BTW, the players are all pre-teen, the gaming table is usually on the verge of chaos (and sometimes well into chaos), but they have a blast. Anyone thinking that the group is about twice the size of what is reasonable is absolutely correct. It’s the kids and their friends, and they all want to play, so I don’t want to exclude anyone.
I want to go 4th edition as I believe they will love the new rules. I read through KOTS and it looks like a lot of fun. It looks like some of these encounters will really take a lot of teamwork and smart tactics to get past – which is great for this group - so I am motivated to make this work somehow.
Lastly, I don’t object to doing some on-the-fly work to balance things (ah, there are two more hiding behind those rocks that you didn’t see earlier in the battle…) But I’d really like to pre-scale this if there is a systematic way to do it.
Thanks for your help (and your sympathy)
Increasing the size of the module to almost double means that you will have almost double the work on a given turn. Thus, I give you the following suggested duties to help you run things.
1> Appoint someone to be secretary for the monsters. Write out in advance on a piece of paper the name of each monster and their hit points. Have a box to the side that keeps track of any status effects the creature may have. This person's job is to note down any hit points that are removed, benefits added, or status effects suffered by the various monsters.
2> Appoint one or two people to act as additional die rollers. To keep things moving quickly, it is good for the DM to have someone do the rolling of to hit and damage when needed.
3> Appoint one person to keep track of iniative and which monster or which player goes next. A quick way to do this is to make up file cards with the name and key information like defences for each person and monster. The person then has to sort the order once to get it set up and then can mill through the order. Another way is to set up a list on paper or a board with the names in order. The person then makes sure each person is ready to go when their turn comes up.
4> There are plenty of status effects in 4e. I keep a set of five colours of stickies (like post it notes but made for labeling pages in a book). I then attach them to various miniatures as reminders of things. I use red to mark bloodied. I use other colours depending on what is going on. You could direct one player to apply the stickies to the models or remove them as directed.
This should leave you clear to do the most important stuff which is run the encounters. There are not enough tasks for everyone which is fine as some tasks can be rotated from encounter to encounter if people like.
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Beefing up encounters will depend upon the encounter.
Your first level budget is going to 900 to 1000xp and you will have the option of up to 9 picks for an encounter. With a minion heavy encounter that can mean 4 models per pick. Many of the maps are not designed to handle the extra amount of models of both players and monsters which means that you will need to do some creative construction.
For Example
On the Road p16-17
First, the set up map (p17) shows only half the map but the encounter is meant to use the full map like shown on p24 (check errata). The players start at the east edge of the map.
Four boulders only offer so many hiding spots for the kobolds. You should thus plan to hide a few more behind some trees or in the nearby woods.
Now, I have two ways to suggest increasing the numbers.
The first is the easy way. You combine the kobolds from On the Road with A1: Kobold Ambush. It is essentially the same encounter done twice in the story. Having your group do the same battle twice could be good from a learning curve to help learn more on what to do and when to do it. OTOH it might just bore them having just finished the one fight and seemingly have the same encounter almost again.
The second way is deciding on how to increase the numbers for On the Road while keeping the same feel.
You need roughly 4 more picks of monsters and 400 to 500 xp more of monsters.
I would start by getting another 5 minions for 125xp (that should give at least one minion for everyone to hit in your group).
I would add 2 slingers for another 200xp (three slingers should be able to toss a few effects to mess up the players a bit and when you have 9 you are going to need some crowd control).
I would add 1 dragonshield or another 125xp (with so many players moving these dragonshields should be shifting all over the place).
That is 4 more picks for 450xp more. Total encounter is now 925xp.
That is also 16 kobold models but the minions should die quickly which should help things out.
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Note what I said on map size when it comes to the Keep.
You are going to need to upgrade to larger scale of room sizes or combine several rooms into 'one' encounter area to allow players not to be tripping over each other and to allow the monsters to not be stacked up like chord wood for wizards to use Scorching Burst.
If what I have said is useful then let me know and I will see what else I can think through.
Cheers
I know exactly what you are talking about in regards to the keep, this group has played 3e a little and I found that out quickly. With so many players, they need elbow room.
Also, your advice on finding some roles for the players (like handling initiative) is great, I will give that a try next session.
In regards to your specific advice on the encounters, I appreciate it a lot. It will take me a day or two to parse through your recommendations fully, but on the surface it looks very reasonable. I guess I am still stuck thinking in the 3e Challenge Rating mindset, with 4e it looks like it might be a little more linear to scale these encounters.
There are other things you could do.
I am sticking to the monsters that come in KotS because I am waiting on my FLGS to get 4e in stock and then reach trade date.
One of the things is that you are going to have plenty of models moving around on the maps.
For example, you are probably looking at 25 miniatures (16 kobolds and 9 characters) in the On the Road.
You will also likely find some interesting balance issues with the character powers. Things like the Cleric power Beacon of Hope will feel very different in a group that consists of 9 characters instead of a group of 5 characters.
Wizards and the Dragonborn will also have fun getting to use their powers without some collateral damage (I am looking at Burning Hands and Dragonbreath).
Warlord powers too could be potentially be powerful in this group with so many targets to benefit from some powers.
Even a pair of rogues in such a large group if they get some freedom to work together can cause a surprisingly high amount of damage in short amount of time (together they can pair up on a target flanking and each provide combat advantage to the other resulting in +2d6 or +2d8 with Backstabber damage each every attack).
These type of synergies make me think that you might have a learning curve on exactly the ratio of increase of opponents needed.
While the 100xp per character likely works for 4 to 6 character groups, I have a suspision that synergy values may suggest that a higher value like 125xp or 150xp per character might need to be used for a group more than 6 people. The same I think will be the case with a group of 3 or less in that a better value might be 75xp per character due to less synergy (these are estimates based on level 1 characters and would need to be scaled up to the level of group).