Hello, I got recently persuaded by a friend to start DMing. Now the problem is I've been playing with a mixed group, where some friends take it seriously and some don't. I was originally counting on four players to start the adventure with, but two of them seem too unreliable and I don't want to start a long story that would take forever to finish. I and the other two friends have been looking for more people to play with, but I've started considering running the module for only two people.
Reading through the module it became clear it's not an easy adventure, especially for a small party. So I'm looking for some advice on how to adjust the game for a small party. I was thinking either increasing the player levels right from the start or giving them followers. One even told me he wouldn't mind playing multiple characters.
Do any of you have any suggestions on how to run this adventure with a small group or should I keep looking for more people?
There are 2 things that make it easier for small parties. 1) Drinking potions can be done as a Bonus Action (no matter the class) 2) Give them access to more healing potions than a normal game would
Just note that at least 1 of the players needs to be a strong Tanky type class or else no amount of potions will save them. Then what I did was I would plug my party into the encounter tool (the one here on this site) and add the monsters starting from the lowest CR. I tuned pretty much every fight to be Medium to just barely into Hard for the most part and it felt great! The only truly difficult fights to balance were the boss fights but with the potion rule from above my group was typically able to handle most fights without too much trouble.
Semi-spoiler: Once the party gets Lulu they will have a much much easier time if you allow them to control lulu themselves instead of you controlling her.
PS: I would also give them access to more money/magic items since they are a small group to make sure they can buy potions. (The traveling Bazaar is a great way to have them shop once they make it to Avernus)
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
Hello, I got recently persuaded by a friend to start DMing. Now the problem is I've been playing with a mixed group, where some friends take it seriously and some don't. I was originally counting on four players to start the adventure with, but two of them seem too unreliable and I don't want to start a long story that would take forever to finish. I and the other two friends have been looking for more people to play with, but I've started considering running the module for only two people.
Reading through the module it became clear it's not an easy adventure, especially for a small party. So I'm looking for some advice on how to adjust the game for a small party. I was thinking either increasing the player levels right from the start or giving them followers. One even told me he wouldn't mind playing multiple characters.
Do any of you have any suggestions on how to run this adventure with a small group or should I keep looking for more people?
There are 2 things that make it easier for small parties.
1) Drinking potions can be done as a Bonus Action (no matter the class)
2) Give them access to more healing potions than a normal game would
Just note that at least 1 of the players needs to be a strong Tanky type class or else no amount of potions will save them.
Then what I did was I would plug my party into the encounter tool (the one here on this site) and add the monsters starting from the lowest CR. I tuned pretty much every fight to be Medium to just barely into Hard for the most part and it felt great! The only truly difficult fights to balance were the boss fights but with the potion rule from above my group was typically able to handle most fights without too much trouble.
Semi-spoiler: Once the party gets Lulu they will have a much much easier time if you allow them to control lulu themselves instead of you controlling her.
PS: I would also give them access to more money/magic items since they are a small group to make sure they can buy potions. (The traveling Bazaar is a great way to have them shop once they make it to Avernus)