Optimal Party Size

[BootStrapTommy]

Recently started a new group as GM. While originally I planned to run a 4 member party in 5e, it quickly ballooned to 7 members rather unexpectedly.

The issue is that my new group is saturated with noobs. As a result of the party size and inexperience, combat has slowed to a crawl. Given RL time constraints, this is an issue.

Since I don't want these noobs to lose interest, I was wondering a few things.

What do you think is the optimal party size? What techniques do you use to speed up things up and make sure everyone has their time? How do you best organize and design campaigns for large parties (RL time, encounter balance, etc)? And how do you engage players who might have wanning interest (do to the above reason)?

Oh, and does anyone know a good initiative tracker? I'm an airhead, it would help a lot...

[squab]

For the last one, a pen and paper would probably work fine. Scribble down everyone's initiative then spend a few seconds rewriting it from highest to lowest.

[Aspiration]

Biggest thing is to emphasize that people should plan their turns in advance as much as possible. All the noobs should have a cheat sheet of simple actions, and when possible individual rulebooks as well (otherwise maybe an expanded cheat sheet in addition to a concise one). Encourage doing stuff they understand over the absolute best decision for a while - maybe a bull rush would be optimal but just hitting the orc with the axe would probably suffice and take much less looking things up on the noob's part or explaining on the GM's part. Have them discuss actions in advance, too. Even without any really experienced players to guide them, maybe somebody else remembers how to do a bull rush from last session, and can explain it at least in part before the barbarian's turn comes up.

One thing to keep people interested that I haven't been able to manage yet as a GM but I've seen work before - design combats that are intellectually challenging on a non-rules level. Do you climb up the rock face or take the long way around to get to the archers on the high ground? How do you take down the villain without him hurting the hostage? Give players something to plan and figure out that's complex enough to make them worry about their turn coming up before they know what to do.

[The Grue]

For the last one, a pen and paper would probably work fine. Scribble down everyone's initiative then spend a few seconds rewriting it from highest to lowest.

Better idea: Use a different system for initiative.

[Pluto!]

2 players + GM is enough for most games, 5 players + GM is too many.

I mean, you can get obscenely large groups to work, but if there are more than 2-3 other people at the table, there's some level of a fight to keep it down to one conversation/point of attention, even before adding instruction.

[Joe the Rat]

Optimal Party? I rather like 5. A little more flexibility than a "core four" group, and a little slack so having one person fall doesn't completely cripple their combat capability. You also see more teamwork synergies based on shared focus (Stealth Duo, Hope and Crosby, Hammer-and-Anvil, etc.).

Initiative: Tent tracking systems are rather handy. Take a stack of 3x5 cards, fold them into "tents", and have the players put their character names on both sides. have a stack to write in monsters. The 5e DMG take is to sort them by initiative, and every time someone does their turn, put them on the bottom of the stack. Name on top = current turn.

If you are using a GM screen, you can run these along the top in order, right to left (or reverse your normal reading order) so it reads correctly to the players. I call this the "WotC Livestream" method. This lets the players see the turn order, so they have a sense of when they will act, and should be planning accordingly. If you want to have the monster's turn a surprise, don't add them to the sequence until their first actions.

Combat: Roll attacks and normal damage simultaneously. For spells, have the players roll damage while you are rolling saves (& vice versa). Make your side (monsters & NPCs) go fast, so that more time (and focus) is on the player's actions. They don't mind as much when it's their turns. Using average damage is a common trick.

Mook Masses fall fast, but take a lot of time to do things. Boss Monsters have short turns, but have poor field control and can get swarmed by multiple opponents. Brute Squads (2-4 "strong" opponents) can make a happy balance between the two. Consider mixing these up to keep some variety (for a published adventure, drop a portion of the listed cheap guys and add a "captain" version). If the players start getting bored with the fight, call it a rout when 10-25% of the opponents remain. They still get the XP.

