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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Alzrius" data-source="post: 5288730" data-attributes="member: 8461">Yesterday, I started running a new Pathfinder campaign. The group consists of a mixture of old and new friends, and a few friends-of-friends, and we're running the Kingmaker Adventure Path.The problem is that, while last night's group consisted of five players, we've now reached a total of seven people expected to play, not including me (the GM). And quite frankly, I'm worried about managing a party that size.To illustrate how we got here, some friends and I were player's in another guy's Pathfinder game. It wasn't very good, and we were all getting discouraged - however, we met a former player (who'd since left that group) and some of his friends who were also gamers while we were all at Gen Con. We got to talking, and decided to set up a new Pathfinder game, with me as the GM.Now, initially, our group size consisted of five players - three existing friends of mine, and the two new guys. Five PCs was easily within the range of what Paizo's pre-gen adventures are built to handle.However, things started to grow more complicated when we all got together to make characters. One of the new guys had a sister who wanted to join...there wasn't any discussion or anything, just a sort of general acknowledgment that she'd be playing too. I didn't want to say anything and seem like I was on some sort of GM power-trip or generate bad feelings, so I just nodded and that was that.Fast forward to yesterday, our first session. One of the new guys (the brother of the aforementioned sister, in fact) couldn't make it, so it was just a group of five. We played through the first third of the adventure or so, and a good time was had by all.Except, about halfway through...the sister's boyfriend showed up, Core Rulebook in hand, and started rolling up a monk. He didn't get around to finishing his character before we broke for the night, but again, there was that sort of general acknowledgment that he'd be there next time. I asked around after the game - after she and her boyfriend had left - and found out that nobody had known about this ahead of time...she'd apparently texted him during the game and invited him to come and play.So now, there's going to be seven players at next week's game. And, frankly, I'm a little unnerved about that.Why? Well, I run pre-gens because I don't have the time or energy to homebrew a game, but with that many players participating in an adventure written for a party of four, there's going to need to be adjustments made.Don't get me wrong, I'm loving the implied compliment that so many people like the game I'm running, but I'm honestly not sure what to do. Seven players are, collectively, a glass cannon...they can dish out an impressive amount of damage in one round, but any monster that could effectively stand up to that could bring down any single PC with comparative ease. I don't want to start killing PCs (I fudged a few rolls, and monster tactics, last game to avoid just that), but it seems like I need to have them face harder-hitting monsters to stand up to their total damage-per-round, which increases the risk of PC death.Worse, when the total XP is divided seven ways, instead of four, it means the players won't be leveling at the rate they should be. This won't be a big deal at first, but I can see it spiraling into an issue at the higher levels. Will the increased party size help take care of that, or should I move them from the medium XP track to the fast one?Finally...I'm not sure I like the permissive atmosphere of "anyone can join the game." While I think it's old-fashioned for the GM to have some sort of veto power regarding new players, I don't think it's out of line for the group to discuss the matter first, so I can at least bring up issues of party size, etc.I haven't said anything because we're all friends, all fairly decent role-players, and nobody's ruining anyone else's fun. Everything is great, except there's more PCs than I think the adventure easily accommodates. Am I worrying over nothing, or should I say something? And if so, what do I say without engendering bad feelings or coming across as a control freak?</blockquote>

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