Strength in Numbers

[Superj3nius]

I am a relatively new DM and I dm for a group of 7-10 players that just made it to level 5. It's been really tough for me to come up with adventures that appropriately threaten the group. The group just finished an adventure with a cr 6 boss when they were at level 4. I thought that the cr was good, however they pretty much just waltzed through every thing. The time I spent into making the whole adventure, which I though would last two sessions was destroyed in 1. Granted everyone had fun and it was a good campaign I just don't feel that I have set up a real challenge. Maybe I am not setting up difficult enough adventures but I like to think my players are just relying on strength in numbers. I was wondering on advise: should I just prepare adventures with higher CR or am I not utalizing the right monsters? Any suggustions on good monsters or monster combinations (more than one big monster) that can appropriately challenge a party of 10 5th level characters?

 

[Veven1290]

I usually try not to have more than 5 players at a time. See if they would be ok with splitting into two smaller groups. With 10 players the have a huge advantage over any single foe you throw at them, instead of higher CR's use more minions to distract them while the big bad hurls spells or whatever.

If you don't want to have two separate groups out-of-game, use traps and other things to split them up in-game. Pit traps or stone doors that suddenly close, split the party into more manageable groups and then throw the monsters at them.

 

[Theo R Cwithin]

Heh, yeah "strength in numbers" can go a long way. One of the biggest advantages a side can have in a D&D fight is a greater total number of attacks (that can hit).

The recommendations for CR assume a party of 4. Since you're essentially DMing for two-ish parties of PCs, you'll probably want to aim for CR+2 or +3 encounters to acheive the same degree of threat to PCs and their resources.

The best way to do that (without risking introducing powers the PCs can't handle, which is an important consideration) is simply to double the number of baddies in a run-of-the-mill combat. That forces the PCs to spread out their attacks so they can't focus fire on a single creature. In a boss fight, that would probably mean giving him a surprise defense of some sort (illusions, wards, decoys, etc), and a couple strong lieutenants, snipers or something. You could also advance monsters in size/HD, or throw on a template to up the challenge a bit.

[edit: I'll reiterate what Veven1290 said though: smaller parties are easier to deal with because that's how 3.5e is calibrated.]

You can also make the battlefield itself hazardous: hidden pitfalls, falling blocks, cliffs, pools of lava, swinging pendulum blades, poisonous/bad atmosphere, random acid geysers. Look over the dungeon hazards and traps for ideas.

Also you can just use difficult or restrictive terrain to keep the PCs slowed down (eg, ice, slopes), spread out (or in tight formation and easy to hit with lightning!), unable to maintain line of sight/effect (columns, shifting walls, hills), and so on. Terrain can also be used to give the baddies the advantage (eg, higher ground, head wind to deflect arrows, spiders unhindered by webs, or fire elementals unhindered by lava, low ceilings to prevent PC flight, etc)

Just experiment with upping the challenge a notch or two for the next few sessions. You should eventually find a balance between "cake-walk" and "TPK". Hopefully you'll find it before the TPK, of course.

 

[Sekhmet]

Drop in two or three Remorhaz (Remorhaz :: d20srd.org) if you want to wipe the group and force a restart to any campaign.

Good enemies for a group of 10 are generally ones that have Charm/Dominate abilities (See: Illithid, Psions, Wizards, Formian Taskmasters, etc).
Back them up with a group of 15 CR1 or 2 creatures and you have a good "boss battle" for your group.

As Veven and TheOrcWithin suggested, traps and "timed events" can force groups to split up into more manageable situations.

Back in the day, I remember I had 12 people I was DMing for in two seperate groups of six. I had them both active in the same world, in the same region, so whatever happened on Wednesday with group 1, group 2 could find out about on Sunday, and viceversa. It really made them feel more immersed in the story of the place, considering it was a living, changing thing with other heroes and players involved.
Near the end of their respective campaigns, they were both charged with the recovery of an item. Both were Good aligned groups, but their employers were enemies. Group 2 got to the item first, but Group 1 came in right on their tails.
I had the two groups at my place at the same time, and when Group 1 barged in on Group 2, I actually had them come into the room and play out the encounter back and forth.

