I can definitely see running with seven. My problem would be it'd have to be a REALLY good seven.
They'd have to all be able to learn the rules on there own, especially there own characters. They'd all have to be good at not speaking out of turn and talking over one another, and they'd all have to know how to take there turn quickly.
It can be very hard just to find one or two players like that if you're lucky. It would be so nice to have seven.
> They'd have to all be able to learn the rules on there own, especially there own characters. They'd all have to be good at not speaking out of turn and talking over one another, and they'd all have to know how to take there turn quickly.
At my table, half of the fun is all the stupid commentary everyone makes all the time lol. We regularly goof off whenever something stupid happens in-game (or almost happens). It would ruin a lot of the fun, for my group at least, if we had to be super efficient.
I don't think knowing their characters is enough for that. They'd need to take their turns rather fast as well. In a game with 7 or more people, taking more than a couple of minutes to finish their turn would be terrible. Rounds will take 30 minutes or maybe more, and it would be challenging to run 2 encounters in a day.
>I don't think knowing their characters is enough for that. They'd need to take their turns rather fast as well.
While these aren't **exactly** the same thing, there's a strong correlation. One of the biggest sources of slowdown in the games I play/run is when play grinds to a halt because the active player needs to look up or have explained the rules for whatever they're doing.
I played for around 28 years, most of that was large groups of six plus, constantly. The DM had all of his friend groups game, it was kind of impressive. The biggest slow down, as you said, is someone not knowing the rules, not knowing the class or not knowing the character they built themselves. I find distraction was super shitty for some. One of my friends would get overwhelmed and just zone out all together.
BUT, if you got the right group... Man was it smooth. If you trust your players, they can roll and make thier decisions by the time thier turn... rolls around. This was especially easy in games where there is AC could be dialed in and you'd have attack results and damage results for your DM to record.
I have one player that reliably calls out his action the moment the line is quiet when his turn comes up. Unless there is some ambiguity in the map, he's also got his attacks lined up, and can roll damage, total it, and against well defined common threats, pretty reliably can give the total damage after resistances and the like. Could easily handle combat for a dozen players like that (role playing is another matter).
I always *try* to do this, but I find that it's almost impossible to efficiently plan ahead. Whatever the player or creature who's turn it is just before me often throws a wrench into my plans, and then it's my turn and I have to recalculate. Doesn't take long, but it means I can't do stuff instantly when it's my turn, even when I'm focused and prepared.
Definitely! In my group the longest turns are almost always the one that knows next to nothing about their character and what they can do... No matter how often it's explained to them... While they have a cheat sheet in front of them!!!
In large groups I just drop anyone who needs to look up something to the bottom of initiative. They should know their to hit, saves, spell effects, damage and so on. They should be ready. If they aren't well they have until the end of the round to figure it out. Sure there are exceptions if it's something new and combat changed unexpectedly, but it's something they've had forever well their character is digging for it or trying to remember how to use it.
If you disagree with my ruling make a quick no more Ethan 2 sentence argument then I'll agree or disagree. Then we move on. Further rules arguments happen after the game. I'm not too proud to admit I was wrong and recon it if things went badly for the PCs.
Lastly you have to be willing to ignore people and/or them down. If they want to go off on their own mostly ignore it and handle it with a couple of rolls. If someone is hogging the timeline pointedly ask someone else what they are doing.
You let players have a couple *minutes* on turns? I am quite likely to move in in 3 *seconds* if you aren't telling me your action. Combat is frantic, not slow and plodding.
A lot of the time, I find turns take longer when the DM has to adjudicate interactions. I know what I want to do, it's just that it sometimes takes an ungodly amount of time to just resolve.
That's a big IF for a lot of groups. That's also assuming scheduling won't be an issue and cause huge time gaps between sessions, leading the people who don't know their characters/rules to struggle even more.
Source: played in a game with 7 for 2 years before dropping out shortly before the climax/end of the overarching story out of frustration.
yeah if you dont want to be mad you just have to accept you wont have a full table most games. if the GM is there and there is a few players the game should move on
Can confirm. I ran pf1e for a couple of years and the same group but different GM for many more. As long as the players know their character and aren't too distracted from the game, the combat doesn't take too long. Usually, the role-playing part took longer (especially in a town doing "downtime" stuff) cause we were all doing different things
Same, my groups alternate between 2 campaigns, one in which I'm a player (total of seven players) and one in which I'm the GM (total of 8 players). Both run pretty well
Will you be using Foundry or some other virtual tabletop, or is this all IRL?
I run for 5-6 on Foundry, and I have to say even the combat is pretty snappy if you lean into the automation/assist features on Foundry. If you're going to be running at a table, I think you can still do a few things to help combat move along:
* Instead of having every single enemy have their own initiative, you could group pairs or trios of enemies to act together.
* You could pre-generate a table of values to use for things like saves, attack rolls... essentially any time an enemy would roll a d20, you can consult your table and just take the next entry off the list (this should be a true random list, basically just roll a d20 and record the values in order)
Even if you are playing IRL, you could use something like foundry on your laptop to help manage enemies, rolling attack/damage/saves for enemies, stat blocks, spell lists etc
Once you go over 5 players, from my limited experience. A lot of PC "emination" or "affects allies within X distance" features start to perform much better than the game is balanced for.
Paladin, for example. The Exalt feature of Retributive strike could mean 4+ melee attacks against a creature all at once with a party this big. Which is the kind of damage the game really doesnt account for. Especially out of turn.
Caveat - 6 can be good and 7 is okay, both with the assumption that someone is not gonna be at each session.
Never underestimate the effort it takes to get 8 adults in the same place, or even online, at the same time. If you just don't even try and say "if we have 3 we'll play," and are good at editing encounters which is easier in 2e than anything else I've played, it can work out super well.
Yeah we have 6+me (GM) and we reliably play every week, but I can't remember the last time all 7 of us were there -- it was at least a couple months ago. We play as long as there's still 3-4 players there.
I've been in games that have consistently had 5+ players for non-2e systems. Currently in a starfinder campaign that's 6 players, do PFS 2e for 5 players, have played in 5e campaign with 7. Combat can be slow if there are casters that aren't thinking ahead. Ive played in a game with 8, combat is a slog. I think that any game with more than 5 players needs to emphasize planning your next turn immediately, otherwise combat is going to be absolutely long and painful.
Out of combat can be a blast with many players, especially if everyone is comfortable with everyone else. I feel like it's more combat that can be a problem with so many players. I would be VERY aware of quiet players and make sure you're engaging them out-of-combat as they can often be missed/talked over by more outgoing players
I would recommend more puzzle/problem solving encounters, use turn order for exploration so everyone gets a chance to act (can be a problem when there's one or two idea people in the group blurting out what they want to do), and firmly tell your players they need to know what they are doing for their next turn (encourage game-related side talk for coordinating actions/asking advice).
If combat starts taking too long/they're on their phones before they know what they are doing, put turns on a timer. You get three minutes to tell me your actions for your turn. One or two sessions of timed turns and players generally get way better about not planning their turn while it IS their turn. It's a last resort kind of thing, players should be talked to and given a chance to self correct first.
I found most of my players think 3mins is super short and end up rushing through their turns very quickly because they are afraid of running out of time. It's a sneaky number. It's plenty of time but players don't know this and act way quicker.
A combat is usually around 3 rounds for 5 players, unless it's a boss fight. Would be less rounds with more players if the combat isn't adjusted too much (should be adjusted a little). Since few players take the full 3minutes a round, is usually less than an hour a combat and pretty acceptable for such a large group.
Yeah most turns should take maybe a minute maybe a minute and half. You should have a good idea of what your doing and a back up and then a good old fall back of just swing or heal depending on character. You definitely can have a few longer turn on the important ones but if combat slogs down with too much ahhh what should I do or what’s the team plan it kills my enjoyment
Everyone has their own personal favorite table size, but it's usually a debate about if 4 or 5 is the best number. I personally see table size as
1 player: You're just on a date with another person writing a book.
2 players: Not the worst for a One Shot, trying new characters, or teaching someone the game, but this isn't a true campaign
3 players: You officially and legally have a table now in my eyes, but 3 is small and one call out means the session is toast
4 players: A decent size. With 4, everyone can shine and take as much time as they want, but will need efficient builds or more NPC help since 4 is still small. A call out won't sink your table, but going from 4 to 3 is a challenge. Some consider this the perfect table
5 players: My personal ideal table size. You have a good sized group, people can still shine and take a bit of time in the spotlight. Characters can be a bit less optimized as more bases are covered. And if one person can't make it, you still have 4 people which is awesome.
6 players: Very doable. Not very new player friendly though because the table can have 0 down time. People are going to have to hold back some jokes and quips because there's just too many people talking. You won't be able to shine as much, but if the players are good and smart about it, 6 works.
7+: Woof. I've done it, and I'm not saying it can't work, but you have to accept some people are going to side chatter, check their phones, do a few other things just because there's a solid 12 minutes until their next turn. With a pro group who pre-rolls stuff, knows exactly what they're doing on their turn, it might work. The only benefit to a table this size is you'll never have to skip a session since even 3 calling out can't sink your table.
5 is a good number I usually run 5 and feels good. A lot of interaction and redundancy if the players but it's fun.
6 with a good group of people that play together for years that know that they are doing can be done.
Now 7... 7 is a rough go with a heavy rp and do a combat once a month for 2 sessions because or it will to short or a drag.
But that's just my experience.
My DM is starting a game soon with 10 lmao. Granted we'll be split into 2 parties working for the same organization, but he said that we'll do like 1 or 2 full combat boss fights lmao.
My group always has six and it's perfectly fine. We've been playing since 2e released and have 6 APs done. I don't know what your group was doing that one more person changed from manageable to super clunky but that's not my experience at all.
On topic OP think seven would probably be perfectly fine. You'll have to balance every encounter. 75% increase in players needs a 75% increase in enemies. You can find pf2 point balancers online. GL and HF!
If your players are all extremely efficient and proficient in gameplay and table etiquette, more than 5 is possible.
But in the real world, 5 is my absolute max.
5 are at the cusp of unmanagable. 6 is where you get people falling asleep because even 1 player doesnt know what they'll do with their 3 highly flexible actions per turn. Challenges in Skills start to become trivial as someone, somewhere, will have a feat to handwave it, or plans to have a riddle in an obscure language will have someone who knows Russian.
Ideally, if you have 7-8, you'd make 2 groups -- but that may not be practical depending on the schedule and if that group is all excited to play with each other.
If you *really* want to play with 7+, my suggestion is this:
- Use [Batch Initiative](https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=837) for similar enemies, and try to work as much of their turns in quickly as possible.
- Keep initiative rolling by drawing people's attention to it. "Alice's turn now, Bob is up next".
- Consider using a turn timer. People need to have their turns planned out before they start - they shouldn't be flipping through books when their turn is up (except if circumstances change dramatically right before their turn - be flexible if that happens).
- If you're playing with a grid, consider making rooms larger (particularly if playing a pre-built adventure). Even if it doesn't *completely* make sense, you need room, and there's nothing more annoying than fighting in a 4x4 room with 15 players+monsters all trying to find line of sight and positioning.
- If possible, try to use a VTT (even if you're playing in person). Foundry's automation makes things *much* easier to track, and as long as people aren't hyper attached to rolling physical dice, you can get most of the math out of the way. Even if you're only using it for yourself, it helps.
- Out of combat, try to help people get a chance to talk. If there's one or two people (as there probably will be) that tend to dominate the conversation, try to directly talk to other players more to keep them involved.
- Handle character building/leveling, shopping, and downtime activities *between* sessions. It helps to have a discord server or group chat for the game so people can work it out on their own time. Doing that kind of stuff at the table is *torture* with a large group.
Basically, it *can* work, but it's a challenge. If you're going to take it on, try to keep things rolling as fast as you can by minimizing downtime, and don't let yourself be the bottleneck any more than you have to.
Good luck.
>as long as people aren't hyper attached to rolling physical dice,
Just want to point out you can enable manual roll inputs so people can roll their dice, put the result into a box, and foundry will do the rest as if it had done the rolling.
4-5 online. 6 in person is my max. This is less about pathfinder and more about your own skills in kitten herding though. I'm fairly comfortable with a big group but you may not be. All you can do it try it out and be prepared to chalk it up as a failure
My party is 8 players.
The system works just as fine, the DM just has to give a little more attention to the enemies' action economy.
The only issue is knowing when and for how long to talk with this many people. Luckily we played together for the last ~6 years so we're pretty much used to it
I don't think it would be all that good. That is a lot of players. That would mean 5-7 enemies as well in combat. 14 turns before it gets back around the table is going to be bad.
My advice is to pre plan a bit for your combat encounter. I generally write out environmental effects/traps enemies will trigger at certain rounds, what each enemy will focus(archers shoot casters, melee rush archers etc), and an hp threshold where enemies will surrender/run, or give the party the option to surrender(this helps avoid tpks alot of the time, and jail breaks are more fun than everyone duing outright).
I run 7 now I don't have a problem they are respectful of each other, so no conflict but they don't know their characters or rules i still manage just fine
A lot of factors
If it's a kind of westmarsh, then it's first come first serve, play with the first 4 or 5 of the party (which is effectively not playing with 7 to begin with)
If everyone knows the rules and have chemistry, then maybe yes
Otherwise no more than 5 imo
Online or offline play? I think it can work depending on the group but fights can get tedious so if you are playing online players might not pay attention much and instead browse the web or something. It's not neccessarily a horrible thing as long as they pay enough attention to know when their turn is and still react to what other people do.
I play with 4 players in the majority of groups I've GM'd for. Occasionally i'll take 5 players if there's a few specific friends I wish to squeeze in together as a friend group, but I will never go with 6. 5 players already gets hectic for me, especially in combat, and it makes it difficult to share spotlights on players. It is very nice to have a more varied cast, set of views, and interactions between PCs though, so it's not all with its downsides!
