Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Ravenking 02-21-06, 08:13 AM	This adventure is made for 5th level characters. I want to it with a 7th level party, but i cant find the sidebar "scaling the adventure". Am i blind or isnt it there? If it isnt in the book, can anyone help me scaling it?
White_Wizard 02-21-06, 11:35 AM	Well, scaling is not that difficult, and this is most true if you know well your players. When I have to scale a pre-made adventure, which I had to do only a couple of times, mostly because I make my own adventures for my group, I usually follow a rule of thumb: if I need an adventure for characters that are a couple of levels higher than those the adventure was built for, then I add one or two levels to NPCs and advance every monster of one or two CRs. Usually the more they are in a single fight, the least HD they get. I usually leave traps at the same CR they are presented, unless they are up to guard something very important (such a key item for the adventure). Then, when you are finished, pick up a couple of those encounters you feel less sure and put a standard party of adventurers in it just to see by yourself how the things go. Yes, you'll have to roll a lot of dices, but it's worthy and you don't have to throw a copy of your players' party: even four pre-made NPCs from DMG (I used the standard fighter, rogue, cleric, wizard when I did this) and see how balanced is the encounter. If you see that with a couple of standard rolls the party is wiped out, then the enocunter is too difficult and you have to lower it's CR. You don't have to fight the entire encounter with yourself (which is pretty boring, at least for me it was), 3-4 rounds will be enough to see if things are still well balanced. Finally a word of advice: keep in mind that often, at lower levels, adventures consider that maybe not many character will have certain feats that will make some encounters easier, so remember to check out such things. Feats, spells, etc. You'll also need to push up most of skill checks' DCs. The only exception that comes into my mind is the DC for jumps: almost certainly such DCs are thought to be challenging only at a certain level and higher levels will make it easily. Unfortunately there's no way to increase jump DCs without modifying the map's spaces, which can result in a decent amount of nearly useless work (because they are not that great challenge and don't require more than one round to be surpassed), so, if there are chasm to jump over, just let them as they are. Hope this helps ;)