Encounter creation w/many players

[Dain Broadbeam]

So, as my first campaign as a DM I am running a modified version of Horde of the Dragon Queen.

The problem is that due to a series of circumstances we ended up with 7 players.

The biggest problem I have is creating my encounters. More specifically the DMG guide for number multiplication. I guess it works with a more "normal" amount of players, but as I have way more then that, I feel it somewhat falls flat on its face. One "big" enemy usually ends up getting swarmed while a horde of, say, Kobolds gets massacred even how many I use. I have tried to modify the multiplier a bit to some success (upped my budget pr. character the same way monsters do) and shifted the number needed for each multiplier tier.

Any advice? Am I on the right track?

Cheers, Dain

[Malifice]

Have you tried mixing it up with different critters in the one encounter?

Big high HP brutes that deal a lot of damage, and smaller mook types, maybe with a leader or controller along for the ride (like a caster or hobgoblin captain type)?

[Dain Broadbeam]

To a degree yes. I kind of want to stay within the "theme" of story which limits my selection somewhat. I have noticed I missed out on some monsters that would have been great earlier (like the dragonclaw/dragonwing which I have used to "deadly" effect).

[coredump]

The encounter calculator says to decrease the multiplier by one level if you have 6-7 players. So having 4 creatures will only be a 1.5x modifier.

Single big monsters are often pretty easy, the action economy really hurts them. *especially* with lots of PCs. Using ones with Lair actions or Legendary actions helps, but its still a problem.

As mentioned, mix it up a bit. Either with monsters of various CR, or ones with various abilities. You can even use terrain to mix it up and make the encounter more interesting and challenging.

Also, I think they named them poorly. I think of them as Trivial, Easy, Medium, Hard... and multiply by 1.5 or 2x to get to Deadly.

Last of all... remember the idea is for them to have 6-8 encounters between long rests. If they only have one encounter, a Deadly is easy to deal with. If that Deadly encounter is the 5th of the day.... it is much more of an issue.

[Dain Broadbeam]

The encounter calculator says to decrease the multiplier by one level if you have 6-7 players. So having 4 creatures will only be a 1.5x modifier.

It does? Haha, thanks, I must have missed that bit... It is basically what I ended up doing anyway :smallbiggrin:



Also, I think they named them poorly. I think of them as Trivial, Easy, Medium, Hard... and multiply by 1.5 or 2x to get to Deadly.

Last of all... remember the idea is for them to have 6-8 encounters between long rests. If they only have one encounter, a Deadly is easy to deal with. If that Deadly encounter is the 5th of the day.... it is much more of an issue.
Noted.

[MaxWilson]

So, as my first campaign as a DM I am running a modified version of Horde of the Dragon Queen.

The problem is that due to a series of circumstances we ended up with 7 players.

The biggest problem I have is creating my encounters. More specifically the DMG guide for number multiplication. I guess it works with a more "normal" amount of players, but as I have way more then that, I feel it somewhat falls flat on its face. One "big" enemy usually ends up getting swarmed while a horde of, say, Kobolds gets massacred even how many I use. I have tried to modify the multiplier a bit to some success (upped my budget pr. character the same way monsters do) and shifted the number needed for each multiplier tier.

Any advice? Am I on the right track?

Cheers, Dain

Monster power in 5E scales roughly quadratically, as the square of the number of monsters. PC power scales similarly (see Lanchester's Square Law) because in the time it takes to take down one PC, seven PCs are inflicting damage. AoE and control effects can alter this either way, but even if we compromise and drop down to the 3/2 power instead, 7 players are expected to be roughly 260% as strong as 4 players. This is basically what the various multipliers are trying to express by reducing the difficulty multiplier, etc., but you could also just calculate difficulty for a 4-PC group but multiply all the difficulty thresholds by 2.6 ((7 PCs/4 PCs)^3/2 = 1.75^3/2 = 2.6) and that should get you an even more accurate guideline. If you feel that's low you could use the 2nd power instead of the 3/2 power, which means treating the PCs as if they were 3.06 times as strong (1.75^2 = 3.06) as a 4-person group.