A Larger Party

I will be new to running adventure paths for my group of friends (in the past I made up my own adventures for other games but I just don't have the time to do that anymore). Is there any advice to beefing up the adventure for a group of about 8 players? Is there anywhere in the core rule book about doing this? Thanks.

Woah 8 players. Make sure to tell everyone to turn off there phones. Here is a discussion on reddit that I found on converting. How can I adjust this Adventure Path for a 6 player party? It says 6 but you get the idea.

Do it like the starship troopers game: add a s~~&load of mobs
(and make the important one more resillient)

If you have twice as many PCs as normal, then fighting twice as many monsters as normal ought to be balanced.

It all depends on the party makeup.

With 8 players you could end up with all the specialties covered, or you could have a very combat focused group. How you balance depends on how well the characters enhance each other.

When two or more PC's can take similar skill checks consider increasing the DC. Likewise if you have multiple Envoys giving buffs or spell casters giving support. Say for example the party is trapped in an alley. With 4 players they could old off the attackers and chose between hacking the lock on a door or hacking a security system to close a gate. With 8 players they could hold off the attackers, attempt both actions at the same time and have another player give a buff to one. If you increase the DC the choice becomes risk failing both or perform one at a time with aid another.

Likewise combat adjustment vary with party makeup. A group with 2 envoy and 2 operatives can do a lot of buffs/ debilitating tricks to help out the shooters. Meanwhile a party with 4 soldier/ Solarian/ combat Mechs but only one envoy and operative would balance a lot different. Let's say the AP has 6 opponents. For the Buff/ Debuff party I would use more opponents (8-10) with +1 AC and normal CR. For the firepower party I would use 6 enemy at CR+1 (includes higher AC) and maybe one of them at CR+2. More effective shots is balanced with numbers. Increased number of shots is countered by making the shots less effective. If you were to match more shots with more targets there is a good chance the party would overwhelm the enemy. By adjusting the encounter opposite the party's strength it makes it more challenging and requires them to work together better.

Whoa, 8 players? That's pretty huge. I aplaud you for doing that, as it's quite tricky to divide your attention appropriately between that large a group. Personally, I'd be looking at splitting them into two groups of 4, perhaps having them run different adventures in the same world so they sometimes notice effects from eachother's exploits, or having them run through the same adventure just to see how they do different.

Best of luck managing that. Best advice I could give is make damn sure everyone keeps their turns short and moving along reasonably rapidly, as with the increase in players and mobs, you're looking at pretty staggeringly long turn times.

Also, has anyone thought about the space battles? with every role covered and 3 people to spare, you probably want a slightly bigger ship (more guns in each firing arc means more people can be on the guns and feeling usefull) Alternatively, you could keep the ship as-is but swarm them with more (but smaller) enemy ships so they have stuff to shoot at on multiple sides a lot of the time.

Or, you could houserule a modification for the players' ship that lets them use it as a carrier for 2, maybe 3 fighters, and have some of the players sortie in those during fights. That would be a bit tricy to balance BP-wise perhaps, and neccesitate you modding the starship battles even more, but it might be the most engaging sollution.

That's just off the top of my head with fairly limited experience with the starship combat, so take that with a decent pinch of salt.

Thanks for the input and advise. I ran the group through a homebrew with World Of Warcraft RPG rules which was just a 3.5 based rule set. So I do know what I am facing. We did OK because we have all known each other for over 30 years. I just don't have the time or energy to make up my own adventures anymore. I really like the idea of balancing based on the party since more enemies do take a long time per turn, but I am sure a few more grunts are fine as well. We are currently in a Warhammer Fantasy RPG that another guy is running. I probably won't have a chance to balance for the party at first since I like to get things ready ahead of time and no characters have been made yet. It should be fun.

.:

I've been in a campaign of D&D that had 10 people once. But I've always felt it gets too difficult to GM both due to balance and trying to focus on everyone if the group's larger then five or six people (at most).

I have a group that's technically 10 people, but only about 6 show up regularly, though one week all ten showed up and it was a nightmare. Cellphones everywhere.

First: Good luck, you'll need it.

Second: I recommend raising the CR of bosses by 1 (to APL +4 instead of APL +3). I run for a group of 5 and found that a single +4 CR enemy is challenging for them but not impossible to beat. If you had one with a few adds for an 8-man group, it would probably work out okay. AC will be high enough only half of them will be reliably hitting, and they'll be taking enough damage that everyone will stay on their toes.

An APL+4 CR creature can bring a PC down very quick if they aren't paying attention. Providing harrying fire becomes more important.