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Whether you’re playing through an old homebrew adventure or an official module inDungeons & 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.
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 playerswho progress from levels one to ten.
If you’re playinga prebuilt module, adjust the adventure whenever yourparty size or level exceeds the recommended amount.
If you’re playinga homebrew adventure,consider the followingbefore adjusting the stats of the adventure:
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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 adjustelements of the adventure. However, if it’s a combat-heavy module, you’ll want totake a close look at every encounterto ensure 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 betterin certain types of adventures or modules. For example, clerics and paladins tend to do well in moduleslike 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, considerif 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 tomake 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 tofocus 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 isyour party’s action economy.
Action economy is a representation of the number of actions, bonus actions, reactions, and morethat 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 youtake 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 actionsthey can take in a single round of combat, sometimes before an enemy even has a chance to move or react.
This is particularly important tokeep 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 adventurefor party size and negate action economy.
More Than Expected
These are just some of the ways, particularly in combat, you canmake enemies less or more powerfuland adjust for differences in party sizes.
When the party gets bigger than expected, it’s best togive enemies more turns and abilities in combatthrough Legendary Actions and grunts or mobs.
When you’re playingwith fewer players, it’s best to remove these types of advantagesto 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 expectfor a given moduleor adventure, there’s aslightly 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 tweakingwhen it comes to tailoring an adventure to your party’s cumulative level, andhow to make adjustments for them.
Challenge Rating
When it comes to looking at combat encounters, you’ll want to replace creatures in the encounterof one challenge ratingwith a different creature that has an applicable challenge rating.
This is the easiest way to balance encounters for higher-level players.
Second, take a look atwhat spells your party has available.
Resurrection spellsat certain levels could spell trouble for lower-level combat.
Ask players to send their spell sheets ahead of the adventure so that you’re able to balance any roleplay encounters necessary andgive enemy creatures tools like Counterspell or Dispel Magicto keep up with high-level casters.
Class Features
Lastly, take a look at yourparty’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 arebased on challenge rating,adjust roleplay encounters based on spellsand features available, andbuff or nerf NPCsbased on action economy.
