D&D 5E A query on an idea for large party encounters

[Michael Lindoewood]

So i am currently running a COS game with a group of 6, soon to be 8 players. I know having such large groups is often not recommended, especially seeing as this is my first campaign so am pretty new to DnD, but it just turned out that way with how many were interested. My players defeated the shambling mound with swift ease, with more of them going down and taking damage from the traps when escaping death house. For this reason i looked online to try and find out ways of making encounters more difficult for large parties and the general consensus was to focus more on quantity not quality of enemies. This has now been going fine but something that recently occurred to me was something that could be horribly broken as i am still relatively new to DnD, hence me posting the question for people who know more to give their opinion.
Would it be horribly broken to perhaps give enemies in encounters where there are few of them multiple initiatives, meaning that whilst the party has 8 actions a turn and they only have 3 due to numbers, one of the enemies takes two turns a round, giving them 4 actions per turn. I realise the idea may be completely broken as most enemies are designed to do more damage per attack than the players, so maybe giving creatures like the bone-grinder hags some legendary actions might work better. I just think my players often manage to kill the enemies so fast compared to how fast they can fight back due to the amount of actions on each side. I wouldn't do this with any creature that has legendary actions though as they are meant to do a similar thing anyway.
What are peoples opinions on something like this?

 

[generic]

Perhaps increase the monster's AC and give it an extra attack.

 

[Swarmkeeper]

Some ideas...
Use higher than average HP and add lower level minions to the encounters.
Increase the occurrence of random encounters to expend the party’s resources.
Unleash the hags’ shared spellcasting early and often.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Giving monsters more than one turn per round is actually a mechanic that exists in the game. Strahd himself has it...they’re called Legendary Actions. So the game already does allow for this in some capacity.

I don’t think that giving the occasional monster an extra turn would be all that unbalancing. It might do what you want and help balance the game for your larger party.

 

[TallIan]

The trouble I see with this idea is that it significantly increases the offensive ability of an enemy and does little to improve the defensive ability. So you are still in a situation where whoever goes first wins.

The fact that the enemies actions are split, makes this slightly better than simply giving the enemy extra attacks, but not enough (IMO) to be worth the effort.

You really are better off adding minions or environmental dangers. Something to occupy the character's actions for a turn or two.

 

[Horwath]

Don't use single monsters.

They are weak for 4-5 person party, 8 ppl is overwhelming.

Have enemies some kind of AoE attack. While an average fireball of 28 damage could be a problem to one character of 5th level, hitting all 8 will deplete HP pool of the party by a lot.
Follow that with henchmen with ranged attacks that would target the PC's that look in worst shape after the blow.
5th level wizard that failed the save would be out or barely on his feet, while 5th level barbarian that made the save and was in rage, would just get more angrier

having one strong enough enemy for a large party runs the risk that the battle will be very binary.
Either the enemies high level abilities will be too much for the party and he will remove 1-2 PCs per round or it will be countered by the party and enemy will get ganked in a round or two.

Medusa(CR6) might be tough encounter for 4 PCs of 6th level, but it would be devastating for 8 PCs of 3rd or 4th level.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

When I’m running for a larger group, I increase the HP of the boss monsters. Especially if it’s a solo encounter.

Outside of Legendary and Lair Actions, I’m not sure I’d add more attacks, though. No matter how many attacks the enemy gets, the PCs will still be able to focus their attacks on them, taking them down just as quickly.

Some ideas...
Use higher than average HP and add lower level minions to the encounters.

 

[robus]

When I’m running for a larger group, I increase the HP of the boss monsters. Especially if it’s a solo encounter.

Outside of Legendary and Lair Actions, I’m not sure I’d add more attacks, though. No matter how many attacks the enemy gets, the PCs will still be able to focus their attacks on them, taking them down just as quickly.

Yep - I've found that my monsters can generally deal out damage, they just don't live long enough to make an impact. Maxing out the hit points has made the challenge much more appropriate IMHO. Everything else works fine if the monsters can stay alive longer than a single round

 

[ccs]

Increase the monsters Hp, AC, etc as you need.
Maybe add an extra attack.
Play intelligent monsters intelligently....

But to give a large party a decent fight? Try this.
Set a minimum # of rounds each monster will survive (barring the PCs doing something truly excessive {disintegrate etc} to them).
Track the damage as usual. Once the min # of rounds have passed, if the monster is at 0 or fewer HP, have the monster take a single death save each time it takes further damage. Success: it keeps fighting/etc. Failure: Yay! The killing blow has been landed.
Do NOT tell the players how this is working.
This is an art, not a science. So you'll have to fiddle about with finding what the right # of minimum rounds is.

 

[Warmaster Horus]

We had a large group in a high level encounter yesterday. Maxed out HP for the BBG and added some non-trivial battlefield support NPCs each round. It was a grand mêlée!