DM'ing with EIGHT players

[Turkagent]

So... yeah... it's my first time and I need help. I'm trying to understand how to adjust monster classes to the correct level... What level should the starting encounter be? :|

[Human Paragon 3]

Unfortunately, there is no super-clean way to do this.

My suggestions are these:

1) Boost the number of monsters in the encounter by roughly 75%. Normal encounters are balanced for 4 players; you have eight. Just doubling the monsters will make the encounters drag on forever. You need to be wary of action economy, however. Normal "boss" encounters will be a breeze for your team, because their actions will be 8-1. Make sure all your encounters have numerous enemies to fight.

2) Focus on ways of dividing up the battlefield, breaking encounters into 2-3 small skirmishes.

3) Don't be afraid to split the party sometimes. This gets boring if you do it a lot, but often times, having the party break off into sub-adventures lets you dramatically shift back and forth between them at oppurtune moments, and balance encounters in a way closer to normal.

[Tokuhara]

3) Don't be afraid to split the party sometimes. This gets boring if you do it a lot, but often times, having the party break off into sub-adventures lets you dramatically shift back and forth between them at oppurtune moments, and balance encounters in a way closer to normal.

This option is VERY fun, especially in Ravenloft

[Tyndmyr]

So... yeah... it's my first time and I need help. I'm trying to understand how to adjust monster classes to the correct level... What level should the starting encounter be? :|

Start with normal EL stuff. Multiply normal number of monsters by 2.25. Carry on. Be careful not to focus fire players as much, since fight scale has gotten a lot larger.

Encourage snappy player turns, btw. Eight players is where Im at atm, and it's easy for it to get slow.

[Birstel]

I had a table of 13 at one point. I had to start counting to 6 every time someone came up in initiative. If I got to 6 before they started acting, they lost their turn.

[Piggy Knowles]

Ugh, I've been in groups this large, and it's not my favorite.

My single biggest piece of advice: roll things in advance! Combats are going to take ridiculously long with this many people. If not properly managed, a single combat encounter with that many PCs can take up the majority of a session, leaving very little time for any serious RP or plot development.

So do everything you can to minimize that time. You need to be really well organized. Have a very clear idea of what every player can do, as well as every enemy or monster that you stick on the table. It's tough to keep track of with so many people, but it's way more important that you do so.

But for serious time saving? Make all of your rolls in advance. Just having a list of d20 rolls on a list or spreadsheet makes a huge difference, especially when you've got to resolve a whole bunch of attacks at once. Just make sure that your players are aware of what you're doing, and that you won't ever game the system by looking ahead at the next roll.

If you still want to roll for occasionally for dramatic circumstances, you can - but only if your players trust you, and don't think that you're just rolling because you saw that there was a crappy number coming up ahead.