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Katuko
2016-06-21, 02:42 PM
Hi,

I'm rather new to running a game, and I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed before our first session. Me and a friend recruited some players for an RPG, and we happened to say "yes" to more people than we first thought we would get. I'm looking at a whopping 9 players here. I'm not too worried about getting everyone involved in the story - they all seem enthusiastic and are content with running a game with this many people. At the moment they are just starting out, and some players are rather fresh to tabletop gaming, but at least they all seem ready to learn and ready to work together.

Planning for the campaign is mostly done, in terms of story and locations and so on. My main worry is encounters and other challenges - if you drop 9 players into an encounter, there will be attacks and spells flying everywhere. I would need to ramp up the number of enemies substantially, I think, or else risk making every combat situation trivial. I could also drop in high-level monsters early, but then I run the risk of severely wounding only one character while the rest hack the monster to death on their turn.

I plan on providing plenty of situations outside of combat where they can each use their skills (and burn some points on using their special powers). In a worst-case scenario, I'll split the party. I would like to keep everyone in one group, though. Possibly talking could also be an issue, if everyone wants their say, but I feel like they can handle the social part easily. Combat is potentially the main issue.

I would very much like some tips on how to make combat with many players work. :)

DaveOTN
2016-06-21, 03:01 PM
The first 3.5 game I played in had 9 players in it, and 2 DMs. We had a good time, but it can be tricky to get everyone involved. Don't be afraid to break up the party a little bit - they don't have to be fully split, but if combat starts while half the PCs are on a different side of a bridge than the the others, and bad guys show up on both sides, it'll be a lot more interesting than if you're in a narrow hallway and 7 characters are throwing spells over the front two's heads. Try and surround the players with bad guys so that everybody has interesting tactical choices to make. Not everyone is going to want to be a front-line fighter, but they should have the opportunity to decide...do I rush back and help the rearguard who got ambushed, or deal with the bad guys up ahead? Should the PCs try and defend both sides of that bridge? Should one group rush across and then destroy the bridge behind them?

You'll need to use more bad guys than D&D normally recommends, and you'll have to make them dumber than they might be otherwise. An optimized pack of 12 goblins should try to focus all their fire on one enemy, then the next, and so on - even weak monsters can take out a character if the odds are 12-on-1. But to keep this interesting and fair, the bad guys should split up a little more so that everyone has one or two within range.

You also might find it interesting to give some of the players non-combat goals to deal with during an encounter. For instance, half the party has to hold off the ogres trying to get through a narrow passage while the other half sneaks through the tunnels and steals the magic artifact.

Finally, I would suggest not letting combat drag on too long once the tide has turned. If those 12 goblins get cut down to 3 or 4 in the first two rounds, the remaining ones should probably turn and run. Otherwise everyone's just competing to see whose arrow hits.

SilverLeaf167
2016-06-21, 03:02 PM
You didn't mention a system, so I'm going to assume D&D from your description.

Well, one pretty basic fix to the action economy problem is giving bigger enemies (like "mini-bosses" and up) extra actions/attacks they have to spend on different targets. For example, a giant could swing his club around to attack multiple characters "at once", and maybe move before a full attack or something. This way they can't absolutely crush a single character in one round (which you're rightfully worried about), but can still be a real threat to the party as a whole.

Now you just need to give them more HP (but probably not AC, as it can completely shut down the party) and think of some other ways to add variety to your battles (like environmental hazards, other monsters or special tactics) and you're off to a pretty good start.

This thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?491974-Dungeon-Combat-help-Single-Encounters-take-whole-sessions) has some pretty good tips to speed up the game a bit, which you'll definitely want with such a huge party (and beefier monsters).

CharonsHelper
2016-06-21, 03:25 PM
1. 9 players is a lot. The most I've seen run successfully is 7, and that always feels crowded, and combat slows as you have to wait for everyone to take their turn. If you're sure - here are a couple of tips.

2. Disallow pets. No animal companions. No summon monsters. They inherently slow down a game and with 9 players already, you can't afford it.

3. I'd go with increasing # of foes rather than toughness of enemy. At least to start, I'd keep most of them pretty basic. Maybe 1-2 tougher foes and a bunch of mooks. (mooks with no special abilities besides swinging a blade)

Aotrs Commander
2016-06-21, 04:55 PM
I ran with nine players not long ago for a while. We're back down to seven now, but the same things apply.

