D&D 5E A query on an idea for large party encounters

[Tormyr]

Here are the rough guidelines I use for scaling an encounter for different numbers of players. I have had groups as high as 8 and 9 players. The group has varied between that and 4 players.

1. Assume the encounter was built for 4 PCs even if it is a WotC adventure that says it was built for 5.
2. For an encounter with multiple bad guys, divide their number by four and add that many bad guys for each PC above 4.
3. For single monsters, add 40 hp per PC above 4 (100 hp for CR20 or higher enemies). If the monster has legendary resistance, you can swap one of those blocks of additional hp for an additional use of legendary resistance. This allows the monster to cope with either heavy hitters or a group of spellcasters trying to overwhelm it with save or suck spells and effects.

That works as an off the cuff solution. I plan out my encounters a bit more. So when I know I knew I had a variable amount of players coming, I would load up the encounter in a spreadsheet and figure out how to scale it for roughly the same difficulty with additional PCs. You can get a copy of my spreadsheet here.

http://www.enworld.org/forum/rpgdownloads.php?do=download&downloadid=1186

It is a little different than most encounter builders as it smooths out the big jumps in the encounter XP multiplier when adding monsters or PCs at certain points. Instead of big jumps in only a couple of locations, it changes the multiplier a little bit for each additional monster or PC.

 

[Quickleaf]

So i am currently running a COS game with a group of 6, soon to be 8 players. I know having such large groups is often not recommended, especially seeing as this is my first campaign so am pretty new to DnD, but it just turned out that way with how many were interested. My players defeated the shambling mound with swift ease, with more of them going down and taking damage from the traps when escaping death house. For this reason i looked online to try and find out ways of making encounters more difficult for large parties and the general consensus was to focus more on quantity not quality of enemies. This has now been going fine but something that recently occurred to me was something that could be horribly broken as i am still relatively new to DnD, hence me posting the question for people who know more to give their opinion.
Would it be horribly broken to perhaps give enemies in encounters where there are few of them multiple initiatives, meaning that whilst the party has 8 actions a turn and they only have 3 due to numbers, one of the enemies takes two turns a round, giving them 4 actions per turn. I realise the idea may be completely broken as most enemies are designed to do more damage per attack than the players, so maybe giving creatures like the bone-grinder hags some legendary actions might work better. I just think my players often manage to kill the enemies so fast compared to how fast they can fight back due to the amount of actions on each side. I wouldn't do this with any creature that has legendary actions though as they are meant to do a similar thing anyway.
What are peoples opinions on something like this?

Welcome to ENWorld

It sounds like your issue is that your large group of players "alpha strike" very well; that is, they can kill groups of monsters before the monsters act. If that's the case, then it really doesn't matter how many actions per turn you give a monster, it's still dead before it gets to act.

Sometimes that's really fun, like when taking out sentries. It lets players running rogues or who've invested in stealth/invisibility really shine.

But too often can lead to unsatisfying combats.

However, the best solutions to that particular issue ("alpha striking") that I've seen typically revolve around changing the circumstances of the fight. This is best done with a hint of foreshadowing of the nature of the coming change. A couple examples:

