Help! Best way to handle 30-50 LVL 3 orcs vs the party as the GM


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I know.the mass combat rules don't quite work with regular combat; so what is the most efficient way to handle this.


Haargoth wrote:
I know.the mass combat rules don't quite work with regular combat; so what is the most efficient way to handle this.

Get a few Warhammer battle trays and run them as squads of 5 or 10 until they get too close and their thirst for blood causes them to break ranks?


I'm thinking more along the lines of rolls and damage so that I don't have to roll an extensive amount of dice


Guessing you have to do this rather large battle. Time management can indeed be a pain in that situation.

Five groups of ten orcs each might be good for initiative order. Have each group have the same weapons & statblock. Group 1 has ten orcs with heavy steel shields & longswords, Group 2 two-hand greataxes, Group 3 are archers, etc. Depending on how challenging or mean you want to be, add in a reach weapon group. May even be preferable to have those Aid Another rather than go for a -4 attack. I'd avoid anything CMB-wise however. With the sheer amount of rolls, it'd make at least half the party disarmed tripped grappled or something, at all times.

Color code or number the groups if possible. Since it'll likely become a horrible mix awful fast. Roll 10D20 for the archers when plausible. If you're very concerned for time, you could create lists of rolled numbers beforehand, but that does seem a bit much.

Good luck, hope the players play smart!


Are they going to be melee orcs or ranged orcs?

Silver Crusade

Make the orcs into a swarm.

Sovereign Court

There's a Troop template in the adventure Rasputin Must Die! from the Reign of Winter AP. There's also a BLOG on the subject here that you can reverse engineer if need be.

--Vrock & Awe


Thanks outlaw.

The concept is that the party needs to seek assistance from a town that is under swivel by a massive orchestra army. They will fie.d a weak point (30-50 orcs) and have to take them to get into the city. I'm thinking the orcs would have both melee and range weapons. Javelins at the least.

Under seige... not under swivel haaha. Fat thumbs and small phone, first world problems.


How do you convert into a swarm.


Haargoth wrote:
How do you convert into a swarm.

Use this.

Depending on the level of your party, Mass Combat works as well. Just convert each of your PCs into a single army unit.


Troop or swarm? They will be LVL 10-11 when this happens so it shouldn't be too tough.


I ran a battle with six level 7 PCs against 60 goblins I hand painted. It was a massacre. I suggest simply running them quick, with handfuls of dice.


Level 10-11 is powerful enough for each of your PCs to count as a CR 2-3 army. 50 Orcs is ACR...not much. 100 is ACR 1/3. I believe the rules say they don't even really constitute a whole army since they'd be less than 1/8. Might be better to up the number to at least 100.

500 Orcs would be an ACR 3, a decent enough challenge if you don't want it to be an epic fight but a precursor to something more. This is assuming the orcs don't have class levels, they'd be more challenging there.

What I suggest, though, is having a core of powerful Orc warriors (a Barbarian leader, a Witch Doctor and/or a Cleric, and some lower level Fighters) that your PCs fight while the town militia holds off the rest.

Essentially your PCs shatter the core, and weaken the army enough that they may be dispersed.

Less muss, less fuss, no fiddling with rules nobody's familiar with, and you can get creative with the class levels and such to make for a fun fight.

But, the Mass Combat thing works just as well too.


I would say just have a few high-level orcs shooting or attacking the players. Each hit against them "kills" off an orc or two. The few javelins that the orcs toss will have a solid chance of hitting the players. Describe the attacks as a waves of javelins flying at them. The party is able to dodge all but two or three and these javelins are the ones that are actually thrown.

Scarab Sages

No no no, don't stream line it. This is so much fun for players to tear through a small army like this. I ran my level 5 party through forty first level fighters like this and they had a blast.

First, you need a map. Second, divide the orcs into groups of five or ten, and have each group go on initiative, and basically have each guy in the group do the same thing that round. Third, put individual color-coded pieces on the map for each group. So all the oranges are one group, all the reds another. Starbursts or other candy work best for this. Especially when it's declared that whoever kills them gets to eat them.


This is where I miss the old morale rules. If the party chews through 25 orcs....the others should run away.


I designed a mass combat spreadsheet using Tejon's DPR calculator as a foundation. I basically would figure out the DPR of a single troop, then just multiply that by the amount of them in a unit. Then I would take that expected DPR and multiply that by a modifier based on the result of a 4d6 roll each time a unit attacked.