As I recall, it ended in a bloodbath, with Group 1 dieing completely and Group 2 having only their Ranger left.

They all agreed it was probably the most fun they'd had playing a campaign to that date.

 

[frankthedm]

Lots of foes with ranged weapons

Also do you use minis or counters? If you print your own tokens, stop by this thread...

 

[Wyvernhand]

More foes and stronger foes both increase Encounter Level (EL). The issue is, things get really deadly really really fast. If you have higher CR creatures, on top of having more HP, they have MUCH better abilities. Those much better abilities might have a good chance of 1-shotting a PC, and unless you want a high turnover rate, thats probably not a good thing. A low chance to kill is inevitable in the game, but if most PCs need a 20 to save vs your bad guys abilities, its probably too high of CR. Sure, 10 PCs might kill it in a round or 2, but it'll probably take out 1-2 of them with it. And each combat would be like this, a roll of the Wheel of Fortune to see who's not coming home for dinner.

The other route, adding additional combatants, is also danagerous. 1 kobold Adept 4 is CR2 = EL2. 2 of them is EL4. 4 of them is EL6. 8 of them is EL8. 16 of them is EL10. Even going with the 8 example and throwing an EL8 challenge at 10 level 5s, there's the potiential for 8 Scorching Rays in the first round of combat. Thats 32d6 damage, 112 damage average, with only touch attacks needed to hit. Even spread out, you'll probably torch 3 level 5 PCs in the opening round. If you send an EL10 group of kobolds, it'll probably be a TPK if the kobolds get a surprise round or win intiative.'

D&D just isn't designed to handle and challenge 10 player parties. About the best thing you could do is to solve it like Diablo2 does. Extra PCs mean extra HP for bad guys, but then this still causes problems with things like save vs disables and other issues with status effects. If you boost saves too high to fix this, your caster PCs (and anyone with a save, like a Standstill using fighter or Staggering Strike rogue) will complain about how worthless their abilities are because the don't work. So in reality, this just further discourages PCs from direct HP attacks (because the base rules already reward such behavior).

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

The other issue with more/stronger enemies is focus fire. No matter how strong the group is, each individual PC is still the same power level as in a 4 person party. If you toss enough crap at one PC, they will die horribly and be pretty much powerless to stop it. Assuming you don't want to indescrimintely kill off PCs left and right, you should make sure to spread out your attack plans among the group. If the PCs try to cheese focus fire to drop NPCs one at a time, warn them to knock it off or you'll do it to them.

Really have to agree with the others about splitting the group, though. More PCs means more time per round and more things to remember. More NPCs, pretty much required to counteract a large group, likewise adds to this. Unless you're ok with the much higher DMing burden, but few are after a couple sessions IME.

 

[aboyd]

I am a relatively new DM and I dm for a group of 7-10 players that just made it to level 5. It's been really tough for me to come up with adventures that appropriately threaten the group. The group just finished an adventure with a cr 6 boss when they were at level 4. I thought that the cr was good, however they pretty much just waltzed through every thing.

All the things others have mentioned are true: D&D 3.5 edition is not optimized for 10 players; pitting a big crowd of low-level PCs against one super-high-level enemy will probably result in the monster getting some one-hit kills in before going down; terrain & traps will help; a mass of enemies concentrating fire on a single PC will probably kill that PC.

Really high level monsters have resistances that low-level characters might not even be able to get around. If the monster has a spell resistance of 25, the odds of your 5th-level spellcasters getting any of their spells to work is pretty much negligible. So high level monsters are not a solution, unless you're willing to nerf their abilities.

Having said that, let's talk about tools to handle your situation. I've been there -- I just wrapped up a campaign with 9 players.

First, you should be using the encounter calculator. It will show you how hard a challenge is. The challenge ratings increase like this: trivial, easy, challenging, very difficult, deadly, obscene. If I enter in 10 level 4 PCs vs. 1 CR 6 enemy, it is rated as challenging -- a little more difficult than the "easy" rating, but not much. It's certainly not going to be the "big tough ending battle."

