Continuing the thread of running large groups (6 - 8) players into "The Trial" here.
As with the same thread for HoH - we are looking for experiences and ideas helpful to other DM's running parties that run over the Adv. as written like a SWAT team. ;-)
Bear in mind bumping CR's dramatically increases the odds of individual PC death as discussed in the HoH thread and various DMing advice publications.
As always more monsters of a given type help to keep the party busy, but in addition to areas where adding more mooks works we are specifically looking for creative rules tweaks, appropriate min/maxing of baddies, and any other off the cuff bits of DM'ing genius from the community.
I'm currently bereft of ideas, but will be sure to add to this thread as I get my head into this adv.
Looking forward to seeing your brilliant/deviant/nefarious and ultimately FUN ideas here!
Discuss..... :-)
I dealt as with HoH.
Maxed HP's. Where possible add 4HD of monsters. AND fudge as you see fit.
As for strategies that worked or didnt..please see my ToTB log.
As you seam to have more time playing as us (we play only 4-5h a week) I will look for you leading the way in BM etc.
My group is running with 5-7 members. I always max out the hit points for the creatures, and add a couple grunts if needed. For example when they were going through V&G's factory I added 3 mongrel men to the vat room because they were dying too fast.
Like Windspirit said I also find some fudging is needed. The fighter was going through the mongrel men too fast so I doubled the hit points on one to slow him down.
The Golem Hound (at max HP and a party of 5) was the hardest part of the encounter so far. Almost lost a bard. It didn't help the party that the caster used shocking grasp and healed the hound...
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I just finished the Trial portion with 6 PCs and for the most part I maxed out hit points for Named NPCs and added 50% more minions. In any encounter with only a single enemy I generally added hazardous terrain features, kept them mobile, or both!
When they had an easy time of set piece encounters I used the Random encounter tables in the bestiary to round things out. There's a lot of travel in the Dipplemere and my PCs ran into a few encounters with wolves, and a dryad fending off bugbears (she ended up becoming an ally of our elf spirit ranger).
We started into Schloss Caromarc this weekend and even with six players the encounters are tough! The only place I've added monsters so far has been the Trolls. I added an extra troll hound at the gate & moved the extra troll & hound inside the gate house instead of thwe terrace.
My group has had a rough time of things so far as they don't have a rogue with trapfinding, only a ninja and alchemist. So the Air Elemental trap and Erinyes trap really hurt them (literally dropped the Cav's mount into the deep negatives). They also did not like the Rust monsters as the Cavalier is in Full plate, the barbarian just bought a mithral breastplate, and the ninja wears a mithral chain shirt!
They're just about to enter the Living Museum but we're on hiatus till January.
--Masterwork Vrock picks