D&D 5E Experience with 4 players vs. 6/7

95% of my games have been with 4-5 players in the tier 2 range of play. I'm rebooting an old campaign next month that will involve the original 5 plus 2 new additions, so I'm in for a 'treat.'

The other 5% was Adventurer's League, and those sessions usually had 7 players. Honestly, things just didn't feel that swingy, but that scenario is pretty far removed from what you're playing (different players each session, mixture of experienced and new players, obligatory encounter maths, etc).

For the reboot, my plan is to feature more fights where HP attrition is not the primary goal. I did this somewhat regularly in my 4-5 player sessions, and felt like it presented more interesting challenges while simultaneously reducing the need to observe CR considerations, XP budgets, etc. With 7 players, I'll be focusing on this more.

I like 6 player groups as it removes the stress of making default archetype characters.

With 6 characters, players do more wacky builds as more than one player can pitch in for a single task.

But, also you must add more monsters, not stronger ones as CC will get more powerful against a single BBEG. More mooks, more mooks, more mooks.

4 is fine, 7+ is too many, less assertive players will find it difficult to get a look in. 3 or less can sometimes be too few.

Sweet spot is 4-6.

Paul Farquhar said:

4 is fine, 7+ is too many, less assertive players will find it difficult to get a look in. 3 or less can sometimes be too few.

Sweet spot is 4-6.

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with 3 player we used a gestalt rules few times. Works great.

Zardnaar said:

Six is where the game starts to break down around level 5 to 7.

By breakdown I mean steam roll the encounters.

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Yeah, the raw DPR with our party makes most individual bad guys not a huge threat compared to if we only had 4 characters. But the DM adjusts the encounters so we face opponents that would TPK a group fo 4 characters.

Shield spell becomes nearly useless after level 10.
I am Adventure League dm. It appears you have the same group. Heavy on the magic. Some good combat builds. AL generally increases the monster mob by 2 for 7 players. Your problem is what is suppose to be an easy fight is a hard fight.
Talk to your DM. Ask them to vary the difficulty level.
Early in my D&D career I did try to make all combat deadly. Also in my game store we have a bad killer dm. He always bumps the fight up 1 level of difficulty. People have walked away from his table.
You also are killing monsters groups way out of your league. So the dm is having trouble running the monsters.

In recent years as a GM I've had a "never turn away a player" rule, so we've had as many as 9 players at the table, but only once or twice. Usually it's 5-7, sometimes only 3 or 4.

I won't GM for fewer than 4, because it puts too much pressure on me to entertain, and for whatever reason I don't handle that pressure well. We do have one player who is always engaged and invested and tends to generate his own story, so if I know he'll be there then I will game for run it for 3 players. With more players the story kind of generates itself with or without him.

Part of why I have my "never turn away a player" rule is because I know that it will be rare that everyone will show up.

I gave up technically balancing encounters a long time ago, but I've been running games for a long time so I have a feel for what level of challenge the group needs on a case by case basis.

My two current groups both have 7 players and the nights when everyone shows up... the combats definitely end up in the party's favor, much oftentimes to my chagrin. But now having done this through 5 different year-plus campaigns, all with 7-9 players... I've accepted what have become true facts regarding our tables when it comes to combat:

- The more players at the table, the longer each individual round takes. Because obviously there are more PCs, but also because I need to put more enemies on the table just to try and give a bit of combat parity.

- The longer an individual round takes, the more the players are exceedingly happy when their turn produces a substantial result. If they have to wait 20 minutes for their turn to come around again, they want to really do something cool with the turn they have. Which means me accepting and not getting bothered by my enemies dropping like flies. Because heaven forbid someone like a spellcaster uses their turn to make a Spell Attack and then botch their attack roll. At least the weapon-users usually have 2 or more attacks to do something in the round... that spellcaster who up-casts their one spell and then rolls a '4'? They don't even get the satisfaction of at least doing half-damage... they instead end up having waited an entire 40 minutes (on both sides of their turn) wherein they have done absolutely nothing. That is not something I enjoy doing to my players by any stretch.

