Hi guys,
I'm a new-ish GM: I've run several pathfinder society scenarios, but never an ongoing campaign. I've recently gotten a group of players together who are going to play either Mummy's Mask or Rise of the Runelords, but first we're playing the Beginner's box to get people introduced to the rules and especially the idea of simple roleplaying. This game is happening in 2 weeks.
Unfortunately, for our first night it looks like we'll have 7-8 players turning up, nearly double the number of players provided for in the Blackfang adventure.
Does anyone have any advice on what I can do to scale the whole encounter up to make it suitably challenging for a group of 8 people. It doesn't need to be anything crazy as it's a once off evening (my normal group is 5 players), I just want to make sure it feels sufficiently epic/challenging for the party.
As it stands, the roster would be:
Rogue (Beginner Box)
Fighter (Beginner Box)
Cleric (Beginner Box)
Wizard (Beginner Box)
Barbarian (Beginner Box)
Bard (Iconic)
Alchemist
Inquisitor
Double the number of monsters generally...
Yes, add more monsters, maybe maximize their HP (if it says d6, make it 6 etc). Once you get past 6 players the numbers begin to get hard to manage, monsters will be easily surrounded, powerhouse monsters will get 1 attack, then defend for 8 rounds (Usually enough to kill it). I would go 2.5 times the monsters or even 3 times.
Maybe add a Template like Gnarled (CR +1) for more AC, or one that grants limited DR, or something to grant SR so that everything isn't instantly fried by the magic users.
Yeah, things are going to get a bit rough. You have the ability to expand in two ways:
1) More monsters! I wouldn't say you should double it, but it should scale up in a reasonable way. I'd also make sure to include variety here; if there were originally just melee goblins, maybe add a few shortbow firing and magic using ones in the back row to give the players something else to do. Be careful about ganging up on players though, since you get a lot more attacks between any single player's turn. Also be aware that combat will take far longer to run now.
2) Harder monsters! Maxing out hit points, increasing AC, upping damage. The whole idea here is that monsters need to live long enough to threaten a player. Since before a monster would be 1 on 4 (assuming standard party size, it is now 1 on 8. So the monster will wait much longer between turns and thus take more damage / do less damage. Making it harder to hit and take more punishment is a way to ensure it lasts a bit longer. Scaling up damage is a bit harder to manage since you don't want to kill the PCs with a single well placed hit.
Mostly, I'd recommend doing both together, as the others indicated. Increase the variety of monsters and make them harder to kill. A good way to estimate this is to use the expected per player xp. I'm going to make up numbers for the example here: Say six goblins is worth 400 xp, which is 100 xp a player, then with eight players you want to have 800 xp. This could be adding six more goblins, but increasing their difficulty is also a good way to increase their xp value. So maybe you take the original six, then add 3 more and make everything tougher.
I'd also strongly suggest making every combat area larger. If they are supposed to fight in a 30x30 foot cavern, you can make it 60x60 full of pillars and rocks. Considering you have more than a few ranged classes, you can add some bad guys to the tops of boulders or in balconies firing downwards. You can also try to move fights into a narrow hallway where the bad guys are coming at the players from both ends.
Lastly, I'd say boss fights will be the hardest to manage simply because it will be 1 on 8 and the boss probably won't survive to get a second round. Two ways to deal with it: add more monsters, possibly nearly equally as big as the boss; another way is to give the boss two turns a round, the second placed so it falls roughly half way through the round from where the first action occurs. Just say the boss is so fantastic and terrible that it acts more frequently. Try to avoid using this to attack the same player twice in a round.
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Yeah, things are going to get a bit rough. You have the ability to expand in two ways:
1) More monsters! I wouldn't say you should double it, but it should scale up in a reasonable way. I'd also make sure to include variety here; if there were originally just melee goblins, maybe add a few shortbow firing and magic using ones in the back row to give the players something else to do. Be careful about ganging up on players though, since you get a lot more attacks between any single player's turn. Also be aware that combat will take far longer to run now.
2) Harder monsters! Maxing out hit points, increasing AC, upping damage. The whole idea here is that monsters need to live long enough to threaten a player. Since before a monster would be 1 on 4 (assuming standard party size, it is now 1 on 8. So the monster will wait much longer between turns and thus take more damage / do less damage. Making it harder to hit and take more punishment is a way to ensure it lasts a bit longer. Scaling up damage is a bit harder to manage since you don't want to kill the PCs with a single well placed hit.
Mostly, I'd recommend doing both together, as the others indicated. Increase the variety of monsters and make them harder to kill. A good way to estimate this is to use the expected per player xp. I'm going to make up numbers for the example here: Say six goblins is worth 400 xp, which is 100 xp a player, then with eight players you want to have 800 xp. This could be adding six more goblins, but increasing their difficulty is also a good way to increase their xp value. So maybe you take the original six, then add 3 more and make everything tougher.
I'd also strongly suggest making every combat area larger. If they are supposed to fight in a 30x30 foot cavern, you can make it 60x60 full of pillars and rocks. Considering you have more than a few ranged classes, you can add some bad guys to the tops of boulders or in balconies firing downwards. You can also try to move fights into a narrow hallway...
This has come up for me, I used a possession object that allows a "god" to channel magic through the object only when wielded by a loyal, devout minion (I.E. the big Bad Boss), can be a crown, scepter, effigy, etc. I used the "gods" initiative which can fit in the middle of the order. That way there is the martial/ranged boss, then a spell, summoning, ranged touch attack from the "God" using the Boss. An easy, thematic way of adding a second action set. (The "Gem" Shatters when the boss dies making the item completely normal).