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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Obryn" data-source="post: 5188218" data-attributes="member: 11821">To expand on what I said before...  I currently have a roster of 7 players, but I can usually expect 1 to miss each night.  6 is pretty easy for me to run; I'm used to it.If you have 9 players, your absolute focus must be on speed and efficiency.  And it still won't be great, frankly, but if everyone makes the most out of it, everyone should still have a good time.* Stick with low levels.  At high levels, things get exponentially more complicated with 9 players.* Make everyone keep a pad of scratch paper to track (1) The conditions on them, and (2) The stuff they have active and up in battle.  Enforce this rigidly.* Give everyone no more than 10 seconds to decide what to do on their turn.  They should have all necessary dice in hand.  After 10 seconds, make them default to their favorite At-Will.(3) Take all the help you can get.  You will have a bajillion monsters.  Find and learn how to use a copy of Masterplan or another combat tracker.  You need something to help you keep track of 9 enemies.(4) Stick with simple monsters.  Complex ones will get to be too much.(5) Combat gets weird.  Do not rely on any single monster as the cornerstone of your combat.  Avoid anything like a BBEG.  While more PCs means more monsters, more PCs also means a greater ability to focus fire on a single enemy.  Any particularly scary standard or elite monster will die very, very quickly if the PCs concentrate on them - they're taking 9 attacks now instead of 5.  Any solo will suffer from the action economy - especially in regard to immediate actions.  Compensate for this either by changing up the opposition, or by using a different encounter composition.That's the best I can offer.  Nine is far from ideal, but it can still be a fun time for your players.-O</blockquote>

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