Add it all up: Make sure the new folks have all of their attack and damage numbers added up, and all of their specific skills filled in. Until they get used to situationals, have them list calculate their mode modifiers as separate entries (Greataxe +5 to hit, 1d12+3 damage; Raging Greataxe +5 to hit, 1d12+5 damage (must be raging); Power Attack Greataxe +0 to hit, 1d12+13 damage, etc.).

What can I do on my turn?: A cheat sheet can be handy. For combat, I use the last page of this homebrewed DMG screen (Not mine; I've misplaced the original source link). I print a couple of these out every time I go to a new table; somebody will find them useful.

[Mr.Moron]

I like 3-4 players. 5-6 is doable but feels bloated. I would never do more than that. With 7 players you'll just have no time to explore characters individually, develop 1-on-1 relationships with NPCs or flesh out small details of the day-to-day happenings.

I'm personally of the opinion that smaller groups are better if even you can't play as much. Have you considered splitting the group in 2, and just running half as many sessions for each. I'd say quality over quantity when it comes to game time.

[hymer]

Initiative: Tent tracking systems are rather handy. Take a stack of 3x5 cards, fold them into "tents", and have the players put their character names on both sides. have a stack to write in monsters. The 5e DMG take is to sort them by initiative, and every time someone does their turn, put them on the bottom of the stack. Name on top = current turn.

If you are using a GM screen, you can run these along the top in order, right to left (or reverse your normal reading order) so it reads correctly to the players. I call this the "WotC Livestream" method. This lets the players see the turn order, so they have a sense of when they will act, and should be planning accordingly. If you want to have the monster's turn a surprise, don't add them to the sequence until their first actions.

This is what we do; except we have them standing in line next to the battlemat rather than along a GM screen, which we don't always use. This means shifting your initiative is much easier than stacking, and everyone can find out the initiative order quickly and plan accordingly. We have cards called things like 'BG1' and 'A1', which stand in for various non-PC participants in battle.
After asking for initiative rolls, the DM will often ask 'Is anyone slower than [lowest monster intiative]?' That's when a monster init is bad. Otherwise, he counts out from 1, and when there's only a few players who have not yet responded, you ask them what number they've got.

As for size of group, there's often game technical reasons for certain sizes. Those aside, I like 3-4. Bigger than that slows things down, and there's less spotlight time for each player. We usually play with 5 at most, with the occasional 6 for guests. But I wouldn't run a campaign expecting seven players, that's much too much in my estimation. Two players seems to be a waste of prep time, somehow, although you can do some wonderful things with just two players for a session.

[DigoDragon]

In my personal experience as GM, I think the optimal party size is about 4-5 members. Everyone will be able to find a role to fit in without too much overlap (a little overlap is good though, in case of emergencies).

For the last one, a pen and paper would probably work fine. Scribble down everyone's initiative then spend a few seconds rewriting it from highest to lowest.

One system I used was to write everyone's name on a separate index card, and then include one card for each group of enemies in the battle. Top card is first in initiative and when their turn is done the card goes to the bottom of the pile. Makes for a useful loop each round. If a player holds their action, their card is moved to the side of the deck and comes back in when the player finally takes their turn.

[Friv]

For most games, I find that four people is a perfect party size. It's large enough that players can break up into pairs to do things, and can rely on each others' skills, and small enough that they all get screen time. Three is doable, five is doable. Two is sort of doable but I don't like doing it, and ditto for six. I find it stressful to GM solo games, and I find it very stressful to try to manage six players (except maybe in something like Paranoia or Toon), and more than six is generally going to be a rolling cluster.

For a large party, I'd recommend appointing one of the more experienced and mature players as a helper - someone who can give advice and ideas to the newer folks, and give them help while you're talking to someone else.

[Bulhakov]

3-4 players + GM is my optimum, but the longest campaign I've ran was with 5 players, but that required some optimizing.

My advice is to simplify combat with houserules:
- simpler or fixed initiative
- don't roll damages for enemies, etc.

[sovin_ndore]

I have never had opportunity to run a game for less than 6 players and I find that 9 is too many.

