I will be running this campaign with about 7-8 players, has anyone else done this? I am planning on probably doubling the size of most of the encounters, also probably doubling the size of all rooms/buildings to allow all the players to actually move around.
I am thinking that the mass combat in the second book may not go so well with so many players, with a lot of them sitting aroung being bored. Anyone have experience with this?
You'll also have to read through book three to decide on how you'll want to handle the starting traits, as they're deeply tied into the game up to that point.
Instead of doubling all encounters you might want to smush a few together and then tack on enough extra mooks to hit the right CR. The goal being to reduce the overall number of encounters, since with 7-8 players the time to complete a single round will be really really high.
Be careful when increasing room size, as that can create a huge advantage for ranged characters/monsters.
I think there are a few campaign journals with 6 players, and you'll certainly want to read over those. My worry would be that the player power curve with mythic doesn't go up linearly as you add players. I find that it is easier to give things to players than it is to take away. Thankfully you have until the end of Book 1 to make that call with mythic.
So I run WotR for a 5-7 player group (depending on who got slammed with the Mandatory OT curse at work) with the added curveball having a 3 to 4 split of players focus on minmaxing and pure RP characters.
For the most part I have dealt with this via a combination of encounter redistribution, adding templates and adding reinforcements from the NPC and Monster Codex.
You might also want to consider giving the occassional group of enemies some alchemical weapons- easily explained away by adding a few as loot to the teifling alchemist in the Grey Garrison. Though if you go this route try to avoid letting your party loot anything too powerful.
Also, one way to make your players a bit lower on the power scale is to add some enemies without loot to encounters. Trained fiendish hounds- common dogs with 5 Resist Fire/Cold and SR 5 and later reskinned wolves with SR upped to 8-9 add a bit of good theming to an "enemy patrol" if you explain it right.
I had my group come across a group of 5 cultists and 3 dretches with 3 of the 'fiendish hounds' trying to break into a house with refugees inside begging for mercy. The party began trying to hunt down groups with hounds to protect the survivors.
Once your group has actually played a few sessions then you might want to watch for areas that they are somewhat weak and find a way to exploit it, without pulling too much GM bs. I had a cultist from a random encounter escape to one of the hideouts and give descriptions of part of the group, after he saw 2 of his allies get one shot by crits in the first round. Since my party had almost no ranged combat I used that as an excuse to give most enemies crossbows with 2-4 bolts to open any ambush style fights.
Hope that some of this is useful!
So I run WotR for a 5-7 player group (depending on who got slammed with the Mandatory OT curse at work) with the added curveball having a 3 to 4 split of players focus on minmaxing and pure RP characters.
For the most part I have dealt with this via a combination of encounter redistribution, adding templates and adding reinforcements from the NPC and Monster Codex.
You might also want to consider giving the occassional group of enemies some alchemical weapons- easily explained away by adding a few as loot to the teifling alchemist in the Grey Garrison. Though if you go this route try to avoid letting your party loot anything too powerful.
Also, one way to make your players a bit lower on the power scale is to add some enemies without loot to encounters. Trained fiendish hounds- common dogs with 5 Resist Fire/Cold and SR 5 and later reskinned wolves with SR upped to 8-9 add a bit of good theming to an "enemy patrol" if you explain it right.
I had my group come across a group of 5 cultists and 3 dretches with 3 of the 'fiendish hounds' trying to break into a house with refugees inside begging for mercy. The party began trying to hunt down groups with hounds to protect the survivors.Once your group has actually played a few sessions then you might want to watch for areas that they are somewhat weak and find a way to exploit it, without pulling too much GM bs. I had a cultist from a random encounter escape to one of the hideouts and give descriptions of part of the group, after he saw 2 of his allies get one shot by crits in the first round. Since my party had almost no ranged combat I used that as an excuse to give most enemies crossbows with 2-4 bolts to open any ambush style fights.
Hope that some of this is useful!
How did you handle the mass combats of the second module? I am worried that it will only interest/occupy a couple people at a time.
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I used the Legend of the 5 rings system of how "engaged" you are in the battle.
Disengaged - tell me what you are doing from the sidelines, (maybe buffs/healing/looting, etc)
Ranged support - do some damage, (can lower CR of fight for other allies)
Engaged - fight a few adversaries of equal CR (enemy commanders/heavy units),
Heavily engaged - fight CR +2-3 encounter.
The rest of the battle is assumed to be going on around the players, with the PCs hunting down enemy commanders on the battlefield. As more commanders/heavies get squooshed, the army makes morale checks or starts to withdraw/retreat.
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Well as a fellow GM running a large group of players through the AP for the first 3 books I generally used these basic guidelines to adjust the APL of the party. Mind you I have very experienced players that have played together through several demon based APs (Planescape Hellbound & Dungeon magazine's Savage Tide AP).
+1 APL for 6+ PCs
+1 APL for 20 point buy
+1 APL if they had >2 steps using SKRs step system for alternate XP (basically Pathfinder Unchanined Staggered Advancement)
Once I had the adjusted APL you can more easily adjust the encounter CR. For the most part I added +50% minions and maxed hp on named NPCs to begin with. As they grew more powerful I used scorpion_mjd statblocks for better challenges.
For Mass Combat in book 2 check out my blog entry for some helpful suggestions Mass Combat in WotR.
--Vrock you like a hurricane