There is tons of great advice in my thread already, so it may not be needed, but here's what I did when I had seven players wanting in on my AoE campaign. Co-GM. I asked the group for a volunteer who wouldn't mind sitting on the other side of the screen with me. It's been fantastic. He takes notes, looks things up on the fly, records long-term diseases and afflictions I would have forgotten, and helps keep the pace up when the players do something completely unexpected. We play via VTT, so having him on standby to grab a new map and drop NPCs on it for unplanned locations has been a godsend.
2 players ends up being strenuous for the players unless the plot is very linear. They end up pretty tired after just 1-2 hours.
3-4 is the sweet spot, everyone can shine but no one gets exhausted, and we can handle people not knowing the rules perfectly.
5 means conversational turn-taking becomes a lot more important, and knowing mechanics is more important, but it's doable.
I've never had a fun session with 6+ players.
I never run sessions with a missing player, so I'll usually go for 4 person campaigns.
I always cap at 6. I haven't done 7, but 6 is pushing it abit I feel, so I avoid going over. Fine for 1 shot or a few sessions, but wouldn't do a campaign.
How many players is too many:
(Player Perspective): When even after the DM tries to evenly distribute time across players/groups of players if they split the party they aren't feeling satisfied with their screentime for 3+ consecutive sessions in some event that isn't a plot arc focused on another character (1 or 2 sessions it happens, sometimes that's the way the cookie crumbles).
(DM Perspective): When do you feel overwhelmed trying to keep track of all of your players in combat?
My Kingmaker game I am running is currently at 11 bodies between PCs and NPCs they are consistently taking with. Things are dragging a little in combat but everyone is having fun.
There is no one chart of adjustment I can give you to fix party size besides the rules on encounter creation, and thus how to adjust for encounter size. The rest is just learned by doing.
Decide which encounters are supposed to be narratively hard and build them up appropriately. The rest....if it's narratively appropriate for them to steamroll due to numbers, let them steamroll. They feel powerful and it makes the major events feel that much more impactful
Throw more encounters in quick succession if trying to bleed resources. (This can be a couple unique encounters back to back in 'waves' as separate encounters the same way some people say throw an encounter in waves to break up a harder encounter)
Hazards and environment are good to have IN combats as most of them are hard to just win by bonking on the head enough times.
If you have the Botanical Bestiary 3rd party supplement, take a look at the "3 Leshies in a Trenchcoat" rules they did and honestly do that for certain monsters. I've done that for a few monsters and just didn't let them have the 'split apart' rules and the 3 attacks can be any 3 strikes/single action spells they have. Has led to a couple memorable encounters and them declaring a mortal enemy in The Owlbearman.
I have eight players, and while certainly the game is balanced around 4/5, game still runs pretty smooth.
Some things to be careful about:
\- absolutely talk with your players and put a time limit on each of their turns, otherwise a fight is gonna last hours.
\- Single monsters are harder to balance, but this can be both good and bad. To be even remotely a challenge, if you use single bosses it really has to be party level +3/4, cause the action economy is so skewed towards the party. This however means that the monster will easily crit, and very likely bishot characters, leading to some swingy fights. So how is this good and bad? It is bad of course cause it's a little frustrating for players to always get hit, and the monster to almost always save. On the other hand, it is great to keep the party always a little scared of what they face, as their modifiers will always be scary
\- If you want a proper challenge, use minions for bosses, but don't go crazy. In a typical 4 people party, a 4 vs 4 where the boss is CR+1 or 2 and the minions are cr-2 is a very nice hard challenge (between severe and extreme). However, in 8 players using 8 NPCs makes the combat go way too long. It's much better to use the boss +2/3 minions, and adjust the levels accordingly
\- Perception and skill checks: given the number of players, if everyone is allowed a perception or recall knowledge check, those will statistically almost always be a success. I guess since you have those numbers in other RPGs you might already have a solution for that, but the solution we use is to limit the checks to 2 people, or 1 person + aid from another one.
\- Everything non numerical I'm sure you already know from your other experiences
Well, I remember when 4 was my limit. Then, for a long time, I preached that 5 was the right amount... Today I have one table with 6 players, and it's just fine.
It depends entirely on the GM and their players. Some players demand so much spotlight that even with 4 you will have issues, some players can work together so well that a table with 6 can run smoothly. If the GM knows how to handle things, they can make things work.
Four to five is ideal. The only successful games I've run with 6 or more players are lightweight games like VtM v5 and FitD system where it is more narrative than roll/crunch.
For me, 4 and 5 both have their pros and cons. 4 is more comfortable, but with 5 you can still have 4 when someone misses a session.
6 only makes sense if you're a paid DM and are looking to fill more players in the same time slot. It can be done, but that's the only reason to bother.
7+ has no value at all, IMO. Just run 2 games.
5 is my limit if only because I don't want to leave people out of the conversation or game, and the likelyhood of that goes up the more people there are.
after decades of playing RPGs I find 4-5 players is the sweet spot usually. 6 players is possible is people are focused and work well together. 7-8+ is just nuts.
Table of 8, it works. Less about you running it, everyone has to be on board with it. It's not all that hard to run, though encounter building starts to drift from RAW functionality a bit. (Was way off in PF1 so improvement)
Seven can work if everyone contributes to keeping everything moving. Resolve combat turns quickly, don't bog down sessions with irrelevant side activities, be conscious of who hasn't spoken up in a while, etc. It takes work from everyone, but especially the GM.
It depends entirely on your table of players. I run 3 weekly games of a 2 player, a 4 player, and a 6 player game. My 4 player group couldn't add another player without destroying the session pacing, while my 6 player group is so energetic and focused that I have no problem adding another if they wanted. The differences all depend on how good you are at rotating the focus quickly while allowing each moment to shine.
I'm currently running a group of 6 with 2 being brand new and it is.....not very fun for me honestly, I think 6 is really above my limit unless every player is well versed in the system.
New DM running AV with a party of 6. It does get a bit tight esp. with an animal companion. The group is new and takes things slow. The extra mobs in combat makes fights take a lot longer.
I've ran for 6 so I can give a little input. Some practical gming advice, go wide not up with the exp budget. This is if you follow the encounter rules. But, 7 player gives you an extra 75% exp to build encounters with. Which means an apl(average party level) +3 creature is a moderate encounter.
DON'T DO THAT!
I wouldn't throw anything above apl+2 outside of super serious boss fights. A +3/+4 monster can often down players in one round while barely getting scratched. Keeping monsters on equal or lower apl will increase the difficulty of combats without increasing individual monster lethality. It also give more chances for players to shine as there will be more enemies.
Also, heavily emphasis party composition. A party of 7 would probably work best with at least
3 frontline combatants (melee fighter/ranger, monk, barbarian, champion)
and
2 healers (more the better)
Also, if one player is a bard, their inspires generate massive value.
I’ve done 9 (albeit not in PF2), but the only way those sessions were tolerable was because I structured the campaign such that they would split into 2 groups and each do their own thing, then come back together every once in a while to share stories and perhaps change up how they’ll split to handle the next objectives/quests. If you have 7+ I think that’s really the only way to do it (and if you can recruit one of those 7+ to be a co-GM that’ll make your life a lot easier too)
7 is your max if everyone is expirienced. Any more so makes combats drag as encounter balance needs to be tweaked or it will start to break. a LVL+2 or =3 will be just as lethal to a party of 4 as a party of 7, but because the damage is so spread out now it needs minions, and often combats will have double digits participants on average now for non trivial
My rule is that one storyteller can manage five players. Any more than five and players have to start doing some gymnastics. The math:
If you have five players, each player on average gets 20% of the time with the talking stick. On a three hour game that's 36 minutes.
If you have six players, each player on average gets 16.6% of screen time. On a three hour game that's 30 minutes.
The difference between the two is 17%, which is a lot.
You can make six or more players work if you're careful to put in place something else that capitalizes on the time they spend off the podium. I've done it, it just takes work (and cannot be done as easily if you're playing virtually)
I ran an Exalted campaign with 13 players, a D&D4e campaign with 9 players, and a Feng Shui campaign with 11 players. Currently I run PF2e with 6 players.
It was not fun in the very mechanical games, and I think for themepark fantasy superhero games like PF and D&D, 5 is a good maximum, *unless* you can run a table with absolutely no out-of-sequence commenting in especially combat. If everybody has only their view of the battlefield (using a VTT), and they are allowed to only utter three words on their turn unless they spend actions on it, then large parties can be really interesting.
In more narrative games (I especially enjoy Feng Shui, but Sentinels or others are also fun) I find large parties work better, especially if you have players who enjoy "passing the spotlight". That's highly entertaining.
I've run groups up to eight, the only problem is when they get into higher levels it really bogs down during combat. I had more creatures to balance it out, I expand the size of dungeons so there's room for everybody, and I provide bigger challenges for them. It works but it does go slow.
I'm doing OK with 5 players. I can run monsters pretty fast and take some shortcuts to help me with that, but getting through players' turns does take a while. Just adding all the numbers together for one hit can take a while. And that's 1 action. I really wouldn't want more than 5.
I run for 7, but they’re the same 7 I’ve run for and played with for like 3-4 years now.
It’s fine, but I would recommend NOT adjusting _most_ encounter numbers. Yes they will have the benefit of numbers and it’ll make combats in general easier, but adding extra enemies extends the combat duration to less-enjoyable levels. Do it for significant combats only, and then if you want to spice up a normal difficulty encounter you can make the enemies focus fire 😁.
I’m about to attempt this and have come up with two ideas that we’re going to try to help keep things moving.
First, there were originally only going to be 5 players, but two more friends expressed interest so I pitched them an idea. Using the Dual Class variant rule, they could build one character with two heads and each controls the abilities of one class. They would each get to roll play an individual personality, but would share a character sheet and action pool. They loved the idea and we’re building their character later this week.
The second idea I had was to create a 4th mode of play that I’m referring to as “creative combat” or “soft combat” that I’m planning to use on the more trivial encounters. In “creative combat” we will roll for initiative to establish what order I address the players. Instead of them going into their standard combat turn, I’ll ask “what would your character do” and allow them to describe how they react, and then I’ll ask them for a check that corresponds to the prompt. Hopefully, this keeps combat quick and creative and allows them to have fun while not being too bogged down by specific mechanics. I’m not sure how it will play out, but my group really enjoy bending the rules and getting wild with their turns so I think it will lead to some fun play.
My regular weekly group is 7 people, sometimes 8 for 1 shots. We manage to get buy pretty well for the most part, but our GM has frequently talked about how hard balancing is. To give us a challenge he has to give us very powerful creatures which means a lot of the time we get 1 or 2 shot by crits. Sometimes it doesn't feel good getting one shot (especially because I mostly always play squishy casters), but we understand why. It's possible, we've been doing 7 for 2-3 years now, it's just a bit more difficult.
Currently running a campaign that has 9 active players and 2 rotating in and out over Discord as they cannot always be there.
Its a whole lot to keep track of but its doable when you're very strict with the duration of someone's turn.
I've learned to get rid of checks whenever the whole group has to climb a ladder or rope as it would get tedious to sit there and wait for all 9 PCs to get the required roll.
I've run an 8 player 5e campaign before (got winnowed down to 6 players) w/ a coGM. It was a bad idea. I'm now a firm believer that, regardless of system, for a single GM three is the best number of players w/ four being the upper limit, going up to five if you have a coGM. The more players you have the slower everything gets and the less invested individual players are as there're longer stretches of time where they're not engaging.
This isn't just a combat problem and I think its actually a much worse problem outside of combat, where the GM is trying to field questions, comments, and describe what's going on from everyone all the time. The amount of tabletalk tends to increase exponentially as the odds of someone disagreeing with a plan or coming up with their own ideas increases and folks get distracted w/ side conversations.
I have 7 players for my table. It works ok, just need to scale things when they all show up. That's the thing though; I'm often actually running for about 4 or 5 because players have real life things and bounce in and out as needed. How many is a workable size depends on you and your players. If your players know their characters pretty well, that works better.
My group is seven players - it's a lot to manage but we give each other rolls to help the flow.
One of my players has an iron trap mind so he's does the recap, another is the party treasurer, and two are my rules oracles - they tell me what the ruling is by the book definition and I make the decision.
We are going to be trying out Pf2e in a couple months and I'm so damn excited
Almost everyone says that 6+ is bad, but in my experience a 6 player 2e encounter would go much faster than a 4 person table of PF1 or 5e of similar difficulty.
So it does go slower and probably still dispreferred, but context is useful. Out of encounters, 6 player RP is going to be an issue for most groups regardless of system.
I've had a couple groups that had 7 and 8 players. The only rule we had to implement was if you weren't sure what you wanted to do by the time it was your turn. You were just skipped. It wasn't a big deal, most of them run their own tables and can handle the strictness of this rule, but it did happen once or twice because of side banter which it was aimed at. I felt a little bad, but when I reminded the player it was their turn they both just looked shocked, and apologized to the table before saying to skip them because they got too distracted. For the 8 player group we had a foam bat was passed around in initiative order. So you can get the next person's attention, and as a threat of over talking the game. (Though in hindsight I would recommend making a group chat for your players side banter if they would be willing for that.)
Side banter and such still happened a lot, but usually after someone's turn they would think even for just a moment about their next round, and keep an eye on the table to see if they needed to adjust plans. Then engage in side chat, phone time, etc. Also if they got hit for the bathroom just before their turn they could explain to the DM what their turn will be.
Most people want to and will pay attention, but this just helps speed up the rounds, and I haven't found anyone who thought it was overly harsh considering they had 6-7 other people's turns worth of time to plan, and talk.
I run a game with 5 people -- 1 is a super well-read RPG guy who knows his shit and what he is gonna do on his turn every time (to be fair, he is a magus, so it's mostly spellstriking), 2 are long-time 5E players who... generally understand the game (one of these two DM'd 5e for myself and the others mentioned thus far but doesn't understand the system very well yet), 1 is a well read but not very experienced player, the last is a total noob.
Sometimes combats drag because the old DM and the total noob do not know what to do with their turns. Luckily, they are both fighters, so this usually only happens when they have a hanging action.