[DigoDragon]

I find that 9 is too many.

I once ran a one-shot adventure for 11. A lot of it was a blue because I was downing Red Bull to have the energy to keep everyone busy with adventuring.

It ended poorly. So yeah, know your limits.

[ComaVision]

I like 5, or 6 if someone's known to have poor attendance. We do weekly games and I don't like to call it off if one person can't make it.

[Knaight]

I favor the 2-4 range, particularly 3, though having 5 players is doable. That 7 could be split into two groups of 3, with one player becoming a GM, and it would probably work better as a result.

[Thrudd]

There's a lot of variance in preferences here, and a lot depends on what game you're playing and what type of game it is. For narrative story telling style, regardless of system, you probably don't want more than three or four, and one or two might even be optimal so you can really get deep with the character's story and make them the "star" of the show.

For the editions with complex tactical combat, 3.5e/PF and especially 4e, three or four players is a good number, so you have enough variety in skills and combat roles and abilities to be an effective party and not so many players that battles take hours to get through.

For AD&D and older editions, I think 5-6 players is good. The rules are simpler, less actions to take for each player. Characters tend to be less powerful individually, especially early on, so having a bigger party helps survivability. Having a greater variety of character types will help the party out in various situations. You can even handle more than six players, if you prepare for it and have adventures prepped with that size party in mind. You just need to have strong organization and control of the table, and assign one player to be the "caller" for the party, who will filter out all the competing voices.

For 5e, with a bigger party you will find it easier to go with a sandbox/open world style game rather than trying to write a narrative that gives each character equal spotlight and ties together all their background stories. Using the simplest/fastest possible version of combat rules (not necessarily theater of the mind, letting the players figure out good battle formations can be fun when you have larger groups of characters). Having the game focus on planning and exploration rather than drama and story telling, because you just don't have time to let all the players get into elaborate social situations. You either end up with one or two players always taking center stage with the rest doing nothing, or you spend entire sessions with all the players going in their own direction and nothing really happening, because everyone wants character interaction time. This doesn't mean there is no social interaction with NPC's, but it should be only a small part. With more characters, you can employ more dangerous threats. The party can afford to lose a couple characters and still be able to succeed, and characters that drop have a better chance of being tended to before they die, or recovered and revived rather than lost in the dungeon permanently.

[Pont]

Regarding Initiative, I played in a big group once where the GM had a deck of cards. He would then give out an Ace to the highest, a deuce to the next and so forth. Worked fine.

[FocusWolf413]

As a good player and a mediocre-bad DM, I prefer 3-4 players. If you have any more than 4, everything slows down, the times between when you can do anything get too long, and it gets boring. 3 players is wonderful because everyone is more cautious and it's more streamlined. In some very specific settings, I could see a 2 person party being fun, but that's not flexible enough.

[Thrudd]

Oh yeah, really large parties should do group initiative, with all the players declaring their intended actions at the beginning of the round before initiative is rolled. Use no bonuses to the roll for either side, unless it is a one-on-one fight. Having a dex bonus let individual characters act during a surprise round when the rest of the party can't act. That's how AD&D did it.

If you're doing individual initiative with a really big group, you need to be really organized, have a turn order sheet ready, with grid spaces numbered 1-30. Place tokens with the characters names and tokens for the monsters on the numbers they roll. Consider doing group initiative for the monsters if there are a lot of them, break them up into units and roll for four or five individuals as one unit.

Another thing you might consider for a large group is combat time-limits. Give the group five minutes to discuss a plan of action before combat starts. Then, each player gets 30 seconds or so when it is their turn to declare what they're doing. As DM, give yourself roughly the same limit to make the monster's moves. Hopefully, most of the time they won't need the full 30 seconds. If they fail to act in about that time, their character can ready an action to attack any enemy that approaches them.

[Knaight]

As a good player and a mediocre-bad DM, I prefer 3-4 players. If you have any more than 4, everything slows down, the times between when you can do anything get too long, and it gets boring. 3 players is wonderful because everyone is more cautious and it's more streamlined. In some very specific settings, I could see a 2 person party being fun, but that's not flexible enough.

