Help with Managing Large Table - OotA

[CrimsonOvercoat]

I am currently running OotA for a table of 8 players. They are enjoying themselves, but challange level has gotten skewered all to heck. They ambushed the drow hunting party (including the priestess of Lolth), rolled high initiative and, combined with a surprise round, obliterated the high level bad guys with some great rolls and good tactics.

I need to be able to put the fear of death back into the party. What options and opinions do you have on running a challenging 5e encounter for such a large group?

[steppedonad4]

I am currently running OotA for a table of 8 players. They are enjoying themselves, but challange level has gotten skewered all to heck. They ambushed the drow hunting party (including the priestess of Lolth), rolled high initiative and, combined with a surprise round, obliterated the high level bad guys with some great rolls and good tactics.

I need to be able to put the fear of death back into the party. What options and opinions do you have on running a challenging 5e encounter for such a large group?

Given that the campaign is balanced for a four person party, I'd just double everything. Or split the group up into two groups and find another DM.

[ad_hoc]

Given that the campaign is balanced for a four person party, I'd just double everything. Or split the group up into two groups and find another DM.

Yeah, that sounds like a nightmare.

Why does everyone want to play such a large game?

My maximum is 5 players + DM.

[endur]

I need to be able to put the fear of death back into the party. What options and opinions do you have on running a challenging 5e encounter for such a large group?

Putting "the fear of death" into a party of characters is different from "challenging a large group."

The "Fear of Death" can be created by anything that sounds challenging... The Dragon in Red mountain, the Lich of Skull Crypt, the Demon of Kazan, the cult of Omen,... its about role playing and not about stats. My favorite adventure for creating fear is the original module that included Strahd, but any of the Strahd modules are great for this.

Challenging a party in combat is all about stats and strategy. Do you want to present a difficult challenge? Increase the EL. Do you want to kill a character? Bring a Dragon or a Vampire (or other boss/legendary monster). A Big Bad Evil Genius that splits his attacks among several PCs is difficult but all of the PCs will likely survive. A BBEG that focuses his attacks on a single PC will likely kill one or more PCs.

Tomb of Horrors was a "challenge the large party" adventure (albeit a challenging adventure designed for a Total Party Kill). Whereas Ravenloft was a "create fear" adventure (but the party was still supposed to survive).

[Kane0]

- More combatants split into more than 1 initiative (saves you from losing the action economy and condition lockdowns)
- Split the party during a fight (forces players into inefficient courses of action)
- Focus on fewer party members (high risk, be careful)
- Have multiple stages of an encounter (keeps things interesting all the way through, you can stay your hand at the beginning)
- Mix easy and tough foes together (allows PCs to drop a few to keep the pace up while allowing you expendables)
- Terrain, traps and other factors to keep the PCs busy and threatened (forces attention away from enemies and allows you to spread damage through everyone)
- Stage a combat when they are not at peak effectiveness or readiness (during a short or long resting period is common, they should have at least 2 people on watch at a time)

[Safety Sword]

Hidden combatants.

Invisible spellcasters which join a fight (usually with a fireball).

To challenge a large party such as this you need to start taking the kid gloves off and using higher level attacks because they have many more resources to use on survival and retaliation.

Grapple the spell casters and dominate the melee types and see how they respond.

My best advice is probably that your game is just not within the typical party size, so you need to wing it.

I would never run a game with 8 PCs because I think there would be too much waiting for turns in combat.

Good luck :smallwink:

[CrimsonOvercoat]

With 5e, combat has actually flown by.

[Safety Sword]

With 5e, combat has actually flown by.

We're all old and impatient :smallamused:

[Kane0]

Oh I forgot. When you want to really screw someone over? Exhaustion.

[steppedonad4]

Oh I forgot. When you want to really screw someone over? Exhaustion.

Exhaustion is probably the nastiest mechanic in 5e that I can think of. Even one level can screw you, since initiative rolls are ability checks and having disadvantage on all ability checks also lowers your Passive Perception by 5.

[Kane0]

It's like 5e's version of Negative levels. Get up to 6 exhaustion and you die, no save, do not pass go, do not collect $200.

You only recover one rank of exhaustion per long rest, so if you have just one enemy with a 'Ray of fatigue' that targets a single dude for a CON save vs 1 exhaustion level (max 2 or 3) then after a couple rounds your party will be dead locked on exterminating him with the most prejudice possible.

That'll put the fear back in 'em.

Oh and auras are a nasty trick too. The more party members engaging, the more people subject to them. Put a fear aura on one baddie and a damage aura on another and watch the carnage.

[CrimsonOvercoat]

Thanks for all the great ideas! I was in kind of a mental rut, but now I've got some good stuff to work with. I like the damage/fear aura idea, and the ray of fatigue.