well first off, those modules are meant for 4 players, so you basically have double the amount of people, and people are the strongest thing in pathfinder.
Even with 4, bosses will die in 1 or 2 rounds. Unless you want to HEAVILY mod your game this will be the case.
Challenging fights are when the players are outnumbered or even numbered, and the enemies are smart and threatening. But those fights can often turn to a TPK cause they aren't favoring the players to win.
With seven characters you could pretty much double the enemies in every encounter and it would be pretty close to the original intended challenge.
Obviously, with boss fights have duplicate bosses probably won't be satisfying, but adding minions equal to the challenge rating of the boss works out.
If the characters in your game have a high level of optimization, beyond the standard hobbyist level the adventure path writers seem to be expecting I'd throw the advanced simple template on everything as well.
One problem with the above, adding more enemies along with a large party is that in a lot of the encounters there simply won't be room for everyone. Depending on the specifics of and encounter and party composition this can be good or bad for the party, but whether the encounter ends up being easier than expected or not do to cramped quarters it can often be unfun for an individual player:
GM: What does Bill the Brave do this round?
Player: Well, I'm two corners back from the room where all the fighting is happening and I can't see anything and don't see anywhere I can move to get closer so I guess I won't do anything.
Making everything larger on the maps can solve a lot of this issue, if you increase each dimension by 50% (a 2 x 4 room becomes a 3 X 6) you come pretty close to doubling the amount of area available.
|
You have 7 people.
The APL is essentially +1.
With an APL of +1, essentially you can add minions to encounters/more monsters as if the party was one level higher.
as a general rule APL+4 is what you want, if you want both sides to have a tough fight on their hands...but don't go for higher CR monsters.
The problem is even if you have for example let say 7 level 3 characters, their APL+1 so 4, means it's a party of level 4, it's better for them to fight many CR 4 or CR 3 monsters than for example fighting one big CR 8 monster.
An Ogre Mage is technically CR appropriate but the Ogre Mage will decimate the level 3 party without trying too hard...the cone of cold would have taken care of many party members before the fight even started.
Some options:
- Assuming the characters were made with the recommended 15 point buy, have the players re-stat their characters using only 10 point buy?
- Split up the group and run two sessions - one for a group of 3 players and one for a group of 4 players?
- Give bosses Max HP, then double it, and then give them the Advanced template.
- Give some bosses the Mighty template
- Have bosses wear an assortment of Talisman to help protect against meddlesome adventurers. though theey occupy a neck slot, one can wear up to 3 talisman at a time on a single chain. One can only have the benifits of one talisman's effects at a time, however.
(Talisman of Arrow Protection, Talisman of Freedom, Talisman of Good Fortune, Talisman of Healing Power, and Triskelion Talisman all seem useful)
How far along are you? RotRL as an AP is somewhat notable as one that starts out really easy and gets honestly pretty tough towards the end. If the PCs are rolling through book 1, that's pretty much to be expected.
Introduce D&D 5e mechanic of Legendary actions for bosses.
While prepping, define 1-3 actions that the boss can take off turn each round (these can only be done at the end of another character's turn, and are not to be confused with immediate actions which interrupt other character actions)
This is one of the few mechanics i have seen that actually help balance BBEG vs Adventuring party encounters, allowing the bosses to actually appear to take on all of the party members as a whole, react to party member actions, and have them remain dangerous for multiple rounds without getting overwhelmed by unbalanced action economy.
A similar tactic that is a little more powerful (but takes less prep time) is to just let the BBEGs have multiple turns in a round, splitting up the round into halves or even thirds (beginning after the BBEG gets its first turn via initiative order).
Hello, I run the whole campaign with 6 players.
My first advice (in the long run) is keep your players alive. Try to mangle them here and there so that they have PC's with a story and a backdground. But it also give's them a disadvantage, wich downgrades the pc level. For example if you score a crit. Cut a hand off instead of the normal double damage.
As some people already explaned that extra monsters is not good. The rooms are not large enough to handle that amount of creatures. Max the bosses until the 3 maybe the 4 adventure.
The first book is really a walk threu for a group of 7 players. But the second book is al about the horror of the misgivens and 7 players are much more fun to roleplay then 4 !!!
In the end Karzough will kill them all. Even ive they are with 20. :)
Don't split up !!!
Our group is large 6 players and 1 DM. Where doing this for 15 years now. What we do is to have a Game night we must have at least 4 players.
That way we almost can play every week. And that keeps the game going. We alway's find an exuse why some PC isn't a part of the story that week.
My group has 6. In the first couple of chapters, I added extra enemies (half again as many, to match there being that many more PCs), which did make combat last longer, but that's really all it did. The fights weren't more fun, they just dragged as we went through round after round of a dozen+ actions.
Eventually, I switched over to giving the existing monsters max hit points and occasionally adding an extra enemy or two. That worked out much better.
By the middle of Chapter 3, I didn't even need to do that. Ogres will mess you up. One of them one-shotted the sorcerer with a crit.
We finished Chapter 4 with several casualties. The fights have definitely been getting tougher for them.
Sometimes you don't need to modify the monsters or how many there are, just tweak their tactics a bit. Take advantage of things like Cover, Concealment, and the bonus for attacking from higher ground. If they can't hit the tank, have them use Aid Another or Sunder their shield.
I would like to know if the group is optimized.
We are in Rune Lords (I think second to last book). We have rolled up stats and have 7 players. (not optimized characters) Though the combats have been a challenge, they usually ended in 3-5 rounds (5 if there was a BBEG). There was a combat that lasted longer because my Bard wasn't there with Inspire Courage. :)