I'm a new DM (and a relatively new player as well) and I'm leading a pretty large (6 players) group of newbies. We've done a few demos and whatnot just to show them the basics of combat, but now we're going to start our first adventure (crypt of the everflame).
In the party we have a cleric (sun/healing), bard, wizard, druid, ranger and barbarian. A little light on the tank side of things, but I suppose that's alright.
What I'm worried about is the cleric's channel energy. Sun domain makes the will save higher and does a bit more damage as well. Healing means she can also cast an extra cure light wounds to do even more damage to undead. I know clerics are supposed to be awesome against undead, and I want her to feel powerful and have lots of fun.
But will the other players get bored? I'm thinking of making all of the dungeon rooms larger and adding some bad guys, but if she walks into a room full of skeletons and instantly does 7 damage (1d6+cleric level from sun domain) then that's it for the encounter. On the other hand, if I make the enemies even stronger then I run the risk of overwhelming a group of newbie players.
How do you guys handle this kind of situation?