Currently in the middle of running a larger group through waterdeep dragon heist/spelljammer. The group just finished the mistshore/mausoleum encounter. The party at max is 9 players. But if 4 people can't make it most of the time the group is like, let's just play anyways! So the ease for the party to get through an encounter is all over the place based on the size of the party at the time and if they decide to murder hobo anything and everything in sight. Example, the house Grahlhund encounter had 3 players drop to zero at some point or another because they just murder hoboed their way thru.
I saw a reddit post today about what dms thought an ideal party size was. One person mentioned how campaigns are written with parties of 4 in mind and it got me thinking about whether my current campaign was meat grindery enough or too soft. I saw most dms said that 4 to 5 players was ideal and anything above 7 was too many. I have been dming once a week for over a year. I previously had been running an eberron homebrewish campaign that took a break at lvl 11. That campaign has about the same amount of people. We plan to revisit it after wdh/spelljammer wraps. I had also about 4 years ago ran a couple of pre written campaigns but those ended early due to players lives interrupting, but those groups were about 4 people. I have a stable group of players now that have been at it for a year or more with one even stepping up to dm a short campaign, but we are a larger group.
I weekly run a homebrew campaign with 8 players - during the last arc a friend 'guest starred', bringing the total to 9. My biggest bit of advice is that you won't really be able to use the prewritten combats with all of your players. I have no advice on balancing around players maybe or maybe not showing up, but for the max players:
You'll basically need to homebrew your combats if you want them to be challenging but not kill the players. With that many you can't really have small combats to wear down abilities or health, because even a small combat will take an entire session. So! You want to try to limit rests, and you want your combats to be in phases (fight X group before Y shows up, then fight Y).
Of course all this depends on the kind of game you're playing and your players. Hopefully that helps a little bit.
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I know what you're thinking: "In that flurry of blows, did he use all his ki points, or save one?" Well, are ya feeling lucky, punk?
Consider trying to balance your encounters for the trending norm. If you predominantly have 4-6 show up, balance for that. If you have the time, consider balancing for the next highest trend and be prepared to swap between the two. If you have something in the middle, you might be able to use some of the techniques here: Dials of Monster Difficulty.
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“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
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Currently in the middle of running a larger group through waterdeep dragon heist/spelljammer. The group just finished the mistshore/mausoleum encounter. The party at max is 9 players. But if 4 people can't make it most of the time the group is like, let's just play anyways! So the ease for the party to get through an encounter is all over the place based on the size of the party at the time and if they decide to murder hobo anything and everything in sight. Example, the house Grahlhund encounter had 3 players drop to zero at some point or another because they just murder hoboed their way thru.
I saw a reddit post today about what dms thought an ideal party size was. One person mentioned how campaigns are written with parties of 4 in mind and it got me thinking about whether my current campaign was meat grindery enough or too soft. I saw most dms said that 4 to 5 players was ideal and anything above 7 was too many. I have been dming once a week for over a year. I previously had been running an eberron homebrewish campaign that took a break at lvl 11. That campaign has about the same amount of people. We plan to revisit it after wdh/spelljammer wraps. I had also about 4 years ago ran a couple of pre written campaigns but those ended early due to players lives interrupting, but those groups were about 4 people. I have a stable group of players now that have been at it for a year or more with one even stepping up to dm a short campaign, but we are a larger group.
I weekly run a homebrew campaign with 8 players - during the last arc a friend 'guest starred', bringing the total to 9. My biggest bit of advice is that you won't really be able to use the prewritten combats with all of your players. I have no advice on balancing around players maybe or maybe not showing up, but for the max players:
You'll basically need to homebrew your combats if you want them to be challenging but not kill the players. With that many you can't really have small combats to wear down abilities or health, because even a small combat will take an entire session. So! You want to try to limit rests, and you want your combats to be in phases (fight X group before Y shows up, then fight Y).
Of course all this depends on the kind of game you're playing and your players. Hopefully that helps a little bit.
I know what you're thinking: "In that flurry of blows, did he use all his ki points, or save one?" Well, are ya feeling lucky, punk?
Consider trying to balance your encounters for the trending norm. If you predominantly have 4-6 show up, balance for that. If you have the time, consider balancing for the next highest trend and be prepared to swap between the two. If you have something in the middle, you might be able to use some of the techniques here: Dials of Monster Difficulty.
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad