Greetings all.
I am preparing to join my Old "Family" of experienced gamers with my never-played-anything-like-this-before New Family, and breathe new life into a hobby I left behind a long time ago, using Pathfinder. So far, thankfully, everyone seems to be looking forward to it.
I've never been one to start small (or as I used to say, I always had the most fun diving head first into a shallow pool), and so I'm anticipating a disastrous start. LOL
After I run the New Family through the Beginner Box adventure, and We Be Goblins as a series of practice runs, we'll bring everyone together for Rise of the Runelords (Anniversary, of course...this could not have come out at a better time).
My biggest dilemma at this point is the group itself.
We're talking about 9 players. NINE.
I'm just...doomed.
Granted, even back in the day, we always had large groups, but...it's been a while.
Barring the obvious answers of "It can't be done!", or at least, "It shouldn't be done!"...LOL... I'm hoping to find some concrete, specific advice on how to properly scale these encounters. Because thus far, the only idea I have going into it is to just double the number of opponents and maybe send them in waves. And that can't possibly be the best option.
It will take a *lot* of work on your part. You will need to re-write all the encounters. In the entire book.
Is there no way you can run the two groups separately? The main reason I'm suggesting this is that mixing new and seasoned gamers can lead to extreme unbalances. Your newer party members are likely to make non-optimal choices while your vets will make great characters. The newer players will feel overshadowed etc etc..
If you DO go ahead, try to pair a new player with a veteran as a 'mentor' (run this by the groups first). To help with character building and stuff. That leaves more time for you to prep encounters.. lol.
Essentially doubling encounters is likely the easiest way to go for mob encounters. For solo encounters, take advantage of AoE and try to keep them down. Dont make bosses more than party level +3 or you'll one-shot the lot of them... Everybody in the module should have a best friend they fight with. OR give them 2-3 turns in initiative (and triple HPs).
Best of luck, I hope you keep a game log so we can see how it goes!
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Agreed with dunebugg. While it's awesome to have an experienced hand or two at a table with some new players, it can quickly get overwhelming for the new player.
That being said, here are some suggestions that may help.
* Speak with one of the other experienced players and see if they'll be a co-dm. They can still act as a player and wont have access to spoiler info, but their job is to help answer the questions of the new players and guide them through encounters. This does wonders for taking some of the pressure off you and ensuring combats/challenges go by quickly and smoothly.
* Make some handouts for the new players with info they'll need to have, but may not be on their character sheet (info on the area, important rules, etc.). In fact this may be good for all of the players.
* work out a set system for how to handle out of combat interactions. It can be chaotic at best when you approach a king and 7 players all shout out what they what want to do. I actually instituted a social intiative for this. I base it off either Int or Cha (player's choice) and have the player's roll when they get into a situation where many people may be trying to do something all at once.
* above all, listen to your players after games. If Bob isn't having fun because he's being overlooked, then you can work to correct it in the future.
That's all I have for now..Good luck.
Have a look at this post to start with
http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2owy9?Different-Sized-Party-than-Module-Recomme ndation
I especially like Doomed Heros suggestion which I use when all 6 of my players are there. which is....
Standard group makeup is 4, generally with 1 primary damage character and 1 primary caster. The other two slots are usually called utility characters (healers and buffers are included in this group for these purposes).
When converting modules for groups larger than 4 a good rule of thumb is this:
For every additional primary damage character, boost all enemy HP by 50%
For every additional caster, add one enemy of the same CR as the average level of the group.
For every additional Utility character, increase enemy DCs and Saves by +1.
Simply boosting enemy HD is a problem primarily because it pushes their saves, and the saving throw DCs of their abilities beyond level-appropriateness. To compensate for even one extra primary damage dealer all enemies will have to have the HD increased by about 1/2 the party's level. That's about the number of extra HP needed to provide a challenge. Unfortunately because HD is tied to so much else, it messes things up. The bad guys will be much less effected by player abilities, and players will fail saves far more frequently.
Simply adding more enemies without boosting their HP becomes a problem because player AoE will become the answer to nearly every encounter. Between Cleave and Fireball, the addition of extra enemies will barely be noticed.
Although i have to say combat with 9 players will take forever man... It would almost be worth it to have two groups and alternate playing