So, the group that I run Deathwatch for has been steadily growing. Typically we'll have a team with 6 marines in it. Last night however was the first time we had an 8 character group, and let me tell you, it's becoming troublesome as a GM to make balanced fights for them. Most always, I'll have a significant end-game monster or enemy or something, and they'll drop it in a round, maybe two if bad rolls happen.

For instance, last night one of our librarians actually rolled Perils into spawning a Daemon Prince. It got a high initiative roll, so it did manage to get a turn (and charge in, pulling out a few Righteous Fury's into killing the librarian in question) but the rain of attacks from the extremely melee-heavy team absolutely dominated it before the first round of combat even finished.

So, in general, I'm just looking to see if any of you kindly fellows have run into any similar problems with having too large a team, and what solutions you've tried. Is more really just the answer? Thanks!

I find the problem with larger teams is that each individual has less of a chance to shine as they spend more and more time watching others take their turns.

As for difficulty, try having fun with numbers in a way you couldn't before. Instead of one missile/melta/plasma guy hidden in that mob, have 6 or 7. Stretch your players out so they their focus fire can't bluntly stop threats.

My group size is generally 7-8 Marines...so I know exactly 100% what you mean. I have found that the party is ALWAYS on the edge of either a TPK or a lazy stroll through a garden of enemy corpses. Here are some things that work.

One, try not to give the players wide open spaces unless you are going to be having a huge battle.

Two - Give the players objectives that actually require some of the party to NOT be actively killing things. Examples I've used would be planting demolition and melta charges on key structures, using a breaching augur to rip through a bulkhead, hacking into a computer interface, Carrying something ridiculously cumbersome.

Three - Give the players concrete time windows whenever possible.

Four - Sometimes it can be fun to split the party. Have one group for instance, running and gunning while the other group is actively infiltrating and stealthing. CAUTION: If this is done I have found that the best possible way to do it is to get in the habit of switching right as the the team in question is about to do something awesome or terrifying. "A Carnifex smashes through the wall and screams at you with the sound of a thousand jet engines screaming out at once. Meanwhile, back on the other side of the base, you hear the scream of a distant monster as you reach the top of the comms tower you have been climbing..."

Five - Give the players plenty of situations to roleplay. This can be either internally or Externally. External things would be like receiving a mission briefing from an Inquisitor, or Everyone going on a mission with the watch captain. Last week I put the kill team in a situation where they were surrounded in a fanatic crowd of worshipers who were losing there minds at being near an Astartes in the flesh. I gave each player an opportunity to react to this in some manner even if it was to simply ignore them. An internal thing can be also super fun for instance, I set up my campaign in such a way that anytime they are going to leave one system and go to another, they have to pick first what salient they are heading too, then what mission. This is done democratically, so each marine takes some time to speak about what is important to them and why they feel that the kill teams efforts would best be utilized dealing with whatever area they feel is important. You may have a couple players that don't care and only vote. But that still gives them a meaningful choice that lets them step into the situation a bit.

Six - Alcohol is a great thing, but too much and your roleplay session can turn into a roleplay party with that many people. Even still, it can really loosen up the players to help get them in character. Trust me, last week involved Tequilla shots and probably close to 40 beers. We got alot done still, but we have been drinking like that and roleplaying for many many years. Don't try this at home kids...

Hordes with heavy flamers.

But yeah, splitting the party seems like the thing to do. I mean, eight is an abnormally large kill-team anyway, right? Seems like the only reason to send a group that large would be if the task was so huge that multiple groups needed to work in tandem to succeed. Ideally, the success/failure of each team should have an impact on the situation of the other team. So maybe team A is trying to hold the attention of a bunch of tyranids whilst team B slips inside a structure to receive some vital data. If team A doesn't kill X number of nids each round, that should increase the number/difficulty of xenos that team B has to deal with inside. Or maybe team A has to defended the extraction site while team B rescues an important NPC - but each turn, team A has to deal with more and more xenos, and if team B doesn't move fast, they're going to get overwhelmed.

I'd also reduce the team's requisition by a set amount for each battle brother over 4. When you're deploying that many marines, they shouldn't need a lot of extra gear.

I have 8.5 players in my campaign (the '.5' is one of my players' 10-year-old son, who occasionally sits in), but I play DW as a 'fill in' game for when we can't get enough of our regular Dark Heresy group together. Hence, of our 10-man squad (my OCD required me to include an NPC to bring the squad up to the Codex-approved number- when we have a visitor to a session, we let him or her play the NPC), only half are usually involved in any given mission. I justify this as their Captain splitting the Kill-Team (codename: Blackthorn) into two units (Blackthorn Alpha and Blackthorn Beta), either to search different areas (-and the team who's players are present are of course the ones who find the objective, while the team with absent players comes up empty-handed), or to hold reinforcements in reserve.

I ran one mission where all but one of my players was present. The Kill-Team was divided up into two groups in separate Assault Boats and sent to sweep some Dark Eldar slavers off of an Imperial freighter. Their top priority was locating and disabling the DE's portable web portal to prevent Imperial resources (i.e. the human crew) from being sent through to Comorragh, and I stressed that they could search more ground by being split up. Alas, as soon as they got on board the freighter, they decided to recombine into one unit; the full team then went through the DEs like a hot knife through butter...