Combat Size Limits?


Advice


Hello all

I am GM'ing a party and so far, most of the combat has been fairly manageable, with the party and a 4-5 enemies in the fray.

Last session however I led them into a crypt, where dark magic had raised the inhabitants as undead - which turned out to be a lot of undead. They made their own advantage by fighting them in a narrow corridor, so they could limit the enemies' advantage, but I still felt that I lost track of the many enemies. I have read multiple times on forums that Pathfinder isn't ideal for large scale combat, but is there a usable limit for how many combatants are manageable in a fight?

Smaller side question; the party paladin, and only tank, wishes to retire his character to play a wizard, which makes the entire party quite squishy, would this limit the number of enemies I should reasonably assume them to be able to fight?


I wouldn't worry too much about having lost track of the combat. If the party had fun, they had fun. If you really made the party roll all those dice for however many hours it took to destroy all 9734 Skeletons, you would have had the grim satisfaction of knowing you accounted for every one of them, but is that really the point?

Pathfinder does have rules for simplifying large scale combat including re-describing large numbers of soldiers as a kind of Swarm called a Troop.

If the only tank in the party wants to retire his character and if no one else wants to step up and be the tank by taking over that character instead of his own, perhaps switching characters, reconfiguring his character to be somehow more tanky, or rolling up a new tank character, then the party will have to rewrite its tactical doctrines. Leave it up to them for starters. They might adjust well. If they can't handle it, then punish them by giving them an NPC tank.


Jufo wrote:

Hello all

I am GM'ing a party and so far, most of the combat has been fairly manageable, with the party and a 4-5 enemies in the fray.

Last session however I led them into a crypt, where dark magic had raised the inhabitants as undead - which turned out to be a lot of undead. They made their own advantage by fighting them in a narrow corridor, so they could limit the enemies' advantage, but I still felt that I lost track of the many enemies. I have read multiple times on forums that Pathfinder isn't ideal for large scale combat, but is there a usable limit for how many combatants are manageable in a fight?

That depends primarily on your skill as a game master and on their skill as a player.

There's nothing (in theory) wrong with the idea that a party of 9th level characters are being overrun by 200 giant ants.

BUT, you'll need 200+ miniatures for the ants, and you'll need a way to move them around on the battlefield without knocking everything over and making a mess. You'll need a way to designate individual ants and keep track of individual effects -- "okay, the bard's glitterdust has blinded ants 16, 34, 35, 42, and 81; ants 1-12, and 28-34 are all entangled, and the alchemist's fire has done one hit point of splash damage to ants 43, 61,65,82,82, and 104. Now it's the archer's turn...."

You'll need a way to quickly roll a huge numbers of attacks -- "okay, now these six ants all attack Ted's rogue. These four get a flanking bonus, and this one is blind so he has a penalty and a 50% miss chance. Every ant attacks with a bite, so <roll> it looks like three hits, for <roll> 18 points of damage, and <roll> none of the grab attempts succeed. Every ant attacks with a stinger as well, so <roll> that's four hits -- I need four DC 14 saves from you, Ted -- no, wait, you were already poisoned last round, so I need to look up the multiple doses rules...."

And you need to do all this quickly and smoothly so that the game stays interesting.

It would be even worse, of course, if it were a mixture of giant ants, giant spiders, giant centipedes, and skeletons.

I generally try to keep no more than about 6 opponents on the board at any one time, possibly more (like up to 12) if the monsters are very simple to run. But I also consider myself a better-than-average game master, so don't take those numbers as anything other than a rough guide to my experience.

Sovereign Court

Pathfinder does work best with a small to moderate amount of enemies, for several reasons;
- the amount of work that goes into keeping track of all of them (HP, initiative order, resources remaining, effect durations, morale conditions)
- not diluting your "XP budget" for the encounter too much

The last point is also important. When designing an encounter, the recommended way is to decide how hard you want it to be (picking an encounter level higher or lower than the party level), and selecting enough monsters to add up to the XP that such an encounter should be worth. But at the extreme ends, this system breaks down.

On paper, 12 CR 1 monsters are worth just as much XP as a single CR 8 monster. But a level 5 party can kill those CR 1 monsters with a single fireball, while the CR 8 monster should be a very tough fight. And even if the CR 1 monsters get to act before they're all killed, they'll probably have a tough time even hitting the L5 PCs.

