I know the adventure has some thoughts about adjusting but not a lot (it seems to me).

I would have liked it if they had a cheat sheet in it - the way dragon magazine used (still does?) have guidance for how to adjust an adventure for higher/lower level (add/take away this that, make this different level etc.)

I anticipate running it for 5 players (though often down 1 on a given night), using optional rules that make the heavy damage/soak careers advanced (so no ironbreakers starting off but yes soldiers, mercenaries etc.).

Any thoughts/experience?

Rob

I've got a similar issue in that the "campaign" was designed for characters with just a couple adventures under their belt. Our group has 12-13 XP and are in their second career or close to it (non-career advances ate a few XP). Right now I'm leaning towards just keeping an eye on how things go. The social/investigation stuff should be okay, so it really comes down to combat. It really comes down to two options. Introduce a Rally Step (allowing ACE refresh) and then bring in reinforcements or just add an extra opponent or two initially. If you add extra opponents and things start looking bleak for the PCs, you can have them fail morale and run off once they're down to just one or two left, then try using a group of Henchmen instead of additional individuals. For Nemesis opponents, you can add Wounds on the fly if you feel they are going down too easy.

For more experienced/bigger groups - break the henchmen groups into standard opponents.

For less experienced/smaller groups - reduce the number of enemies or group the standard opponents as henchmen.

For a big party (with an experienced GM) run all three adventures at the same time - so there's a missing merchant to find, whilst rumours abound of trouble in the hills and the dead begin to walk the streets. Throw it all at them at once!

Hmmm...I might do that with my group anyway...

Thanks so far.

It will be my group's first adventure though I plan on running a lead in that will give them a few advances first. I was hoping in part that there being 1 or 2 extra PC's would at times make up for any lag in expected power.

Rob

One thing to watch out for that isn't necessarily obvious when looking through the adventure is the length of progress trackers.

In quite a few places, the adventuring group get to move their token along the tracker based on their rolls, and an NPC tracker is moved based on other circumstances (from the top of my head there's the argument at the Holtz farm and the escape from the beastmen once the PCs have the stone). The upshot of this kind of thing is that the more PCs in the group the more rolls as a group they get to move their token compared to the NPC token. In some cases the NPC token is moved based on failed rolls by PCs so that'sd not so bad, but look carefully for areas where the NPC token moves once per turn, or something like that.

I think, as our group is going to be around 5, as well as increasing numbers of NPC monsters, I'm also going to consider increasing the size of varioyus progress trackers,

Thanks Pumpkin, I had not considered that at all (the progress tracker) which is a "d'oh" since I earlier spotted that with Day Late, Shilling Short social encounter and also liked when I saw the "NPC tracker moves on a PC fail" item when I saw it as it does help balance a larger group.

Rob