[PF]Effective Party Level

[Crustypeanut]

Hey guys, quick and probably simple question for you all:

If I have a group of 8 players, each level 2 and built with 25 point builds and given a free bonus Story feat, what would their Effective Party Level be?

Normally it would be 2 for their level, but 6 players are supposedly 1 higher. Would 8 be one higher on top of that, for a total EPL of 4? I'm honestly guessing the 25 point build and free bonus Story Feat (Which isn't very powerful) wouldn't increase it by another, but if so.. I could see it working.

I'm not going to split the party into two groups of 4 - I'm sure at least one person will mention that, and I'm purposefully creating a group of 8. A campaign I'm playing in as a player has as many players, and so far its been extremely fun and not as disorganized as one would think - plus, its a Play by Post, so its not as nuts as it would be if it was in person. Eight people in person would drive me nuts. XD

[Keneth]

8 people in person is virtually impossible with only 1 GM. Trust me, I've tried.

Is there a particular reason you're trying to determine a specific APL? Basing your encounter CR on APL with a group like this is gonna turn out bad. You'd be better off assessing their classes and group dynamics, then build an encounter that would be fit for two groups of 4. That is, you're gonna want to have an increased amount of enemies, rather than one or two stronger enemies. Depending on the class tiers and levels of optimization, you'll need to determine at what level you want to challenge your players. For instance, my group frequently faces encounters of epic difficulty or above (APL+3 or higher), but others might find it plenty exciting at challenging difficulty (APL+1).

[Crustypeanut]

We've actually been running a Reign of Winter with 8 players on the Paizo forums, as well as a homebrew campaign with 8 players. Both have been hilariously fun so far - but I'm a player in each.

This is entirely play by post, so its not virtually impossible - as it likely would be with Roll20 or In-person (And I've seen the latter, so I fully agree).

Haven't a clue what tiers will be in play yet - I'm going to assume a mix of well-optimized characters without any real cheese.

I also agree with an increased number of enemies rather than more powerful ones.

But alright.. I'll probably just consider them EPL +1.5-2 or so. The campaign itself will be Mythic, so I do plan on challenging the players.

Thanks for the input!

[Keneth]

That's fine as a general guideline, but like I've said, using APL (and APL-based CR) is a poor GM's way of designing encounters. With this many players you'll need to work extra hard to tailor the encounters to the player's strengths and weaknesses, or they're just gonna steamroll through everything you throw at them. Sometimes an APL+1 monster (or group thereof) is gonna be plenty hard to handle, and sometimes you'll find the encounter ends up being APL+6 and still manageable.

This is also partially the reason why I hate CR-based XP rewards. The system is borked from the core and entirely meaningless.

[Maladaptive]

If you want the numbers confirmation of your assessment, it's actually pretty simple.

A party of 4 level 2s is a CR 6 encounter. This is the general reason why the CR system tells you an encounter of average party level+4 is a 50/50 chance for a standard group of 4.

Extrapolating, a party of 8 level 2s is a CR 8 encounter. That is to say, a CR 8 monster should have the same 50/50 chance. Based on this, you can surmise that encounter is 4 above what should be an "average" encounter for the group, CR 4.

Of course, every terrible thing said about CR certainly does apply, but if you are going by the book, there you have it.