Tips And Tricks To Adjust Adventures For Different Party Sizes And Levels In DND
Whether you’re playing through an old homebrew adventure or an official module in Dungeons & Dragons, you may realize that you have to tweak or change elements of the adventure to better suit either your party’s size or your party’s level. There are a lot of different ways to do this, but as a DM, it can sometimes be hard to know exactly where to start.
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Plus, when altering an adventure for your party’s size or level, you want to be careful not to overcorrect, and therefore make the adventure too easy or too challenging. Here are some tips and tricks for rebalancing adventures.
When To Adjust An Adventure
As a Dungeon Master, you might be wondering: how do you know when to adjust an adventure? Many pre-made modules or adventures will have a recommended party level or party size in their introduction.
For example, modules like Curse of Strahd are recommended for three to five players who progress from levels one to ten.
If you’re playing a prebuilt module, adjust the adventure whenever your party size or level exceeds the recommended amount.
If you’re playing a homebrew adventure, consider the following before adjusting the stats of the adventure:
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Adventure Features |
Details |
|---|---|
|
Roleplay vs. Combat? |
Before adjusting the adventure, ask yourself: Is this adventure more roleplay or combat-focused? If the adventure is more roleplay-focused, there might not be much need to adjust elements of the adventure. However, if it’s a combat-heavy module, you’ll want to take a close look at every encounter to make sure it’s balanced. |
|
Party Composition |
What types of classes are in your party, and how would these classes interact with the adventure? Certain classes fare better in certain types of adventures or modules. For example, clerics and paladins tend to do well in modules like Curse of Strahd, but not so well in modules like Tomb of Annihilation. Consider if the adventure needs to be tweaked at all, even if the party is larger or higher-level, given the types of classes they’re playing. |
|
Type of Players |
Lastly, consider if your table is composed mostly of newbies or experts. Depending on the type of players you have, you might want to leave an easier module feeling easier for newbies, whereas you might want to make a module that’s too easy for a large party especially tough for veterans. |
When it comes to balance, ultimately, combat is going to be your main focus.
While you can rebalance roleplay encounters, traps, and other gameplay elements for larger or more powerful parties, you’re going to want to focus most of your efforts on rebalancing combat encounters.
How To Adjust An Adventure For Party Size
When it comes to adjusting a pre-existing or homebrew adventure to your party’s size, the main thing you’re going to want to think about is your party’s action economy.
Action economy is a representation of the number of actions, bonus actions, reactions, and more that your party can take in a single round of combat.
When it comes to tracking how many action types your party can take, make sure you take note of which characters have features like multiattack, which allow them to attack more than once in a single action.
For example, if a party has four characters, that means the party could potentially have 12 different types of actions they can take in a single round of combat, sometimes before an enemy even has a chance to move or react.
This is particularly important to keep in mind for boss battles, in which the party is likely to be contending against a single enemy.
Here are some ways to adjust combat and an adventure for party size and negate action economy.
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Party Size |
How To Adjust |
|---|---|
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Fewer Than Expected |
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More Than Expected |
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These are just some of the ways, particularly in combat, you can make enemies less or more powerful and adjust for differences in party sizes.
When the party gets bigger than expected, it’s best to give enemies more turns and abilities in combat through Legendary Actions and grunts or mobs.
When you’re playing with fewer players, it’s best to remove these types of advantages to make the action economy across the board more even.
How To Adjust An Adventure For Party Level
If your cumulative party level is a lot higher than the average you’d expect for a given module or adventure, there’s a slightly different approach to take.
As before, when it comes to roleplay or exploration, most of these don’t need to be adjusted.
However, there are some exceptions, which we’ll go into below.
Here are a few things to consider tweaking when it comes to tailoring an adventure to your party’s cumulative level, and how to make adjustments for them.
|
Adventure Adjustments |
Details |
|---|---|
|
Challenge Rating |
When it comes to looking at combat encounters, you’ll want to replace creatures in the encounter of one challenge rating with a different creature that has an applicable challenge rating. This is the easiest way to balance encounters for higher-level players. |
|
Accessible Spells |
Second, take a look at what spells your party has available. Resurrection spells at certain levels could spell trouble for lower-level combat. Ask players to send their spell sheets ahead of the adventure so that you can balance any roleplay encounters necessary and give enemy creatures tools like Counterspell or Dispel Magic to keep up with high-level casters. |
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Class Features |
Lastly, take a look at your party’s higher-level features. Some classes have features that can prove game-breaking at low levels. For example, monks at 13th level can start deflecting attacks from several different kinds of damage, which can prove highly destructive for lower-level monsters who primarily rely on long-ranged attacks. |
Ultimately, balancing in 5e is tough, and there’s no exact science.
Be aware of how difficult combat encounters are based on challenge rating, adjust roleplay encounters based on spells and features available, and buff or nerf NPCs based on action economy.
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