problems with a LARGE party [4e]

[Destichado]

Hello, all!

By way of introduction, I'm a relatively new gamer. Having made it through most of my adult life without ever having seen a character sheet, I got suckered into playing D&D for the first time on the weekend that 4th Edition came out. I got hooked, and we've been gaming on weekends ever since. We rotate DMing duties, and a few weeks in I decided to try my hand at DM-ing, and the response from my group was, to say the least, "highly positive."
What can I say? I was a writer before I was a gamer.

Unlike most groups I've known of, we play episodic, tightly packaged "scenarios" set in the context of what we've done previously. For example, one week it may be fighting our way out of a castle dungeon, and the next it may be fighting privateers at sea... because we've had to flee the country for fighting our way out of the castle dungeon. Obviously, the scenarios tend to be very heavy on combat and somewhat lighter on plot, but that's what everyone seems to be interested in, and it fits well both with 4th edition's orientation and with our habit of rotating DMs.

I give you this background because, while I'm finding it enormous fun to bounce my friends from one problem to the next while still maintaining a natural flow of events, I've run into a... slight mechanical problem.
Our group is LARGE. We're a bunch of friends who get together on weekends, and gaming happens to be one of the things we do. There are eleven of us. The smallest group we ever played with was five, the largest was ten and the average number that shows up on a given night seems to be eight.
Combat. Takes. Forever.


As DM I'm dealing with a confluence of problems, many of which have been noted elsewhere on this board. I'll start with what's already been said:

• Characters are hardly ever in any danger. PCs are hard to kill in 4e; or at least they certainly are when you have a virtual warband running around in every battle.
• Adjusting the difficulty of encounters (both to fit the number of players who show up and to properly challenge the characters) ought to be as easy as adding another monster or three; but when you have eight PCs on the board and just as many monsters just to give the impression of a challenge, the number of dice rolls alone is enormous and players get bored and drift off between their turns. Boring is not fun.
• Cutting down the number of enemies (and thereby speeding up combat) by tossing in higher-level monsters is problematic too, because their stats make them impossible to hit. I've done some of this already, and even after knocking the listed AC down (and reflex, fort, will, etc.), my guys still complained about "stupid armor of can't-touch-me-ness" and needing to roll a 17 to hit(!) in some cases. And even so, there's either still too many pieces on the board, or there are so few that despite their strength they're not even remotely a challenge for the players.

My current thought is cooking up some solo enemies: things with lots of at-will standard and minor attacks, some of which need to be AOEs; low AC but high HP; moderate chance to hit but very high damage. Something that can effectively challenge the party alone, so there's not a dozen characters that need to be rolled for.
I've also toyed with the idea of a "day of fell deeds", or some plot hook along those lines which halves all defensive stats, to make combat quicker and more dangerous, and allow the players to take on higher level enemies.


I can't think of any better solutions inside my constraints, but I'm posting here because most of you have been doing this for a good while and you tend to have some pretty useful comments. If there's a better way of coping, I'm looking for it.

[Myatar_Panwar]

I've recently found myself in a similar predicament, although not nearly as severe as yours. My group just recently expanded, to that of 7 players and 1 DM at one time, and would also appreciate some advice for speeding up encounters.

As for the OP, a question: Do you have others play the missing players characters while they are gone? Or do you do something as DM to remove them from the game temporarily (how this could be done varies depending on the situation, or can also be impossible if you wish to maintain a state of believeability)? If you can find a way to remove the characters of the players not there at the time, that could certainly speed up encounters (an example from my last session: The partys Warlord wasnt around, so when they visited the king who they have gotten into a bit of trouble with, I had the King take him as collateral until they return, which will be the next session).

[Gralamin]

Hello, all!

By way of introduction, I'm a relatively new gamer. Having made it through most of my adult life without ever having seen a character sheet, I got suckered into playing D&D for the first time on the weekend that 4th Edition came out. I got hooked, and we've been gaming on weekends ever since. We rotate DMing duties, and a few weeks in I decided to try my hand at DM-ing, and the response from my group was, to say the least, "highly positive."
What can I say? I was a writer before I was a gamer.

