DM'ing for 8 people! Scaling Advise

[AmbientRaven]

Hi Guys,

So recently I started DnD with some friends. What started as me + 4 people has ended up as me + 8 people and a potential 9th.

I'm fine DM'ing for this many people, but having not done it before I am not sure the best way to scale encounters. Should I go with harder enemies, or more enemies?
More means bigger dungeon rooms which may be an issue and a bit weird if the party always happens to find HUGE rooms everywhere.
Harder enemies means I need to find the right level difference/difficulty increase so its not to hard but not to easy

What do you guys think?

thanks

-DM:AR

[CRtwenty]

Honestly, you want to go with both more, and stronger enemies. A party of 8 PCs is just going to overwhelm most encounters with sheer numbers, and even the toughest opponent is probably going to get slaughtered in one or two rounds unless he has lots of minions or other creatures screening him.

[Drachasor]

4 gestalt ettin pcs.

[AmbientRaven]

What would be a good difficulty increase?
Every one is level 2 at present, with the group consisting of a Fighter (sword+shield Tanky build), 2h Paladin, 2H Barbarian, Wizard, Ranged Bard, Ranged Ranger, Ranged Druid (will be a wild form shifter later on though)
Most people have 17-18 in a primary stat and 12-14 in off stats (bard has 3 18's and 3 16's, he rolled amazingly well for 3d6) as everyone seemed to get lucky rolls

The next stage of the campaign I'm using level 3 Rangers and 'scout skirmishers' (Shotbows, if they move more than 10ft it adds adds 1d4 damage to their shot, they have a lower BAb thenr angers though, and no form of slow down arrows) with some snare style arrows and traps (new group, trying to get them used to using look for traps, spot and search checks ect.) with a level 4 Ranger Lord who has some enchanted equipment and other tricks.

The next stage includes ambushes in a forest, I have made up 8 ambush spots (1d8 to determine what spot they are ambushed in) I was going to have 1d6+3 rangers and 1d6+3 scouts per encounter)

And the Ranger lord will have 4 Rangers, 4 Scouts, his wolf, and a trapped battlefield.

Does this seem reasonable?

[Darth Stabber]

At lower levels doubling HP is a reasonable solution, at mid to high levels save or X spells can make nearly any amount of extra HP trivial, so adding a little to saves can be a nice addition to the extra HP (not too much or you risk invalidation of normally valid tactics). A +2 to saves and +2 to any spell resistance will probably do the trick. I am gming for a group of 6, and I tend to either uses masses (which are often invalidated by AoE), or extra HP and increased saves.

[Fitz10019]

1. split the party

2. world's largest dungeon

[Saintheart]

Your ambushes are going to get clowned. Hard. Eight people can put out a lot of firepower in one round, even if three of them have to get up in your face first.

If you start running into problems, the first thing to do is to shut down their casters and interfere with the action economy, and don't focus so much on bringing their hitpoints down until later in the fight. Consider at least one cleric or druid-y type among those outlaws; Incite and Inhibit mess with a party's capacity to coordinate and they're only level one spells.

Next, mundane gear: just because players don't use it doesn't mean your mooks can't. A tanglefoot bag costs all of 50 gp and works on anything up to large size, and it only requires a ranged touch attack. It has a 10 foot range increment, certainly, but if you have a single mage with True Strike you're batting at least a +10 attack bonus even if you chuck the damn thing its full 50 foot distance. And whoever gets hit by a tanglefoot bag is going to lose -2 to his attack rolls, -4 to DEX (i.e. -2 to Initiative, Reflex, and AC), move at half speed, and can't charge or run. If the PCs' fighters can't get close to you, they can't do you damage. And if you're lucky, they'll fail the Reflex save at these levels and be stuck in place. Another cheesy thing I found that does similar horrible stuff is the Harpoon out of Stormwrack: retool it as a "hunting spear" and a successful hit (on a failed Reflex save, keyed to damage) halves movement again down to a quarter of normal speed because movement halvings stack, unlike normal multipliers. To say nothing of the fact that the harpoon does its inflicted damage again when the victim tries to tear it out of the wound. To say nothing of the fact it imposes another Concentration check on top of the check that being Entangled compels.

Also, thunderstones: still viable at these levels. DC 13 Fort save against a second level caster means, generally, a deafened caster. Especially if your mooks deliver a volley of the damn things at the outset of the engagement. And if your rangers and scouts can't hit an AC 5, which is all a thunderstone needs to detonate, I'm sorry, they deserve to die. Deafened characters also means you can shut down the PC's OOC planning: "I'm sorry, but you yelling at Bob to attack the dude over there doesn't work because Bob's character is STONE DEAF and facing the other way."

Also, smokesticks: ignite and run, or ignite and hang around in the fog cloud that's generated for the concealment bonus that the stick gives you.

[crazyhedgewizrd]

They are low level just triple or quadruple the amount of monsters you think a standard 4 man party can take own.

[relytdan]

atypically the standard for a 4 person encounter is of equal or +1 to +2 CR above their level then for 6 most typically take that to double their CR and at 8+ players I personally would take the CR to Tripple of the party, if that means they get a horde of cr1 goblins fine if that means 1 colossal ancient red dragon fine. - As DM you can always in game scale the encounter to add in more if needed or have some of the npcs dies a little sooner if it looks like they are struggling( presuming your of the mind set to not have players rolling new characters every game session )

[killem2]

Underwater combat :)

[Sylthia]

What would be a good difficulty increase?
Every one is level 2 at present, with the group consisting of a Fighter (sword+shield Tanky build), 2h Paladin, 2H Barbarian, Wizard, Ranged Bard, Ranged Ranger, Ranged Druid (will be a wild form shifter later on though)
Most people have 17-18 in a primary stat and 12-14 in off stats (bard has 3 18's and 3 16's, he rolled amazingly well for 3d6) as everyone seemed to get lucky rolls

The next stage of the campaign I'm using level 3 Rangers and 'scout skirmishers' (Shotbows, if they move more than 10ft it adds adds 1d4 damage to their shot, they have a lower BAb thenr angers though, and no form of slow down arrows) with some snare style arrows and traps (new group, trying to get them used to using look for traps, spot and search checks ect.) with a level 4 Ranger Lord who has some enchanted equipment and other tricks.