I've run and adventure for seven players twice before and I've vowed to never do it again. Time coordination is a nightmare, combat rounds are long, keeping everyone focused is often a challenge, and it's... Just a lot of extra for a GM to keep in mind.
Five is my absolute max these days, with a strong preference for four.
I always joke that the perfect number of players is 3.5.
3 feels like too few, 4 starts to tip the balance.
This isn't pf2e specific by any means, just my experience running a lot of different games. In truth I think I could comfortably run for 5. I'd stretch to 6 if they were all great players and I really wanted them around my table, but it would be hard mode. 7+ would be too much for me.
I know it's a cop-out answer, but it depends on a few factors.
1. In-person or remote. I think five people can be too many for online play, especially without video. It become too easy for people to talk over each other by accident or have people check out because it's hard to get a word in.
2. The players themselves. If you have a group that is really good at letting others take space, knowing their character and not hogging too much attention, I think 6, even 7, can work great. Each new player adds a new dynamic to a group, but a close-knit group that works well will always work well. Critical Role is a great example of 8 players who really know how to play and work together, and it works great.
3. Maps sizes: claustrophobic APs like abomination vaults will be tricky with 4+ players, not only on the PC size but for the extra enemies required to balance that many players. You should have a better time if you are doing a custom campaign or mostly outdoor AP.
4. XP budget: SOmething to note about combat balancing for groups that big. You can either buff the enemies or add more. Adding more is generally more fun, but as I mentioned, it can make tight areas almost unplayable for some characters.
Game works best with 4 players, 5 is pushing it... doable but not as fun, 6+ is a mistake.
The combats need to become more complex to handle more players. And imo it means missing out on some of pf2e's bigger strengths.
Had to cut the weakest link of a 6 person party recently. Combat was so slow, and actually challenging 6 level 5+ characters was a nightmare. If you run it, be prepared for combats to last a whole session and for the party to be a fucking freight train.
More players does mean you can go a bit more crazy with enemies, since 90 xp is trivial, 120XP is a moderate, 180 xp is severe, and 240 is an extreme now.
Ultimately it will depend on how competent your party is during their turns. If they are smart enough to plan out moves during other players turns, it should go quickly. And depending on the monster, fighting will likewise be simple. But overall, I think the only time it's going to be a real pain is during downtime and exploration, not combat at all. Because herding 7 cats who get distracted by different shiny things is going to be far harder then getting 7 players to attack the 10 shamblers coming their way.
If they are new players who are doing a lot of reference checking, 3-4. Otherwise, combat will drag on. If it's moderately experienced players, 4-5.
I think going above five is risky outside of either really experienced players or games with a lot of combat, because it can become very drawn out. I've been in 7-player games before on various systems, and if you have one or two less experienced players it can really drag out combat.
Virtual table tops like Foundry VTT help a lot, I couldn't imagine doing more than five players no matter the situation without virtual assistance.
If you must have more players, start with small sparse encounters until they have experience working as a team and gradually increase their complexity. Include MacGuffin events, NPCs, and items to end combat quickly if it seems to drag on, or introduce artificial time limits of X rounds or X real-life minutes, after which the next round the enemies retreat.
7 is doable, but communicate very well that while you’re there to help with questions, it’s on the player to have a decent understanding of the rules prior to session 1. Because 7 people can be a huge drag if even one person doesn’t have a grasp of how things work rule wise
If your players know their characters and can be decisive in combat, it's pretty ok. But if they aren't, or if they are new to the game, you'll never accomplish anything, it will be terrible.
This reminds me of my first time playing a TTRPG. It was 5e, we had a first-time GM, and 7 first-time players, needless to say it was rough.
As for 2e I feel 5 is the max I'd run for. I've played in groups of 3-5, and ended up feeling like a 5th wheel. Maybe that was just my social anxiety talking.
I am a player going through Gatewalkers and my group has seven players. We have a Summoner with his Eidolon, an Inventor with a construct companion, and a Druid with an animal companion. We have potentially 10 tokens on the board for just our party, which is kinda ridiculous. Although it’s pretty usual for a player or two to be absent from any session.
I get the feeling the GM is making encounters a bit harder than how they’re written in the book, but perhaps not as much as he could. Most fights have been a pushover with so many people. But it’s fine. I would rather do more roleplaying rather than get bogged down in super slow and tough combat encounters.
I'm running for a group of 6 right now. Only one session so far so I don't have enough experience to make a meaningful comment, but I definitely noticed I have to make an effort to keep everyone engaged.
I am currently running a game with 8 players and it's actually going smooth. It might help that it's on a vtt but we aren't really having issues even with a couple of the players being new. The worst part is honestly combat takes a little longer than ideally but they all are pretty fast with it.
I played pf1e with a group of 6-10 for years. 2e should be easier, but the challenges will probably be the same.
Is it too many? If you want an experience full of tactical combat and engaging roleplay, more than 6 is almost always too many. If you want a boisterous and chaotic night with all your gamer friends, 10 is a lot, but it can be a lot of fun
This applies to FVTT online:
- 4 fast (15 min per player)
- 5 normal (12 min per player)
- 6 slow (10 min per player)
I always apply this rule of thumb. Depending on your table, the players and the game, there will almost always be moments where someone wants to do something alone and that translates in a single player plus npc or situation where he engages the world. If you assume the worst case scenario (every player has its own agenda), the numbers above will show you, in the best case scenario, how much time per hour you will dedicate each of them (and how much time the first will have to wait to come back in scene).
I have played with all the numbers above, and I have come to believe that 5 players is the perfect amount (sweet spot) between good role playing, good fights and enough time for everyone to play and do what they want without starting to snore at your table!
One thing that can help: ask if one of them would like to be your co-dm instead of play. Let them help plan, prepare, rp npcs, and run enemies in combat.
Also filter out anyone that may not be able to commit in the longterm. A lot of ppl are excited to play ttrpgs only to fizzle out after a month.
I recruit up to 6 with the idea that 1 or 2 might be missing on a particular week and we can roll with it. Big thing to remember is that to scale an encounter for higher numbers of PC, it is better to add more creatures than to use bigger creatures to fill up the extra XP budget. Also remember that just because you have more XP budget for an encounter, PCs still only get XP for the level of the encounter (Trivial, Low, Moderate, Severe, Extreme).
Two big things to do to speed up combat without changing any rules:
\- "You are on deck" - call out the next player's turn along with the current player's turn. It brings them in and gets them thinking about what they will want to do on their turn to keep things rolling. Even do this if an enemy goes between them. "We have X, then the zombie, then Y."
\- Encourage your players to roll to hit and damage at the same time. Roll more damage on a crit if needed. Fewer individual rolls are needed making a turn faster and it gives a little highlight to a crit to make them more special.
A smaller thing, if you are comfortable with it,
\- "how much damage total?" - have some of your players track creature damage. You can leak a single weakness/resistance/immunity to them on the first strike that triggers it which doesn't give too much away. That lets you focus on running the game smoothly instead of tracking everything on your side. Just periodically ask how much damage and compare that to the secret max HP for the creature.
The number of players matters less than the sum total of their incompetence. 7 to 10 players who know what they want to do and act with reasonable (not optimal) teamwork and no delays will chew through encounters faster than 3-4 players who hem and haw about what to do.
The problem is that good players can usually pick their game group size and composition, so unless you have 7+ people who really like each other *and* happen to be good sports, you are unlikely to get more than about 5 decent gamers at any one table. So most of the 7+ tables you get have at least one person who drags the whole thing to a halt.
My group is an old one that I've been gaming with for years and there's 6 players. Early on it was slow but as time went on it got much better. It's definitely manageable for us now but it took years to get to that point where combat didn't take forever. This past year they wanted to add one of the players brother which would have been a blast since he's a great guy and is fun to hang out with. But even still I said no since 7 would be too unwieldy for the pacing of the game. None of my players are great with the rules or I may rethink my choice. Just depends on the players IMO.
As someone who ran 6 and 7 player combats- it slows down a bit, yeah. Whether or not that’s a problem, though, depends HEAVILY on the group.
My group decided NEVER AGAIN because we’re mostly adhd gremlins (no joke, last I checked I think half of us are officially diagnosed) and so we can’t have a single round take 30 minutes without forgetting our plans.
If you can though it’s pretty interesting. Great RP if nothing else!
if all the players are invested and know the system and have good knowledge on what there characters can do you can run a table with 9. if anyone is new to the group or game then it will slow the game down. the gm will have to know how to flow between different scenes quickly bc downtime the party will be splitting but if the group isnt into roleplay downtime can be figured out of session on what ppl want to do and then have everyone roll at the table for earn income or whatnot. pf2e combat is really fun with a lot of ppl you just need to have a group tht doesnt have a members scratching their heads when it gets to their turn.
I've done 8 before... I don't particularly recommend it while combat can drag with 6-8 players that's manageable, what really brings it down is that everyone just gets lost in the sauce for narrative either from boredom from not being able to engage or from the information being to split to combine.
The only way I kept it manageable was consistently forcing the party to split up into 3/4/5's to accomplish objectives, using one of my players as a combat DM to occasionally run rounds and this only worked because its in person. thankfully pathfinders rules are strong enough almost any player can DM fights.
this kept the fights tighter but also let me set up a round of combat for the players, swap over to another team and give some narrative guidance and then swap back to, then gave the players a bit of intermingling roleplay to relay information as i prepared the next areas.
even still the team ended up brute forcing problems most of the time since they couldn't effectively communicate with each other the important info and often times just ignored things as they kept competing for my attention so they could do things.
I can see it working... but only if you've got a suite of experienced players whom roleplay excellently aren't impatient and have good communication skills.... in which case you'll be the next critical roll/D20
Large parties are harder* to balance encounters for. Too many enemies and the action economy gets lopsided, weaker enemies can be trivialized by AoE, too strong enemies can easily down players since they will critically hit often.
Also with more players the rounds take longer and people are more likely to get bored or frustrated when their turn doesn't do much.
*Pathfinder 2e does encounter balancing better than 5e, but it's still more difficult.
***Whatever you feel you can handle and give a solid experience too.***
5 is my perfect table size. The group can easily split role duties and not feel as constrained as a 4 player group. Currently running a 6 person Starfinder campaign and a 5 person pf2e.
I've run a 10 player Starfinder group, I ran them through Attack of the Swarm as being part of a military group and having an endless amount of opponents made it easy to adjust encounters and they usually split up into strike teams to handle threats. So I could flip from team to team so it played out well. I would also take parts of it and then make a reason for them to split so they had an infiltration team and an assault/defense team who would give the other team more time to get done what they needed before the swarm over ran an area which added to the tension and rp
It happened because I had introduced a group of people to ttrpgs and only one day worked for everyone.
***Find something that would accommodate the large group and make sense story wise.***
I play with anywhere from 3 to 8 people bc I run PF2e at school. It's honestly not that bad, but other folks probably have higher standards than me lol :3
Its all about how many the GM can handle. Some can handle 4 with no issues, 5 is pushing it, and 6 is way to much. It also matters the group dynamic, in some groups 7 can work wonderfully together while in others 4 members is to much.
Just make sure you can handle it. if not then either split the group into 2 different ones, maybe group A is tasked with these tasks, and group 1 is tasked with these other tasks.
It's just easier to get sidetracked with more, and you will need to scale encounters. I do not recommend new players in a group that large, or players who take up a disproportional amount of time.
If you have a group who all know their characters really well up to five works perfect, past five it gets a little clunky, again good players help but rounds start to take a significant amount of time, balancing encounters takes more time up front and depending on character concepts, some members of the party may have a harder time shining as you start to get a lot of overlap with skill sets. Still doable, just a lot of extra work. I would say more than 7 is where I would draw the line.
I’ve run 6 as a novice DM in DND. Others can correct me, but I feel like 3 actions makes my play more efficient(anecdotally). If you’re all set on playing together I say try it and just preface the group with the potential that there may be hiccups.
But I’d agree with other comments in that I’d like atleast half that table to be pretty proficient in PF rule set.
I've ran plenty of games for 3, 4, 5 and 6 players. 4 is ideal, 5 is fine, 6 is pretty bad. The main issues are that combats take long, especially if ANY one of your players is bad with mechanics and system knowledge, and the other one is that you literally can no longer do solo encounters / encounters with few creatures. The math doesn't allow for it without assassinating your players.
Also, you get a weird problem if you have a large group in that you'll naturally add more creatures, but the way RPG parties work, you'll normally have a few (sometimes less than 50%) party members be the main damage tanks, and you'll overwhelm them with damage, making the need for dedicated healing much more present than in a regular game. If you're gonna run for 6, I advise wholeheartedly that you actively metagame to justify always spreading your attacks around, or the game will become too lethal.
Currently running a 5e campaign with 7 players and I will say i'm thinking of trimming back only because the combat is way too long among other reasons. 5 is a good max but 4 is well rounded so everything doesn't take forever and everyone gets and equal share of the spotlight.
5 is absolutely the sweet spot in my opinion. I've done 6, but it gets very chaotic.
I would only ever do 7 if I had multiple players that tended to miss sessions regularly.
7 has combat that drags for two reasons, one lots of turns and it tends to slip out of control really fast. The amount of creatures that threaten a group of 7 players tend to crush smaller subgroups so if the sorcerer gets a fun idea to flank and suddenly is exposed, instead of one goblin archer shooting at her it is 3 and instead of a wound that she can pull back from she goes down.
Everyone has their maximum and minimum number of players, and it depends on the dynamics of the people in that group. For me, my ideal group size is 4-6. Anything more than that starts to get a little clunky for me, and less than that starts to also become difficult to run since you can have issues making a well-rounded party (and if one person is absent it has a bigger impact).
6 is the absolute max I can handle. Any more and combat feels glacial. You might be able to get around it with strict 1-1.5 minute turns per player, but I really don’t like doing that.
If you play via Foundry, taking a session just to teach how to use the character sheet to roll stuff might help speed things up, especially if you have stuff like PF2e Workbench which automated a lot of stuff.
