large scale battle logistics


Advice


Hey everyone,

So I run a game in my own home brew world revolving around the acts of a cult of an old dead god trying to restore him to the realm (blah blah blah, really ha)

Long story short the party is quite powerful (lvls 10 and 11 at the moment) an they are about to fight a legit-powerful group of cultists for the first time. They have fought some lower level followers and some mid level cultists (but they were under geared due to the circumstances).

The party:
1) lvl 11 magus (few levels of evangelist)
2) lvl 11 inquisitor
3) lvl 10 oracle (and a cohort that is a fire elemental barbarian)
4) my npc: a lvl 11 arcanist

This next fight is with a number of baddies:
1) lvl 11 cleric
2) 4 lvl 7 inquisitors
3) a lvl 13 summoner (synthesist) [who will not stay the entire time...he is intended to get away]
4) the difficult part.....hundreds of orcs

Here is the set up: So the orc leader (the summoner) has converted to the faith of the evil god, and has turned a large number of his followers. The oracle was a member of this clan in the past and seeks to free it from the rule of this new leader. The party has scryed on the camp and will be teleporting in to confront these cultists. I want to be able to challenge the party (which frankly is quite powerful). I may need to boost the inquisitors a bit, but really what I need advice on is how to use the orcs. There are hundreds of orcs and while they would all die in one decent fireball they would still fight.

What can I do with them that would avoid ridiculous numbers of die rolls (and quite frankly misses)? Has anyone tried to handle these mass fights? I am relatively familiar with the mass combat rules, but I cannot for the life of me remember how they interact with individual actors rather than other armies.

Let me know if any context is needed, but I just want to make sure the presence of a literal army is not ignored in this situation.

Thanks

Liberty's Edge

My first idea (as a GM who dislikes these kinds of fights) is to assign most of the orcs to "flavor duty" and have a player you trust not to twist descriptions to describe what the "flavor combatants" are doing.

Story wise: are there any large fighting forces that could "hold them off for you?" Mercenary bands can count here: have the PCs either get the money or earn the groups favor, and it will feel like they earned their moment of awesome (storming the keep or whatever).

That said, if you want to include a fight with ALL of the Orcs, I have a few recommendations ripped straight from Kobold Press:

-Declare a house rule that anything below a certain number of HD (like, say, the orcs) can be cleaved. Your players shouldn't mind.

-"Stagger" your die rolls. So for instance, if I roll a 15, then the orcs are treated as if one rolled a 13, one a 14, on a 15, on a 16, and one a 17 (or whatever). This simulates horde mentality of either hanging back or rushing a PC.

-Roll several rounds of combat ahead of time. The important thing with these kinds of fights is that the flow is kept moving.

-Avoid waves of foes, and make sure to present the horde as a horde. Players are much less likely to run from a fight they've committed to, so seeing an opportunity to outfox their foes might end up more attractive.

-Keep every orc the exact. Same. Unhomogenousness breaks flow, which you need to preserve.

Best of luck!


Thanks. I think I make use of some of that for sure.

I suppose the big thing story wise here is that the players do not want to kill all the orcs, they want their oracle to be able to attempt to assume control. (he should be able to manage)

As a result I was thinking of having orc casualties correspond to the difficulty of the diplomacy needed to convince them of his legitimacy.

Since they do not want to kill all of the orcs it will make the fight more interesting since the Magus essentially throws fireballs all day typically, and such spells would be less than ideal.

I think I'm most interested in just having it be clear that the orcs were there and were part of the fight, even if that means occasionally roll and have the players take some nominal amount of damage to show they can't block/dodge every attack. What I don't want to do is exactly what you mentioned, i.e. making every roll and slowing it all down.

There are no mercenaries nearby, and in fact the party has access to teleport at CL 12 only...so they are limited to the main party and bringing the elemental in a portable hole. Their only way to escape safely, should they need it, is to be near the arcanist when the return teleport goes off. This can be super dangerous; they either win or suffer.

The orc camp is hundreds of miles from their HQ.

Thanks again

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