More Players WITHOUT More Monsters

[the Jester]

I was thinking about a piece of advice in the DMG2 on handling encounters for large parties- turn up the monsters you're using to elites and solos to make more manageable encounters rather than using higher level bad guys. I like this, and if got me to thinking.

I'm about to start running my new group (kick off on Friday!) and it looks to be about six to eight players, so I started thinking about other ways to turn a monster up. I've experimented fairly extensively with "half hit points, double damage dice" monsters. This variant work well- but it works far better when use it with an elite monster. It now has "normal monster" hit points, but usually can dish out good damage a couple of times a round, making it more interesting than a lot of them. This definitely helps eliminate any grind that might be there, and used as a variant every couple of encounters, it makes for a nice change of pace.

What other quick on-the-fly ways can you think of to turn monsters' capabilities up? Are there other simple techniques that you can use to make a monster worth more than a normal monster when you have a lot of players?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Traps and such can help too. They're simpler than monsters, usually. At least they are something different from more monsters.

You can definitely upgrade some minions to real monsters. It adds a bit of complexity, but not as much as adding a whole new monster.

DMG2 has themes. Technically adding themes to encounter groups doesn't change the XP, but it could increase the difficulty some if the added abilities happen to be really handy. Or you could give the monsters some extra equipment, etc. Upping them a level or two is also pretty easy.

I like the "Elite without extra hit points" idea.

 

[Mentat55]

Synergy of monster abilities. If a monster does a particular type of damage, give it allies that induce vulnerability to said damage. If a monster is hard hitting but slow, find an ally that can make it move faster, or give it extra move actions, or teleport it.

If a monster does extra damage or status effects against targets suffering particular conditions (e.g., ghouls vs. immobilized targets), pair them up with monsters that impose those conditions with regularity.