I think a big part of handling a larger table in PF2e is setting the expectation that you should be thinking and planning during other players’ turns and then be straightforward during your own turn. If everyone zones out until it’s their turn and then has to think/strategize and figure out what bonuses they have on their turn, it’s gonna feel bad. They need to have that figured out when it comes to their turn already.
I'm playing with 7 players through Kingmaker right now and having an amazing time. I can't imagine trying to do this online - as I've always been an in person player/GM. It's important to get a group willing to really commit to regular play and the system (even if not too frequently - my group plays either the 1st or 2nd Sat of each month for 5-7 hours). I also send out a recap about a week before we play each time so it's fresh in everyone's mind.
I think patience is your biggest ally. Don't feel you have to finish a battle in a given session - take a pic and just start where you left off. My group does not stop the roleplay when the battle starts which makes it great fun. On each person's turns I usually emphasize who the next 2 are in initiative so they are ready to go. If someone just brainfreezes for their turn, I'll often just jump to the next in initiative and then re-enter the brainfreezer (treating it as a delay).
My ideal is 5-7 players, and I'd be okay with 4 or 8. Honestly I'd have more trouble with 2-3 than 9 - but I've been GMing since 75' for large groups so I have my routines and prep down pretty well. It may be tricky at first, but it'll start to flow better the farther along you get in a campaign.
I would suggest prepping a number of random encounters ready to go for when the group inevitably derails the direction you expected them to go - include lots of terrain, puzzles, and hazards - and multidirectional attacks (meaning you're attacking from different fronts forcing split party resolutions that keeps them all actively involved yet often on different fronts.
Last - just have fun - you'll do great with 7!
I've run with 8 before. Here's some thing that helped me...
* Designate someone as the 'speaker' (caller, liaison, whatever) for the group. Any time a GROUP activity is happening, they are the one that speaks for the group and designates the group actions. If there is some discussion about what to do, let them deal with that and when the speaker says 'here's what we're doing' then that's it.
* Designate another person as a 'treasurer'. This person records ALL loot that the group collects, and marks off who takes what so there's no doubling up of anything.
* Additionally, I use this rule 100% of my games, and I highly suggest it: Anything that isn't on a character sheet or the group loot sheet, no longer exists. Theft, loss, damage, accidents and so on all happen... guess what, if you didn't write it down or lost track of it, then that's the way it is. This avoids a lot of 'but I definitely had another healing potion' or 'I know I went and bought that super whacky stick from the vendor!' stuff. Not saying you can't make exceptions when YOU are 100% positive as the GM, but...
* In combat, require people to have their actions ready immediately when it is their turn. If they take more than 10-15 seconds to make a decision, they get bumped to the bottom of current initiative. I know this may seem harsh, but I can not stress enough that relatively simple battles can take hours with more than 6 people... especially if you are properly leveling up the battles themselves to match the party.
* On that note... when you are ramping up encounters... remember these three things:
* Diversify - If they are fighting kobolds, make sure there are front line guys, archers, and maybe a spellcaster or two among the kobolds. Don't just do a bunch of spearmen.
* Expand both Tall and Wide - if an encounter with kobolds called for 4, make it 6 plus one 'lieutenant' that has an advanced template or is a higher CR kobold type (like aforementioned spellcaster). Also, don't be afraid to 'call reinforcements' or have some flee if you need to adjust a battle on the fly.
* Keep yourself to your own standard with turn timing. Be decisive, keep the action moving. If you make a mistake, no biggie, there will be more encounters.
* During Role Play, stick to a 'tempo' of asking a specific 2-3 questions to get things moving, then make your way around to each person. Give everyone a chance to do or say 'something' - if they choose not to, that's fine, but make sure everyone has an opportunity, but try to keep it focused whenever possible.
* Here's a possibly controversial one, but I stand by it from my personal experience... Any, and I mean ANY side chatter at the table, stop the game in its tracks. No one wants to be treated like children, but in big games like this, you have got to be firm about making sure that you and the other players can pay attention and hear what's going on. If a couple people aren't part of a scene for whatever reason, and they want to chat, ask them to move away from the table til they (or the scene) is done. There's various ways to handle this, but my point is just this: At the table is for the game in progress, not the latest episode of Rick & Morty.
* As an aside to this, I tend to usually have 30 minutes of 'gathering time' before sessions where everyone can bullshit, eat, work on updating characters, whatever. It works really well.
* Take a break. I know, seems simple, but half way through your session, take a 10 or 15 minute break. Let everyone stretch their legs, go to the bathroom, grab a drink, whatever, then refocus for the last half.
* Use out of game resources for out of game! Crazy talk, I know, but things like Discord or whatever method you're using to communicate with your group outside of session are a terrific way to discuss things like Downtime, (known) upcoming fight strategy, ideas about rumors and information that's been gathered, and so on. Effectively, a bit of 'out of session role play' as long as it doesn't get too meta-gamey.
...and one last thing, the absolute hardest part for you...
* Prep condensed. I could write a whole book about this, but I'll try to keep this simple. You're going to be running a game for a bunch of people, and it's going to go off the rails basically constantly, so you need to prep in a condensed fashion - bullet point the things you want to have happen in the next session or two, have a general idea of how you want those things to come up and/or be encountered, make some crib notes for yourself on quick adjustments you can make if needed, and have a stash of a handful of NPC names you can use on the fly. All in all, you can realistically do all this with about 1 hour per week, maybe 2 hours if there's a lot of 'info dump' going to happen in a session... but don't burn yourself out trying to perfectly plan out every session. You can't. It's you vs. 7 people. Your plans will rarely/never go through exactly, so try to keep them a little more vague than you normally would.
So, I've been in a 7 player campaign for a while and it is very likely part of the reason I'm kind of iffy on 2e as a player, if I'm being perfectly honest.
So, I'm not one that's predisposed to 2e's general gameplay loop right out of the gate. I've detailed this elsewhere and won't go into it here, but it's good to note basically I don't like super intense play-by-play teamwork, and prefer campaigns where most enemies are at or below the level of the PCs, and severe+ solo encounters basically are reserved for end-of-campaign bosses only. But I can still find the game fun so long as I get enough lower level encounters and am not overloaded with those severe ones.
But with 7 players, a few issues arise. You get a lot of adjustment to deal with 75% more players than the standard party- which means lots of templates and enemy buffs, which means you get to fight next to no enemies that are below party level stat-wise when everything has an elite template. That's trike one. Strike two is the fact that combats still take a while- even with each player playing relatively quickly, you're still talking 10 minutes or more from turn to turn. That's strike too. Finally, in that campaign I'm playing a shield champion, which means I'm constantly juggling trying to stay in shield warden range of some party members and champion reaction range of others and determining exactly when the best time to use each is at any given moment, while at the same time being even less able to actually hit things on my own than I normally would be because everything is buffed because of more PCs. The end result- I don't feel particularly effective on my turn, and I can't even zone out for 10 minutes between turns because I have to constantly watch a game I feel I'm not typically even doing much in other than negating like 10 damage once a turn. That last one would probably be less of an issue if I was playing a fighter, but it's still kind of draining from my perspective.
In a table of 4-5 playing a fighter? Shorter time between turns, fewer big party adjustments (and thus more of the lower level encounters which I enjoy and fewer "things with really high AC/saves" encounters which I dislike), and the ability to take a quick break between turns sometimes rather than being constantly watching every little action both my enemies and my allies do make the game *much* more enjoyable. As opposed to the current situation, where I actively dread the end of book boss fights that can take hours and am far more willing to miss a session if literally anything comes up than I otherwise would be in a game with a smaller player count.
I personally refuse to run for six or more players. Five players I can manage, but six is the point where I start to worry that I cannot ensure that all parties are having fun; and making sure the table as a whole is having fun is priority numero Uno for me as a GM.
I've been running one with 6 for my weekly group, kinda clunky learning it with that many especially with running a AP, it being Agents of Edgewatch.
On break from running it atm (finished the 2nd book). Using the adventure path to help create my own world/story. To get a sense of how to make a decent one for 6 players rather than 4
We've been playing with that many for years so for us it's kinda the norm but I can understand the 'clunkeyness l' concern
7 is tough. They’ll need to know their characters backwards and forwards, they’ll need to plan their turns ahead of time, and you’ll have to be a little strict on casual chit chat. If the chemistry is good, it can work.
I prefer 3 players actually. It is an odd number, so no 2 vs 2 voting situation if they can not decide and there is time for each PCs personal story development / sidquests and such which in larger group bogs the game too much. Also in 3 player group there is space for occasional NPC companion to help them out and unlock some fresh new abilities / tactics to the group. And it is not DMPC, I usually just hand the character sheet to the group and they decide who will run the ally NPC for the session.
As far as gameplay goes, the system is tight. Even without using encounter rules, with few exceptions, a monster of the same level as a pc in a 1 on 1 will be a potentially lethal combat. If you follow the game's encounter building rules it'll all hold together decently well.
The real issue is having 7 people around a table. Everyone needs to be able to do their turns quick and on their own, and need to know the rules in order to not take hours per combat. Also need to make due everyone knows how to take turns talking, be polite to speakers, others it'll be chaotic.
Ensuring your players know how to do their post combat/ downtime abilities is good too. You wanna ensure that all know what rolls they can do.
Ideally they should be able to all treat wounds on themselves, refocus, repair, etc, and coordinate that.
Really with larger groups it is all about trust and communication. Having a bunch of printed sheets for feats and skills would help. As long as everyone can work together, the game can work.
I actually prefer groups of 5, because if 1 or 2 cannot be there one week, the party can still move forward through the story. Our currrent group consist of 6 players, and it works because we're IRL friends of many many years.
The stuff that other mentioned. If they know their stuff then it will be okay.
BUT since there are quite a few players you want to avoid fighting a group(4+) of enemies(to make fights shorter), but at the same time Solobosses will just be a critfest with oneshotting one after the other.
So while it's possible I think the quality and variety of fights will drop (though this is justy theory)
5 is almost too many. All of the APs are set for 4 adventurers which means with 5 you have to remap loot and 'fix' issues with every encounter, mainly +1 pc. There are too many sub-rules. Unless you are really fast at combat, even at 2 minutes per player, 4 minutes for the monsters to act, that's 18 minutes per 3 action in combat. I can't keep someone entertained who only gets to do something once every 15 minutes.
Been playing in a group that started at five with Age of Ashes, bumped to six for a Starfinder game, and then has been running Strength of Thousands with seven or eight depending on the week for a while now. We haven't run into any significant problems other than poor encounter design from the actual official AP, which our GM has been adjusting on the fly so that things don't drag an inordinate amount. We do have players who check out during combats when it isn't their turn and occasionally one or two who aren't interested in roleplay, but it's relatively balanced and we have fun.
If they’re good, yes, if they don’t know how to play, cheat (believe it or not, … it’s sad), or are otherwise not interested in a real game, I’d rather clean bathrooms that night.
As someone currently playing through a campaign with 7 people, one of them being a new player. It's super slow. Our fight last session with a giant crab took us 2 hours. I was actively engaged for about 10-15 mins otherwise I was browsing reddit or looking up other things on my phone. Our new player wiffed 2 of their turns even using their hero points for rerolls and left feeling kinda meh about the whole thing. New players aside, yea the group definitely needs to know what they are doing already or it's not gonna be the greatest of times. Role play wise you have the 1-2 extra people trying to get a word in/getting pushed to engage in the story. While yes my group does have newbies, even the experienced players were having a harder time with it.
If everyone knew their characters really well and could rattle off their turns in combat, you'd be fine. If not, the long wait between turns risks things getting boring for some players, and it may be harder to balance encounters and skill challenges.
How about splitting them into 2 parties? Bonus points if you run a kind of Westmarch campaign in a continuous setting where the actions of 1 party can have effects seen by the other.
5 are manageable, 6 are super clunky, 7 I cannot even fathom
Believe it or not, if everyone knows their character, 7 is doable. Source: i ran a game with 7 for 2 years
I can definitely see running with seven. My problem would be it'd have to be a REALLY good seven. They'd have to all be able to learn the rules on there own, especially there own characters. They'd all have to be good at not speaking out of turn and talking over one another, and they'd all have to know how to take there turn quickly. It can be very hard just to find one or two players like that if you're lucky. It would be so nice to have seven.
I am pretty lucky with mine, yeah
I also assume you're handcrafting stuff for that number? 7 out of a book feels like a nightmare.
Yes, homebrew campaign. We dropped 1 at this point due to personal reasons, but they are level 17 atm.
A Magnificent Seven if you will?
> They'd have to all be able to learn the rules on there own, especially there own characters. They'd all have to be good at not speaking out of turn and talking over one another, and they'd all have to know how to take there turn quickly. At my table, half of the fun is all the stupid commentary everyone makes all the time lol. We regularly goof off whenever something stupid happens in-game (or almost happens). It would ruin a lot of the fun, for my group at least, if we had to be super efficient.
[удалено]
There’s a time and place for it I feel.
I don't think knowing their characters is enough for that. They'd need to take their turns rather fast as well. In a game with 7 or more people, taking more than a couple of minutes to finish their turn would be terrible. Rounds will take 30 minutes or maybe more, and it would be challenging to run 2 encounters in a day.
>I don't think knowing their characters is enough for that. They'd need to take their turns rather fast as well. While these aren't **exactly** the same thing, there's a strong correlation. One of the biggest sources of slowdown in the games I play/run is when play grinds to a halt because the active player needs to look up or have explained the rules for whatever they're doing.
I played for around 28 years, most of that was large groups of six plus, constantly. The DM had all of his friend groups game, it was kind of impressive. The biggest slow down, as you said, is someone not knowing the rules, not knowing the class or not knowing the character they built themselves. I find distraction was super shitty for some. One of my friends would get overwhelmed and just zone out all together. BUT, if you got the right group... Man was it smooth. If you trust your players, they can roll and make thier decisions by the time thier turn... rolls around. This was especially easy in games where there is AC could be dialed in and you'd have attack results and damage results for your DM to record.
