Can a creature overrun more than one opponent in a round?


Rules Questions

Sovereign Court

Here is the situation:

Medium Character on a large mount, say a horse. The mount has the Improved Overrun feat.

They are in a 10' wide alley, facing two medium opponents a few squares away. The opponents are side by side, blocking any path through the alleyway.

The character wants to bust through the two opponents in the alley, he directs the mount (for simplicity sake, well say the mount has a 3+ intelligence to get rid of handle animal roles).

So the mount bounds up, crashes into the two opponents...

what happens?

The overrun rules are a bit vague and seem to assume situations where medium or smaller characters are trying to shove past an enemy, and not large size or bigger creatures which take up several squares and could easily ram into a crowd of smaller creatures.

The rules speak in singular, though they don't explicitly state that it is supposed to be only one target.

Even if you do hold that there can only be one target affected per round, how do you handle the rest? It could be suggested that the other creatures in the zone of the overrun just jump out of the way, but what happens if they choose not to get out of the way?

You can end up with absurd situations where a Tarrasque tried to overrun a halfling, but because there are two halflings standing next to each other it suddenly prevents the overrun from happening because they are both bold enough to stand in the way of the gigantic beast.

It isn't clear, but it seems (despite whatever abuse might be possible) that it makes more sense that overrun checks are made for every target in the path of the overruning creature. That way a mob of smaller creatures might present enough mass for a larger creature to be stopped dead in its tracks, likewise it would be possible for the larger creature to plow through the mob, potentially knocking several (or even all) over like bowling pins. Much the way Theoden and his retinue do to the orcs in the Two Towers movie, in their grand charge out of the Hornburg.


Each target individually chooses to avoid or try to stop the overrun.

Otherwise how would it make sense? The horse magically moves through occupied squares? Nah, it has to be each opponent that occupies a square which is overrun.


Maybe use a rule similar to the acrobatics mechanic?
Add +2 to the CMD of each creature being overrun after the first?

This way we simulate the loss of impulse and allow for a big enough crowd to stop even a charging horse.


I think that's pretty fair.

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