Unlike most groups I've known of, we play episodic, tightly packaged "scenarios" set in the context of what we've done previously. For example, one week it may be fighting our way out of a castle dungeon, and the next it may be fighting privateers at sea... because we've had to flee the country for fighting our way out of the castle dungeon. Obviously, the scenarios tend to be very heavy on combat and somewhat lighter on plot, but that's what everyone seems to be interested in, and it fits well both with 4th edition's orientation and with our habit of rotating DMs.

I give you this background because, while I'm finding it enormous fun to bounce my friends from one problem to the next while still maintaining a natural flow of events, I've run into a... slight mechanical problem.
Our group is LARGE. We're a bunch of friends who get together on weekends, and gaming happens to be one of the things we do. There are eleven of us. The smallest group we ever played with was five, the largest was ten and the average number that shows up on a given night seems to be eight.
Combat. Takes. Forever.

Perhaps split into two groups with two sessions.

As DM I'm dealing with a confluence of problems, many of which have been noted elsewhere on this board. I'll start with what's already been said:

• Characters are hardly ever in any danger. PCs are hard to kill in 4e; or at least they certainly are when you have a virtual warband running around in every battle.

• Lowering the group size helps. Having more encounters per day, and upping the difficulty can also help.
  
  

• Adjusting the difficulty of encounters (both to fit the number of players who show up and to properly challenge the characters) ought to be as easy as adding another monster or three; but when you have eight PCs on the board and just as many monsters just to give the impression of a challenge, the number of dice rolls alone is enormous and players get bored and drift off between their turns. Boring is not fun.

[Pandaren]

Ha, I had to run a campaign with eight extra unexpected people joining for that week, you just gotta keep cool. Make sure people don't sidetrack so there's five or more conversations going on at a time, and make sure there are enough enemies so they can't all gang up and obliterate them one-by-one.

[Jothki]

Do you have someone else who would be willing to DM? You could try to split things up into a group of 4 and a group of 5. I'm assuming that everyone want to play together, though, but you could see if you could get the two groups working towards the same objective simultaneously. Keeping everything sychronized enough could be difficult, though.

[Covered In Bees]

No version of D&D really handles 10-person groups well. Each turn in 4E goes faster than each turn in 3E, but with ten people, they still wait around a while.

Most groups I've played in encounter this issue to a smaller extent; with ten, your options are pretty much "suck it up" and "split up the group".

[1of3]

There are some means speed up individual turns: Power cards, clock-wise initiative, rules-look-up guys.

Still 7+ players are a lot. Even six is a lot.

There are eleven of us. The smallest group we ever played with was five, the largest was ten and the average number that shows up on a given night seems to be eight.

When do you get to know who is going to show up? Gaming is not like going to the movies or chilling and sipping beer. There are things to prepare.

One week advance warning should be possible. (Unless it's a case of emergency.) You might try a private message board to coordinate who's coming or not.



Anyway, you could try playing with two GMs.

[Mercenary Pen]

I tried running a 14 vs. 25 encounter last week... it took about 3 afternoons and evenings, so yes, these things take forever...

My advice on making things interesting... Given your format, you have no excuse NOT to use a solo, or 2-3 elites in EVERY battle... For one thing, this'll give you fewer monsters you need to control, for another, it'll drive up the difficulty.

Also consider some of the fantastic terrain on pp.67-68 of the DMG to flavour up your encounter, for example, an Ice cavern filled with Choke Frost, would give your PC's mechanical penalties from the word go...

[FoE]

Here's a relevant "Save My Game" column on the subject:

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/sg/20070706

Really, though, I think the most helpful piece of advice you'll get is to split the group up. Have two DMs running the same dungeon; both groups can then compare notes afterwards and brag/complain.

