(3.5) Bigger Group size and challenging encounters

[Bassikpoet]

Which is a better way to increase the difficulty of an encounter to fit a five member party as a opposed to a four member party?

Is it better to increase the CR of a single monster or to introduce additional monsters while keeping the CR of the main baddy the same?

The way I see it, increasing the CR of a single monster can lead to an increased chance of player death as said creature will more than likely focus on a single PC. For example, a group of 5 level 5 characters is fighting a CR 6 melee creature. Said creature has a much higher chance of hitting and dealing damage to any PC (given that said creature has an increased to hit). That single PC has a much higher chance of dying.

However, if we go with the "increasing number of enemies" route. According to the DMG and the whole CR system, introduced enemies will be at a much lower CR and have very little impact on the battle. This would in turn do very little to change the difficulty of the battle.

I guess the question comes down to this: "Is it more challenging to fight a single enemy or multiple enemies? (Keeping to the rules for encounter building in 3.5 DMG)

[Ponce]

Multiple enemies tend to be more difficult. When the entire party can throw everything they've got at one target, it has a tendency to get shut down pretty quick through a variety of methods.

[Prometheus]

I started to use the same rules for increasing monsters, except I scale the players to four rather than one. So six PCs can handle CR+1, eight PCs can handle CR+2. But I had a rather long campaign with this many people and frequently found I had to take encounters at least one step larger for it to be a decent challenge - of course, I can't say whether this is the number or players.

[Hal]

Honestly, I've found that a fun way of giving a challenge, for groups of any size, is to just throw waves of modestly difficult creatures at them until they're tired of it.

For example, I had a party of three level 5 players who had to hold a bridge against waves of CR 3 undead. There were a lot to hold off, so I also gave each player control of 3 CR 3 Warriors. It ended up being pretty fun, though it took an entire session to work through it all.

[tyckspoon]

Generally you will get better results (in terms of actually increasing the challenge and in being able to better tune the fights) by increasing the number of enemies in an encounter. Two basic reasons are action economy and the occasional 'level check' ability on a monster. The biggest advantage a standard party has over a single monster is that they can do at least four things every round to the opponent's one action; the ratio tips even more heavily in the party's favor if they have a lot of Swift and Immediate action abilities, like Quickened spells/Psionic powers/Tome of Battle Boosts. Making a lone enemy stronger usually doesn't address that.

The other potential error point is accidentally throwing a level-check at the party that they aren't equipped to deal with yet. These are things like monsters with SR, DR, and Regeneration types that the party can't effectively handle. Or monsters with 'affects lower HD'-type abilities that would be damaging to an equal-level party but just destroy a party fighting above their CR.. incorporeal undead tend to be particularly bad for this, since they start showing up around (book value, anyway) CR 3, and the party may not even have magical weapons to use yet.

[Lycan 01]

Meh, my experience is:

Lots of weak enemies can quickly overwelm your group. My 3 lvl 1 adventurers got picked apart by 6 kobold minions, 4 kobold skirmishers, and 2 kobold slingers. I had to pretty much can the campaign right then and there - if they couldn't clean out a hive of kobolds, they couldn't take most of the sessions I'd been working on.

One strong enemy and a few weak enemies, though, tends to work out well. Another lvl 1 group, 2 guys who were actually playing DnD for the first time, had a very even battle with 2 kobold skirmishers and a lvl 3 kobold Warrior.


Of course, I don't go by CR and all that. I go by whats best for the plot and the game experience itself. So just do what you think would be the most fun! :smallbiggrin:

[Sstoopidtallkid]

Lots of weak enemies can quickly overwelm your group. My 3 lvl 1 adventurers got picked apart by 6 kobold minions, 4 kobold skirmishers, and 2 kobold slingers. I had to pretty much can the campaign right then and there - if they couldn't clean out a hive of kobolds, they couldn't take most of the sessions I'd been working on.12 Kobolds. Against 3 PCs. Yeah, that's pretty rough. Level 1 PCs are weak, have few AoE abilities, and can die very easily. @ the OP:Multiple monsters are better, as single strong monsters fall prey to Action Economy and have unfair advantages like saves. And don't trust CR, play through it, preferably with your party's characters. My DM recently ran an encounter that he pulled straight from the module with us and would have had at least 2 PCs dead if he hadn't fiated it away. We looked at it later, and though we are EPL 9 and that was CR 11, it was probably closer to 13-14. And that was a published adventure. CR is bull.

[Lycan 01]

Oh. Oops...

Oh well, I switched to Call of Cthulhu. Now I'm encouraged to overkill the PCs! And they enjoy it, too! :smallbiggrin: