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Posted by: cryptoknight Mar 25 2008, 09:23 PM

Yah... it looks like my group is expanding... and I was looking for a good and easy way to scale the encounters and whatnot to handle a table of 8.

If I recall correctly the basic adventures are designed to scale for as many as 6 players... should I just add another npc to the combat encounters per additional player past 6?

Posted by: the_dunner Mar 26 2008, 12:07 AM

The current adventures are actually designed to handle up to 8. However, if you think things are too easy at that point, just try bumping up the TR.

Posted by: IronSphinx Mar 26 2008, 05:28 AM

When my group hit eight, we were at the end of season two. So starting with season three, they'll be divided into two groups of four playing on separate nights. One high-karma and one low-karma so everyone has the change to play their characters full range of skillz. For Missions, I think that eight+ players is kind of unmanagable.

Posted by: DocTaotsu Mar 26 2008, 10:10 AM

What power level are you playing at? 350 pt builds? 450?

Posted by: BishopMcQ Mar 26 2008, 02:12 PM

I can speak from experience that a Mission can be run for a table of 12 with minimal changes. The worst part is when they break into groups of 8 and 4 and try to run both sides of a Mission. (Twist and Insult gets convoluted if you have runners on the same team trying to play both sides against the middle.)

Posted by: DireRadiant Mar 26 2008, 02:45 PM

But it's so much fun!

Posted by: cryptoknight Mar 26 2008, 03:22 PM

Standard Missions characters. 400 BP and/or stock Archetypes from the BBB.

Near as I can tell the group will be.

1 Sniper/Weapons specialist
1 Mystical Adept (Ninja Sword killer)
1 Troll Bow Adept
1 Rigger
1 Technomancer
1 Street Sam
2 Undecided (though one is leaning in the direction of a Street Sam or a Troll or Ork Thug)

Posted by: Serial_Peacemaker Mar 27 2008, 07:13 AM

I'm surprised you do not have a couple full on mages in the mix.

Posted by: DocTaotsu Mar 27 2008, 10:41 AM

Well you've got both riggers and hackers so you better know the rules inside and out I recommend finding/making cheat sheets like the summary boxes in the BBB but with typical modifiers and so forth. That way you can cut down on the number of times you have to crack books to see if it's a simple or a free action to issue a command to a drone or to recon a node.

Posted by: cryptoknight Mar 27 2008, 02:12 PM

Actually, I was surprised too... but the people who are playing had all just played mages, and decided to try something new.

I'm hoping one of the undecideds tries a mage... just to more balance things out, but if not... I won't sweat it.

As for Knowing the hacking rules inside and out... some days I feel like they are inside out... But we shall see.

Posted by: BishopMcQ Mar 28 2008, 03:50 AM

If they are new players, check out Aaron's page. http://pavao.org/shadowrun/ He has some cheat sheets and a bunch of tips and tricks.

Posted by: DocTaotsu Mar 28 2008, 09:23 AM

BishopMcQ: These are awesome! Saves me from havin to do all the heavy lifting too! Thanks man.

Posted by: BishopMcQ Mar 28 2008, 09:17 PM

Not a problem, Aaron did the heavy lifting for all of us, so I point him out whenever it seems appropriate.

Posted by: Aaron Mar 30 2008, 02:56 PM

I've found that when scaling is more tricky than it seems at first blush. I find that there are two aspects to a PC group's efficacy: their power level and their numbers. If it was me running your game, I'd leave the stats as they are, but increase the number of bad guys by about 1/3.