Is there a way to artificially increase PartyLevel?

Fringeware

I'd like to trick the game into thinking I'm higher level than I am so that I get more intense encounters. Right now, I've been doing it by taking an NPC that I don't like, Keeper-ing them up to level 50, killing them with control-Y, and then dragging their corpse along. It works, but it eats up one of your party slots, which is annoying.

Is there something I could type into the console that would work, or maybe some sort of modding solution?

Fringeware

I figured out a solution. Oh man is it ever ugly, but it works, and has no serious side effects. If you party has any single classed characters in it, you can use Keeper to make them dualclassed, and set the inactive class level to 50. The inactive class won't draw any experience, won't grant your character any extra powers, and will effectively be completely invisible, but those extra levels do count towards the PartyLevel for functions that check that sort of thing.

It gets trickier if all of your characters are multi-classed, but you can still pull it off. Keeper will you allow to edit multi-classed characters so that they have an inactive dual class. This inactive class does not even have to be part of a legal combination (e.g. you can have a Fighter/Cleric who has 50 levels of inactive Paladin).

Character files only have space for three classes, so I guess if you want a party composed entirely of triple class characters, you're screwed. Otherwise, this works and doesn't have an side effects. I just took my group of first level characters out for a spin and got unfairly torn apart by a pack of six dread wolves. Which is what God intended.

Ammar

Sword coast stratagems has a component that always gives you a the most difficult version of any scaled spawn. But it only applied for BG 2.