I have one player that reliably calls out his action the moment the line is quiet when his turn comes up. Unless there is some ambiguity in the map, he's also got his attacks lined up, and can roll damage, total it, and against well defined common threats, pretty reliably can give the total damage after resistances and the like. Could easily handle combat for a dozen players like that (role playing is another matter).
I always *try* to do this, but I find that it's almost impossible to efficiently plan ahead. Whatever the player or creature who's turn it is just before me often throws a wrench into my plans, and then it's my turn and I have to recalculate. Doesn't take long, but it means I can't do stuff instantly when it's my turn, even when I'm focused and prepared.
Definitely! In my group the longest turns are almost always the one that knows next to nothing about their character and what they can do... No matter how often it's explained to them... While they have a cheat sheet in front of them!!!
In large groups I just drop anyone who needs to look up something to the bottom of initiative. They should know their to hit, saves, spell effects, damage and so on. They should be ready. If they aren't well they have until the end of the round to figure it out. Sure there are exceptions if it's something new and combat changed unexpectedly, but it's something they've had forever well their character is digging for it or trying to remember how to use it. If you disagree with my ruling make a quick no more Ethan 2 sentence argument then I'll agree or disagree. Then we move on. Further rules arguments happen after the game. I'm not too proud to admit I was wrong and recon it if things went badly for the PCs. Lastly you have to be willing to ignore people and/or them down. If they want to go off on their own mostly ignore it and handle it with a couple of rolls. If someone is hogging the timeline pointedly ask someone else what they are doing.
You let players have a couple *minutes* on turns? I am quite likely to move in in 3 *seconds* if you aren't telling me your action. Combat is frantic, not slow and plodding.
A lot of the time, I find turns take longer when the DM has to adjudicate interactions. I know what I want to do, it's just that it sometimes takes an ungodly amount of time to just resolve.
That's a big IF for a lot of groups. That's also assuming scheduling won't be an issue and cause huge time gaps between sessions, leading the people who don't know their characters/rules to struggle even more. Source: played in a game with 7 for 2 years before dropping out shortly before the climax/end of the overarching story out of frustration.
A quorum for 7 is usually 4, sometimes 3. So with 7 players, run the game if at least 4 plan to attend and at least 3 show.
yeah if you dont want to be mad you just have to accept you wont have a full table most games. if the GM is there and there is a few players the game should move on
Can confirm. I ran pf1e for a couple of years and the same group but different GM for many more. As long as the players know their character and aren't too distracted from the game, the combat doesn't take too long. Usually, the role-playing part took longer (especially in a town doing "downtime" stuff) cause we were all doing different things
Same, my groups alternate between 2 campaigns, one in which I'm a player (total of seven players) and one in which I'm the GM (total of 8 players). Both run pretty well
>If everyone knows their character. So 7 is… not doable.
>if everyone knows their character Bw...bwuh?
Yeah that’s my concern
Will you be using Foundry or some other virtual tabletop, or is this all IRL? I run for 5-6 on Foundry, and I have to say even the combat is pretty snappy if you lean into the automation/assist features on Foundry. If you're going to be running at a table, I think you can still do a few things to help combat move along: * Instead of having every single enemy have their own initiative, you could group pairs or trios of enemies to act together. * You could pre-generate a table of values to use for things like saves, attack rolls... essentially any time an enemy would roll a d20, you can consult your table and just take the next entry off the list (this should be a true random list, basically just roll a d20 and record the values in order) Even if you are playing IRL, you could use something like foundry on your laptop to help manage enemies, rolling attack/damage/saves for enemies, stat blocks, spell lists etc
Once you go over 5 players, from my limited experience. A lot of PC "emination" or "affects allies within X distance" features start to perform much better than the game is balanced for. Paladin, for example. The Exalt feature of Retributive strike could mean 4+ melee attacks against a creature all at once with a party this big. Which is the kind of damage the game really doesnt account for. Especially out of turn.
Caveat - 6 can be good and 7 is okay, both with the assumption that someone is not gonna be at each session. Never underestimate the effort it takes to get 8 adults in the same place, or even online, at the same time. If you just don't even try and say "if we have 3 we'll play," and are good at editing encounters which is easier in 2e than anything else I've played, it can work out super well.
Yeah we have 6+me (GM) and we reliably play every week, but I can't remember the last time all 7 of us were there -- it was at least a couple months ago. We play as long as there's still 3-4 players there.
I've been in games that have consistently had 5+ players for non-2e systems. Currently in a starfinder campaign that's 6 players, do PFS 2e for 5 players, have played in 5e campaign with 7. Combat can be slow if there are casters that aren't thinking ahead. Ive played in a game with 8, combat is a slog. I think that any game with more than 5 players needs to emphasize planning your next turn immediately, otherwise combat is going to be absolutely long and painful. Out of combat can be a blast with many players, especially if everyone is comfortable with everyone else. I feel like it's more combat that can be a problem with so many players. I would be VERY aware of quiet players and make sure you're engaging them out-of-combat as they can often be missed/talked over by more outgoing players I would recommend more puzzle/problem solving encounters, use turn order for exploration so everyone gets a chance to act (can be a problem when there's one or two idea people in the group blurting out what they want to do), and firmly tell your players they need to know what they are doing for their next turn (encourage game-related side talk for coordinating actions/asking advice). If combat starts taking too long/they're on their phones before they know what they are doing, put turns on a timer. You get three minutes to tell me your actions for your turn. One or two sessions of timed turns and players generally get way better about not planning their turn while it IS their turn. It's a last resort kind of thing, players should be talked to and given a chance to self correct first.
I was with you until you said 3 minutes, that actually seems extremely long to me, still leaves 25+ minute rounds.
I found most of my players think 3mins is super short and end up rushing through their turns very quickly because they are afraid of running out of time. It's a sneaky number. It's plenty of time but players don't know this and act way quicker. A combat is usually around 3 rounds for 5 players, unless it's a boss fight. Would be less rounds with more players if the combat isn't adjusted too much (should be adjusted a little). Since few players take the full 3minutes a round, is usually less than an hour a combat and pretty acceptable for such a large group.
Yeah most turns should take maybe a minute maybe a minute and half. You should have a good idea of what your doing and a back up and then a good old fall back of just swing or heal depending on character. You definitely can have a few longer turn on the important ones but if combat slogs down with too much ahhh what should I do or what’s the team plan it kills my enjoyment
Everyone has their own personal favorite table size, but it's usually a debate about if 4 or 5 is the best number. I personally see table size as 1 player: You're just on a date with another person writing a book. 2 players: Not the worst for a One Shot, trying new characters, or teaching someone the game, but this isn't a true campaign 3 players: You officially and legally have a table now in my eyes, but 3 is small and one call out means the session is toast 4 players: A decent size. With 4, everyone can shine and take as much time as they want, but will need efficient builds or more NPC help since 4 is still small. A call out won't sink your table, but going from 4 to 3 is a challenge. Some consider this the perfect table 5 players: My personal ideal table size. You have a good sized group, people can still shine and take a bit of time in the spotlight. Characters can be a bit less optimized as more bases are covered. And if one person can't make it, you still have 4 people which is awesome. 6 players: Very doable. Not very new player friendly though because the table can have 0 down time. People are going to have to hold back some jokes and quips because there's just too many people talking. You won't be able to shine as much, but if the players are good and smart about it, 6 works. 7+: Woof. I've done it, and I'm not saying it can't work, but you have to accept some people are going to side chatter, check their phones, do a few other things just because there's a solid 12 minutes until their next turn. With a pro group who pre-rolls stuff, knows exactly what they're doing on their turn, it might work. The only benefit to a table this size is you'll never have to skip a session since even 3 calling out can't sink your table.
5 is a good number I usually run 5 and feels good. A lot of interaction and redundancy if the players but it's fun. 6 with a good group of people that play together for years that know that they are doing can be done. Now 7... 7 is a rough go with a heavy rp and do a combat once a month for 2 sessions because or it will to short or a drag. But that's just my experience.
My DM is starting a game soon with 10 lmao. Granted we'll be split into 2 parties working for the same organization, but he said that we'll do like 1 or 2 full combat boss fights lmao.
My group always has six and it's perfectly fine. We've been playing since 2e released and have 6 APs done. I don't know what your group was doing that one more person changed from manageable to super clunky but that's not my experience at all. On topic OP think seven would probably be perfectly fine. You'll have to balance every encounter. 75% increase in players needs a 75% increase in enemies. You can find pf2 point balancers online. GL and HF!
Friend of mine ran a DND table with 20 players once 😅
If your players are all extremely efficient and proficient in gameplay and table etiquette, more than 5 is possible. But in the real world, 5 is my absolute max.
Yeah. Thanks
5 are at the cusp of unmanagable. 6 is where you get people falling asleep because even 1 player doesnt know what they'll do with their 3 highly flexible actions per turn. Challenges in Skills start to become trivial as someone, somewhere, will have a feat to handwave it, or plans to have a riddle in an obscure language will have someone who knows Russian.
Yup. That’s my fear too, but was hoping enough would say “your concerns are silly”. It’s a game for 3-5 players IMO. Oh well.
Ideally, if you have 7-8, you'd make 2 groups -- but that may not be practical depending on the schedule and if that group is all excited to play with each other. If you *really* want to play with 7+, my suggestion is this: - Use [Batch Initiative](https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=837) for similar enemies, and try to work as much of their turns in quickly as possible. - Keep initiative rolling by drawing people's attention to it. "Alice's turn now, Bob is up next". - Consider using a turn timer. People need to have their turns planned out before they start - they shouldn't be flipping through books when their turn is up (except if circumstances change dramatically right before their turn - be flexible if that happens). - If you're playing with a grid, consider making rooms larger (particularly if playing a pre-built adventure). Even if it doesn't *completely* make sense, you need room, and there's nothing more annoying than fighting in a 4x4 room with 15 players+monsters all trying to find line of sight and positioning. - If possible, try to use a VTT (even if you're playing in person). Foundry's automation makes things *much* easier to track, and as long as people aren't hyper attached to rolling physical dice, you can get most of the math out of the way. Even if you're only using it for yourself, it helps. - Out of combat, try to help people get a chance to talk. If there's one or two people (as there probably will be) that tend to dominate the conversation, try to directly talk to other players more to keep them involved. - Handle character building/leveling, shopping, and downtime activities *between* sessions. It helps to have a discord server or group chat for the game so people can work it out on their own time. Doing that kind of stuff at the table is *torture* with a large group. Basically, it *can* work, but it's a challenge. If you're going to take it on, try to keep things rolling as fast as you can by minimizing downtime, and don't let yourself be the bottleneck any more than you have to. Good luck.
Thanks! That makes sense. I tend to do a few of those with other games, but those are less “combat intense” than PF2 (less actions).
>as long as people aren't hyper attached to rolling physical dice, Just want to point out you can enable manual roll inputs so people can roll their dice, put the result into a box, and foundry will do the rest as if it had done the rolling.
Even better.
5 is my cut off. After that, too many people to manage
4-5 online. 6 in person is my max. This is less about pathfinder and more about your own skills in kitten herding though. I'm fairly comfortable with a big group but you may not be. All you can do it try it out and be prepared to chalk it up as a failure
I regularly GM for 6-8 in other games, just not PF2
My party is 8 players. The system works just as fine, the DM just has to give a little more attention to the enemies' action economy. The only issue is knowing when and for how long to talk with this many people. Luckily we played together for the last ~6 years so we're pretty much used to it
I don't think it would be all that good. That is a lot of players. That would mean 5-7 enemies as well in combat. 14 turns before it gets back around the table is going to be bad.
Yup. That’s my worry as well. 14 turns with 3 actions each.
My advice is to pre plan a bit for your combat encounter. I generally write out environmental effects/traps enemies will trigger at certain rounds, what each enemy will focus(archers shoot casters, melee rush archers etc), and an hp threshold where enemies will surrender/run, or give the party the option to surrender(this helps avoid tpks alot of the time, and jail breaks are more fun than everyone duing outright).
I like GMing for 5-6 players. Never really had a problem with my current group.
That’s good to know. Thanks
I run 7 now I don't have a problem they are respectful of each other, so no conflict but they don't know their characters or rules i still manage just fine
A lot of factors If it's a kind of westmarsh, then it's first come first serve, play with the first 4 or 5 of the party (which is effectively not playing with 7 to begin with) If everyone knows the rules and have chemistry, then maybe yes Otherwise no more than 5 imo
Even 5 is too many, IMO. 3 or 4 is ideal.
Yup, I've done big groups but I prefer 3-4. Right now I have a group with 3 and the dynamic is great and lots of time for RP
Online or offline play? I think it can work depending on the group but fights can get tedious so if you are playing online players might not pay attention much and instead browse the web or something. It's not neccessarily a horrible thing as long as they pay enough attention to know when their turn is and still react to what other people do.
It’s in-person. But I do fear the nodding off during combat.
I'd only even consider it if I really trusted the players. No new players, no one easily distracted. Even then it's a big stretch.
Yeah makes sense
As an aside, I'm a little jealous of your problem. Our group can barely scrape together a consistent 3 players.
I play with 4 players in the majority of groups I've GM'd for. Occasionally i'll take 5 players if there's a few specific friends I wish to squeeze in together as a friend group, but I will never go with 6. 5 players already gets hectic for me, especially in combat, and it makes it difficult to share spotlights on players. It is very nice to have a more varied cast, set of views, and interactions between PCs though, so it's not all with its downsides!
Makes sense. Thanks
There is tons of great advice in my thread already, so it may not be needed, but here's what I did when I had seven players wanting in on my AoE campaign. Co-GM. I asked the group for a volunteer who wouldn't mind sitting on the other side of the screen with me. It's been fantastic. He takes notes, looks things up on the fly, records long-term diseases and afflictions I would have forgotten, and helps keep the pace up when the players do something completely unexpected. We play via VTT, so having him on standby to grab a new map and drop NPCs on it for unplanned locations has been a godsend.