First - pre-roll initatives. Seriously. Doesn't matter whether you get the players to roll up twenty in advance or you do what I do and just do a spread sheet for it all. Take some time pre-game to write your initative order down for each encounter.

With that many players, you want to cut down on the delay this causes, because the players will be sitting around enough as it is is (as it will often take some to time to go round the table).

As an option, what we do now (I have only grudingly started doing it when one of the other DMs did). Have all the character's names on a piece of folded card, along with a few "monster 1," "monster " etc etc. You can then line them up on your DM's screen (or just in front of you if you don't use one) where everyone can see. And thus the players know what order everything is an this know when to go to the loo or the bar or something.



As to combat - really depends. I run fairly mid-high optimisation in my games, so all that happened was the complexity of the encounters went up. Just adding More Monsters isn't always a good solution except towards bottom level (and as mentioned above, you also have to try and avoid over-concentration of fire to not kill PCs.) I find it's better to add in different support (casters, ranged support, rogues etc etc) for a bit more variety than just adding More Ogres or whatever.

One thing I will HIGHLY recommend is cribbing my defiant template (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=6971094&postcount=1) idea. Basically, what it does is increment the amount of hitpoints a monster has and gives it some resiliance (but not immunity) to instant-win, fight-ending save-or-sucks. This allows you to prolong the fight (so that y'kno, it's not anticlimatic), while not obviating said save-or-sucks AND critically, not increasing the monster's OFFENSIVE capabilities. I got the idea from 4E's solo monsters and it's turned out to be one the best things I've ever done. It means that you can still stick in a single boss monster and not have it die in one round to the combined fire of the PCs which WILL happen otherwise. It also is something you can apply basically on the fly and means that you don't have to add tons of support and extra creatures to boss fights. I abuse the hell out of it now and it works beautifully.

Vitruviansquid
2016-06-21, 05:20 PM
Some ideas, in no particular order:

1. Consider playing a system that can handle 9 players, if you are currently playing a system that cannot.

2. Split up the group into 2 games with 1 GM and 4 players each.

3. Play your first few games with 9-players and wait for people to drop out... as it is inevitable.

erikun
2016-06-21, 05:49 PM
I primarily have experience with AD&D2e, D&D3e, D&D4e, and Fate. I have experience with large groups in AD&D2e and D&D3e. I'm not sure how relevant that is to your situation, since you didn't mention a system, but I hope I can help.

I've not seen problems with running large groups of characters in combat, at least not any moreso than standard groups of characters - which means that player disorganization is probably still the biggest contributor. The largest concern with a large group is keeping everyone focused, which can be a problem when someone with little knowledge of the system is left sitting around for 10 minutes while everyone else jabbers about there spell lists. There are a number of ways to speed combat along, and I would suggest a number of them if your group is okay with the idea.

Suggestion #1: Divide combat into a simple "player turn" and "DM turn". On the players' turn, they decide between each other who is going first and allow everyone to act. During the DM turn, quickly come up with a movement pattern for the enemies, make the rolls, and tell everyone what happened. The idea is to keep things quick and moving forward, and give the players something to do when "not their turn". (Even when a player is not actively rolling, they can still be involved in the party's plans.) It also means that, if a player is not ready with their spells/action/etc, then other players can still go ahead while the indecisive one figures things out.

If that doesn't work, then definitely group monsters together - "orc fighters", "orc archers", and "skeletons" rather than individual initiatives for each different enemy creature.

Suggestion #2: No coaching. Don't allow players to give suggestions or recommendations to the player who is actively picking their action for the round. If the player is not familiar with the rules and would like some recommendations, then have ONE player (perhaps the DM) answer questions and give recommendations. Too many people suggesting actions just turns it into the 10-minute discussions about spell lists, and drags the game to a halt.

Suggestion #3: Plan enemy actions. Not in a round-by-round sense, but in a general "orc fighters will attack the character who attacked them" or "orc archers attack wizards and clerics". Just have a general idea of how creatures in an encounter will react, so when it is the DM's turn, you can quickly roll the dice and tell what happens. Just a simple plan, something like "charge, attack whoever attacked you, retreat if the archers get killed" is sufficient for most creatures in combat.

