So I am working on this campaign where each of the PC's are strangers to one another, and all wake up in pitch black. Once they make their way out of where they are they will be in a city that each of them sees as their own hometown, meaning for example, the Dwarf sees that a dwarven town, the Human sees a village on the Moonshae isles, the Elf sees some elf village, etc. Eventually it will get weirder with certain actions resetting them back to the pitch black room.
Anyway, Normally a group goes from goblins and kobokds en masse up to bigger and bigger things until they are fighting party vs on BBEG. I want to shake it up.
So they are going to be fighting hoards and hoards of low CR characters, with one "scripted" battle being over a thousand CR 1/2 Goblins.
Kobolds are using their traps, small size, move and shoot feats and small holes in rocks/caves/etc to retreat into.
I want the goblins set to burn and bomb them, with all being good at throwing bombs their alchemists make and doing a fade.
I want the Orcs to be well trained, geared like a PC, and capable of more than "GETS THEMS! RRRAAAARGH!!!"
Basically I want then to feel threatened all the time becuase the little monsters they can easily 1v10 are being smart.
Does this seem like a good idea? There will be some BBEG's to fight, but mostly they are solving the mystery of what is going on while just being swamped by skilled grops of easy mobs.
I was considering doing rolls as such:
1 roll for each 5 monsters. Crits need to confirm twice, damage xnumber of monsters.
Example:
Kobold Strike Squad Omega-
Attacks: Rolls 20. Rolls and confirms, Rolls and fails to confirm, no crit. Roll 1d8, 5dmg x5.
Does this seem unreasonable? The PC's are starting at level 7.
Cool everyone, thanks for the imput!
I believe that reign of winter has specific rules for mass combats. Small groups of enemies count as a troop, somewhat similar to the swarm rules. From what I've heard they work pretty well, but I haven't had a chance to use them yet. Like swarms, they can't be affected by single-target spells and take extra damage from AoE spells, plus they automatically do damage to the squares that they threaten (though it's usually not a whole lot of damage). The rules are on the SRD if you want to check them out.