• Waves of Enemies. PCs hear wolves howling in distance. They fight wolves, win the initiative and soundly defeat the wolves, either killing them all or killing enough to drive the pack off. Give them a moment's quiet, then more howling, and a snarling dire wolf emerges from the forest with wolves coming at the party from multiple directions.
• A Task to Perform Mid-Combat. PCs are charged with protecting a young woman from attacking vampire spawn, and while many of the PCs fight, 1 or 2 of them need to focus on using opportunity attacks, spells, creative ideas, and so forth to keep her safe during the attack. This may be clear at the outset when initiative is rolled, or the NPC-to-save may be introduced at any point you choose, even right before a PC's turn.
• Reactive Monsters. While few monsters have unique uses for reactions (e.g. spectator, marilith, chain devil, goblin boss), you can always customize other monsters to give them unique ways to use their reactions, such as giving a spy or vampire spawn the goblin boss' Redirect Attack reaction.
• Mistaken Identity/Misinterpreted Situation (use sparingly). If the alpha-striking PCs are behaving in a trigger-happy manner, you can always have a suspicious group of NPCs who the PCs mistake for villains or monsters. The story behind the NPCs is more complex than what first appearances would indicate...maybe peasants dressed as wolf-men dancing around a tied up boy near a campfire are attempting to exorcise the "wolf spirit" from the boy who is afflicted with lycanthropy? Such scenarios, while potentially tragic, can help reinforce "look before you shoot" thinking. Side note: If your players are trigger-happy, it's also good to include genuinely helpful NPCs so they know not *everything* is out to get them.
• Alpha Striking Monsters (use sparingly). Customize a monster by giving it the Alert feat (can't be surprised, advantage initiative) or set up a surprise attack with monsters that are designed for surprise (e.g. bugbears, doppelgangers, sea hags, medusae, gelatinous cubes, umber hulks, assassin). Be sure to foreshadow the attack.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Good point! PCs taking a long rest after every single encounter in order to expend all their major resources in the fight can dramatically change the difficulty level. Having wandering patrols/monsters harass them when they rest can help. As can putting waves of bad guys before the boss, as Quickleaf mentioned.

Putting time constraints to keep them moving is something that can also work to prevent alpha-strike behavior, as long as they know they have to hurry. Let them find out in the beginning that, say, the dungeon is going to sink back below the waves in 12 hours.

It sounds like your issue is that your large group of players "alpha strike" very well; that is, they can kill groups of monsters before the monsters act. If that's the case, then it really doesn't matter how many actions per turn you give a monster, it's still dead before it gets to act.

 

[Michael Lindoewood]

Wow!!! Thanks for all the replies everyone!
I will definitely try to use all the advice you have given.
I think incorporating other aspects, like specifically protecting someone or disabling reinforcements, might be a cool idea to help divert the players from bum rushing the enemies.
The big upcoming encounter is the three night hags at the old bone grinder, would this be enough of a challenge for 8 lvl 3 players or should i include some minions to fight alongside the hags, if so do people have any recommendations?

 

[Tormyr]

Wow!!! Thanks for all the replies everyone!
I will definitely try to use all the advice you have given.
I think incorporating other aspects, like specifically protecting someone or disabling reinforcements, might be a cool idea to help divert the players from bum rushing the enemies.
The big upcoming encounter is the three night hags at the old bone grinder, would this be enough of a challenge for 8 lvl 3 players or should i include some minions to fight alongside the hags, if so do people have any recommendations?

8 PCs is double of 4. So I would usually have twice the number of enemies. That might be a bit too much if they have gotten used to steamrolling the encounters. So you might start with only 50% more enemies and work your way up from there. The other thing I would do is keep track of initiative for all of the different creatures individually or just spread them out throughout the initiative order. The reason I increase the number of bad guys but spread them out through the initiative order is so they do not alpha strike a PC. This is the same reason I only bump the HP on a solo monster. I do not want to wipe out a PC, but I do want to absorb the extra damage output from the extra PCs.

The downside of this is that the encounter starts to drag on when the PCs have to chew through twice the HP. You need to keep track of what the monsters can do and be ready to execute when their turn comes up, and the players need to do the normal time-saving things like having a plan of what their turn might be and rolling attack and damage dice together.

 

[Quickleaf]

Wow!!! Thanks for all the replies everyone!
I will definitely try to use all the advice you have given.
I think incorporating other aspects, like specifically protecting someone or disabling reinforcements, might be a cool idea to help divert the players from bum rushing the enemies.
The big upcoming encounter is the three night hags at the old bone grinder, would this be enough of a challenge for 8 lvl 3 players or should i include some minions to fight alongside the hags, if so do people have any recommendations?

You're looking at a very deadly scenario for the PCs, as in at least a couple PC deaths are likely! The night hags at Old Bone Grinder constitute a coven, so that gives them some nasty spells like eyebite, phantasmal killer, polymorph, lightning bolt and counterspell. For example, lightning bolt deals 8d6 damage on a failed DC 15 Dex save (avg. 28); that is enough to outright drop most 3rd level PCs to 0 hit points. Heck, even just having the 3 hags focus magic missiles on one PC will take down any 3rd level PC, no saves or attack rolls needed!