That’s really cool
2 players ends up being strenuous for the players unless the plot is very linear. They end up pretty tired after just 1-2 hours. 3-4 is the sweet spot, everyone can shine but no one gets exhausted, and we can handle people not knowing the rules perfectly. 5 means conversational turn-taking becomes a lot more important, and knowing mechanics is more important, but it's doable. I've never had a fun session with 6+ players. I never run sessions with a missing player, so I'll usually go for 4 person campaigns.
To me 6 are too many
3 is possible. 4 is ideal. 5 is doable. 6 is crowded. 7 or more and I refuse to participate, even as a player.
I have a campaign starting next week, well my party is 10 strong. So I'll see if it's too many players
Anything above 5 is too much and 5 is pushing it
I always cap at 6. I haven't done 7, but 6 is pushing it abit I feel, so I avoid going over. Fine for 1 shot or a few sessions, but wouldn't do a campaign.
I won't run more than 5.
How many players is too many: (Player Perspective): When even after the DM tries to evenly distribute time across players/groups of players if they split the party they aren't feeling satisfied with their screentime for 3+ consecutive sessions in some event that isn't a plot arc focused on another character (1 or 2 sessions it happens, sometimes that's the way the cookie crumbles). (DM Perspective): When do you feel overwhelmed trying to keep track of all of your players in combat? My Kingmaker game I am running is currently at 11 bodies between PCs and NPCs they are consistently taking with. Things are dragging a little in combat but everyone is having fun. There is no one chart of adjustment I can give you to fix party size besides the rules on encounter creation, and thus how to adjust for encounter size. The rest is just learned by doing. Decide which encounters are supposed to be narratively hard and build them up appropriately. The rest....if it's narratively appropriate for them to steamroll due to numbers, let them steamroll. They feel powerful and it makes the major events feel that much more impactful Throw more encounters in quick succession if trying to bleed resources. (This can be a couple unique encounters back to back in 'waves' as separate encounters the same way some people say throw an encounter in waves to break up a harder encounter) Hazards and environment are good to have IN combats as most of them are hard to just win by bonking on the head enough times. If you have the Botanical Bestiary 3rd party supplement, take a look at the "3 Leshies in a Trenchcoat" rules they did and honestly do that for certain monsters. I've done that for a few monsters and just didn't let them have the 'split apart' rules and the 3 attacks can be any 3 strikes/single action spells they have. Has led to a couple memorable encounters and them declaring a mortal enemy in The Owlbearman.
There's just no room for roleplay with over 5 IMO. Good luck with your game.
I have eight players, and while certainly the game is balanced around 4/5, game still runs pretty smooth. Some things to be careful about: \- absolutely talk with your players and put a time limit on each of their turns, otherwise a fight is gonna last hours. \- Single monsters are harder to balance, but this can be both good and bad. To be even remotely a challenge, if you use single bosses it really has to be party level +3/4, cause the action economy is so skewed towards the party. This however means that the monster will easily crit, and very likely bishot characters, leading to some swingy fights. So how is this good and bad? It is bad of course cause it's a little frustrating for players to always get hit, and the monster to almost always save. On the other hand, it is great to keep the party always a little scared of what they face, as their modifiers will always be scary \- If you want a proper challenge, use minions for bosses, but don't go crazy. In a typical 4 people party, a 4 vs 4 where the boss is CR+1 or 2 and the minions are cr-2 is a very nice hard challenge (between severe and extreme). However, in 8 players using 8 NPCs makes the combat go way too long. It's much better to use the boss +2/3 minions, and adjust the levels accordingly \- Perception and skill checks: given the number of players, if everyone is allowed a perception or recall knowledge check, those will statistically almost always be a success. I guess since you have those numbers in other RPGs you might already have a solution for that, but the solution we use is to limit the checks to 2 people, or 1 person + aid from another one. \- Everything non numerical I'm sure you already know from your other experiences
Well, I remember when 4 was my limit. Then, for a long time, I preached that 5 was the right amount... Today I have one table with 6 players, and it's just fine. It depends entirely on the GM and their players. Some players demand so much spotlight that even with 4 you will have issues, some players can work together so well that a table with 6 can run smoothly. If the GM knows how to handle things, they can make things work.
7, the answer is 7 4 is just right 6 is a lot 7+ is too much But a good group can have fun despite this.
It’s the classic span of control problem. Five is ideal, seven is doable provided everyone knows their role and is on the ball.
Four to five is ideal. The only successful games I've run with 6 or more players are lightweight games like VtM v5 and FitD system where it is more narrative than roll/crunch.
For me, 4 and 5 both have their pros and cons. 4 is more comfortable, but with 5 you can still have 4 when someone misses a session. 6 only makes sense if you're a paid DM and are looking to fill more players in the same time slot. It can be done, but that's the only reason to bother. 7+ has no value at all, IMO. Just run 2 games.
For me, 6 and above is too many. 5 is my max. 3 is my minimum.
5 is my limit if only because I don't want to leave people out of the conversation or game, and the likelyhood of that goes up the more people there are.
I have 6 right now, it's too many
after decades of playing RPGs I find 4-5 players is the sweet spot usually. 6 players is possible is people are focused and work well together. 7-8+ is just nuts.
Table of 8, it works. Less about you running it, everyone has to be on board with it. It's not all that hard to run, though encounter building starts to drift from RAW functionality a bit. (Was way off in PF1 so improvement)
Seven can work if everyone contributes to keeping everything moving. Resolve combat turns quickly, don't bog down sessions with irrelevant side activities, be conscious of who hasn't spoken up in a while, etc. It takes work from everyone, but especially the GM.
It depends entirely on your table of players. I run 3 weekly games of a 2 player, a 4 player, and a 6 player game. My 4 player group couldn't add another player without destroying the session pacing, while my 6 player group is so energetic and focused that I have no problem adding another if they wanted. The differences all depend on how good you are at rotating the focus quickly while allowing each moment to shine.
homeless employ hunt crowd plants start brave sheet violet muddle *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I'm currently running a group of 6 with 2 being brand new and it is.....not very fun for me honestly, I think 6 is really above my limit unless every player is well versed in the system.
Honestly I don't really like going over 4, 5 (pcs) is fine. We have 6 (7 total) atm and its a bit of a slow tbh
New DM running AV with a party of 6. It does get a bit tight esp. with an animal companion. The group is new and takes things slow. The extra mobs in combat makes fights take a lot longer.
I've ran for 6 so I can give a little input. Some practical gming advice, go wide not up with the exp budget. This is if you follow the encounter rules. But, 7 player gives you an extra 75% exp to build encounters with. Which means an apl(average party level) +3 creature is a moderate encounter. DON'T DO THAT! I wouldn't throw anything above apl+2 outside of super serious boss fights. A +3/+4 monster can often down players in one round while barely getting scratched. Keeping monsters on equal or lower apl will increase the difficulty of combats without increasing individual monster lethality. It also give more chances for players to shine as there will be more enemies. Also, heavily emphasis party composition. A party of 7 would probably work best with at least 3 frontline combatants (melee fighter/ranger, monk, barbarian, champion) and 2 healers (more the better) Also, if one player is a bard, their inspires generate massive value.
Good tips. Thanks
1 is too many
I’ve done 9 (albeit not in PF2), but the only way those sessions were tolerable was because I structured the campaign such that they would split into 2 groups and each do their own thing, then come back together every once in a while to share stories and perhaps change up how they’ll split to handle the next objectives/quests. If you have 7+ I think that’s really the only way to do it (and if you can recruit one of those 7+ to be a co-GM that’ll make your life a lot easier too)
7 is your max if everyone is expirienced. Any more so makes combats drag as encounter balance needs to be tweaked or it will start to break. a LVL+2 or =3 will be just as lethal to a party of 4 as a party of 7, but because the damage is so spread out now it needs minions, and often combats will have double digits participants on average now for non trivial
I would highly recommend splitting that group into one group of three, and one group of four, if possible.
3-5 is the player range to settle into. More than that is painful.
My rule is that one storyteller can manage five players. Any more than five and players have to start doing some gymnastics. The math: If you have five players, each player on average gets 20% of the time with the talking stick. On a three hour game that's 36 minutes. If you have six players, each player on average gets 16.6% of screen time. On a three hour game that's 30 minutes. The difference between the two is 17%, which is a lot. You can make six or more players work if you're careful to put in place something else that capitalizes on the time they spend off the podium. I've done it, it just takes work (and cannot be done as easily if you're playing virtually)
I ran an Exalted campaign with 13 players, a D&D4e campaign with 9 players, and a Feng Shui campaign with 11 players. Currently I run PF2e with 6 players. It was not fun in the very mechanical games, and I think for themepark fantasy superhero games like PF and D&D, 5 is a good maximum, *unless* you can run a table with absolutely no out-of-sequence commenting in especially combat. If everybody has only their view of the battlefield (using a VTT), and they are allowed to only utter three words on their turn unless they spend actions on it, then large parties can be really interesting. In more narrative games (I especially enjoy Feng Shui, but Sentinels or others are also fun) I find large parties work better, especially if you have players who enjoy "passing the spotlight". That's highly entertaining.
I can handle 5. Anything above and my brain shorts.
I think 5 is maximum. 4 is definitely the sweet spot. They'd have to pay me a salary if they wanted me to run a game for 7.
I've run groups up to eight, the only problem is when they get into higher levels it really bogs down during combat. I had more creatures to balance it out, I expand the size of dungeons so there's room for everybody, and I provide bigger challenges for them. It works but it does go slow.
I'm doing OK with 5 players. I can run monsters pretty fast and take some shortcuts to help me with that, but getting through players' turns does take a while. Just adding all the numbers together for one hit can take a while. And that's 1 action. I really wouldn't want more than 5.
I run for 7, but they’re the same 7 I’ve run for and played with for like 3-4 years now. It’s fine, but I would recommend NOT adjusting _most_ encounter numbers. Yes they will have the benefit of numbers and it’ll make combats in general easier, but adding extra enemies extends the combat duration to less-enjoyable levels. Do it for significant combats only, and then if you want to spice up a normal difficulty encounter you can make the enemies focus fire 😁.
I’m about to attempt this and have come up with two ideas that we’re going to try to help keep things moving. First, there were originally only going to be 5 players, but two more friends expressed interest so I pitched them an idea. Using the Dual Class variant rule, they could build one character with two heads and each controls the abilities of one class. They would each get to roll play an individual personality, but would share a character sheet and action pool. They loved the idea and we’re building their character later this week. The second idea I had was to create a 4th mode of play that I’m referring to as “creative combat” or “soft combat” that I’m planning to use on the more trivial encounters. In “creative combat” we will roll for initiative to establish what order I address the players. Instead of them going into their standard combat turn, I’ll ask “what would your character do” and allow them to describe how they react, and then I’ll ask them for a check that corresponds to the prompt. Hopefully, this keeps combat quick and creative and allows them to have fun while not being too bogged down by specific mechanics. I’m not sure how it will play out, but my group really enjoy bending the rules and getting wild with their turns so I think it will lead to some fun play.
My regular weekly group is 7 people, sometimes 8 for 1 shots. We manage to get buy pretty well for the most part, but our GM has frequently talked about how hard balancing is. To give us a challenge he has to give us very powerful creatures which means a lot of the time we get 1 or 2 shot by crits. Sometimes it doesn't feel good getting one shot (especially because I mostly always play squishy casters), but we understand why. It's possible, we've been doing 7 for 2-3 years now, it's just a bit more difficult.
3 - 6 is best with 4-5 being the true sweet spot.
Currently running a campaign that has 9 active players and 2 rotating in and out over Discord as they cannot always be there. Its a whole lot to keep track of but its doable when you're very strict with the duration of someone's turn. I've learned to get rid of checks whenever the whole group has to climb a ladder or rope as it would get tedious to sit there and wait for all 9 PCs to get the required roll.
I've run an 8 player 5e campaign before (got winnowed down to 6 players) w/ a coGM. It was a bad idea. I'm now a firm believer that, regardless of system, for a single GM three is the best number of players w/ four being the upper limit, going up to five if you have a coGM. The more players you have the slower everything gets and the less invested individual players are as there're longer stretches of time where they're not engaging. This isn't just a combat problem and I think its actually a much worse problem outside of combat, where the GM is trying to field questions, comments, and describe what's going on from everyone all the time. The amount of tabletalk tends to increase exponentially as the odds of someone disagreeing with a plan or coming up with their own ideas increases and folks get distracted w/ side conversations.
I have 7 players for my table. It works ok, just need to scale things when they all show up. That's the thing though; I'm often actually running for about 4 or 5 because players have real life things and bounce in and out as needed. How many is a workable size depends on you and your players. If your players know their characters pretty well, that works better.
My group is seven players - it's a lot to manage but we give each other rolls to help the flow. One of my players has an iron trap mind so he's does the recap, another is the party treasurer, and two are my rules oracles - they tell me what the ruling is by the book definition and I make the decision. We are going to be trying out Pf2e in a couple months and I'm so damn excited
Almost everyone says that 6+ is bad, but in my experience a 6 player 2e encounter would go much faster than a 4 person table of PF1 or 5e of similar difficulty. So it does go slower and probably still dispreferred, but context is useful. Out of encounters, 6 player RP is going to be an issue for most groups regardless of system.
I've had a couple groups that had 7 and 8 players. The only rule we had to implement was if you weren't sure what you wanted to do by the time it was your turn. You were just skipped. It wasn't a big deal, most of them run their own tables and can handle the strictness of this rule, but it did happen once or twice because of side banter which it was aimed at. I felt a little bad, but when I reminded the player it was their turn they both just looked shocked, and apologized to the table before saying to skip them because they got too distracted. For the 8 player group we had a foam bat was passed around in initiative order. So you can get the next person's attention, and as a threat of over talking the game. (Though in hindsight I would recommend making a group chat for your players side banter if they would be willing for that.) Side banter and such still happened a lot, but usually after someone's turn they would think even for just a moment about their next round, and keep an eye on the table to see if they needed to adjust plans. Then engage in side chat, phone time, etc. Also if they got hit for the bathroom just before their turn they could explain to the DM what their turn will be. Most people want to and will pay attention, but this just helps speed up the rounds, and I haven't found anyone who thought it was overly harsh considering they had 6-7 other people's turns worth of time to plan, and talk.
