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Message: <blockquote data-quote="kigmatzomat" data-source="post: 3904347" data-attributes="member: 9254">IMC I have 6-7 players as well as 4 cohorts plus the occasional NPC tag along.  I feel your pain.  The simplest mechanical way to confirm you've got enough foes is to calculate up the XP in comparison to the "default" party of 4.  A quick check of the XP charts says you'd need to have a CR of Party Level +3 for a party of ten on a "typical" encounter.  However I would limit your largest creature to party level+5.  Yes, the PCs will toss out tons of damage and will be able to ablate a lot.  Those creatures that are +5 CR tend to have special abilities or defenses that the party won't be able to deal with easily. The flip side is that if you only have 2-3 creatures, there's a distinct tag-team effect.  So I toss in a couple of "low" CR creatures (~Party level -2 or -3) that help keep the entire party engaged.  But the biggest thing is to have a plan of attack for your monsters.  I'm not saying each and every one needs to be Sun Tzu, but with that much going on it's going to be easy to lose control.  I generally have a 2-3 round plan for the encounters as well as the likely reaction to the party's most common actions.  Sometimes the reaction is "run away" when the mage or cleric opens fire, which is something the PCs tend to appreciate for versimilitude.Here's my combat notes for the most recent fight my 21st level party went through.  They were scouting out a shared dragon lair from the ethereal.  That came as a shock to me since the dragons actually laired on the ethereal, thanks to a couple of phase spiders they turned into pets.  The dragons also have an ogre tribe as slaves.  The dragon's original plan was to use the phase spiders to move the ogres behind the party via the ethereal.  Once the party was out of position, the dragons were going to attack in waves from different directions, with the most well protected one performing a breath weapon strafe first to see if the party was buffed.  If the group seemed injured the other dragons would add additional breath attacks, if the PCs were buffed the dragons would default to snatching the most dangerous party members with flyby attacks to either kill separately or just scatter throughout the woods.   With the party on the astral, the dragons did essentially the same thing but in reverse, maneuvering on the material to flank the party.  Net result the party's been slaughtering ogres and killed one dragon but has been worn down pretty solidly.    The PCs will win, with probably only one or two PC deaths, but they'll have worked darned hard for it.</blockquote>

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