- This has led me to believe that the true enemy during combats with 7+ players is not the monsters I throw down, but actually is BOREDOM. As a result... I accept that fights will really be steamrollers for the party because the challenge they all want is remaining engaged with the scene, and not specifically the fight mechanics itself. Especially when you add in the fact that with 7+ players there's going to be probably at least 3 or 4 characters that have healing at their disposal, so any damage I attempt to do to them to make the fights "challenging" are going to be wiped away every round anyways.

At the end of the day... interesting and compelling "combats" occur much more readily at my tables when I have people absent and there are like only four PCs. Because then I can throw more enemies down on the table so there will be more damage thrown about and more chances of really getting hurt (without it being wiped away so easily from massive amounts of in-combat healing). Plus the rounds will still go by fast enough so that each player can get several turns in pretty fast succession, thereby keeping them all engaged with the fights despite the large numbers of HP both sides have to burn through.

Given my choice, I'd prefer to just play with four people and 4 PCs because it allows for faster and more challenging combats... but I just have a lot of very interested friends who all want to play, so I feel an obligation to give them all chances to play. And I just I presume that my less-than-lethal combats at 7+ players does not actually bother any of them, since they all keep coming back to play in my games.

TwoSix said:

Wouldn't having multiple enemies in your face make shield better, not worse? You're getting +5 AC to a whole bunch of attacks, then, not just one.

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I meant that with all the crud thrown that +5 AC for one round of combat seems like a waste of a feat, especially as you don't know when the best time to take it is. You might even use it at the wrong time (our DMs don't let us know what their rolls are, so you are guessing whether Shield will prevent that big hit).

I know that the Toughness feat gets a bad rap relative to adding +2 to Constitution, but it was a life saver for me a few weeks ago. My L8 fighter took Toughness, and my HP went from 75 to 91. Without those full HP, my character would have dropped versus the aforementioned Drake, and we would have likely had a Total Party Kill. Those extra HP were worth the feat just for that adventure.

Some have mentioned the problem of slow rounds and getting enough character time. I've noticed a big jump in that issue in our 6 vs. 7 person campaigns (it isn't the individual people, 5 of the slots are fill by the same weekly players). I think the sweet spot is 5 players...a little bit under the 6, but enough characters to fill the tasks, and if one goes down, your effectiveness only drops 20%, not 25%.

Toledo said:

I meant that with all the crud thrown that +5 AC for one round of combat seems like a waste of a feat, especially as you don't know when the best time to take it is. You might even use it at the wrong time (our DMs don't let us know what their rolls are, so you are guessing whether Shield will prevent that big hit).

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Played that way, yes shield is less useful because it cannot guaranty turning a hit into a miss.

3e beat me out of keeping track of players AC (AC could change round by round and could vary depending on the type of attack), After that I announce the total number and the player lets me know if it hit.

5e isn't nearly as fiddly - but the remnants are there, and I've found just calling out the number significantly speeds up play.

On the large group topic - isn't the DM keeping track of AC a timewaster? My group is typically 6 people, and that would certainly slow me down.

Toledo said:

I know that the Toughness feat gets a bad rap relative to adding +2 to Constitution, but it was a life saver for me a few weeks ago. My L8 fighter took Toughness, and my HP went from 75 to 91. Without those full HP, my character would have dropped versus the aforementioned Drake, and we would have likely had a Total Party Kill. Those extra HP were worth the feat just for that adventure.

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Yeah, in theory the +2 CON is better, but in practice the +2 HP level has a truly meaningful impact.

Toledo said:

Some have mentioned the problem of slow rounds and getting enough character time. I've noticed a big jump in that issue in our 6 vs. 7 person campaigns (it isn't the individual people, 5 of the slots are fill by the same weekly players). I think the sweet spot is 5 players...a little bit under the 6, but enough characters to fill the tasks, and if one goes down, your effectiveness only drops 20%, not 25%.

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I've noticed that I can run a very tight ship with up to 6 players. 7+ starts to get difficult and I have to be MUCH more mindful of the flow of the game - which can make other aspects of my DMing suffer.