Suggestion #4: Many creatures, but spread the love. You'll want lots of enemies to deal with the overly large group - in most systems, an exceptionally tough enemy is more a problem than a solution, so just more enemies is preferable. However, as DaveOTN notes, focused fire can easily kill a single PC very quickly. Instead, make it a goal to spread enemies out over the party. Rather than have every orc charge the same barbarian and attempt to mob them, instead have one or two orcs go after every frontline fighter. Depending on the enemy group, you could have one orc per melee fighter while a few more attempt to circle around and flank the spellcasters - lots of enemy units gives you some interesting options, and poses threats that a typical D&D fight does not.

For "boss" encounters, I would probably recommend 2 or 3 enemy "bosses" for the encounter rather than some sort of "superboss". The superboss idea can be fun, but really needs to be designed properly for an overly large group to be effective.

Also, don't be afraid to toss in a bunch of "trash" mobs of weaker enemies to bump up the CR/XP limit. An extra ten or twenty kobolds (depending on encounter level) can both be a fun stomping option, and give the party something extra to worry about - especially if there is a theme in the campaign where they make sense. Players generally like scoring kills during combat, even the "noncombative" ones, and allowing the less combat-focused characters the chance to deal with a couple of goblins from bothering the party cleric - even if not strickly necessary - still feels nice. Plus, sometimes the frontline fighters might be the ones swarmed with kobolds, while the rest need to deal with the flanking ogres. :smallwink:

Katuko
2016-06-22, 06:55 AM
Thank you for your replies so far, they have been insightful. I'm sorry for not mentioning the system we use; I'll describe it below the replies to your posts.


Don't be afraid to break up the party a little bit - they don't have to be fully split
I agree, and I have been thinking about this myself. It will give some edge to combat, as the players will be forced to come up with new strategies. If I split them into different groups on the battle map each time, I'm sure there will be some interesting situations. I also have some scenarios where I'm sure they'll split up on their own accord; I'll mention it below.

I happen to have a bridge map already. I was planning to start combat by having enemies launch ranged attacks from one side, but now that you mention it I think having the players partly cross the bridge first would be far more interesting.


You'll need to use more bad guys than D&D normally recommends, and you'll have to make them dumber than they might be otherwise.
I'll try to spread out the enemies between players so everyone has something to do. There are a few characters that may hit multiple enemies at once, but if they are spread out this doesn't matter as much.


You also might find it interesting to give some of the players non-combat goals to deal with during an encounter. For instance, half the party has to hold off the ogres trying to get through a narrow passage while the other half sneaks through the tunnels and steals the magic artifact.
I actually have two such scenarios already planned, I'll type them out below and see what you guys think. :)


Well, one pretty basic fix to the action economy problem is giving bigger enemies (like "mini-bosses" and up) extra actions/attacks they have to spend on different targets.
[...]
Now you just need to give them more HP (but probably not AC, as it can completely shut down the party) and think of some other ways to add variety to your battles (like environmental hazards, other monsters or special tactics) and you're off to a pretty good start.

A very good idea, and one that I will likely use for encounters with larger enemies. I'm trying to select maps that offer both cover, some open space, and hazards (such as steep cliffs, lava, and so on) both due to the number of players, and due to the special powers some of them have.


9 players is a lot.
Indeed it is, but I think I'll be able to handle it so long as we both play it simple and speed up combat a bit. With the suggestions I've gotten from you guys I feel a bit more confident already. :P


pre-roll initatives
I thought about this earlier, but I had actually forgotten it again up until you mentioned it. Pre-rolling is a very good idea, and one I will definitely use! We are going to be using Roll20.net to organize parts of this game, but I think I'll just use random.org to generate a list of random numbers in a flash. :D

Roll20 also keeps track of initiative order, so that's nice. We won't have to wonder about whose turn it is, at least.


One thing I will HIGHLY recommend is cribbing my defiant template (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=6971094&postcount=1) idea.
You basically made a template for monsters with multiple health bars. I like it! It allows a decent amount of damage to be dealt (as it just flows over into the next "bar"), but status effects and one-hit kills are prevented from ending the entire encounter immediately. I will definitely use this one, slightly modified for the system we run.