So while on paper these encounters are equally tough, in practice one of them results in lots of bookkeeping, probably takes a while to run, but never really threatens the PCs; while the other one might kill a couple of PCs.

I think the ideal encounter is 2-5 enemies, of differing strengths. Some of them are just there as cannon fodder to stop the PCs using superior numbers to swarm the "main" enemy.

To make it a plausible fight, the "main" enemy should be able to hit most of the PCs with at least 50% success rate. In a tough fight, the main enemy should be able to hit any PC, even the high-AC ones, with 30-80% accuracy.

Or, one enemy can hit some PCs well and the other can hit the other PCs. As in, the necromancer targets the chunky PC fighters with Will saves and the troll smashes the high-Will but squishy PC wizard. The players would be wise then to adapt their tactics and make sure the troll can't get to their wizard.


Link: Older thread on the subject


Scott Wilhelm wrote:

I wouldn't worry too much about having lost track of the combat. If the party had fun, they had fun. If you really made the party roll all those dice for however many hours it took to destroy all 9734 Skeletons, you would have had the grim satisfaction of knowing you accounted for every one of them, but is that really the point?

That is actually a good point, and I do think the party had fun. Well except for the fact that the combat left them severely injured, but they found their way out

Scott Wilhelm wrote:
If the only tank in the party wants to retire his character and if no one else wants to step up and be the tank by taking over that character instead of his own, perhaps switching characters, reconfiguring his character to be somehow more tanky, or rolling up a new tank character, then the party will have to rewrite its tactical doctrines. Leave it up to them for starters. They might adjust well. If they can't handle it, then punish them by giving them an NPC tank.

The party isn't really equipped currently to change to tank, but they have been pretty inventive, so they might make it regardless.

Orfamay Quest wrote:

That depends primarily on your skill as a game master and on their skill as a player.

There's nothing (in theory) wrong with the idea that a party of 9th level characters are being overrun by 200 giant ants.

BUT, you'll need 200+ miniatures for the ants, and you'll need a way to move them around on the battlefield without knocking everything over and making a mess. You'll need a way to designate individual ants and keep track of individual effects -- "okay, the bard's glitterdust has blinded ants 16, 34, 35, 42, and 81; ants 1-12, and 28-34 are all entangled, and the alchemist's fire has done one hit point of splash damage to ants 43, 61,65,82,82, and 104. Now it's the archer's turn...."

It's primarily the miniature thing. I actually use a Whiteboard and colored Magnets rather than miniatures, but my problem actually was that I ran out of magnets to signify enemies, so I got quite confusing. As for the status effects; our two main spellcasters are also both kinda new players, so they mainly stick to direct damage and buffing allies, which is a bit easier to manage.

Orfamay Quest wrote:

It would be even worse, of course, if it were a mixture of giant ants, giant spiders, giant centipedes, and skeletons.

I generally try to keep no more than about 6 opponents on the board at any one time, possibly more (like up to 12) if the monsters are very simple to run. But I also consider myself a better-than-average game master, so don't take those numbers as anything other than a rough guide to my experience.

Yea this might have been my mistake here; the undead were a mixture of Skeletons, Skeletal Champions, Zombies and some ghouls thrown in for good measure. But the 6-12 limit sounds reasonable - and they should probably be of the same kind next time ^^

Thank you both for the very good input :)


Ascalaphus wrote:


On paper, 12 CR 1 monsters are worth just as much XP as a single CR 8 monster. But a level 5 party can kill those CR 1 monsters with a single fireball, while the CR 8 monster should be a very tough fight. And even if the CR 1 monsters get to act before they're all killed, they'll probably have a tough time even hitting the L5 PCs.

So while on paper these encounters are equally tough, in practice one of them results in lots of bookkeeping, probably takes a while to run, but never really threatens the PCs; while the other one might kill a couple of PCs.

Yes, but slaughtering dozens of popcorn is fun, if the GM manages to keep the game running smoothly and quickly. Not every encounter needs to threaten the PCs, and it's often a good idea to mix it up.

One of my favorite tricks, for example, is a faucet of low-level monsters. This gives the much maligned rogue a chance to shine, because there's something that only she can to to turn the spigot off, while at the same time, the fighters get to go to town trying to keep the monsters from overwhelming the party with sheer numbers -- which is fun for them, too. And if the wizard wants to waste a fireball burning up CR1 critters, he'll run out of fireballs long before the faucet runs dry, which will make the later encounters much more interesting. So it ends up being a win all around.