On the other hand, 2 opens up a whole bunch of territory where more than two doesn't work, so it's kind of a wash. More specifically, every subgenre focused on partners is suddenly available.

[LibraryOgre]

I find that around 5-6 people tends to be ideal... enough skills to cover everything, and if no one is a spotlight hog, enough time for everyone to shine.

For initiative, make it a player's responsibility. Say, "You, Bob, are in charge of initiative." So, Bob writes down everyone's initiative as they call it out, and you tell him a few secret initiatives to work in ("Bob, DG is going on 12, AP is going on 4, and QT is going on 1, because my dice love you and want your phone number.") He writes those down, where everyone can see them (including your coded initiatives), and is responsible for prodding whoever is taking a while.

It takes initiative off your shoulders, and helps the game move along. If you're using a white board, he might write it down right on the board.

[BWR]

Based on my experience, the optimal size is 4-5 players+GM.
Anything above 5 quickly gets bogged down, even if people are quick at the mechanical and decision stuff, and work well together. Mechanical issues aside it gets very complicated with more than five people trying to have a fair share of the spotlight and drive the story forward.
Three or two players is too few. Three can work on the odd occasion you can't get a full group but it's a bit too limited for long-term games. Two players is just stilted and weird.
One player is just fine.

[BootStrapTommy]

I have never had opportunity to run a game for less than 6 players and I find that 9 is too many.

sovin_ndore is my spirit animal.

One thing to keep people interested that I haven't been able to manage yet as a GM but I've seen work before - design combats that are intellectually challenging on a non-rules level. Do you climb up the rock face or take the long way around to get to the archers on the high ground? How do you take down the villain without him hurting the hostage? Give players something to plan and figure out that's complex enough to make them worry about their turn coming up before they know what to do.

Before my last group ended, one of my players took an interest in DMing, and after a few tries with balance issues (the party mopping his encounters or his encounter nearly mopping the party), he asked me to do a one-off educational campaign, to illustrate some GMing techniques. I had constantly been telling him that it was not about stronger monsters (after an incident where only judicious use of an Instant Fortess saved the party), but smarter monster. I illustrated my point with a single cannon, a long, narrow hallway, and clever abuse of sight range.

Initiative: Tent tracking systems are rather handy. Take a stack of 3x5 cards, fold them into "tents", and have the players put their character names on both sides. have a stack to write in monsters. The 5e DMG take is to sort them by initiative, and every time someone does their turn, put them on the bottom of the stack. Name on top = current turn.

If you are using a GM screen, you can run these along the top in order, right to left (or reverse your normal reading order) so it reads correctly to the players. I call this the "WotC Livestream" method. This lets the players see the turn order, so they have a sense of when they will act, and should be planning accordingly. If you want to have the monster's turn a surprise, don't add them to the sequence until their first actions.

This is lovely. Though, my one veteran player struggles not to metagame, so I often fear making monster's initiatives known, for fear he'll find some way to metaknowledging it to his advantage...

[hymer]

Though, my one veteran player struggles not to metagame, so I often fear making monster's initiatives known, for fear he'll find some way to metaknowledging it to his advantage...

He could be me. If I play a character I consider an able combatant, I'll take any advantage I can get.

[Garimeth]

I find that around 5-6 people tends to be ideal... enough skills to cover everything, and if no one is a spotlight hog, enough time for everyone to shine.

For initiative, make it a player's responsibility. Say, "You, Bob, are in charge of initiative." So, Bob writes down everyone's initiative as they call it out, and you tell him a few secret initiatives to work in ("Bob, DG is going on 12, AP is going on 4, and QT is going on 1, because my dice love you and want your phone number.") He writes those down, where everyone can see them (including your coded initiatives), and is responsible for prodding whoever is taking a while.

It takes initiative off your shoulders, and helps the game move along. If you're using a white board, he might write it down right on the board.

