I run a decently sized group, anywhere from 5-7 players, and it seems every map used is really tight and cramped. We just finished retaking Rannick, and man was that a pain trying to have the Ogres fight the PCs, because there was literally no place to move. At one point I had the lower ogres fighting each other because they kept pushing each other to get to the PCs.
I've been reading it chapter by chapter as we progress. Do the locations start to open up? I'm thinking I'm going to need to start modifying the maps to accommodate a large party size.
Make sure you've got the map scale right -- some of the maps are 10' squares instead of 5' squares.
I'm pretty sure I've scaled them right, the only map scaled larger that I recently remember was the outside of Fort Rannick.
I know how you feel. My party's a 5 man team, and the wizard has been dabbling in using animate dead to create bloody skeletons out of dead ogres and the like, so at this point it's more like 7 and a half. After they beat Rannick he reanimated Jaagrath as a bloody skeleton, who he just calls Kreeg and uses him as their "trap tester" on doors. It's working with amazing efficiency, but I digress.
As for your problem of areas opening up, they definitely do. Pretty much until the end of the adventure path, most areas are large enough to accomodate the larger creatures, as most of these places are actually the beasties' homes, and not a fort they took over which in itself was made for smaller creatures.
However, this leaves me personally with a problem. Several of the upcoming maps do state that one square is 10ft, rather than 5ft, and so far I've been preparing most of my maps in advanced for the party. However, due to the differing size now, a map that would already take up the entirety of one of my smaller battlemats, would be required to take up double that if I'm trying to be as accurate as possible. And god knows my players (and myself for that matter) don't want to just say "Oh, you move only 3 squares on a turn, rather than 6", it just doesn't feel right. I already know what I'm going to do to accomodate teh change in size, but hey, at least the big monsters (and the party) are going to have tons of room.
What are you planning on doing Hellmuffin?
What are you planning on doing Hellmuffin?
My local gaming store has pretty nicely sized grid paper for cheap. I was planning on buying a few of these and getting them laminated, so if I get 4 of them, I can just make one gigantic square that should (key word should) be able to reproduce the maps at their true scale. It ends up being quite cheaper to do it this way than purchasing several Chessex Battlemats (though I love mine), and they too would be reusable as well. Though if my funds don't allow it, I could just buy the grid paper without laminating and use them for the map it's intended for only. Either way, with enough of them, I could just draw out the entire map to correct scale, then do my standard fog of war...which is paper towels with the room number...then taping it to the matt and removing them as they go...cheap, but effective lol.