Waves of enemies attacking in sequence are more manageable than having big groups all on the battlefield at once. The reinforcements might be more effective waiting until they have critical mass, but it's usually easy to work out a rationale why they don't, especially if the PCs are willing to devote effort to making sure that doesn't happen. It's in their own interest not to be overwhelmed, after all.

Sovereign Court

Orfamay Quest wrote:
Ascalaphus wrote:


On paper, 12 CR 1 monsters are worth just as much XP as a single CR 8 monster. But a level 5 party can kill those CR 1 monsters with a single fireball, while the CR 8 monster should be a very tough fight. And even if the CR 1 monsters get to act before they're all killed, they'll probably have a tough time even hitting the L5 PCs.

So while on paper these encounters are equally tough, in practice one of them results in lots of bookkeeping, probably takes a while to run, but never really threatens the PCs; while the other one might kill a couple of PCs.

Yes, but slaughtering dozens of popcorn is fun, if the GM manages to keep the game running smoothly and quickly. Not every encounter needs to threaten the PCs, and it's often a good idea to mix it up.

One of my favorite tricks, for example, is a faucet of low-level monsters. This gives the much maligned rogue a chance to shine, because there's something that only she can to to turn the spigot off, while at the same time, the fighters get to go to town trying to keep the monsters from overwhelming the party with sheer numbers -- which is fun for them, too. And if the wizard wants to waste a fireball burning up CR1 critters, he'll run out of fireballs long before the faucet runs dry, which will make the later encounters much more interesting. So it ends up being a win all around.

Oh, I agree there are fun ways to do it. But this is a case of "understand the 'rule' before you break it".

Scarab Sages

Big combats are always messy and difficult. I run for a party of 7-8 players, which means I regularly have to keep track of 12-20 monsters plus environmental hazards.

I couldn't do it without Herolab.

Silver Crusade

My experience is that it works well to somewhere around 20 combatants with the full rule set and maybe as many as 40 with very minor abridgements (such as the first edition of the Dungeons and Dragons Miniatures Game used). More than that and it gets problematic.

Note that these suggestions also speed up smaller combats dramatically, so it might be worth doing even if you aren't running a 20 person combat.

Things that can help with running multiple combatants
-Be decisive. Know what each combatant will do and do it--even if it's not the best choice.
-Make your players be decisive too. If they can't decide what they're doing within a reasonable time (6-12 seconds if you want to make things run quickly), they are automatically delaying until they figure it out.
-No fussing with spell targeting locations, not telepathic conferences where the whole table tries to figure out what each character should do. If you're casting a spell, say so, and say where you're centering it if it has an area of effect. Or delay while you figure it out.
-Group small groups of monsters together. Combat is much less dynamic if it is just "player's turn/monster's turn" but tracking separate initiative for 16 monsters can be a chore and it can prevent the next time saving device. The most fair way to do this is to roll initiative however many times there are members to each initiative grouping and assume that the faster monsters delay in order to move together.
-Roll multiple dice at once. Take 4 or 5 d20s, assign them each to a monster (if they always correspond to the same grouping it will help--red is always first, yellow second, green third, etc) and roll them all together.
-Roll attack and damage together. If you are rolling multiple d20s, have them color coded: red d20 goes with red d6; yellow d20 goes with yellow d8, etc.
-Use miniatures
-Use representative miniatures. If you have to look at a sheet or your players have to look at a sheet to figure out if the green square is a skeleton or a wizard and whether it is wearing armor or not, combat will go more slowly. This will sometimes result in suboptimal equipment choices because you have an orc mauler miniature so he has a heavy shield and heavy mace. That's OK, it's worth it.
-Use a variety of miniatures or otherwise mark them. (Colored stickers on the base can help with this). "It is the dragonmarked kobold/Grey Maiden's turn/Red caravan guard" is easier to keep track of than "it is kobold #3/guard #4's turn").

