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Message: <blockquote data-quote="FrozenNorth" data-source="post: 8958006" data-attributes="member: 7020832">I think the most important thing to do, with respect to both you and your players, is to recalibrate expectations.  With 7 players, the amount of spotlight each player will receive is greatly reduced.  The best way to deal with powerful groups is to use the action economy against them by including more enemies, but in a group with 7 players, that will tend to slow combat to a crawl and reduce further the spotlight each character gets.With that in mind, here are some practical steps you can take to manage a large group.  Since you are playing a module, these all involve modifying the module.1. Use more Level Up monsters.  Level Up monsters tend to have better defenses, better reactions, and extra attacks when bloodied.  This makes them more threatening to 5e groups;2. “Modified” Scatter spell.  The Scatter spell is in XGE.  As written, its restrictions don’t make it a great NPC spell, but with a couple of modifications, its awesome for large parties.  First, make the save Cha instead of Wis (Cha is a dump stat for many characters).  Second, increase the scatter distance and allow it to scatter across walls.  Third, create at least two nearby rooms that meet these criteria: (i) something interesting or threatening in the room; (ii) no obvious way back.  Suddenly, the main fight consists of just the bard and the paladin, while the wizard is single-handedly dealing with a roper in another room, and the fighter has to pick a trapped lock to get back to the main room.3. Subvert expectations: you should know your party’s SOP by now.  Throw in combats where this isn’t the optimal approach.  My favorite, BBEG + lieutenants.  Most parties try to take down the BBEG and ignore the lieutenants.  Here’s the flip, the BBEG has ridiculosly high defenses snd saves, but only does moderate damage.  The lieutenants are 4e strikers, that do massive damage but aren’t as tanky (I like Star Spawn Manglers for this role).4. Environmental Effects.  Real ones, not the weaksauce ones in the DMG.  I like this one since it increases difficulty of combat without having to modify the creatures in combat. In a room with flying monsters, on initiative count 1 of combat, the floor disappears, dumping the characters 10’ into acid.  The take acid damage at the start of every turn.  At initiative count 1 of the second round, the floor reappears, separating the characters who climbed out (who are facing the remaining monsters) from those that are still in the acid.  Necrotic miasma covers the room that affects all characters but not their undead opponents.5. Split the party.  (1) the classic room with many pits with monsters that can shove characters (and there is a bigger monster at the bottom of the pit).(2) To open the doorway to the next level, two keys need to be turned simultaneously in separate rooms.  Once the two parties get into place, they are attacked simultaneously by two separate groups.Good luck!</blockquote>

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