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Yeah, any large group of PCs is going to make the roleplaying sections suffer just because time is linear.
Have you considered running two separate groups through the campaign?
6 is really as large as the game can comfortably handle before gameplay suffers due to the sheer amount of actions the players have, and the lowered amount of spotlight time each player has.
A group of 4 and a group of 3 on the other hand would be a lot less work to make balanced. If you run the game weekly have group A run one week and group B run the other week.
Hello, I'm relatively new to Pathfinder
Because of this run it as is, you will have enough things to think about
just give the monsters max hp if you feel the need, there are loads dungeons where 7 isn't a bonus
My group is also 7 players, and a bit OP as well. I'm using the guidelines for encounters in the Core Rule Book: take average party level. This should be the base CR for an encounter for a group of 4 PC's. If the group is 6-7 PC's, increase the CR by one. This would be for an average encounter. For a challenging encounter, increase CR by one more. So, for a powerful party of 7 PC's, the CR should be APL +2.
This is the technique I am using. I also max out boss HP. Works so far
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I'm doing exactly what you're doing. Relatively new GM, 7 players, Jade Regent. We've been having a good time thus far (currently in the middle of the third book). Here're my houserules to help speed up combat:
* Be ready when your turn comes, otherwise the next player will take her or his turn first. I'd recommend having a short list of your favorite battle actions.
* No takebacks: once you say your character is doing something, she's doing it.
* One of the players records Initiative order while I prep, then hand it to me.
* Roll attack and damage dice together (you might want to trade your d20 die with another player for the evening so your attack and damage dice are different colors).
* Print out or always have ready all the stats for any mount, animal companion, familiar, or summoned creature you use in battle. Same goes for polymorph, reduce/enlarge person, rage, any shapeshifting or transformation, and anything else that changes your stats.
* Unless your character's life hangs in the balance, don't disagree with the GM's ruling. I will almost certainly misremember rules from time to time but poring over them to salvage a hit point or two slows us down too much. Don't read rules aloud to me at the table, but feel free to tell, text, or e-mail me later so I can learn them better!
Also have a large group for JR (started with 8 players, now 6 with one person occasionally guesting as Ameiko). We are at book 5 after nearly 2 years of playing.
I highly recommend attempting to fold some of the NPC roles with players especially Ameiko. I dropped Shalelu as someone essentially took her role and a regular player was doing Ameiko but now due to other commitments joins here and there.
I've done some pretty similar things as you have:
1. Essentially doubing the monsters (a lot of monsters have brothers or sisters it seems!)
2. Regular monsters I'll often take their max hp and multiply by 1.5. Bosses I've even tripled.
3. For ease of play I generally will provide the monsters ACs, encourage rolling in advance, be pretty particular about keeping turns flowing quickly.
4. I will use automated dice rollers for complicated monsters/opponents and roll in advance so I'm not rolling 8 attacks and managing the action at the table. I generally put in their full attack repeat it 8 times and cycle through it as necessary.
5. For dungeons double sizes so 5' squares are 10'. It gets frustrating and boring if players can't get involved or monsters can't attack more than one guy.
6. Pretty well all what Dustin said as well.
7. Also, as with most APs be up front with the players about the premise of the AP, encourage them to build characters that would want to help Ameiko, explore the orient etc. With a large group it will be harder to go off script and it still be fun.
We've had a lot of fun with a good mix of rp and combat. Its a fun AP but with larger groups be prepared to do a bit more tweaking and prep work to make it run on all cylinders.
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7 PCs is a lot, especially for Jade Regent where there are several major NPCs to deal with.
You could do something like we did for 4 players; Shalelu is written out of the campaign whilst Sandru and Koya are minor NPCs who don’t do much except for looking after the caravan and providing healing for the party when they return from an adventure.
We also turned Ameiko into a player character (Bard) and made it compulsory that every PC is a friend and/or a relative of hers with no exceptions. It is much easier to make a campaign run more smoothly if the PCs know each other before the campaign starts, has a rough idea as to the scope of the campaign, and if player-vs-player conflict is prohibited (we have thrown people out of our group because they wanted to play their own game at everyone else's expense).
Since no-one else has mentioned it, I suggest ignoring the caravan combat rules unless you want to wipe out the party with an encounter which they would easily win if you actually ran it. The caravan combat rules are truly awful. The caravan logistics rules are however quite good.
I second the other suggestions, especially the one about players missing their turn if they are not ready when their initiative comes up. In our group (4 players) if a player takes too long to decide what they are doing then their character’s initiative drops to below that of the next character. In extreme cases of dithering a character is instead assumed to be doing nothing for their turn. You should only have to do this the one time; everyone soon starts to pay attention after that!
We track initiative using Paizo’s combat pad. One of the players keeps track of all of the characters’ initiatives using the pad and the DM only announces when the creatures act as soon as their initiative score arrives in the first round (if the players know the bad guys’ initiative scores at the start of the first round this will give them a massive advantage, so don’t do it).
http://paizo.com/products/btpy9066
You could do something like we did for 4 players; Shalelu is written out of the campaign whilst Sandru and Koya are minor NPCs who don’t do much except for looking after the caravan and providing healing for the party when they return from an adventure.
We also turned Ameiko into a player character (Bard) and made it compulsory that every PC is a friend and/or a relative of hers with no exceptions.
Agreed. We have a player with Ameiko as her PC and another playing Sandru. Koya and Shalelu have largely dropped out of the campaign though it's implied they're still around...somewhere...doing something.
They're doing Tarot, Err.. Harrow readings and hunting Bunnies:-p
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I'm also running a 7-player JR. Our group has been together forever (longer than most of you have been alive, I'm guessing!), so splitting the group isn't an option. We're currently in Hungry Storm. Here are some of the things I've been doing:
- As mentioned by others, I dropped Shalelu altogether, and try to keep the other NPCs out of the action. Hard to avoid during most of Hungry Storm, but not too bad otherwise. Where the NPCs have to get involved, I have each assigned to one of the players, so they play two characters. You can get the HL .por files for them on line, although we're reaching the point where I'm going to have to level them up some. Oh, and I dropped the whole Relationship mechanic.
- I've made liberal use of alternate templates to bump up enemies: see [url]http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/indexes-and-tables/templates-by-cr-adjustm ent[/url]. The simple Advanced template works well, but other things like Entropic, Runescarred, Dire, etc. can be a good fit for specific parts of the adventure (e.g. I made the Lonely Maiden in HS a "Broken Soul" (CR +2)). Sometimes I just throw 75% more critters at the party, although that makes for a lot of dice rolling. However, part of the balance comes from not letting the party gang up on a small number of opponents - even an awesomely powerful spellcaster can get overwhelmed if 7 people are focusing on her alone. Be aware that, in my experience, the CR/APL equivalency doesn't always work that well. More often than not, I find I have to make an encounter tougher than the math would suggest to keep it challenging for the party.
- As almost everyone on the forums suggests, throw out the caravan rules. I converted all the caravan encounters into party encounters. However, I'm finding that many of the suggested enemies, like Frostfallen Skeletons, Zombies, and the like, are too wimpy to be able to threaten 7th or 8th level characters, so they need real upgrading. (For Dead Man's Dome, I'm going to hit them with a Zombie Horde!)
- One thing I do to prepare for each session is to take the stat block description for each enemy and copy it into a spreadsheet. That makes it easier to apply new templates. I also go through each of the spells, spell-like abilities, unusual feats, etc. and add appropriate description for them to the sheet, so when I print it out I've got everything I need without wasting lots of time looking things up each turn (although I still seem to do that a lot!).