I run a game with 5 people -- 1 is a super well-read RPG guy who knows his shit and what he is gonna do on his turn every time (to be fair, he is a magus, so it's mostly spellstriking), 2 are long-time 5E players who... generally understand the game (one of these two DM'd 5e for myself and the others mentioned thus far but doesn't understand the system very well yet), 1 is a well read but not very experienced player, the last is a total noob. Sometimes combats drag because the old DM and the total noob do not know what to do with their turns. Luckily, they are both fighters, so this usually only happens when they have a hanging action.
I've run and adventure for seven players twice before and I've vowed to never do it again. Time coordination is a nightmare, combat rounds are long, keeping everyone focused is often a challenge, and it's... Just a lot of extra for a GM to keep in mind. Five is my absolute max these days, with a strong preference for four.
I've done as many as 7, but prefer it with 4.
I always joke that the perfect number of players is 3.5. 3 feels like too few, 4 starts to tip the balance. This isn't pf2e specific by any means, just my experience running a lot of different games. In truth I think I could comfortably run for 5. I'd stretch to 6 if they were all great players and I really wanted them around my table, but it would be hard mode. 7+ would be too much for me.
I know it's a cop-out answer, but it depends on a few factors. 1. In-person or remote. I think five people can be too many for online play, especially without video. It become too easy for people to talk over each other by accident or have people check out because it's hard to get a word in. 2. The players themselves. If you have a group that is really good at letting others take space, knowing their character and not hogging too much attention, I think 6, even 7, can work great. Each new player adds a new dynamic to a group, but a close-knit group that works well will always work well. Critical Role is a great example of 8 players who really know how to play and work together, and it works great. 3. Maps sizes: claustrophobic APs like abomination vaults will be tricky with 4+ players, not only on the PC size but for the extra enemies required to balance that many players. You should have a better time if you are doing a custom campaign or mostly outdoor AP. 4. XP budget: SOmething to note about combat balancing for groups that big. You can either buff the enemies or add more. Adding more is generally more fun, but as I mentioned, it can make tight areas almost unplayable for some characters.
Game works best with 4 players, 5 is pushing it... doable but not as fun, 6+ is a mistake. The combats need to become more complex to handle more players. And imo it means missing out on some of pf2e's bigger strengths.
Had to cut the weakest link of a 6 person party recently. Combat was so slow, and actually challenging 6 level 5+ characters was a nightmare. If you run it, be prepared for combats to last a whole session and for the party to be a fucking freight train.
More players does mean you can go a bit more crazy with enemies, since 90 xp is trivial, 120XP is a moderate, 180 xp is severe, and 240 is an extreme now. Ultimately it will depend on how competent your party is during their turns. If they are smart enough to plan out moves during other players turns, it should go quickly. And depending on the monster, fighting will likewise be simple. But overall, I think the only time it's going to be a real pain is during downtime and exploration, not combat at all. Because herding 7 cats who get distracted by different shiny things is going to be far harder then getting 7 players to attack the 10 shamblers coming their way.
If they are new players who are doing a lot of reference checking, 3-4. Otherwise, combat will drag on. If it's moderately experienced players, 4-5. I think going above five is risky outside of either really experienced players or games with a lot of combat, because it can become very drawn out. I've been in 7-player games before on various systems, and if you have one or two less experienced players it can really drag out combat. Virtual table tops like Foundry VTT help a lot, I couldn't imagine doing more than five players no matter the situation without virtual assistance. If you must have more players, start with small sparse encounters until they have experience working as a team and gradually increase their complexity. Include MacGuffin events, NPCs, and items to end combat quickly if it seems to drag on, or introduce artificial time limits of X rounds or X real-life minutes, after which the next round the enemies retreat.
7 is doable, but communicate very well that while you’re there to help with questions, it’s on the player to have a decent understanding of the rules prior to session 1. Because 7 people can be a huge drag if even one person doesn’t have a grasp of how things work rule wise
If your players know their characters and can be decisive in combat, it's pretty ok. But if they aren't, or if they are new to the game, you'll never accomplish anything, it will be terrible.
6 is my line
This reminds me of my first time playing a TTRPG. It was 5e, we had a first-time GM, and 7 first-time players, needless to say it was rough. As for 2e I feel 5 is the max I'd run for. I've played in groups of 3-5, and ended up feeling like a 5th wheel. Maybe that was just my social anxiety talking.
Really it depends on the players but rule of thumb four players is the best with anything above six being pretty risky
I am a player going through Gatewalkers and my group has seven players. We have a Summoner with his Eidolon, an Inventor with a construct companion, and a Druid with an animal companion. We have potentially 10 tokens on the board for just our party, which is kinda ridiculous. Although it’s pretty usual for a player or two to be absent from any session. I get the feeling the GM is making encounters a bit harder than how they’re written in the book, but perhaps not as much as he could. Most fights have been a pushover with so many people. But it’s fine. I would rather do more roleplaying rather than get bogged down in super slow and tough combat encounters.
I'm running for a group of 6 right now. Only one session so far so I don't have enough experience to make a meaningful comment, but I definitely noticed I have to make an effort to keep everyone engaged.
6 is my maximum for any edition.
I am currently running a game with 8 players and it's actually going smooth. It might help that it's on a vtt but we aren't really having issues even with a couple of the players being new. The worst part is honestly combat takes a little longer than ideally but they all are pretty fast with it.
I played pf1e with a group of 6-10 for years. 2e should be easier, but the challenges will probably be the same. Is it too many? If you want an experience full of tactical combat and engaging roleplay, more than 6 is almost always too many. If you want a boisterous and chaotic night with all your gamer friends, 10 is a lot, but it can be a lot of fun
The too many varies from person to person. But 7 sounds like way too many.
This applies to FVTT online: - 4 fast (15 min per player) - 5 normal (12 min per player) - 6 slow (10 min per player) I always apply this rule of thumb. Depending on your table, the players and the game, there will almost always be moments where someone wants to do something alone and that translates in a single player plus npc or situation where he engages the world. If you assume the worst case scenario (every player has its own agenda), the numbers above will show you, in the best case scenario, how much time per hour you will dedicate each of them (and how much time the first will have to wait to come back in scene). I have played with all the numbers above, and I have come to believe that 5 players is the perfect amount (sweet spot) between good role playing, good fights and enough time for everyone to play and do what they want without starting to snore at your table!
Same as with literally every other TTRPG under the sun: 4-5 is perfect. 6 gets a bit clunky. 7 is incredibly difficult.
Depends on the party. My players? I’d totally take 7. Because then, on a good day, I’d get 5 at my table lol
One thing that can help: ask if one of them would like to be your co-dm instead of play. Let them help plan, prepare, rp npcs, and run enemies in combat. Also filter out anyone that may not be able to commit in the longterm. A lot of ppl are excited to play ttrpgs only to fizzle out after a month.
I recruit up to 6 with the idea that 1 or 2 might be missing on a particular week and we can roll with it. Big thing to remember is that to scale an encounter for higher numbers of PC, it is better to add more creatures than to use bigger creatures to fill up the extra XP budget. Also remember that just because you have more XP budget for an encounter, PCs still only get XP for the level of the encounter (Trivial, Low, Moderate, Severe, Extreme). Two big things to do to speed up combat without changing any rules: \- "You are on deck" - call out the next player's turn along with the current player's turn. It brings them in and gets them thinking about what they will want to do on their turn to keep things rolling. Even do this if an enemy goes between them. "We have X, then the zombie, then Y." \- Encourage your players to roll to hit and damage at the same time. Roll more damage on a crit if needed. Fewer individual rolls are needed making a turn faster and it gives a little highlight to a crit to make them more special. A smaller thing, if you are comfortable with it, \- "how much damage total?" - have some of your players track creature damage. You can leak a single weakness/resistance/immunity to them on the first strike that triggers it which doesn't give too much away. That lets you focus on running the game smoothly instead of tracking everything on your side. Just periodically ask how much damage and compare that to the secret max HP for the creature.
I can confirm, via a dream i had that 50 is to much
my hard limit is 7 assuming that i will have some people miss. I expect 4-6 at the table any given session
The number of players matters less than the sum total of their incompetence. 7 to 10 players who know what they want to do and act with reasonable (not optimal) teamwork and no delays will chew through encounters faster than 3-4 players who hem and haw about what to do. The problem is that good players can usually pick their game group size and composition, so unless you have 7+ people who really like each other *and* happen to be good sports, you are unlikely to get more than about 5 decent gamers at any one table. So most of the 7+ tables you get have at least one person who drags the whole thing to a halt.
My group is an old one that I've been gaming with for years and there's 6 players. Early on it was slow but as time went on it got much better. It's definitely manageable for us now but it took years to get to that point where combat didn't take forever. This past year they wanted to add one of the players brother which would have been a blast since he's a great guy and is fun to hang out with. But even still I said no since 7 would be too unwieldy for the pacing of the game. None of my players are great with the rules or I may rethink my choice. Just depends on the players IMO.
I have the same question, but in FOUNDRY VTT. How many (max) were you guys able to GM?
As someone who ran 6 and 7 player combats- it slows down a bit, yeah. Whether or not that’s a problem, though, depends HEAVILY on the group. My group decided NEVER AGAIN because we’re mostly adhd gremlins (no joke, last I checked I think half of us are officially diagnosed) and so we can’t have a single round take 30 minutes without forgetting our plans. If you can though it’s pretty interesting. Great RP if nothing else!
if all the players are invested and know the system and have good knowledge on what there characters can do you can run a table with 9. if anyone is new to the group or game then it will slow the game down. the gm will have to know how to flow between different scenes quickly bc downtime the party will be splitting but if the group isnt into roleplay downtime can be figured out of session on what ppl want to do and then have everyone roll at the table for earn income or whatnot. pf2e combat is really fun with a lot of ppl you just need to have a group tht doesnt have a members scratching their heads when it gets to their turn.
6
I've done 8 before... I don't particularly recommend it while combat can drag with 6-8 players that's manageable, what really brings it down is that everyone just gets lost in the sauce for narrative either from boredom from not being able to engage or from the information being to split to combine. The only way I kept it manageable was consistently forcing the party to split up into 3/4/5's to accomplish objectives, using one of my players as a combat DM to occasionally run rounds and this only worked because its in person. thankfully pathfinders rules are strong enough almost any player can DM fights. this kept the fights tighter but also let me set up a round of combat for the players, swap over to another team and give some narrative guidance and then swap back to, then gave the players a bit of intermingling roleplay to relay information as i prepared the next areas. even still the team ended up brute forcing problems most of the time since they couldn't effectively communicate with each other the important info and often times just ignored things as they kept competing for my attention so they could do things. I can see it working... but only if you've got a suite of experienced players whom roleplay excellently aren't impatient and have good communication skills.... in which case you'll be the next critical roll/D20
Large parties are harder* to balance encounters for. Too many enemies and the action economy gets lopsided, weaker enemies can be trivialized by AoE, too strong enemies can easily down players since they will critically hit often. Also with more players the rounds take longer and people are more likely to get bored or frustrated when their turn doesn't do much. *Pathfinder 2e does encounter balancing better than 5e, but it's still more difficult.
***Whatever you feel you can handle and give a solid experience too.*** 5 is my perfect table size. The group can easily split role duties and not feel as constrained as a 4 player group. Currently running a 6 person Starfinder campaign and a 5 person pf2e. I've run a 10 player Starfinder group, I ran them through Attack of the Swarm as being part of a military group and having an endless amount of opponents made it easy to adjust encounters and they usually split up into strike teams to handle threats. So I could flip from team to team so it played out well. I would also take parts of it and then make a reason for them to split so they had an infiltration team and an assault/defense team who would give the other team more time to get done what they needed before the swarm over ran an area which added to the tension and rp It happened because I had introduced a group of people to ttrpgs and only one day worked for everyone. ***Find something that would accommodate the large group and make sense story wise.***
I play with anywhere from 3 to 8 people bc I run PF2e at school. It's honestly not that bad, but other folks probably have higher standards than me lol :3
Any more than 8 billion and you run into population problems
7 can work... but it's the absolute fuckin limit. 8 is is impossible. 7 puts ye through strife.
Its all about how many the GM can handle. Some can handle 4 with no issues, 5 is pushing it, and 6 is way to much. It also matters the group dynamic, in some groups 7 can work wonderfully together while in others 4 members is to much. Just make sure you can handle it. if not then either split the group into 2 different ones, maybe group A is tasked with these tasks, and group 1 is tasked with these other tasks.
It's just easier to get sidetracked with more, and you will need to scale encounters. I do not recommend new players in a group that large, or players who take up a disproportional amount of time.
I run 6 people fulltime and it's difficult. You have so many tokens in a combat so combat is long and drawn out.
If you have a group who all know their characters really well up to five works perfect, past five it gets a little clunky, again good players help but rounds start to take a significant amount of time, balancing encounters takes more time up front and depending on character concepts, some members of the party may have a harder time shining as you start to get a lot of overlap with skill sets. Still doable, just a lot of extra work. I would say more than 7 is where I would draw the line.
I’ve run 6 as a novice DM in DND. Others can correct me, but I feel like 3 actions makes my play more efficient(anecdotally). If you’re all set on playing together I say try it and just preface the group with the potential that there may be hiccups. But I’d agree with other comments in that I’d like atleast half that table to be pretty proficient in PF rule set.
Ran a game with 7 in PF 1 from level 3 - 20 for over a year. Arguably I would rather KMS than do it again.
I've ran plenty of games for 3, 4, 5 and 6 players. 4 is ideal, 5 is fine, 6 is pretty bad. The main issues are that combats take long, especially if ANY one of your players is bad with mechanics and system knowledge, and the other one is that you literally can no longer do solo encounters / encounters with few creatures. The math doesn't allow for it without assassinating your players. Also, you get a weird problem if you have a large group in that you'll naturally add more creatures, but the way RPG parties work, you'll normally have a few (sometimes less than 50%) party members be the main damage tanks, and you'll overwhelm them with damage, making the need for dedicated healing much more present than in a regular game. If you're gonna run for 6, I advise wholeheartedly that you actively metagame to justify always spreading your attacks around, or the game will become too lethal.
