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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Imaginary Number" data-source="post: 4763587" data-attributes="member: 63056"><p>My game typically has between six and eight players each session.  I've found that the DMG XP budget system has worked very well, with a couple of caveats.  First, in designing encounters you need to resist the temptation to fill up your budget with monsters above the party's level, particularly solos.  As has been mentioned elsewhere, encounters with solo monsters can become "grindy" because the PCs can have difficulty hitting the solo's defenses and because the solo's attacks do not do enough damage to wear down a PCs hit points quickly.  That problem becomes even worse with larger parties, when the PCs still individually have problems getting around the defenses and the monster has to divide its attacks among even more PCs.  Putting in more regular monsters of the party's level works best in my experience; although the monsters then have more opportunities to focus fire on a single PC, as KarinsDad pointed out, even my non-tactically-minded players usually manage to arrange themselves on the mat such that the defenders, who can take the heat for a round or two, are the subject of the focused attacks.  Second, and more obviously, you need increase the physical size of your encounter areas to accommodate the additional PCs and monsters.  Particularly in published adventures, the encounters areas as written are too small to hold larger than average groups of PCs and monsters without overcrowding.</p></blockquote><p></p>

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