I've taken over a Jade Regent game from another GM, and due to different circumstances, the group is now 7 players strong.
I know that means I have to modify most of the encounters in the AP if I want to keep them in any way or form challenging.
My problem is how though.
It starts with the problem of determening the APL of the party. According to the PCR "If your group contains six or more players, add one to their average level". Somehow I'm not really convinced 3 additional players are the same as 1 additional level though.
Is a party of seven level 2 characters really "just" APL 3? Or would you say it's 4 already? (point buy was 25, btw)
That's my biggest problem with that right now. Adjusting the encounter once I know the APL and therefore the CR I have to meet, by adding more mooks or giving some of them the advanced template, or leveling them up or whatever, I can do I think. It's figuring out the target CR.
Adjusting Treasure is the next thing. Increasing money they find accordingly is easy again, it's all the items. Should I add stuff the party can use? Or that they'll mostly sell for half-value? A mix of both? See who didn't get something for a while and add an item for them? Just roll up random loot?
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The 25 point buy is another APL, so you are at 4 right there.
What you want to worry about is that although they have a lot of offense being so many, each person individually is still as vulnerable as the regular APL.
So while you will win higher level encounters, your causality count will be higher. I would say +2 is probably the way to do, as otherwise you are going to get a body count. But I am in the process of playing that AP now, so I don't know much about it (my wife is running it, so I can only guess at what the AP actually will entail as I am going through it)
My group has found anything over 6 gets unmanageable after awhile, but YMMV.
With a 25 point buy that could be quite tricky to balance. The ideal fix would be to less PC's, but barring that you need to increase the number of minion type enemies by anywhere from 90%-100% as a rough baseline. "Feature Creatures" should either be allowed to utilize terrain to protect them from all the PC's ganging up on them at once and/or have additional hit die (or two). If your players are good optimizers then soup it up a hair more with some single use magic and alchemical items for the feature critters and maybe some of the middlin' minions as well.
Do not forget to increase treasure as well, and any extra magic items you place, make sure they see use against the party. With that many PC's and NPC's things could still get hairy real friggin quick, so prepared.
Roughly speaking, double the number of mooks and give bosses max hit points. DO NOT have solo encounters as the PC action advantage is too great. A single monster the CR of the party should be two monsters instead.
Its not going to be easy. Players will get distracted by each other and slow down the game. I swore off ongoing games with more than five players.
When you make your encounter adjustments, start out with small boosts to the difficulty and then increase as you get a better feel for it. Its ok if they have a few easy fights at the beginning. If possible, break up the enemies into waves, that way you can assess how the players are doing and modify as you go.
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RPG Superstar 2015 Top 16, RPG Superstar 2013 Top 16
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Up front, you're just going to have a hard time of it. Seven players means less GM face time per player, more niche overlap, and consequently less time to shine for each PC.
I would not adjust treasure at all. Being below WBL will slightly compensate for more PCs.
As for encounter building, adding more monsters to each encounter will help, as will beefing up some monsters with class levels or templates. The latter is, of course, much more time-consuming.
Single-monster fights get exponentially more rocket-tag-y because to threaten such a large party, the monster has to have enough defensive capabilities that it can last more than one round against concentrated attacks from seven PCs. Any monster that has such defenses probably also has extremely dangerous attacks. Classic example would be something like a greater invisible stoneskinned flying 10th-level wizard (CR 9) vs. a pack of 7 6th-level PCs. That wizard will probably also be slinging DC 20 feeblemind or circle of death. Either the PCs will be able to effectively concentrate attacks on the badguy and he goes down in 1-2 rounds, or you overcompensate and the badguy is utterly impregnable and able to kill 1-2 PCs each round.