Some ideas, in no particular order:

1. Consider playing a system that can handle 9 players, if you are currently playing a system that cannot.

2. Split up the group into 2 games with 1 GM and 4 players each.

3. Play your first few games with 9-players and wait for people to drop out... as it is inevitable.
I think the system can handle 9 players, but the amount of time each one will take up is hard to estimate. Everyone seems enthusiastic about the game right now, but it may be that some will drop out due to lack of spare time. I won't say I'm hoping for that until I see how our first sessions go, though. ;)



I primarily have experience with AD&D2e, D&D3e, D&D4e, and Fate. I have experience with large groups in AD&D2e and D&D3e. I'm not sure how relevant that is to your situation, since you didn't mention a system, but I hope I can help.
Your insight is appreciated, no matter the system. My bad for not specifying what we use, but the advice you gave works anyhow. :)


Since I failed to do so in my first post, here's a description of what we are running.

------------------------------

The system

The system is a home-brewed one, and is basically a simplified version of most other tabletop games. Stats have been condensed into a set of rather standard attributes, with each attribute affecting a few skills each. Players gain a fixed amount of points to spend on their stats when the game starts, and another set of points to use on gear. They have a fixed pool of energy points to use on abilities in combat; it's basically mana. HP is also a fixed value per race that does not change even on level up.

There are only a few types of rolls to be made. Dice like d4 and d6 seem to be eliminated from the system. A percentage value (1d100) is rolled to determine whether attacks hit or not. They are also rolled for skills. For each of these rolls, you take your value in the associated stat, add your bonuses/penalties, and if the roll is lower than the total number you succeed. Enemies do not have any AC that reduces hit rate, only a few special abilities (or dodging, which may be attempted on one attack per turn) does that.

For every attack, the basic thing that needs to be rolled is a percentage (automatically done by our online tools), checked vs either your Melee or Ranged stat (+/- bonuses). If it hits, roll damage. For any basic weapon, damage is 1d10, plus your Strength stat divided by 10. (So a Strength score of 45 would add +4 damage).

Damage reduction is a fixed value of Armor + Toughness / 10, so it's also easy to calculate. HP is not based on level, only race. Instead a higher Toughness stat = more damage reduction. Characters may attempt to Dodge one attack per round. If successful, that attack deals no damage.

My thoughts: Great damage resistance seems to be the way to go. People won't dodge, rather they'll prevent weaker enemies from even putting a dent in them. I may need to include some enemies with powers that ignore armor (a lot of powers do, actually) to counteract this. Those powers grow progressively more dangerous with level, as they hit an HP pool that never increases. Status effects such as poison, however, ignore Armor too, so I could use those where needed. They deal minor damage over time instead of eating a big chunk of health at once.

Every character gets to pick an Element, which is a "magic school" of sorts. It gives them a small range of spells plus a special trait. They do not get new spells on level up, the ones they have simply grow stronger due to stats. Everyone is pretty much a melee fighter with limited casting ability.

Most of the powers act simply as a basic Ranged weapon attack except with different target area (cone, blast, etc). Several of them have extra effects, however, like setting the target on fire for damage over time, reducing enemy Armor, or moving stuff around on the map. This could turn combat more complex.

Plus, like, half of the characters have some form of flight or hover ability. I imagine Flight powers will be the bane of some of my scenarios, as it allows the player to ignore terrain hazards and mostly avoid melee attacks. At least Flight costs a lot of energy points, and forces them to keep moving every round lest it turns off again.

The most common powers in the group are: Various forms of Flight, various forms of moving stuff around with your mind, and simple blasting powers.

------------------------------

Thoughts:

Most of the players have chosen a melee weapon and focused on that. They have feats that add some extra damage and hit rate, nothing fancy. The characters have good single-target damage but sharply limited area-of-effect skills, so adding multiple weak enemies to the fight will let them cut them down quickly while still eating some damage themselves here and there.

Powers will kill several weak enemies outright, otherwise they are just a ranged option for melee fighters. They can't blast away forever, as they are limited by how many energy points they have. Early game, each player will have maybe 2 or 3 uses of their power per in-game day, akin to low-level D&D wizards.

Due to the number of players, I may have one or two larger fights per in-game day instead of many smaller ones. It would also make more sense story-wise to have a big battle with many enemies in one specific location, rather than constant armies of creatures that appear out of nowhere. One cave can only hold so many monsters before it becomes ridiculous, after all.

