D&D 5E Not Again! Retreater Needs to Balance 5e for 7 Players

[Retreater]

My wife's friends are coming to play D&D this Friday, and the number of players are growing.

Keep in mind:

1. There are 7 players - only one of whom I'd describe as "experienced." The remainder are casual players who've played around 5 times. Or never at all.
2. They're likely going to be drinking and not really paying complete attention (so we don't need "mega-challenging" encounters)
3. They want "brand name" D&D - not like Dungeon World or something.
4. I had purchased Tales of the Yawning Portal and was planning to run "The Sunless Citadel" back when we had 4 players coming.

Some things specifically I'm asking:

1. Do I try an alternate group-based Initiative?
2. Do we go "theatre of the mind," battle grid, or use something in between?
3. How do I add enough challenge to give all the players something to do?

 

[dave2008]

I am not familiar with the adventure, but with that many players I think you will have to increase the difficulty of the encounters, even for casual players.

Also, to keep people interested / things moving quickly I have two suggestions:

1. Use the players roll option in the DMG. Instead of you rolling the monster attacks the players roll to defend. Saves you time and keeps the players engaged.
2. Alternately or in addition: set a time limit for players to resolve their turn. People seem to frown on this idea in D&D circles, but I think it adds a lot of excitement to the game and people outside of D&D are normally OK with time limits (a lot of games have them). Personally we allow 30 sec. for a person to resolve their turn and it has work really well for us since we started doing it in 4e, so much so we continued in 5e.

 

[Tony Vargas]

planning to run "The Sunless Citadel" back when we had 4 players coming.

Some things specifically I'm asking:

1. Do I try an alternate group-based Initiative?
2. Do we go "theatre of the mind," battle grid, or use something in between?
3. How do I add enough challenge to give all the players something to do?

Edit: 0. Use pregenerated characters! (Maybe offer enough Clerics, Bards, Druids, etc with Healing Word known/prepared that the party is obliged to take at least one.) Oh, and yes, by pregen, I do mean spells already prepped, too.
1. nah. I've run 7 players for years with regular initiative, works fine.
2. nah, keeping track of 7 players and their enemies and any conjurations/summons/spell-AEs/etc in your head will drive you crazy. A play surface is also way better for players whose attention may be straying, as they can look at the state of the game and ask 'who's dat?' 'what's dis?' rather than you describing the whole panorama of the battlescape overandoverandoeveragain, often to the same player more than once on his own turn. (if you detect a trace of bitterness & frustration, yes, that's personal experience running TotM with a large group!)
3. eh, it's 5e, it's low level, having more PCs will just make the combats less likely to be unintentionally deadly. Being outnumbered tells heavily in 5e, so if you do increase the number of enemies, don't make it more than the number of PCs. The players sound like they won't be putting in peak tactical performance nor bringing in encounter-busting optimized builds or anything, anyway. If they surprise you, adjust on the fly. Fudge a roll here, a hp total there. No worries.

4. Enjoy!

 

[Li Shenron]

1. I don't think you really need to change initiative but either way will work
2. TotM is difficult with a lot of characters, and visualization can help casual players, grid or gridless as you prefer
3. That's gonna be your main concern... try to ask questions to players who aren't proactive, even just a "what is your character doing about this?"; also maybe try not to let the most active players turn the game into roll-play, and resolve things more as a group

Also, don't explain rules before you need them in play and bring pregenerated characters, unless you want to spend most of the evening preparing instead of playing.

 

[Nightfly]

Sunless Citadel is a superb adventure, but it's hardly a one-shot. You might consider looking for something that can be finished in a few hours, like an Adventurer's League adventure. There are tons of lists of the best AL modules out there to guide you.

As for more general advice, I'd probably just suggest to keep it moving. If things are lagging, you might want to be a little aggressive in pushing the pace. D&D can slow to a crawl even with just 4 players if the DM allows it to.

 

[overgeeked]

Do I try an alternate group-based Initiative?

Yeah. I'd go with side-based initiative. The PCs go in any order then the monsters go in any order. Just keep alternating sides until the combat is done.

Do we go "theatre of the mind," battle grid, or use something in between?