I only used it once, in a battle where 5 PCs plus an NPC ally were up against 6 units and 11 single figures, with a total enemy count of 105. I think it did ok for a trial run. The battle went at a decent pace since I was only making a single roll for each unit. The PCs pretty much crushed the army, as they were all 11th level and most of the units were made up of CR 1 creatures. If I ever use it again I'll probably change it to a 3d6 roll to make it more dangerous for the PCs.


-Sticky notes on the bottom of the bases for recording hp.
-divide the group of orcs so they go on several different initiatives
-use different miniatures to signify the different orc groups

I've ran a battle in the hundreds using this method. It was amazing and my pcs loved it.


krevon wrote:
This is where I miss the old morale rules. If the party chews through 25 orcs....the others should run away.

Orcs have, as a racial ability, "I keep on f+@%ing murdering you long after normal creatures would have died".

Don't think a tiny thing like killing half of them would make the rest of them run like pansies.


I really dig.all the input. I'm somewhat torn now about whether I want to have them act as groups of 5-10 w different initiative or have them as a troop or swarm. I like the idea of a swarm or troopdue to the auto hit effect as it makes sense to me and shouldn't really be too big if a deal. But I also want them to get the feeling of blitzing the enemy and just one-shotting or cleaving through groups; they started at LVL 1 and that's a good feeling when you realize you can just smash through lesser beings with ease.


Pre-roll a ton of dice, add their to hit bonuses and have a load of results ready. You can do this for damage too.
When you need some rolls just read out the pre-rolled results.

If you did say 100 you could get a player to roll a d% and start at that result just so the players can be in control of the sequence of results.

Five dudes attack Bobby with javalins, 18,12,14,9,17 do any of those hit?

Yeah two hits.

OK damage is 6 and 11, next...


I think preparation, grouping and simultaneous rolls are the keys.

As already mention, group your orcs into groups (e.g. archers, brawlers etc.).

Then roll all of ond group attack rolls at once, maybe together with the damage dices (color coded dices).

We had once a similar fight against multiple lower demons and it worked fine (even if the fight takes some time...).

I also like the idea of pre-rolled dices from suart(but ask your player if they like it).

Last but not least you can take the "significant fight" tactic (like in the 4th Kingmaker book).
Build a few encounters with less but more powerfull enemies and let the player fight them, while the "town militia" fight against the orc-horde without rolls, just storytell.

Depending on how the players manage the encounter (win/loss/rounds) they win or loose victory points which determinates hwo the battle progress/ends.

Example:
While the militia holds the orcs at bay at the north palisades a few ogres breach throught the east palisade. The players have to face this new danger befor the ogres run havoc in the defenders lines.
If the players hesitate to attack immidiately, they will loose one Victory Point (VP) per round. If they engange the ogres and defeat them, they will get 5 VP, if they were defeated they loose 10 VP.

Then you only have to create a table what happens at which VP-count (e.g. -5 VP the West milia is defeated, more orc swarm into the city (-1 VP/5 rounds until the players liberate the west gate etc.). Also define when the battle is over (e.g. at 20 VP the players defeat the orcs and make them flee).

I planing a similar setting at the moment and will probably run it in an month or so. If the threat is still active then, I will post the results


I just use a slightly altered version of the Aid Another rules in similar cases:

* need not roll dice to Aid in combat, it happens automatically
* AA works with ranged attacks as well.
* The AC bonus applies to all members of the mob (I interpret it less as people playing bodyguard for one person and more focusing on parrying and hampering all attacks from their opponents)
Done.

Now individual beings in a group will get enough bonuses to their attacks to hit reliably (very nice when using Power Attack) or be hard to hit, or can fire effective volleys of missiles at heroes.


It might actually be fun to just play them as 50 creatures, as long as you can deal with battle really quickly. Orcs don't sound like the types to coordinate themselves into one tight unit to me (like aiding another, or acting as a swarm), I'd expect them to just each do their own thing. If your orcs are all the same level they presumably all have the same stats. So you could get a computer to pre-roll attacks (both range and melee) and damage for you. You could then bring a printed sheet with 200 melee attacks and 200 ranged attacks on it, dump 50 tiny objects (some kind of candy works) on your battlefield, and just go "these 10 attack you with a javelin, what's your AC?" and the see how many of the first 10 ranged attacks on your sheet beat that AC (probably not many), and quickly add up the damage. Then put a line under those 10 attacks on your sheet and continue to the next phase. I like the suggestion of using a few different colors of candy for a few different initiative groups.