As you get more experience (IRL experience not XPs) running such a large group, you will get more of a feel of what they can handle.
give every monster mximum hps. easy to adjust on the fly
thats what we do as we always have 7, it means the baddies survive long enuff to do their tricks
I echo the, don't do it, but if you are stuck people have given you a lot of good ideas. (I had a group of around 8 or 9 at one point, it is now down to 5 and much easier to handle. I had a strict no butt head/no show policy going a little bit and was able to weed out the uninterested or jerks.)
I second Max HP Boss Mooks, use more minions. Sometimes I also use the rule of two and just give all monsters a +2 bonus to whatever it is they are rolling.
To keep players busy and less distracted and had responsibilities. I had someone else track initiative, status effects, damage done to monsters and players that kind of thing. It gave everyone something to do and lessened my book keeping. I would also use a timer, if they didn't get their action going in a minute, times up, you delay.
I also experimented with other ways of doing initiative. Sometimes I would do a group initiative, where the mooks rolled initiative with whoever was triggering the encounter and the PCs would do the same. All the NPCs and PCs move/act on their turn. It sped the melee up. I did not do this with every encounter
I would also split the party. It lets you focus on players a little more.
Lastly, I talked with the group about these issues and what help I would need from them to run. I laid out the problems and concerns and got solutions. People want to have fun and they will help make it fun if you let them.
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It's a tricky thing to handle, my Runelords party was running at 8 PCs and an eidolon at one stage which was getting ridiculous. I ended up having to scale up every encounter they went into and on quite a few occasions they still nixed the bad guys in 2 or 3 rounds.
I'm down to 5 players (and the eidolon) now and even then I still feel that I should be adding minions to single encounters. Last week was a case in point, the party got the drop on Ordikon in part 5 of Runelords and had him down in 3 rounds flat, and that was despite knocking the party cleric down to single hit points on round 1.
There are a lot of very good ideas and points made by others on this topic, all I can really add is that I would use as many of them as you feel would be appropriate for your group. Good luck!!
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It may help to tell the players it's ok to skip a turn. That will save everyone a lot of time wasted on frantic browsing through character sheets looking for something to do, which always seems to end up being something desperate or awkward.
Instead, if the players decide to skip a turn when there's nothing rewarding to do for their character, the game will speed up.
Ah lots of useful tips here, thanks alot.
I should maybe have mentioned it, it's a PbP game, so some of the issues mentioned here don't really apply.
I guess I'll see how it goes in the first few combats, if its too easy I adjust upwards, too hard, and I make it easier next time.
1. No pets/cohorts/companions/eidolons. That does disallow two classes.
2. No more than one summoned critter per side at a time.
3. Have "full defense" add a little something extra like +1 to all saves, thus making it a decent option when a player doesn;t have much to do. Allow FD to flank.
4. Never split the party. Be ruthless here.
5. No coaching, except for newbies. But yes, a PC can yell "heal me!" or "flank him" or something out of his round.
6. I'd be Ok with 25 pt build, but require a high CON, say 16.
Don;t worry, I now play with 6+dm and it's not that big of an issue.
Maybe see if you can convince one of the players to co-GM with you? Then it's 2 vs. 6 instead of 1 vs. 7. This will be especially helpful if the PCs split up, or someone goes on a solo mission or something. Also, in a big fight, one GM can control the BBEG and the other the mooks. Or split the mated pair of dragons up or whatever. Or one can look up the rules about something while the other continues with the rest of the encounter. And they'll all be big fights, since you're gonna have to pretty much increase the complexity of each encounter.
Remember, action economy is king.
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RPG Superstar 2015 Top 16, RPG Superstar 2013 Top 16
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My experience has always been that for some reason, 6 is OK, but that 7th PC just pushes the game over that critical mass. Sure, 6 is still harder to balance than 4 or 5, but 7 seems to be the magic number for near-unplayability.
Also +1 to the limitation of pets, cohorts, familiars, eidolons, companions, etc. I would "strongly encourage" (require) players to take alternate options (druid domains, ranger bond with hunting companions, etc.). I would also disallow Leadership in any party over probably 5 players.