Easy rules abridgements to speed play with more combatants:
-No rolling for damage. Just take an average roll, round to the nearest 5 and go with it.
-No fiddly hit points. Just round them to the nearest 5.
-Ignore staggered for at 0 hp. Just treat it the same as -1 (unconscious).
-Don't try to keep damage information hidden. Just put a die or other clear notation next to the miniatures to indicate how much damage they have received.
-If you want to speed your decision making, you can also automate it by using morale checks when an individual unit or monster reaches half casualties or half hit points. No thinking about whether they should run or fight, roll and follow the dice. It's not necessarily faster or better, but if you find yourself puzzling, it's a good solution.

Silver Crusade

Consider grouping the enemies, each pair works as a single unit, one enemy does aid another to give the first a +2 on attack rolls. Still the number of enemies, but only half the work, really.


Val'bryn2 wrote:
Consider grouping the enemies, each pair works as a single unit, one enemy does aid another to give the first a +2 on attack rolls. Still the number of enemies, but only half the work, really.

This isn't as much of a help at it first appears, since it's possible to take out half of a pair while leaving the other one standing. For example, the fighter swings at orc 3-a and kills it, but can't swing at (or misses) orc 3-b. The wizard casts a save-or-lose spell and orcs 4-a, 5-b, 6-a, and 7-b all succeed in their saving throws. Are you going to pair up 4-a and 5-b to make a new pair?

Still a help, but not a panacea. I myself simply prefer rolling a fistful of dice and hoping for twenties.

Silver Crusade

Orfamay Quest wrote:
Val'bryn2 wrote:
Consider grouping the enemies, each pair works as a single unit, one enemy does aid another to give the first a +2 on attack rolls. Still the number of enemies, but only half the work, really.

This isn't as much of a help at it first appears, since it's possible to take out half of a pair while leaving the other one standing. For example, the fighter swings at orc 3-a and kills it, but can't swing at (or misses) orc 3-b. The wizard casts a save-or-lose spell and orcs 4-a, 5-b, 6-a, and 7-b all succeed in their saving throws. Are you going to pair up 4-a and 5-b to make a new pair?

Still a help, but not a panacea. I myself simply prefer rolling a fistful of dice and hoping for twenties.

It's not a help at all. You need just as many miniatures. You need to keep track of just as many hit point totals. You need to roll just as many saves as if you were running them fully independently. You don't even save effort and time on rolling d20s unless you are going to give them the aid other automatically (and DC 10 is not automatic for most creatures that would merit the minion treatment).

More to the point, you also shortchange yourself a whole bunch. Unaugmented,(by Order of the Dragon, the helpful trait, etc), standard action Aid Other is an almost worthless option. It is empirically worse than simply having both equal combatants roll their own d20s in almost every situation except for the vanishingly rare scenario where they hit exactly on a 20. (If it only hits on a 20 because 20s always hit, the +2 won't make a 19 hit so you're back to being worse again). And if you are in that scenario, you are probably doing it wrong.

Between buffs (bardsong, bless, prayer, order of the lion cavalier, etc), charging (+2 to hit), flanking (+2 to hit), nets, tanglefoot bags, tripping, etc, rage, etc you should be able to get attack bonuses that can hit on more than just a 20 on most combatants that have any business being on the same field. And if you don't have any kind of synergy or buffs going, why on earth are you running a large number of combatants against the PCs?


If you have a computer - dm's familiar is your friend for large combats - just prep what you need (20 ants) and when you pull them to the combat board it will number them for you - roll initiative and such.

It will also roll saves and all kinds of fun stuff - letting you keep track of individual hit points. After that use whatever you like to keep track of them at the table - I bought some numbers on stickies I can toss on anything so ant #1 is always ant #1.

After that have fun! using this program has really made combat much more manageable for me. Another suggestion for large groups of enemies (especially for low HD ones) is to group them up:

20 ants - 1/4 hd each.

4 ants per group for 1 hd monsters - now you only have 5 to worry about - combine hit points and give the 'group' a larger attack bonus - but keep damage the same. For each 1/4 hit points the 'group' looses it looses the bonus to hit.

Or even some variation on that theme - to keep your sanity. This trick also works to use large numbers of lower level monsters and keep them a 'threat' for higher level groups. You are simulating aid another and flanking but keeping the # of rolls and things to track down to a minimum to keep combat moving.


I would say a decent rule of thumb is number of PCsx3 is the cap. The higher the levels go the higher that number can be, also that number does not account for mooks that are at worst a roadblock.