Scenarios:

I have two players with Fire as their specialty. This gives them some blasting spells, plus a resistance to fire and heat. As one of the planned locations is a volcanic cave, they will be preoccupied there, I imagine, with doing a special task only they could survive. They will also have a nice resistance vs fire damage, but will in turn be unable to use their powers very effectively on the creatures there. In the meantime I plan to have similar monsters attack the rest of the party. The location can easily have lava-based hazards that force some use of powers to fully avoid. When their task is complete, a minor eruption will cover parts of the map in lava, caused by an awakened boss monster.

Those who fly can easily move anywhere on battle maps with natural hazards, but unless they ferry the rest of the party across in the middle of combat (bad idea) the rest of the characters must still deal with things such as a narrow bridge. I can see several strategies forming here. In particular, carrying a character to the other side means that you can't attack, and you may be shot down. On the other hand, dropping a melee character into the midst of weaker archer enemies would allow him to decimate them very quickly.

If certain players use their special power, they can move an enemy several squares. If they opt to move an enemy off the edge, that is basically an instant kill regardless of stats. They can only do this to one target at a time, and they will not have the energy to do it to more than one or two, so I think it will be fine. I'll add in flying enemies to spice things up.

I plan to include several out-of-combat situations where flight and telekinesis powers are useful, so that the players will not be cheesing every encounter. I will force them to use their powers wisely, as they can be real game-changers at times. Also, I know my players are not focusing entirely on combat stats, they are happy with social challenges and puzzles too. For that reason I doubt this party will be a war machine, they'll have mix-n-match stats that make them all versatile rather than optimized.


If you have any scenarios that could work, feel free to suggest them. I like the thought of splitting the players between several tasks, and have been thinking of the following:

Protecting NPCs from monsters, by having at least some party members guard them from swift attackers while the others move ahead to try to eliminate the slower enemies.
Crossing a bridge or passing through a narrow corridor, maze, or similar, where they can be separated or attacked from multiple angles.
Being "forced" to spend powers on avoiding hazards or dealing with special enemy types.
Having an enemy grab a plot item, so that the challenge is not direct combat, but stopping this single enemy before it escapes.
Similar to the above: "Timed" combat, where it must be resolved within a few rounds in order to succeed. This could be due to an approaching danger, someone escaping, NPCs being threatened, and so on.
Monsters tailored to the party, so that using specific powers on specific targets seem like a better idea than blasting away randomly.


Sorry for the long post, but I realized I may have to explain the mechanics a bit. ^^'

CharonsHelper
2016-06-22, 07:29 AM
Suggestion #1: Divide combat into a simple "player turn" and "DM turn". On the players' turn, they decide between each other who is going first and allow everyone to act. During the DM turn, quickly come up with a movement pattern for the enemies, make the rolls, and tell everyone what happened. The idea is to keep things quick and moving forward, and give the players something to do when "not their turn". (Even when a player is not actively rolling, they can still be involved in the party's plans.) It also means that, if a player is not ready with their spells/action/etc, then other players can still go ahead while the indecisive one figures things out.

This I disagree with entirely. It makes initiative all but worthless and a high initiative pointless.

Aotrs Commander
2016-06-22, 08:39 AM
This I disagree with entirely. It makes initiative all but worthless and a high initiative pointless.

Depends what sort of system you're using; you COULD get away with it on some simpler systems. 3.x/PF/4E would not be a good system to use that on, I agree, but you could maybe get away with more with something like Rolemaster (*rocks hand back and forth*); maybe the OP's homebrew, I don't know how complex it is beyond basic attacks as described (i.e. if there are spells and if they are varied in effect as D&D spells and what). Something like HeroQuet or Dungeoneer (advanced fighting fantasy) you almost certainly could; but with a simple system, you mkight be as well go with cracking round the table anyway.

Amphetryon
2016-06-22, 09:11 AM
My experiences with running large parties echo the concerns raised by the OP: 1 high-powered enemy against large numbers of PCs never works out well. Either the bad guy goes first and wrecks one of the PCs entirely (often causing a chain-reaction in the encounter's difficulty), or the PCs get the drop on the bad guy and proceed to use the Action Economy advantage to make the super scary monster into super chunky salsa before it can really mount a threat.

Given what we know of the OP's homebrew system and Player count, I'd opt for lower-powered enemies, with flight, that outnumber the PCs, but don't outclass them in expected power. Have these enemies split themselves among the PCs either randomly or based on story goals for the bad guys, so that the numerical advantage doesn't turn into focus-fire kills on one PC per combat round and so that each PC feels directly involved in the fight.

Aotrs Commander
2016-06-22, 09:19 AM
My experiences with running large parties echo the concerns raised by the OP: 1 high-powered enemy against large numbers of PCs never works out well. Either the bad guy goes first and wrecks one of the PCs entirely (often causing a chain-reaction in the encounter's difficulty), or the PCs get the drop on the bad guy and proceed to use the Action Economy advantage to make the super scary monster into super chunky salsa before it can really mount a threat.

This is exactly the problem I made the afore-linked template for. It allows you to scale the bad guy defensively (to compensate for the action economy shortfall), while keeping the offense to the same level. I not long ago finished running the first half of Rise of the Runelords adventure path (which is designed for a four-character party) for the aforementioned nine players (only eoght characters, as it happened for examples reasons), so I'd had to scale the combat encounters up; I made frequent use of the defiant template on the boss monsters as a quick and easy way to boost up those fights without having to over-scale the monsters or add tons of extraneous creatures.

Jay R
2016-06-23, 01:07 PM
Monsters have minions.

Take the high-level bandits you'd have used against a party half that size, and give them 50 or more 0th level followers. Take the trolls you had planned, and give them a bunch of goblin slaves. Every PC has plenty of targets, but the overall threat level hasn't really gone up. (And that Fighter with Great Cleave really gets to use it.)

CharonsHelper
2016-06-23, 01:24 PM
Depends what sort of system you're using; you COULD get away with it on some simpler systems. 3.x/PF/4E would not be a good system to use that on, I agree,

True - some systems actually already work that way. But the implication of the OP seems to be that it was D&D of some stripe.

Aotrs Commander
2016-06-23, 05:31 PM
Monsters have minions.

Take the high-level bandits you'd have used against a party half that size, and give them 50 or more 0th level followers. Take the trolls you had planned, and give them a bunch of goblin slaves. Every PC has plenty of targets, but the overall threat level hasn't really gone up. (And that Fighter with Great Cleave really gets to use it.)

There are some problems with that solution without actually doing more work than just slapping x number of basic monsters into the encounter, though.

1) Space. Particularly in a module (such as a scaled-up Pathfinder module), you quickly find there isn't SPACE for doubling the number of monsters; not all of them can get get into the fight and if the PCs have area-effect weapons, all that does is concentrate them into a place where dealing with them doesn't provide a challenge (if, at worst case one such attack with wipe them, they probably weren't really an balance to the encounter in the first place).

2) If the PCs don't have lots of area effects to quickly clear the chaff, and it doens't pose much threat, it can become a boring slog of dice rolls.

3) If there IS space, you can run the risk of the exact problem the boss monsters fight in reverse vis a vis the action economy. If you add fifty creatures with ranged attacks to an encounter, for example, that damage will start to add up (if they are any threat to the PCs. If they are NOT a threat, then adding, them, as mentioned above, is not a balancing factor to the encounter).

Increasing the number of monsters is certainly a solution, yes, but just adding 50 0th level followers is not the way to go about it (you're far better off having less minions of closer level, but with more variety1); at least not without assessing it first based on system and party level/combat capability.



1My typical encounters are regualrly combined arms, with ranged support, spellcasters, front-line fighters, flankers etc. A few moderate-relative-to-PCs level "monsters with class levels" is much better encounter than a larger horde of bottom-level chaff that is could be either effectively irrelevant or cumbersomely tedious to fight.

Jay R
2016-06-24, 07:25 AM
There are some problems with that solution without actually doing more work than just slapping x number of basic monsters into the encounter, though.

Agreed. One of the standard problems of internet communication is that the writer included some assumptions that the reader didn't. Let me modify my suggestion to what I actually intended.

Monsters have minions. And the DM shouldn't be stupid about it.

All encounters should be thought through carefully. But adding a large number of minions is still step one in expanding an encounter without increasing the threat level appreciably. A tenth level wizard with a lot of low-level apprentices is a larger encounter than a tenth level wizard alone, but with the exact same number of high level area effect spells affecting the party. And many of the party members will be too busy to attack the wizard, so she's facing the same number of attacks as she would have alone against a smaller party.