7 Players on my First 5th ed session - Difficulty tips?

[Fairy]

Hey all,

So short version is I have 7 players and I have never run 5th ed before, I've always done 3rd. But on that note I've been famously bad for difficulty in the past - usually I've relied on the book's challenge rating but the scenarios were consistently too easy. It's not like we have an expert group - in fact we're /extremely/ casual, but usually the fighter with the high AC just tanks a bunch of foes and they win.

This time I'm scrapping the challenge rating and being as blunt as I can - they have seven players, they'll have seven enemy characters, both players and enemies are all level 2. Simple.

Initiation on an even fight will obviously be a big deal, I think I have that set up well enough. The enemies have two out in the open and the remainder in the treeline setting a trap. Optimal is to discover the trap and pick them off one at a time. Falling for the trap means enemies get to prepare and surprise attack - could well be a slaughter house, but I'm fine with them losing this battle and I think I'll end it with them being captured if they lose since we rarely play so total failure might leave a bad taste.

Beyond initiation, there are a few factors skewing the fight.
Namely the players have a unique magical item that's basically a one shot kill up close but with only 4 uses for the entire campaign.
Furthermore for story reasons the enemies have no magic users and are all fairly sneaky, so in actuality it's 4 rogues, 2 rangers and one fighter, whereas the players have a regular class mix (don't know yet we haven't made the PCs)

On the other hand the enemies carry unique equipment, magical items I stole from another game (Numenera). Most are utility but in total the enemies have two grenades, one stun ring and one weapon buff.

With all this I'm still convinced how the players initiate will be the determining factor, but since I'm new to 5th ed I do want to be safe and seek general advice. Is 7 v 7 madness, is it too luck dependent? Too time consuming? I guess I'll have the losing side retreat to quicken things. Is the class imbalance too significant, will 4 rogues mean the enemies are easily slaughtered?

On the general side of things I wonder if anyone has any tips as well for running so large a game; I haven't played with 7 players before. I'm expecting to be stricter than usual with turns and shooting down irrelevant talk, maybe leaning towards guiding the players with more obvious signifiers on what to do next, lest they get lost debating.

Anyway, we only run a game once per year or so and last year the one I ran was very meh so just looking to have something good! Thanks if anyone can give advice! Happy roleplaying!

[Xolordo]

In my experience pvp in 5e seems to be very lopsided, PCs just deal out a metric ton of damage and some can take it. At level 2 if all your rogues are getting sneak attacks, which if they are positioning properly they should be, then theyll be dealing quite a bit of damage themselves. Adding in the fact that you've a 7v7 I think itll be pretty random and really just be luck of the die and maybe initiation thatll decide the fight. Could be wrong though I dont have a TON of experience in PC v PC in 5e.

[Man_Over_Game]

In my experience pvp in 5e seems to be very lopsided, PCs just deal out a metric ton of damage and some can take it. At level 2 if all your rogues are getting sneak attacks, which if they are positioning properly they should be, then theyll be dealing quite a bit of damage themselves. Adding in the fact that you've a 7v7 I think itll be pretty random and really just be luck of the die and maybe initiation thatll decide the fight. Could be wrong though I dont have a TON of experience in PC v PC in 5e.

This is spot on.

Players have high damage, low accuracy, low health.
Monsters have low damage, high accuracy and health.

This means that players deal enough damage to kill a player, making things feel epic and lethal, while having a consistent challenge they can react to when killing monsters.

So find ways of making the enemies more consistent and less bursty. Give them temporary hitpoints, cover, etc., while decreasing their damage. Give them clear, obvious goals the players can respond to.

Because dnd5e is more about the game aspect rather than being overpowered avatars of death.

[Pelle]

If you have trouble making balanced encounters, you don't have to. Just make sure you have some variety, and provide enough information that the party can make their own decisions. If you make sure there are different ways situations can be approached and resolved, the combats don't have to be balanced.

[Unoriginal]

If you've never DMed 5e, you might want to not modify it in all the ways you mentioned.

Do you have the Starter Kit?

[Laird]

My biggest tip for you is: When stating initiative tell the table who is up and who is going next. This makes them less likely to get distracted by their phones, friends or what have you. Big fmgroups tend to slow things down especially if they are new players.

[MaxWilson]

This time I'm scrapping the challenge rating and being as blunt as I can - they have seven players, they'll have seven enemy characters, both players and enemies are all level 2. Simple.