The next stage includes ambushes in a forest, I have made up 8 ambush spots (1d8 to determine what spot they are ambushed in) I was going to have 1d6+3 rangers and 1d6+3 scouts per encounter)

And the Ranger lord will have 4 Rangers, 4 Scouts, his wolf, and a trapped battlefield.

Does this seem reasonable?

What's the 8th member of your party? Or did I miscount? Were you doing the standard 4d6 and drop the lowest for stats or a straight 3d6? If so, they were very lucky.

[Dungeon_Master]

for your own sanity you should treat it similar to EL

4 PCs at level 1-3 = their rough level
8 PCs at level 1-3 = their rough level+1

8 PCs at level 4+ are suddenly their rough level+2

generally it is not any more challenging to make pcs fight more then 6 (1.5 x party members)

8 PCs should face no more then 12 appropriate challenge rating monsters
which should be within 7 of their average party level if they are

1-3 APL no more then 12 monsters up to 8-11 EL (keep in mind that they will not gain exp if they face something 8+ CR above their own actual level

so as an example a party of 8 4 ECL pcs should face roughly the same types of encounters as a group of 6 ECL (4 PC)
consider recurring bad guys with the leadership feat, whose minion supplies are refreshed monthly.
which means anything between CR 1/64 and CR 11 is "fair game" with Cr 12 and 13 being still feasible, but that's a very mean thing to do to your group, as they will not gain exp, although they will still likely defeat it unless of course it is a group of 4 9th level wizards (EL 13) (quite a challenge if they all have the leadership feat, your PCs will hate you unless of course they win, in which case It is quite a bit of experience hehehe)

[BowStreetRunner]

I have been playing in a large group for some time now. Honestly, the thing that I think has worked best are mixed encounters. I'm not just talking about a few powerful opponents and a bunch of weaker lackeys either (although that can help give everyone something to do). You need to use the environment to your advantage as well.

Hazards and obstacles usually call upon various specialized characters to overcome them. Throw in a combat while the party is still trying to overcome these challenges and you can take what would be a simple, short battle and turn it into a much lengthier encounter as the party needs to balance between getting their offensive power in place to take down the enemies and trying to get the group past whatever hazards or obstacles are in place.

One thing I would caution against (mostly for later on, as it will probably not be relevant at the current party level) is huge battles. We have been stuck in a battle with hundreds of monsters that has been taking about 3-4 hours per round just to resolve all of the units in combat.

Summoners work very well as an alternative to large numbers of troops. They can summon new creatures to replace those that fall in battle, but keep the overall size of the battle manageable by not having all of their summon-able creatures in play at the same time. Necromancers can have a similar utility, by turning fallen creatures into undead during the battle.

[Amphetryon]

Having DMed for large groups for a long period, my advice is to scale encounters up by adding enemies, not increasing the strength of individual enemies. Your party's effective level shifts, relative to standard, the higher above 4 party members you go, but Action Economy is the thing. If you respond to their greater size by simply giving them higher CRed enemies within the expected number per encounter, the party will either ROFLstomp them by having the Action Economy advantage, or get steamrolled if they cannot act in a Surprise round, and roll poorly in the Initiative; most groups I've seen find both of these outcomes to be unexciting. Adding additional enemies to an encounter that the party's ECL would otherwise indicate is appropriate minimizes the chance of either of the above unsatisfying outcomes.

[shadow_archmagi]

Having DMed for large groups for a long period, my advice is to scale encounters up by adding enemies, not increasing the strength of individual enemies. Your party's effective level shifts, relative to standard, the higher above 4 party members you go, but Action Economy is the thing. If you respond to their greater size by simply giving them higher CRed enemies within the expected number per encounter, the party will either ROFLstomp them by having the Action Economy advantage, or get steamrolled if they cannot act in a Surprise round, and roll poorly in the Initiative; most groups I've seen find both of these outcomes to be unexciting. Adding additional enemies to an encounter that the party's ECL would otherwise indicate is appropriate minimizes the chance of either of the above unsatisfying outcomes.

This. An enemy strong enough to pose a threat to 20 PCs is also an enemy strong enough to kill 10 PCs per round, which is problematic. Larger encounters are definitely the way to go.


Alternatively, have you considered splitting the party? You could have dual adventuring groups that meet on different days, and have different adventures within the same campaign, and only team up for special events.

[Sylthia]

You could split the party, but try it short term at first. I've found you can burn out fast if you are having to plan two different campaigns every week. Also, it bears mentioning, but does the entire party show up every week? At full strength, I have six PCs, but often at least one or two can't make it so it makes it more average sized. So I usuAlly plan for a party of 5 and adjust from there.

[AmbientRaven]

Thanks for the tips guys :) its really helped a lot

i dont want to split the party as its some of my closest friends, their gf's, my gf and their is no easy split for them

also the 8th is a Cleric, i missed listing him

[Dungeon_Master]

as I posted above, but if the group is mixed levels, always use average party level

add up All PCs ECL and Divide by the number of PCs
Npcs do not affect this calculation.