How should I adjust my campaign for additional players, unforeseen high stats?

Question

I'm new to DMing, and I'm running the 5th edition starter set Mines of Phandelver. The starter set calls for 4 people, but my crew is 6.

I ran our first night tonight, to try and get a handle on DMing mechanics and stuff, thinking that if it was too easy for 6 that I would adjust it accordingly as we went through.

Needless to say, they have plowed through the first arc of the campaign with terrifying ease. Partially due to the fact that there is six of them, and partially just because they rolled pretty good stats.

How do I make this a little more challenging for them? I was thinking about just adding additional monsters, but is this a situation where I'd actually want to change enemy stats to make them more challenging? How would I go about doing something like that?

Answer 1

This will unfortunately require a bit more work than you probably want to do when running the starter, but it's doable. You need a copy of this document. Take a gander at the second to last chapter and there you will find the encounter construction rules.

Basically what you need to do is find the encounter construction rules, reset the XP budgets to be for 6 players, and then rebuild each encounter with the appropriate number of monsters.

I would note that this is completely optional. You can run this straight up, let your party mow through it, and simply chalk it up as a learning experience.

One last suggestion if you don't want to change anything at all, is to adjust monster HP and damage. This is something I've experimented a bit with in my games with fewer people, but it's something that is definitely worth trying as monster HP and Damage are significant scale factors in 5e. Each monster has their average HP and damage listed. use a midpoint between their average and their high.

Answer 2

Absolutely,

Behind that screen you are able to do anything. Toughen up the critters HP, add more to their number as required.

Do it before hand so the game is still authentic.

There will come a time when the party is stuffed and on their way out and you have a choice of a wondering monster throw or not. They can get lucky then. In mean time - let em have it!