Regarding the paladin to wizard. it can work but the party will have to adjust, summoning spells are pretty easy way to get some meat between enemy and squishies.


There are a couple of tricks to running this kind of combat. First is to limit the different kinds of creatures. Having a couple of different types of undead is fine but the vast majority should be a single type with identical stats. A boss with a few lieutenants is fine, but don’t have a dozen different types each with their own individual stat blocks. Use group initiative instead of individual for the monsters.

Know how much damage your characters will be doing and figure out how many hits it will take to kill the monster and use that when you can. So don’t roll for damage if the player does +25 damage and hits twice on a 40 HP monster. If he hits one then go ahead and roll the damage but otherwise just figure out the kill point. The same is true for spells. If the fireball is going to kill the monsters even if it makes the save don’t bother rolling the save.

The most important thing is to delegate out some of the work to the players. For example have one of the players keep track of HP instead of doing yourself. Have the players move the some of the monsters instead of doing it all yourself. When you have 2-4 people moving figures it takes a lot less time. This also keeps the players interest and prevents them from getting bored

For rolls use a computer instead of actual dice. Hero Labs has die roller utility built in that allows you to make any roll you need including bonuses. It even allows multiple rolls so you can roll 99 saves with a single click of the button.

The biggest thing is don’t sweat the details. If you are off a few HP on the monsters who cares?


Elder Basilisk wrote:


More to the point, you also shortchange yourself a whole bunch. Unaugmented,(by Order of the Dragon, the helpful trait, etc), standard action Aid Other is an almost worthless option. It is empirically worse than simply having both equal combatants roll their own d20s in almost every situation except for the vanishingly rare scenario where they hit exactly on a 20. (If it only hits on a 20 because 20s always hit, the +2 won't make a 19 hit so you're back to being worse again). And if you are in that scenario, you are probably doing it wrong.

Actually, I consider this to be a benefit.

Presumably, the reason that the GM wants to stage this kind of a battle is because he wants to have nearly limitless hordes of opposition who can be racked up like points in a billiard match (think of Legolas and Gimli). Ironically, if the opposition uses poor tactics, this effectively weakens them, which means that the game master can use even an even larger number and make the billiard match that much higher-scoring.

I used an example above of an APL 9 party being swarmed by 200 CR 2 giant soldier ants, which is actually semi-realistic if you have enough miniatures (I use tend to use pennies in that situation, so it would be about four rolls of coins). This would technically be a CR 17 encounter by the math, so it would be way beyond Epic, except that a) giant ants are stupid and don't pose much of a tactical puzzle, b) giant ants lack ranged weapons, so they can really only attack a few at a time, and c) as you point out, they can't hit [the tanks] for toffee, so only a few lucky rolls will actually do any damage. (Just make sure that you hold the line, because if someone breaks through, the wizard is likely to turn into Purina Ant Chow.)

The effect is that the party can carve its way through a practically limitless number of ants at relatively low risk and indulge in all the cathartic slaughter that their bitter little black souls desire. [Hmm, "bitter little black souls." That reminds me, I need coffee.]


I am an experienced GM and my players (bless their little cotton socks) decided to abridge part of an adventure and track down a unit of Giants before I could separate them into easily digestible chunks. I'd doubled the number of NPCs due to the size of the PC party (7 players + eidolon and animal companion). So they confront 30+stone giants and a dragon (yep, it was a bad plan, they only 'survived' by dumb luck and one of them having the sense to run away. 4 raise deads later...). Turns out that is about the upper limit of what I consider manageable.

the biggest thing that helped was to reduce them to squads and handle 5-6 bad guys at a time. Once squad one is dealt with then go on to squad 2s attacks. Re-assign squads as they are depleted.
Break them up into waves. Don't worry about the bad guys who can't get into the fight.
I'm a bit mean so I let my players handle 1d4-1d6 round countdowns for when bad things happening, like bad guys coming from a different direction - (in my case some of the bad guys moving around to flanking higher ground to rain boulder-y death from above).

As each player died, they got to take over control of a squad - one of them took to that job with unnatural glee - but you can delegate before that.

Don't sweat the small stuff, it is no big deal if you assign the damage to the wrong critter, just try to make it in the favour of the players (don't just randomly assign it to an unhurt bad guy). It also doesn't matter if you take a bad guy off the table if he only has 2-3 hp left - close enough is good enough.

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