[Kiara LeSabre]

No version of D&D really handles 10-person groups well. Each turn in 4E goes faster than each turn in 3E, but with ten people, they still wait around a while.

Yes, exactly. Remember the 3e game I mentioned in that other thread? The one that I was questioned on whether it really existed or not (that still irks me a little)? Well, our party wasn't even that big, and combat still seemed to take ages. In my experience, D&D combat has always been a little on the slow side.

Also in my personal experience, and just as an aside, combat in Vampire: The Masquerade seems to go a lot faster ... for whatever that's worth.

[Covered In Bees]

Also in my personal experience, and just as an aside, combat in Vampire: The Masquerade seems to go a lot faster ... for whatever that's worth.

Well, sure, it's not a combat-focused game.

Also, LOL CELERITY.

[Kurald Galain]

What I'd suggest for a group that large (other than splitting it) is this:

The players all go in clockwise order, regardless of initiative, and all monsters go at the same time. This means you'll either have to (1) don't do initiative at all, or (2) rule that everybody who gets 15+ on their initiative gets an extra round before the rest gets to act, or (3) re-seat people at the beginning of combat. This plays a lot faster.

Players are expected to think during other people's turns. That means that when their turn arrives, they can do something quickly. Be strict about this - if a player doesn't decide in 20-30 seconds, they forfeit their turn; in practice this means that if they don't have any clever ideas, they'll move up to something and attack, which is not bad.

Promote one of the players to co-DM, in that he gets to control a bunch (half?) of the monsters. Some players love doing that.

[Tengu_temp]

My answer will not be horribly inventive.

Split the group into two, or even three. Just do it. Playing a game with more than six players is unbearably slow, and even with six of them things already start to lag a bit, no matter the system.

[OneFamiliarFace]

I have an odder suggestion than most:

Pre-roll EVERYTHING!

Have people come with a prepared sheet of rolls which should probably cover a crapton of d20 rolls, a decent number of weapon damage rolls, and enough rolls for each encounter that they won't be lacking during a normal day of adventuring for you guys.

For their daily powers and really important rolls, they can roll in front of the group for excitement purposes. If everyone has power cards drawn up as well, then everyone should pretty much be able to dictate what they do during their turns when it comes around to them, rather than doing a bunch of rolling and math.

Even not using this system, in any group, you should encourage people to have a rough idea of what they want to do for their turn, and already have any necessary rolls finished before their turn comes around. (Again, allow them to roll in front of everyone for particularly dramatic rolls.)

Finally, for your workload, you can just always assume the bad-guys have rolled a 10 on whatever attack they do. That idea has to be scrapped if it means the bad guy will always or will never hit every player.

Wuddya think?

[DeathQuaker]

I will echo the "split into two groups" suggestion.

I cannot think of ANY RPG that would be runnable with that many players. The DM is asking for a serious beating.

Geez, I can barely run a game with 6 or more people without wanting to kill someone by the end of the session, and certainly with not as tactically oriented form of combat found in 4th (or 3.5 for that matter).

You obviously have more than enough players, so just break it up.

That said, the suggestion for pre-rolling is a good idea--especially if you have some GM game management software (e.g. the encounter manager in PCGen, etc.). But still, break it up.

[TwystidMynd]

Assuming you don't want to split, I will echo what I see as the second-best solution: reduce the time spent by rolling. If everyone takes 10 seconds to think about what they want to do, 5 seconds rolling, and 10 more seconds to calculate their total, you can reduce combat time by 20% if you eliminate rolling, by 40% if you eliminate in-line planning time.

So first off, enforce concurrent planning... make sure that each character knows what he/she will be doing BEFORE their turn comes up. If they can't figure out what they're doing this turn in a very short period of time (in an 11-person group, I'd almost suggest a 5-second time limit... there are 10 other people waiting on you, ffs!), delay the character until they can figure it out.