Generally, I keep normal encounters to challenging levels, and the BBEGs to "very difficult." Back when your 10 PCs were level 4, the calculator says you could have thrown at them 1 monster of CR eleven and still it would have only been "very difficult." Of course, the calculator doesn't quite take into consideration that a CR 11 bad guy can one-shot kill a level 4 character. So even though the level 4 PCs would defeat the CR 11 bad guy, they'd take losses. So let's look at lower-level bad guys in bigger numbers.

I put in your 10 level 5 PCs on the left, and on the right I put in 4 CR 4 enemies, and also 6 CR 1/2 enemies. This is listed as a "challenging" fight for the PCs -- it's run of the mill. It's what they should normally see, and normally defeat, if they're smart. There is one enemy for each PC, but the weak enemies will probably be one-shot killed by your PCs, while the 4 CR 4 monsters hang back. Why hang back? Because they want the PCs to expend resources and actions while they buff up or attack from range. This makes the combat rise to a more challenging level for the PCs.

And that brings us right into the next suggestion. To challenge this big of a group, you have to start being decent at playing the monsters. If you think of the monsters as objects you drop in front of the players to hold them off for a moment, rethink that. Try thinking of them as your PCs that you are playing. You want them to live, right? Give them a fighting chance. Think about what you'd do as a player to keep your guy alive. Obviously you cannot give the monsters immortality or other freebies that ruin their challenge rating. But you can play smart.

In the Goodman Games module, Cage of Delirium, there is what should be a pretty scary, deadly enemy on the 2nd floor: an allip that has been advanced to CR 8. Now, I was already doing something right -- that module is for PCs level 6 to 8, and yet I was running my level 4 PCs through it because I knew that a group of 9 was bigger than the module expected. So it felt right. But regarding the allip in particular, I saw that CR of 8 and assumed that the level 4 PCs were going to really struggle to beat him. Instead, they took him out after just 3 or 4 rounds, and none of the PCs were significantly injured. After the game, I went back and looked at the allip. I read & re-read the monster stat block, and tried to figure out what I did wrong. Finally I landed on the "incorporeal" type in the listing, and looked it up in the DMG, and saw all the advantages it confers. Then I read here about how to make incorporeal types operate well -- they should be ending each turn hidden in the walls or ground so that it's very difficult to retaliate against them. They should use flyby attacks if they have them. Etcetera. Suddenly I realized that not only was the monster a good CR 8, but that if I played him intelligently, he probably would have killed every PC in the game. But instead, I had played him like a dumb tank -- he engaged the PCs, stood his ground in the open, took a lot of hits, and died. Suboptimal.

Don't forget that D&D 3.5 edition is all about the action economy. And a group of 10 PCs can levy waaaaaay more actions than a module expects. Your NPCs & monsters need to deny the PCs some actions, if they are to survive for a few rounds. If you have 10 5th level PCs, they can swarm an enemy and get 8+ attempted hits in the first round alone. A single enemy can't withstand that, especially considering that the D&D game was built expecting only 4 players and thus only 4 hits maximum per round at lower levels. So that's the advantage that a party of 10 has -- they can "frontload" combat with lots of hits, thus ending it fast. Your job is to get rid of some of those actions.

I'll close with one suggestion about the actions. While I mostly hate 4th edition D&D, one of the things they did right (IMHO) is mooks (or whatever they call them). These are enemies that fall after a single hit, regardless of how much damage was delivered. They are important because they eat up a PC's actions, but they are easy to manage even if there are a hundred of them, because they're essentially binary -- up or down. Fighting or fallen. There are no hit points to manage. So it's something to consider very seriously with a group of 10 PCs. You need to give them targets, but in large numbers it can be nightmarish to manage. So we put together a team of enemies that includes a few powerful bad guys that we really care about, and then a lot of 1/3 or 1/2 CR enemies that are basically meat shields.

Good luck! Have fun!