*snip* With all this I'm still convinced how the players initiate will be the determining factor, but since I'm new to 5th ed I do want to be safe and seek general advice. Is 7 v 7 madness, is it too luck dependent? Too time consuming? I guess I'll have the losing side retreat to quicken things. Is the class imbalance too significant, will 4 rogues mean the enemies are easily slaughtered?

4 rogues will be tough if they use Cunning Action and Sneak Attack effectively, but your PC spellcasters could tip the balance with spells like Sleep, Thunderwave, Find Familiar, etc. It will be a tough fight but doable, probably 60/40% in favor of the PCs winning, and since you say you're already prepared for the PCs possibly losing, it's definitely not madness to run this fight. In my first 5E campaign I threw 3rd level PCs into a level 20 encounter (~60,000 XP worth of umber hulks and neogi, although the players also knew they were coming and had had time to prepare bear traps/caltrops/etc. and borrow a couple dozen NPC guards from the king to lead in battle) and it was very dicey but the players really enjoyed it. Challenge can be fun.

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General advice on difficulty:

As Pelle says, as long as players have a variety of choices, don't sweat difficulty too much. It's up to them to choose what they're comfortable with.

Do spend a little bit of time thinking about how you'll deal with mistakes, which could be as simple as giving a little pre-game speech to the players about e.g. "I'm new to this and so if I make any rules mistakes during the game, let me know and I'll correct them if I can do so without breaking the gameflow; if you think the game was too hard or too easy or have any other feedback on the adventure itself, please make a note to yourself and let's discuss it after the game. I want to get better at adventure-writing but I don't want it to get in the way of running the adventure. Any questions?"

Then I advise you not to adjust things during play, especially not things players have already witnessed e.g. don't add or remove monster HP during combat. Collect a full session worth of data first, then tweak.


My biggest tip for you is: When stating initiative tell the table who is up and who is going next. This makes them less likely to get distracted by their phones, friends or what have you. Big fmgroups tend to slow things down especially if they are new players.

For your first game I would encourage you not to use individual initiative at all. Do something really simple, like side initiative: one PC rolls initiative, one monster rolls initiative, whichever side wins goes first. All the PCs go at once, and so do all the monsters. This prevents players from feeling like 6/7 of the players aren't allowed to talk to the DM because it's "not their turn", which is what makes them disengage and get distracted by their phones in the first place. Instead, they're cooperatively fighting the monsters together.

If necessary, and if you have any experienced players, ask the players to choose a "party caller" who keeps track of which PCs actions have been declared, who still needs to take a turn, etc., so you can focus your brain on running the monsters and making rulings. This solves the same problem as individual initiative (reducing chaos) without introducing the bad side-effects like player boredom.

[Fairy]

Some very solid advice here, I didn't expect to get much since my question was fairly specific. Thanks all.




'4 rogues will be tough if they use Cunning Action and Sneak Attack effectively, but your PC spellcasters could tip the balance with spells like Sleep, Thunderwave, Find Familiar, etc. It will be a tough fight but doable, probably 60/40% in favor of the PCs winning, and since you say you're already prepared for the PCs possibly losing, it's definitely not madness to run this fight.'


Glad to hear this, 60 / 40 sounds perfectly fine to me for this. The group likes a bit of competitiveness. There are one or two players who favour spellcaster classes as well and have caused me all sorts of trouble with sneaky spells like grease. Maybe for once the strong/abusable spells will be a good thing.
Also I like your advice on initiative... Not certain if I'll use that tomorrow, might even try it for a short mini-fight if the players get lost in the forest, just to try it as an experiment for them. Definitely an interesting idea.


'If you've never DMed 5e, you might want to not modify it in all the ways you mentioned.

My group and I just love changing things around, it's extremely unusual for us to play /without/ something changed in the ruleset. Our universally agreed best-ever game was a battle royal where we more-or-less abandoned all rules except for character stats.


'This is spot on.

Players have high damage, low accuracy, low health.
Monsters have low damage, high accuracy and health'

Noted. Might even run a 'simulation' of sorts tomorrow if I have time before the session to decide upon whether I should mix the fight with regular monsters. I kind of like the idea of a battle field of the 'players' you described though so I'm excited to see how it goes, even if it's a slaughter!
... Just crossing my fingers that it's not /too/ lopsided as has been mentioned elsewhere.

Thanks again!