Secondly, as a DM, you can just not roll for most of your creatures. Alternate hits/misses for your normal baddies, and let your BBEGs hit 100% of the time. You'll still have to roll for damage, and this is where I'd say you could incorporate the various penalties the PCs may put on the mobs... a mob that has a penalty to hit can hit just as often, but deals less damage. You'll be doing, on average, more damage if you do it this way, but with 11 characters, they should be able to handle the increased damage intake.

[Yakk]

Big Group, Fast Combat, Elite Template:
Increase HP by 4*Level.
Increase all Defenses by +4.
Increase all attack rolls by +1.
+5 bonus to saves (saves on a 5+).
Grant an Action Point, and a bonus Action Point when bloodied.
Roll double damage dice from each at-will power.

Replace all "Recharge 4,5,6" powers with at-will powers. Increase damage by a similar amount as at-will (ie, if you added an average of +5 damage to your at-will powers, add +5 damage to this power too).

Change all "Recharge 5,6" to "Recharge 4,5,6", and "Recharge 6" to "Recharge 5,6", and double damage dice.

Change all per-encounter powers to "recharge when bloodied", and increase damage by the same amount you increased at-will attack powers by.

...

I think that should be about as tough as having 2 normal monsters, but keep the exact same feel as the original monster.

They have lower than standard HP, do just under double damage per attack, are more accurate, harder to hit, and shrug off status effects quickly.

...

Minion Swarm Rules for Large Parties:
Each type of minion has a Minion Kill Threshold. This is equal to (4 + Level*3).

All Minions share a common HP pool. When they are damaged, apply it to the pool.

When the Minion HP Pool passes the Minion Kill Threshold, the damaged minion dies, and the Minion HP Pool is reset to 0.

Status effects of any sort deal (Minion level) damage, and knock the Minion prone (if it doesn't kill the Minion).

Minion damage is doubled compared to the standard rules.

Each Minion is worth 1/2 the standard monster XP for the same level (ie, twice a standard minion).

(This generates tougher than standard minions, which are still extremely bookkeeping-light (one HP track per type of minion, and one status effect per minion (Prone or Not), and generate sufficient threat that you cannot ignore them.)

[nagora]

No version of D&D really handles 10-person groups well.

Really? None?

I've seen 16 players plus henchmen handled in 1e and I've run 10 and more player groups myself in it. The biggest problem is with player organisation, IMO.

A second DM can help with the player organisation issue and also if the group splits up.

[FoE]

I've seen 16 players plus henchmen handled in 1e and I've run 10 and more player groups myself in it. The biggest problem is with player organisation, IMO.

"You whipper-snappers have it easy today, what with your healing surges and your lack of save-or-die effects and your 'consistency in power levels!' Back in my day, you never came to a session unless you had at least six pre-rolled characters, and you were lucky if only half of them ended up dead! Half the monsters could kill you just by looking at ya, and you were lucky if one out of every ten magic items wasn't cursed! We had to trudge to our dungeons uphill through six miles of snow while naked! Which reminds me of this keep on the borderlands ..."

[Knaight]

Combat. Takes. Forever.

Then play a better game.

[valadil]

I played in a 15 person game a while back. Each round took 30-45 minutes. Part of the problem is that after everyone else's turn, players were no longer aware of what was going on and had to re-evaluate the board each time their initiative came up.

One change we made was to call out who was on deck as well as whose turn it was when doing initiative. That forced people to figure out what was going on while it wasn't their turn. It helped with some players, but didn't make a difference with others.

The other rule we made was that people had 30 or 45 seconds to declare their actions for the turn. I think die rolling took place outside of that time. I'd even go a step farther and say that dice should take place in the timer, and players should be ready to make their rolls as soon as the turn starts.

[ImperiousLeader]

A slight twist on the split the group idea: invent spralling encounters that require your PCs to be in a few spots at the same time, so they will split themselves up. You'll want someone to be a backup DM to help in the other areas, but this allows everyone to be in the same story and will add some epicness to the combat.

Some ideas:

1. Defending a castle/keep/town. While some PCs are needed at the walls, a group of enemies have broken through the defenses and some of the PCs will have to hunt them down before they do too much damage.