EDIT: Though for sheer rat bastardness, I'd have the night hags reserve magic missile for forcing death saving throw failures on downed PCs. Narrate the missiles as burst of ghoulish light in synch with the hag's cackles buffeting the unconscious PC to and fro. Your players will hate you.

If the players are very strategically-minded, have silver weapons, prepare spells well, have a well-balanced group of PCs, have someone with the Mage Slayer feat, come to the fight fresh, and so forth, then I'd consider it a suitably deadly challenge.

Just be aware that you're exceeding the Adventuring Day XP guidelines in the DMG (p. 84) which I've found to be a better guideline than the encounter building suggestions. For example, they recommend 1,200 adjusted XP per 3rd level PC per adventuring day (or 9,600 adjusted XP for a party of eight 3rd level PCs). 3 Night Hags as part of a coven are worth 13,050 adjusted XP.

It also depends on how much you determine the night hags know about the PCs & how intelligently you play them as monsters. And it depends on how you rule the hags' Etherealness & Plane Shift abilities in Barovia – those powers alone could wreck a low-level party.

 

[Michael Lindoewood]

Would perhaps upping the lvl of the players a bit, to like 4 using them meeting the new players as little milestone, make it less likely to be a TPK? Also perhaps having the other two hags of the party arrive on the second round, just hoping morgantha, the first, doesn't get annihilated in a round.

 

[Quickleaf]

Would perhaps upping the lvl of the players a bit, to like 4 using them meeting the new players as little milestone, make it less likely to be a TPK? Also perhaps having the other two hags of the party arrive on the second round, just hoping morgantha, the first, doesn't get annihilated in a round.

Personally I'd run it with the 3rd level PCs. But then I love to see players at the edge of their seat with their PCs facing down death. Eight PCs is a huge force multiplier. They may surprise you. Just be clear with your foreshadowing: these hags are no laughing matter, they're vicious, have mighty magic, and are cunning and deadly adversaries. Any NPCs who know of the hags say that facing them in battle is madness... but no one else is going to do it.

For a great example of running/facing hags, I'd look to Witcher 3's Ladies of the Wood quest and Ciri's showdown with the Ladies.

 

[Rhenny]

Lots of good advice in here and honestly, I haven't DMd a huge group (over 5) for 5e yet.

Even with a group of 5, I tend to give monsters max hit points (every other encounter or so) and then I try to give some of them (usually the leader of each encounter) one or two special features. The key for me is to make it so that the players don't know when they'll be fighting a tougher battle so that they don't spend all their resources on each encounter (or predict when to use them). Giving one or two creatures extra abilities also makes it more fun.

I tend to like controlling less monsters and only use packs/hoards for special fights, but I do use reinforcements if I feel that there are other monsters/NPCs nearby that can heed the call.

Try tweaking encounters a little at a time so that you get the hang of it and the players feel the changes subtly. I'd start with trying some max hit point encounters. To use encounters as they are written in adventures, you'll probably have to add at least 1/2 more in each encounter, but that's also something you can play with.

By far, the more creatures the PCs encounter, the more dangerous the encounter becomes. This is true for all levels because the more rolls you make against the PCs, the more chances you have to score critical hits and if creatures focus fire and all try to take out one PC at a time, it can get ugly for individual PCs pretty quickly.

Here's a link to a handy compilation I made of monster/NPC/PC powers that can be used to modify monsters. http://www.enworld.org/forum/rpgdownloads.php?do=download&downloadid=1375

I hope this helps too.

Cheers.

 

[Michael Lindoewood]

I was literally planning to try and do the welsh accent and RP them like the ladies, i am from wales so its an accent everyone would recognise. Ismark and Ireena are also with them so they would hopefully be able to warn the party.
Im also someone who personally loves challenge, hence why i am doing strahd, and did warm the players before the campaign began that not all battles will be able to be fought.

Thanks so much for the help, hope i dont TPK but the magic missile idea sounds devilishly brilliant .