Grand Lodge

You could try units of 5 with 1 attack with 4 effective aid anothers, simulating lots of spears/arrows etc. but I agree with two of the posters above. Either just narrow down the combat to a small scale combat and that represents the pivot point of the larger combat or set up a Victory point set of conditions for hitting certain objectives.

Both would work well.

HOWEVER it would be COOL as BALLS! to hack through 50 elite style orcs.

I was once part of such a mass combat and still remember it years later.

Move them in groups of 4. One attack, 3 aid anothers (assuming all can get position). Killing one weakens the unit. Single or dual orcs retreat/withdraw and form a new unit which attacks again... creating an interesting wave dynamic. Make the orcs 20 hps each. Round damage to the nearest 5. Play smart(ish) if its getting so they are too clumped up? Have them withdraw and then try a flanking proposition. Each unit of 4 should be 20ft from the next unit of 4 until they can actually close. This is good against fireballs, artillery etc. Orcs ARE trained to war.

I'd also include a few ogres as shock troops as well and maybe some sort of cavalry style troops.

Your party is 10th level? Then sorry, level 3 orcs are not going to be much of a speed hump even in the numbers proposed. Your wizard should be able to take out 8-12 minimum with one spell.

I recommend an initial wave of skirmishers. Call it about 50 level 1 orcs - use them in units of 10. They'll soak up a fireball and some area affect spells, Get the fighters excited etc

Then send in your first wave of level 3 orcs. Call it about 30 of them. Send in some cavalry as well. Throw in a leader. Have them move in a staggered ragged wave - area effect spells will work but not so much.

Then your final wave. 30 more level 3 orcs with ogres and a level 6 leader or two. Maybe some minor spell casting support like a shaman buffing them with bless etc.

Most importantly? Tell the players to prepare for an all day combat session and set aside 5-6 hours.


Somebody on these boards made an posted a melee and a ranged orc troop before. I copied them for later use, but sadly forgot who made them, so sorry for not being able to give due credit.

You can just use multiple of those until the CR is high enough.

QUOTE:

Melee:

XP 1600
NE Medium humanoids (Orc, troop)
Init +0; Senses Perception +0
DEFENSE
AC 19, touch 10, flat-footed 19 (+3 Armor,+6 natural)
hp 6d10+18
Fort +6, Ref +2, Will +3
Defensive Abilities troop traits
OFFENSE
Speed 30 ft.
Melee - troop (2d4+6)
Space 20 ft.; Reach 5 ft.
Special Attacks - Brutal charge (Ex)
STATISTICS
Str 17, Dex 11, Con 12, Int 7, Wis 8, Cha 6
CMB +20; CMD 34
Feats - Toughness, Iron will
Skills …..
Languages - Orc
Equipment - St.Leather and falchions
SPECIAL ABILITIES
Brutal charge (Ex) orcs troop collides with the enemy in a brutal onslaught. The troop makes a charge attack as per charge rules, only instead of getting +2 to attack they double their STR bonus to damage in the resulting automatic attack (Reflex DC 15 for half).

Ranged:

XP 800
NE Medium humanoids (Orc, troop)
Init +4; Senses Perception +0
DEFENSE
AC 17, touch 10, flat-footed 17 (+3 Armor, +4 natural)
hp 4d10+8
Fort +5, Ref +1, Will +0
Defensive Abilities - troop traits
OFFENSE
Speed 30 ft.
Melee troop (1d6+3)
Space 20 ft.; Reach 5 ft.
Special Attacks arrow volley (DC 14)
STATISTICS
Str 17, Dex 11, Con 12, Int 7, Wis 8, Cha 6
CMB +20; CMD 34
Feats –Improved initiative
Skills ….
Languages - Orc
Equipment - St.Leather, Longbows, shortswords
SPECIAL ABILITIES
Arrow Volley (Ex) As a full round action the troop can launch a volley of arrows at a distance up to 100ft, this volley covers a 30-foot-radius area, anyone caught in that area takes 2d8 piercing damage (Reflex DC 13 for half). This ability takes 1d2 rounds to recharge. The save DC is Dexterity-based.


Haargoth wrote:

Thanks outlaw.

The concept is that the party needs to seek assistance from a town that is under swivel by a massive orchestra army. They will fie.d a weak point (30-50 orcs) and have to take them to get into the city. I'm thinking the orcs would have both melee and range weapons. Javelins at the least.

Under seige... not under swivel haaha. Fat thumbs and small phone, first world problems.

A massive orchestra army? That sounds cool. Comes with its own fight song. Battle violinists and all that.

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