2. Your PCs have been trapped in a dungeon, while some PCs fight a holding action against waves of monsters, the others must disable the traps and dungeon guardians to reach a teleport circle to gate to safety.

3. Naval Combat. Some PCs board an enemy ship while others repel boarders on their home ship.

[Covered In Bees]

Really? None?

I've seen 16 players plus henchmen handled in 1e and I've run 10 and more player groups myself in it. The biggest problem is with player organisation, IMO.

A second DM can help with the player organisation issue and also if the group splits up.

Really. None. Not even minimalist ones like Wushu. Problems of player organization, distraction, wait time, etc aren't something you can really overcome, after a certain point.
I've seen a lot of players (each with 2 PCs) handled in 2E. The game was a slow drag.

Yes, "split up and get a second DM" are the obvious solutions.... because they mean that you don't have one oversized game, you have two reasonably-sized games.

[wodan46]

Make all rolls for enemies and all at-wills/basic attacks prerolled. Save actual rolls for the cool stuff.

The Minion Swarm idea suggested above is good. Allows you match the players numerically without overloading the game. The Elite version of the Standard monster is also a good idea.

Also, declare that anyone knocked to negative HP is instead dead. How's that for increased lethality? Given that your party is large, fluid, and not too concerned about roleplaying, you can afford to kill PCs, and in fact doing so will make the combat much more visceral.

However, in return, monsters with multiattacks should always attack multiple targets if they can, so they can't vulcan punch the meatshield to oblivion before the healbot gets a turn.

[JaxGaret]

Yakk had some good suggestions, but if you don't want to do lots of prep calculations, here are some easier methods:

Use lots of Solo monsters, either by using Solos straight out of the book, or using Elites and slapping a template on them.

Use lots of Minions that act on the same Initiative count. It may seem counterintuitive to put lots of minis on the board in an attempt to reduce battle time, but believe me, those Minions go down fast and hard. Also, running them all on the same Initiative count really speeds things up.

Use my houserule for reducing monsters' HP. It basically breaks down to this: Cut a monster's HP in half, and drop its monster level by 1. My current suggestion for the next step is to simply add +1 to every numeric the monster has - attacks, damage, defenses, leader auras, initiative, skills etc. - to bring it back up a level, so that you don't have to even figure out what its new XP cost should be. That should speed up combat quite a bit.

[Fiendish_Dire_Moose]

Just go oldschool. For initiative do first come first serve, then resolve monster actions.

About three years ago I ran a twelve man game. I reseolved all initiatives before combat. Initiative was based on the group's highest roll, versus the oppositions highest roll. Whomever had the highest, got to go first.
The players turns were then decided by Initiative Bonus (Highest roller obviously got first go). If two people had +6, it was based on stat. Stat trumped feat. In the case of a tie, they simply, rock, paper, scissored. They then switched seats quickly to make it clockwise for initiative.

Another tip from my days of 12-15 man games: If you're not playing a tantric game, you're wasting your time and effort. Our group has thinned out and we are now six per game at best, but we only play for five hours, mostly because half of us work on weekends. If you run a large group you need to play long hours, I myself cannot stand dming for less than an eight hour game.

[Oracle_Hunter]

Another tip from my days of 12-15 man games: If you're not playing a tantric game, you're wasting your time and effort.

I am... unaccustomed... to this particular usage of the word "tantric." Would you mind elaborating?

[pasko77]

I am... unaccustomed... to this particular usage of the word "tantric." Would you mind elaborating?

Yes, me too, i'm curious :)

[JaxGaret]

I'm assuming that FDM was using the term "tantric" to mean something akin to "marathon", as in an extra long session. I come by this conclusion due to their further speech about the length of gaming sessions.

Of course, tantra means much more than that

[Waspinator]

I think it's fair to say that most RPGs start to get problems once you get large groups of people. It's less a problem with any one system and more of a problem with coordinating a group to stay focused.