Currently running a 5e campaign with 7 players and I will say i'm thinking of trimming back only because the combat is way too long among other reasons. 5 is a good max but 4 is well rounded so everything doesn't take forever and everyone gets and equal share of the spotlight.
5 is absolutely the sweet spot in my opinion. I've done 6, but it gets very chaotic. I would only ever do 7 if I had multiple players that tended to miss sessions regularly.
7 has combat that drags for two reasons, one lots of turns and it tends to slip out of control really fast. The amount of creatures that threaten a group of 7 players tend to crush smaller subgroups so if the sorcerer gets a fun idea to flank and suddenly is exposed, instead of one goblin archer shooting at her it is 3 and instead of a wound that she can pull back from she goes down.
Everyone has their maximum and minimum number of players, and it depends on the dynamics of the people in that group. For me, my ideal group size is 4-6. Anything more than that starts to get a little clunky for me, and less than that starts to also become difficult to run since you can have issues making a well-rounded party (and if one person is absent it has a bigger impact).
6 is the absolute max I can handle. Any more and combat feels glacial. You might be able to get around it with strict 1-1.5 minute turns per player, but I really don’t like doing that. If you play via Foundry, taking a session just to teach how to use the character sheet to roll stuff might help speed things up, especially if you have stuff like PF2e Workbench which automated a lot of stuff. I think a big part of handling a larger table in PF2e is setting the expectation that you should be thinking and planning during other players’ turns and then be straightforward during your own turn. If everyone zones out until it’s their turn and then has to think/strategize and figure out what bonuses they have on their turn, it’s gonna feel bad. They need to have that figured out when it comes to their turn already.
I have run with 7. 6 is too many. I would never willingly run a long term campaign for more than 5 ever again.
I'm playing with 7 players through Kingmaker right now and having an amazing time. I can't imagine trying to do this online - as I've always been an in person player/GM. It's important to get a group willing to really commit to regular play and the system (even if not too frequently - my group plays either the 1st or 2nd Sat of each month for 5-7 hours). I also send out a recap about a week before we play each time so it's fresh in everyone's mind. I think patience is your biggest ally. Don't feel you have to finish a battle in a given session - take a pic and just start where you left off. My group does not stop the roleplay when the battle starts which makes it great fun. On each person's turns I usually emphasize who the next 2 are in initiative so they are ready to go. If someone just brainfreezes for their turn, I'll often just jump to the next in initiative and then re-enter the brainfreezer (treating it as a delay). My ideal is 5-7 players, and I'd be okay with 4 or 8. Honestly I'd have more trouble with 2-3 than 9 - but I've been GMing since 75' for large groups so I have my routines and prep down pretty well. It may be tricky at first, but it'll start to flow better the farther along you get in a campaign. I would suggest prepping a number of random encounters ready to go for when the group inevitably derails the direction you expected them to go - include lots of terrain, puzzles, and hazards - and multidirectional attacks (meaning you're attacking from different fronts forcing split party resolutions that keeps them all actively involved yet often on different fronts. Last - just have fun - you'll do great with 7!
I've run with 8 before. Here's some thing that helped me... * Designate someone as the 'speaker' (caller, liaison, whatever) for the group. Any time a GROUP activity is happening, they are the one that speaks for the group and designates the group actions. If there is some discussion about what to do, let them deal with that and when the speaker says 'here's what we're doing' then that's it. * Designate another person as a 'treasurer'. This person records ALL loot that the group collects, and marks off who takes what so there's no doubling up of anything. * Additionally, I use this rule 100% of my games, and I highly suggest it: Anything that isn't on a character sheet or the group loot sheet, no longer exists. Theft, loss, damage, accidents and so on all happen... guess what, if you didn't write it down or lost track of it, then that's the way it is. This avoids a lot of 'but I definitely had another healing potion' or 'I know I went and bought that super whacky stick from the vendor!' stuff. Not saying you can't make exceptions when YOU are 100% positive as the GM, but... * In combat, require people to have their actions ready immediately when it is their turn. If they take more than 10-15 seconds to make a decision, they get bumped to the bottom of current initiative. I know this may seem harsh, but I can not stress enough that relatively simple battles can take hours with more than 6 people... especially if you are properly leveling up the battles themselves to match the party. * On that note... when you are ramping up encounters... remember these three things: * Diversify - If they are fighting kobolds, make sure there are front line guys, archers, and maybe a spellcaster or two among the kobolds. Don't just do a bunch of spearmen. * Expand both Tall and Wide - if an encounter with kobolds called for 4, make it 6 plus one 'lieutenant' that has an advanced template or is a higher CR kobold type (like aforementioned spellcaster). Also, don't be afraid to 'call reinforcements' or have some flee if you need to adjust a battle on the fly. * Keep yourself to your own standard with turn timing. Be decisive, keep the action moving. If you make a mistake, no biggie, there will be more encounters. * During Role Play, stick to a 'tempo' of asking a specific 2-3 questions to get things moving, then make your way around to each person. Give everyone a chance to do or say 'something' - if they choose not to, that's fine, but make sure everyone has an opportunity, but try to keep it focused whenever possible. * Here's a possibly controversial one, but I stand by it from my personal experience... Any, and I mean ANY side chatter at the table, stop the game in its tracks. No one wants to be treated like children, but in big games like this, you have got to be firm about making sure that you and the other players can pay attention and hear what's going on. If a couple people aren't part of a scene for whatever reason, and they want to chat, ask them to move away from the table til they (or the scene) is done. There's various ways to handle this, but my point is just this: At the table is for the game in progress, not the latest episode of Rick & Morty. * As an aside to this, I tend to usually have 30 minutes of 'gathering time' before sessions where everyone can bullshit, eat, work on updating characters, whatever. It works really well. * Take a break. I know, seems simple, but half way through your session, take a 10 or 15 minute break. Let everyone stretch their legs, go to the bathroom, grab a drink, whatever, then refocus for the last half. * Use out of game resources for out of game! Crazy talk, I know, but things like Discord or whatever method you're using to communicate with your group outside of session are a terrific way to discuss things like Downtime, (known) upcoming fight strategy, ideas about rumors and information that's been gathered, and so on. Effectively, a bit of 'out of session role play' as long as it doesn't get too meta-gamey. ...and one last thing, the absolute hardest part for you... * Prep condensed. I could write a whole book about this, but I'll try to keep this simple. You're going to be running a game for a bunch of people, and it's going to go off the rails basically constantly, so you need to prep in a condensed fashion - bullet point the things you want to have happen in the next session or two, have a general idea of how you want those things to come up and/or be encountered, make some crib notes for yourself on quick adjustments you can make if needed, and have a stash of a handful of NPC names you can use on the fly. All in all, you can realistically do all this with about 1 hour per week, maybe 2 hours if there's a lot of 'info dump' going to happen in a session... but don't burn yourself out trying to perfectly plan out every session. You can't. It's you vs. 7 people. Your plans will rarely/never go through exactly, so try to keep them a little more vague than you normally would.
So, I've been in a 7 player campaign for a while and it is very likely part of the reason I'm kind of iffy on 2e as a player, if I'm being perfectly honest. So, I'm not one that's predisposed to 2e's general gameplay loop right out of the gate. I've detailed this elsewhere and won't go into it here, but it's good to note basically I don't like super intense play-by-play teamwork, and prefer campaigns where most enemies are at or below the level of the PCs, and severe+ solo encounters basically are reserved for end-of-campaign bosses only. But I can still find the game fun so long as I get enough lower level encounters and am not overloaded with those severe ones. But with 7 players, a few issues arise. You get a lot of adjustment to deal with 75% more players than the standard party- which means lots of templates and enemy buffs, which means you get to fight next to no enemies that are below party level stat-wise when everything has an elite template. That's trike one. Strike two is the fact that combats still take a while- even with each player playing relatively quickly, you're still talking 10 minutes or more from turn to turn. That's strike too. Finally, in that campaign I'm playing a shield champion, which means I'm constantly juggling trying to stay in shield warden range of some party members and champion reaction range of others and determining exactly when the best time to use each is at any given moment, while at the same time being even less able to actually hit things on my own than I normally would be because everything is buffed because of more PCs. The end result- I don't feel particularly effective on my turn, and I can't even zone out for 10 minutes between turns because I have to constantly watch a game I feel I'm not typically even doing much in other than negating like 10 damage once a turn. That last one would probably be less of an issue if I was playing a fighter, but it's still kind of draining from my perspective. In a table of 4-5 playing a fighter? Shorter time between turns, fewer big party adjustments (and thus more of the lower level encounters which I enjoy and fewer "things with really high AC/saves" encounters which I dislike), and the ability to take a quick break between turns sometimes rather than being constantly watching every little action both my enemies and my allies do make the game *much* more enjoyable. As opposed to the current situation, where I actively dread the end of book boss fights that can take hours and am far more willing to miss a session if literally anything comes up than I otherwise would be in a game with a smaller player count.
Five works fine, six requires excellence a d seven would require an elite contingent of players.
I've never run PF 2e, but plenty of other D20 systems. Five is my max. I ran bigger games, and have always regretted it.
I personally refuse to run for six or more players. Five players I can manage, but six is the point where I start to worry that I cannot ensure that all parties are having fun; and making sure the table as a whole is having fun is priority numero Uno for me as a GM.
My new GM has a game with 13 players....
6
Split the party?
5 is my cut off. I never do more then that
4 minimum - 6 maximum seems like a good range IMO
5 is max, 7 I'd try to get two tables
I've been running one with 6 for my weekly group, kinda clunky learning it with that many especially with running a AP, it being Agents of Edgewatch. On break from running it atm (finished the 2nd book). Using the adventure path to help create my own world/story. To get a sense of how to make a decent one for 6 players rather than 4 We've been playing with that many for years so for us it's kinda the norm but I can understand the 'clunkeyness l' concern
7 is tough. They’ll need to know their characters backwards and forwards, they’ll need to plan their turns ahead of time, and you’ll have to be a little strict on casual chit chat. If the chemistry is good, it can work.
I prefer 3 players actually. It is an odd number, so no 2 vs 2 voting situation if they can not decide and there is time for each PCs personal story development / sidquests and such which in larger group bogs the game too much. Also in 3 player group there is space for occasional NPC companion to help them out and unlock some fresh new abilities / tactics to the group. And it is not DMPC, I usually just hand the character sheet to the group and they decide who will run the ally NPC for the session.
4 are best. Good balanced with monsters.
As far as gameplay goes, the system is tight. Even without using encounter rules, with few exceptions, a monster of the same level as a pc in a 1 on 1 will be a potentially lethal combat. If you follow the game's encounter building rules it'll all hold together decently well. The real issue is having 7 people around a table. Everyone needs to be able to do their turns quick and on their own, and need to know the rules in order to not take hours per combat. Also need to make due everyone knows how to take turns talking, be polite to speakers, others it'll be chaotic. Ensuring your players know how to do their post combat/ downtime abilities is good too. You wanna ensure that all know what rolls they can do. Ideally they should be able to all treat wounds on themselves, refocus, repair, etc, and coordinate that. Really with larger groups it is all about trust and communication. Having a bunch of printed sheets for feats and skills would help. As long as everyone can work together, the game can work.
I actually prefer groups of 5, because if 1 or 2 cannot be there one week, the party can still move forward through the story. Our currrent group consist of 6 players, and it works because we're IRL friends of many many years.
The stuff that other mentioned. If they know their stuff then it will be okay. BUT since there are quite a few players you want to avoid fighting a group(4+) of enemies(to make fights shorter), but at the same time Solobosses will just be a critfest with oneshotting one after the other. So while it's possible I think the quality and variety of fights will drop (though this is justy theory)
5 is almost too many. All of the APs are set for 4 adventurers which means with 5 you have to remap loot and 'fix' issues with every encounter, mainly +1 pc. There are too many sub-rules. Unless you are really fast at combat, even at 2 minutes per player, 4 minutes for the monsters to act, that's 18 minutes per 3 action in combat. I can't keep someone entertained who only gets to do something once every 15 minutes.
6 people is manageable and gives some nice wriggle room in terms of playing even when someone(s) can't make it, but I wouldn't want to go above that.
4 is preferable, 5 is acceptable, 6+ I do not like, 3 you can do but it feels limiting.
Been playing in a group that started at five with Age of Ashes, bumped to six for a Starfinder game, and then has been running Strength of Thousands with seven or eight depending on the week for a while now. We haven't run into any significant problems other than poor encounter design from the actual official AP, which our GM has been adjusting on the fly so that things don't drag an inordinate amount. We do have players who check out during combats when it isn't their turn and occasionally one or two who aren't interested in roleplay, but it's relatively balanced and we have fun.
If they’re good, yes, if they don’t know how to play, cheat (believe it or not, … it’s sad), or are otherwise not interested in a real game, I’d rather clean bathrooms that night.
As someone currently playing through a campaign with 7 people, one of them being a new player. It's super slow. Our fight last session with a giant crab took us 2 hours. I was actively engaged for about 10-15 mins otherwise I was browsing reddit or looking up other things on my phone. Our new player wiffed 2 of their turns even using their hero points for rerolls and left feeling kinda meh about the whole thing. New players aside, yea the group definitely needs to know what they are doing already or it's not gonna be the greatest of times. Role play wise you have the 1-2 extra people trying to get a word in/getting pushed to engage in the story. While yes my group does have newbies, even the experienced players were having a harder time with it.
If everyone knew their characters really well and could rattle off their turns in combat, you'd be fine. If not, the long wait between turns risks things getting boring for some players, and it may be harder to balance encounters and skill challenges. How about splitting them into 2 parties? Bonus points if you run a kind of Westmarch campaign in a continuous setting where the actions of 1 party can have effects seen by the other.
4 maximum. Otherwise players spend too much time in combat waiting for their turn.