end).
If you increase the XP award by approximately 62% for each encounter, for a party of 7 you will just barely make level 5 at the end. For example, in the Smelter Cavern of the Water Echo Cave where the party faces off against 8 zombies and 1 flameskull (worth 1500XP) you would have an XP budget of 925 (1500*0.62 = 920.2) to spend to increase the award of that encounter. Maybe: 1 Flameskull, 2 Ghasts, 1 Spectre, 2 Shadows (2400XP - and just ticked over the difficulty from Hard to Deadly, so the party has to be smart when dealing with these enemies).
As mentioned above, the Encounter Builder is your friend. Be careful of simply adding more enemies to each encounter, as in 5th edition, number of attacks tends to be more telling than CR of enemies (this is somewhat taken care of for you in Encounter Builder by looking at the adjusted XP values - note the adjusted XP is just to figure out how hard the encounter will be, not to be awarded to the PCs).
In general the easiest way to scale encounters for number of characters is to just multiply the number of monsters by (number of characters) / (expected number of characters). This should retain the correct xp per character; it might or might not fit encounter budget math, but that's not a big deal. You'll have to do a bit more work for uniques and solitary monsters.
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New player&DM here again. Running my first campaign using Lost Mine of Phandelver. All my players are new to D&D 5e and I’ve only played a few online sessions. In either case we have 7 players in our party and I’m fairly certain the campaign is made for 5.
Now with this official content is there a calculation to determine how to increase opponents during encounters. But more importantly how do I scale for XP. I know the campaign gets players from Level 1 to 5 and that’s kind of our mission with starting with it. But my fear is that the math won’t add up for all 7 players if I keep the XP suggestions as is. What are some best practices with this?
Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks.
Yes, the campaign is meant for 4 to 5 players.
As for scaling for XP, I wouldn't. I would keep the suggested level progression and instead scale encounter difficulty (which would of course scale XP too). You can read the following to get an idea about how to scale encounters:
https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/dmg/creating-adventures#CreatingaCombatEncounter
https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/xgte/dungeon-masters-tools#EncounterBuilding
Personally, I would increase the number of monsters by 25% to 50% and call it a day.
Alternatively you could ignore the relationship between XP and # of monsters and just correct for it. What I mean is this: Make the encounters as hard as they need to be for your party, but keep the XP amount listed in the book the same. Then figure out how much it was supposed to be per character for a party of 4 or 5, and award that to each character.
Simple example: On pg. 19 it says "Divide 400 XP equally among the characters if the party defeats the ruffians." OK, for a party of 4 that is 100 XP each. So just give your 7 players 100 XP each. Is that more than the total in the book? Yes. So what? The book expected you to be giving about this much each, so do that.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
So like if they had to encounter 4 goblins you would suggest 8?
Divide suggested XP by 4 (Sug XP \ 4 = xp per player) I like that
By-the-numbers...
LMoP nets around 28200 XP, assuming all optional side-quests performed successfully, and the optimal resolution to each encounter (capture not kill the casters, kill the dragon, etc...). The only way to get to level 5's XP requirement of 6500 is with a party of 4 (a party of 5 is 1000XP shy of level 5 at the end).
If you increase the XP award by approximately 62% for each encounter, for a party of 7 you will just barely make level 5 at the end. For example, in the Smelter Cavern of the Water Echo Cave where the party faces off against 8 zombies and 1 flameskull (worth 1500XP) you would have an XP budget of 925 (1500*0.62 = 920.2) to spend to increase the award of that encounter. Maybe: 1 Flameskull, 2 Ghasts, 1 Spectre, 2 Shadows (2400XP - and just ticked over the difficulty from Hard to Deadly, so the party has to be smart when dealing with these enemies).
As mentioned above, the Encounter Builder is your friend. Be careful of simply adding more enemies to each encounter, as in 5th edition, number of attacks tends to be more telling than CR of enemies (this is somewhat taken care of for you in Encounter Builder by looking at the adjusted XP values - note the adjusted XP is just to figure out how hard the encounter will be, not to be awarded to the PCs).
Good luck!
If they were supposed to encounter 4 goblins, I would suggest 5 or 6 instead.
In general the easiest way to scale encounters for number of characters is to just multiply the number of monsters by (number of characters) / (expected number of characters). This should retain the correct xp per character; it might or might not fit encounter budget math, but that's not a big deal. You'll have to do a bit more work for uniques and solitary monsters.