Greetings Fellow Empire Players (And Interested Rebels).

I am currently working on modifying the existing missions, and creating some of my own, to allow for a fifth hero to be played regularly through a campaign.

So far, the Hoth campaign has scaled the best by increasing later missions threat and adding an extra Open group to missions after the Interlude.

A couple of older threads are here describe peoples experience with 6 or 7 players, but they often revolve around splitting into groups or having one or more players take charge of an Ally rather than a hero. Plus, they're 12 months or more old, and there have been some great expansions since then.

One of the missions I designed is a straight up fight. Many of the the Rebel missions revolve around specific timed tasks or objectives. This one has the Heros invade a small outpost to disrupt communications with some Sabatouers. After round three, two AT-ST's appear outside and the Heros need to take them out before they can escape.

Looking forward to seeing what people have done or experienced.

I have a (slow) ongoing 5 hero campaign.

It uses these rules:

-2 HP on all heroes

Threat level increased by 1

Starting threat increased by threat level (and optional deployment if there isnt one)

Open Groups +1

+1 Influence set, draw +1 card.

6 xp/influence spread out through campaign. For the JR campaign, I am doing +1 xp after intro and interlude. +1 Influence after all story missions. (Based on 4 rebel xp=1 imperial xp & 400 credits=1 influence)

I have also done a full solo campaign using most of these rules.

Those are good ideas and it sounds like you've adjusted appropriately.

We've had a couple of missions throughout our campaigns where we've have more than 5 people show up. In some cases we've had 2 Imperial players, which works well so they can plot and scheme together much like the Rebels do.

The easiest option we've come up with for 5 rebel players is to have one of them control an allied deployment. As long as you can agree on a properly costed character (e.g. Jedi Luke) to play as, there shouldn't be any problems. If the ally gets defeated, you can allow a redeployment and give the Imp the threat plus an optional deployment.