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Message: <blockquote data-quote="brainstorm" data-source="post: 5094058" data-attributes="member: 45712">I DM two separate campaigns for 4E.  One group has 4 players and the other has 7.  I have found that the smaller group runs pretty smoothly with the RAW.  My other group, however, requires a lot of house ruling and tinkering with monster powers/stats to challenge them and even so I find encounters to be painfully long and drawn out.  After analyzing my last several sessions (I digitally record them), I believe the main reason my large group is so much more difficult to run is because the game is optimized for groups of 4-5.  Every person beyond that is going to add complexity to the game.  Adding more monsters, increasing monster damage while lowering hp are all solutions I've tried, but have found to be less than successful. After giving this much thought, I believe that the solution is not with making monsters/encounters more difficult, but instead, modifying the character advancement matrix.   The current character advancement matrix on p. 29 of PHB shows that every character will have 11 total powers (not including racial or magic item powers) by the time they finish the Heroic Tier.  By the end of the Paragon Tier, they'll have 15 powers and at the end of the Epic Tier, 17 powers.  That's a lot of powers for 1 character.  Multiply that by 6, 7, 8, or more, players and you get a group of characters that literally have dozens of powers at their disposal and very difficult to challenge.   Throw in magic items, racial powers, Paragon and Epic features, and you get even more powers that are available to the players.  With so many options, players spend time sifting through power cards if they use them and rule books if they don't, trying to figure out what power to use every round.   My idea is to modify the character advancement matrix for groups of 6 or more players, to cap the total number of powers that characters get much earlier.  The current matrix allows characters to add new powers until 13th level, at which point they begin replacing powers with the higher level powers.  With my revised matrix, the power replacement begins at 6th level and continues through the end of the Epic Tier.  The only new powers the PCs get are the Paragon and Epic powers.  So, instead of having 11 powers at the end of the Heroic Tier, they'll have 7.  Instead of 15 powers at the end of the Paragon Tier, they'll have 10.  At the end of the Epic Tier, they'll have 11 powers instead of 17. The theory is that, with fewer powers to choose from, the players will not have as many options to sift through, and will be a time saver.  With fewer powers, they'll burn through them faster, and will require less monster buffing to make the encounter challenging. Any thoughts on whether this might work as I envision or if it is completely broken.  Please elaborate if you feel either way.  I hope to test this out soon, but would like to get community feedback before trying it.</blockquote>

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