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Hi all, long time lurker but first time poster here and I'm getting ready to run Curse of the Crimson Throne soon. The only issue is I'll have a larger party running through the AP - six currently with a seventh player that's very keen to join. Obviously the encounters will need to be tweaked in order to keep things challenging but I was just wondering if anyone else has run through the AP with a party this big? If so, were there any story problems or overly weak encounters that arose as a result of having so many players? If so, how did you overcome these?
I can see the Fishery in particular becoming pretty trivial with a 7 man party (I'm not even sure if I can fit that many PCs into some of the rooms!) but the idea of trying to incorporate interesting roleplay opportunities and storylines or quests relating to individual characters also seems pretty daunting with that many people, so I suppose any advice there would also be appreciated. I have GMed before in both Pathfinder and other systems but I can't remember the last time I had this many people.
I have five players in my game, some of the encounters are still challenging but there's a lot more room for error on the part of the players.
I have compensated by increasing the numbers of minions sometimes, and where bosses are fought alone, increasing their hit points a bit. I find the latter fights are often "easier" than I think they should be, but I've run a lot of encounters "by the book" (or by the PF bestiary or fan conversion or whatever) and it tends to work out fine. No PC has died yet (we're in book 4) but I think everyone's been dropped to negative hit points at some time or other.
Seven is a lot of players though, just in general.
Seven is a lot of players though, just in general.
Tell me about it. If push comes to shove I'm going to limit it to six and turn the seventh player down. From past experience it seems numbers and action economy are the biggest deciding factors of encounter difficulty so it seems the safest option is going to be a case of denying the PCs numerical advantages in a lot of combats, though I can think of a few encounters (the Nosferatu in seven days for example) where aside from summoning undead adding some mooks into the encounters may not make a whole lot of sense.
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You don't even need to summon, you can combine encounters. If Ramoska shows up when the players are fighting Rolth's group or Lady Andaisin, suddenly that's a challenging fight even for seven PCs.
"What is all this racket, mortals?? I am trying to WORK here!"
Then if you're really evil, have him Dominate whoever has the worst Will save in the party ;)
Or recruit a friend and run two groups of four :)
Two groups of four sounds better than one group of seven, but if you must...
Add encounters. (More PCs, more XP to split among them, more treasure to equip all of them.)
Add mooks. More than just a few mooks. You want the PCs to have to choose what to do, not just all focus-fire on one leader. Make some mooks tougher -- not all of them, necessarily.
Revamp some spell, feat, and tactics suggestions.
Also note that if any or most of the PCs are using post-PHB options (races, classes, feats, spells, etc.) the enemy will need a further buffing-up given power creep. Plus it will be cool to have some of the stuff for your own arsenal.
Thanks a lot for your advice, everyone. In the end I wound up with running the module for six players which, while less than ideal, is at least a little more manageable. I'm adding a whole bunch of side content to help address the lower xp gains - I've given Lamm a link to a series of beheadings (two of which were inflicted upon PC loved ones) across Korvosa, for instance, with the idea that this'll eventually help foreshadow and tie in a certain noble house and a certain clandestine group into the plot, at the very least it's some busywork and an excuse for a few more encounters that might not otherwise happen.
Aside from that, I'm mostly beefing up the sheer number of mooks in encounters.
Thanks for the link Skeld, I'll be reading all that in more detail once I get the chance.
I've just finished running Jade Regent with a 7-player party, and am starting to prep for CotCT with the same group. At lower levels, adding a few more bad guys to the mix can help keep it even, but it's more work for the DM, and slows down combat with all the extra rolling. I've found that creative use of templates to bump the monsters up in toughness can both make the encounters more even and add more variety/flavor to the adventure (avoid the "oh crud, yet another pack of bugbears" phenomenon).
At higher levels, I've had success with adding Mythic ranks to the BBEGs. Overall, I think Mythic rules are too overpowered to let the players loose with them, but when the BBEGs suddenly start doing things that the players think aren't possible, it really makes them take notice, and it makes for the kind of challenging final encounters that I think authors of the APs had in mind.
I've also found that the official Paizo CR/APL math doesn't really work as the CRs go up. Generally, above level 3 or 4, the party is more powerful than their APL would suggest, and they'll often tend to breeze through even CR+2 encounters. It's important to keep the XP payout balanced, though, or the problem just gets worse (give them higher-CR encounters, they get more XP, they go up in level sooner than the AP expects, and the delta for future encounters gets worse).
My problem?
Narrow dungeon, 3 player characters with animal companions and 4 without.
Thank god for Scarwall being so much bigger