I'd suggest either loose zones or something like Ultimate Dungeon Terrain. Theater of the mind, especially with players who're drinking and not paying attention will be a nightmare. But fretting about cool maps, minis, terrain pieces, etc would also be a nightmare.

How do I add enough challenge to give all the players something to do?

If you're running a module, double the number of monsters in all encounters. Baseline 5E combat is a cakewalk. You have slightly less than double the assumed number of PCs. So doubling the monsters will fractionally increase the difficulty compared to the baseline. Adjust from there if necessary.

 

[billd91]

Some things specifically I'm asking:

1. Do I try an alternate group-based Initiative?
2. Do we go "theatre of the mind," battle grid, or use something in between?
3. How do I add enough challenge to give all the players something to do?

1) Regular initiative works just fine, but you might want to make it visual for the players in some way - a white board, tags on the DM screen, something to make it easy for you and them to see and consult. Make sure to announce who's up and who's on deck so the next player can focus up and prepare.

2) Some kind of visual representation will be good for semi-focused players but you don't have to be a slave to the grid. Use it to be generally representational but don't worry about them counting their movement spaces or 5' space control or squeezing. Ask where they want to go and maybe YOU move them appropriately. Use it as a general representation, not exacting.

3) Increase the number of goobers they're fighting - roughly double. But don't over concentrate your forces any more than you would for half the players. Example: If the initial combat encounter was for 3 kobolds, make it 6. But don't gang up more than 3 on any one of the PCs because that's the most you could have done that with if you only had the original numbers (doubling the encounter numbers but ganging all 6 of the kobolds up on one PC would really shift the terms of the encounter).

 

[jgsugden]

Give them character sheets. Each sheet should have a 25 word description of the character at the top and a quick list of what they can do in one or two word options: Sword attack, Cast Shatter, Pick Locks. Each PC should be 3rd level. Don't ask them to manage rules - ask them what they want to do and navigate it.

Give them four 'encounters' that tell a story.

1.) They're friends that have been summoned by a mutual friend, but they discover the friend that summoned them has been murdered. They investigate the murder scene and discover clues on how to proceed, as well as discovering some animated objects that killed their friend. Easy encounter for 7 players designed to introduce them to their abilities. This should give them clues of who was behind it and where they are - and give them a time pressue to deal with the issue themselves. This combat should be theater of the mind.

2.) They travel to the location where the bad guy is located. Along the way they encounter the Warlock that enchanted the objects. The warlock will have summoned some undead, and will focus on boosting the power of the skeletons and zombies rather tan directly attacking the PCs. He'll try to escape if possible, but if not will fight to the death. If captured, he'll reveal everything in exchange for being let go. Make this a 'hard encounter'. This should be a miniature/tactical combat with some fun terrain.

3.) The PCs get to the base and have to navigate traps. Theater of the mind...

4.) The Big Bad is a low powered Devil. He'll pester them as they navigate the traps if he hears them coming. His goal will be to escape once he realizes they can get past the traps, but will fight to the death if cornered. There will be an avenue of escape available to him (such as an underground river with a boat) that the PCs may discover before meeting him. Go ahead and make this a deadly encounter - when the enemy is trying to flee, they can never be too powerful. This can be theater of the mind. Use pictures to give the group visuals of the base and where he is fleeing.

That should be a simpled design with an easy to follow story that 7 players can do in a few hours.

 

[BookTenTiger]

When I ran a casual camping game for a bunch of new players who were drinking and hanging out, I made premade characters and power cards and really didn't worry too much about resource management.

Here's a sample of power cards for the Warlock:

Arkmenos Power Cards

Dark One’s Blessing Hellish Resistance Spellcasting When you reduce a hostile creature to 0 Hit Points, you gain 4 temporary Hit Points. You have resistance (half-damage) to fire damage. You may cast spells. You can cast limitless cantrips, and one 1st-level spell per Short Re...

docs.google.com

If you want the others, let me know! I don't have the character sheets anymore but they were pretty typical level 1 characters.

 

[MockingBird]

We have 5 players and they took out the final encounter in Sunless Citadel fairly easily. Note, they aren't experienced players either. If you manage to make it to the end with your 7 players I'd suggest adding a couple more significant enemies in there.