It might be the ENTJ in me but I am ALL about delegation. I delegate the initiative, the looking up of rules, and anything else convenient at the time. I run the game, make decisions, and organize the group getting together in the first place. Food? Delegated. Hosting? Delegated. Frees me up to focus on the stuff I HAVE to do, and I only organize our get-togethers because if I didn't we'd never game.

As far as speeding up combat, delegating the rules look-up to the rules lawyer works well for me. It let's him be the rules guy in a non-disruptive fashion, and enables me to keep things running while he looks stuff up. Unless its something that MUST be decided right now, I just retroactively say what happened. Never had any problems with it. If I have players who are taking to long on making their call I give them a time limit. "Alright man, you have 15 seconds to make a decision or XXX loses his turn to indecision." After losing a turn or two, people tend to make their decisions faster - nothing like that negative reinforcement!

[Talyn]

@Garimeth: First, as a fellow ENTJ, let me salute you. I also delegate when I run - and not just in combat, either. One player is the initiative guy. One player has the rule book open. One player is the party accountant and keeps track of loot. One player writes down the names of important NPCs and makes a little note about them. Etc.

The speeding up combat suggestion, though, won't work for every group. An experienced group, or a group full of assertive people, will thrive under that rule. But I tried implementing that a few years back when I was playing 4E in law school, and it was a disaster. The noobs ended up so flustered and frustrated under the time limit that they basically didn't participate. Afterwards, I was told by two of my players that the rule had to go or they would, it was just too stressful for them.

And, to address the OP's question: 4 players + DM is my favorite group size. Generally, though, 5 to 6 players is fine, since, as adults with jobs, houses and families, we are always missing a player or two at any given session.

[GungHo]

I like 5 characters that cover a good skill spread. If there aren't that many players available, I'll offer to let someone(s) run a second PC (I refuse to run the second PC to get away from the DMPC stuff). I also delegate things like initiative, moving pieces around the board, and other housekeeping items.

[Sith_Happens]

One. Because screw sharing the loot.

[Lappy9001]

Recently started a new group as GM. While originally I planned to run a 4 member party in 5e, it quickly ballooned to 7 members rather unexpectedly.

The issue is that my new group is saturated with noobs. As a result of the party size and inexperience, combat has slowed to a crawl. Given RL time constraints, this is an issue.

Since I don't want these noobs to lose interest, I was wondering a few things.

What do you think is the optimal party size? What techniques do you use to speed up things up and make sure everyone has their time? How do you best organize and design campaigns for large parties (RL time, encounter balance, etc)? And how do you engage players who might have wanning interest (do to the above reason)?

Oh, and does anyone know a good initiative tracker? I'm an airhead, it would help a lot...

You can always do the thing with timers on people's turns but I've found that once the party hits a certain size nothing can really be done about the length of combat (especially if most of the players are inexperienced).

I know it's not helpful now that the game is under way, but sometimes you have to seriously put your foot down for an optimal number of players (4-5 for me, although it everyone is experienced I'll go to 6 as an ABSOLUTE MAXIMUM). You don't have to be mean about it either, just say that your ability to run the game will suffer, as will everyone's fun. Try splitting the games into two groups running the same campaign. That is to say, the same campaign plot, as if each takes place in a different timeline so the players don't meet (unless you want to do that sort of thing).

For initiative trackers, I'm very fond of the Pathfinder Combat Pad but now that I implement a laptop almost exclusively, I've moved onto an online initiative tracker. I am the absolute worst at forgetting people's turns and both trackers have cut down on this significantly.

[hifidelity2]

Size of Party - 5 to 7 (although that depends on the system)

As for initiative I use two main options - either
Party initiative - so Party or monsters and then just around the table
or if we do need to have personal initiative then I make the players sit in the right order on the table so again its easy to go round the table and interpose the monsters as needed

In Rune Quest I use to just start counting down from 12 (iirc) and it was up to the players to shout out then I got to their initiative - if they didnt then the player was distracted and missed their go (with leeway for new players)