DM's Nightmare[3.5]

[Beelzebub1111]

Imagine preparing for an event for months, carefully sculpting encounters to challenge a party of 3 level 6 adventurers and a level 5...You have everything perfect, but then you find out that..OOPS! Three people that you didn't think were going to be playing decided to join in. Worse, you're supposed to be running NEXT WEEK! What do you do in that situation. You have to introduce TWO MORE PEOPLE than you thought that you would have to, AND the next encounters are going to either have to be too easy, or too hard from having to do last minute adjustments. What the hell am I supposed to do here?

[Lord_Gareth]

Do you want to know the secret of winging it?

Don't use crunch for the enemies.

No, seriously. I've been running D&D for six years and I say with all humility that I am considered the best dungeon master in town, and my secret is to stretch encounters until the players feel like they have a sense of accomplishment. I tell 'em that I keep all of the crunch in my head, but the truth is that, behind the DM screen, I'm rolling dice just to make a sound.

[Aemoh87]

This is how I build Campaigns.

I write an overall story arch that involves the PC's but doesn't rely on them, I start building dungeon ideas, but nothing concrete, I write my own monster manuals with lots of copy and paste from books as well as monsters with character levels I built. Even some custom stuff. This allows me to build on the fly whiles still being VERY well prepared.

I even write side quests and build randomization tables.

Then I just keep my eye on party wealth as I go so they don't get to rich (I also give monsters some items that the party has difficulty selling since most people in civilization wouldn't want it)

Also Gareth is right, I cheat as a DM alot. I just make up what some one's AC or HP should be if my party surprises me. I often find myself cranking up monster HP in boss fights or when I don't want some one to die easily (so they at least have a chance to escape). I am also nice with my dice when it comes to bad beats. No level 1 longbow archer crits coming form this DM :)... Unless they piss me off.

[Tyndmyr]

What the hell am I supposed to do here?

Don't go overboard on the changes. XP will be split two more ways. Therefore, they will level slower at first, and while the first few encounters will be easy and they'll tear through them, the slower leveling means they'll eventually be going through the plot at a level appropriate pace.

Do not ignore crunch entirely. It's fairly annoying to a great many players.

[Lord_Gareth]

Do not ignore crunch entirely. It's fairly annoying to a great many players.

Well ideally, no one knows that you did it. Otherwise you ruin all chance at actually making the players feel challenged.

[bokodasu]

To bump up encounters without doing a bunch more work:

Add multiple waves of enemies
Have the fighting alert enemies in nearby areas
Increase the number of enemies
Increase caster levels (so that fireball does 6d6 instead of 3d6)

The nice thing about those first two especially is that if you realize your party is having a hard time, you can also dump them back out just as easily as you stuck them in. But you don't want to overuse them, either; mix it up.

Really, though, I'd start with what you have now and see how your players handle it; if they start tearing through it, *then* worry about it.