Scaling Adventures

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Howler
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Scaling Adventures

Post by Howler »

I ran my first Sailors on the Starless Sea session and my group of 4 players will likely finish the adventure after one more session. They're having a great time and really enjoy it.

I've been looking through the published Level 1 adventures for what to do after Sailors. The players really want to run just one character each instead of 2 or 3 or running henchmen, but I haven't found an adventure yet that's Level 1 for 4 characters. I've also noticed that even the higher level adventures seem to have a large number of characters in play.

I've scaled down adventures in 5e D&D for smaller parties without much trouble as there's a well defined system for enemy difficulty. Are there any tips out there for doing the same with DCC adventures? I thought I might try to find something that's for around 8 Level 1 players and just half the number of enemies in each encounter, but with things not necessarily being linear, I'm unsure of that approach.

Have any of you scaled down the published adventures for smaller groups? What methods worked well for you?

*EDIT: Forgot to mention that I've also considered running another 0-level funnel, but with 4 Level 1 characters. I'm not sure 4 Level 1 characters are as strong as 12 - 15 Level 0s?
Last edited by Howler on Tue Jul 19, 2016 7:01 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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GnomeBoy
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Re: Scaling Adventures

Post by GnomeBoy »

From various reports, however many players you have, it seems to work the 'same' for them to run 4 Zeroes each or 1 1st Level character each. If you want to switch back and forth between adventures being funnels or 1st Level adventures, it seems to work just as well to run them for the 'other' set of types. Or even mix some players with 4 Zeroes and others with their 1st Level dudes.

As for your main question, don't forget: henchmen. A copy of page 310 is a permanent part of my toolkit folder.
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Raven_Crowking
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Re: Scaling Adventures

Post by Raven_Crowking »

An easy way to prep potential henchmen is to use the Purple Sorcerer ap to print out large number of 0-levels as a text document rather than on sheets. Voila! Reams of henchmen at your disposal!
SoBH pbp:

Cathbad the Meek (herbalist Wizard 1): AC 9; 4 hp; S 7, A 7, St 10, P 17, I 13, L 8; Neutral; Club, herbs, 50' rope, 50 cp; -1 to melee attack rolls. Hideous scar.
Howler
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Re: Scaling Adventures

Post by Howler »

Thanks, I have a couple of weeks to figure out what to run next so I'll keep researching adventure modules. It would be nice if there were a list of recommended group size for all of them. For some, it's a little hard to find the info.
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Fenris Ulfhamr
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Re: Scaling Adventures

Post by Fenris Ulfhamr »

One thing I love about DCC is there is really no need to scale per se as XP is awarded by difficulty/risk/loss during an encounter. If the campaign ends up being easy, low XP and the baddies catch up. Too hard and the survivors level up to par-or wipe completely!.

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catseye yellow
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Re: Scaling Adventures

Post by catseye yellow »

two published lankhmar modules (masks and FRPGD one) are meant for 4 characters as lankhmar is geared towards smaller troupe play.
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