As rules stand now:
The blue dragon that has been terrorizing the local oasis, either with his kobold minions or personally, has finally been tracked down to his lair by our team of four heroes. The battle was fierce and both sides are wounded, as our heroes prepare to face down the evil wyrm his horde of 200 kobold minions pour out from caverns to aid their master. The heroes see the horde and then promptly ignore them, attacking the dragon to finish it off, the kobolds, despite out numbering the heroes fifty to one, play almost no role in the fight at all, save for the 10 lucky hits they got, barely grazing their master's foes. When the heroes return to the sultan at the oasis, he goes to charge them then 10% tax that has been law for generations only to have his guards all slain or rendered helpless from the heroes because they didn't want to pay.
As it stands now, once characters reach a certain level, what level varies on the type, the threat of low CR creatures is completely ignored, despite any numbers. While they should not in general be facing such foes for a primary encounter, their purpose for the role playing experience should still remain for setting, flavor, and a touch of realism. Currently, the only way to keep players from deciding to ignore every law, defeat every baron they dislike and so forth is to keep going an escalation of the powers of those who must enforce the laws and rule the lands. This leads to bloat of hordes of high level npc and unrealistic items like a tiny barony loaded with nothing but level 10 fighter guards ruled by a level 20+ baron. The best way to remedy the situation is to provide a way for the 25 level 1 warrior guards to be able to enforce the law with that 6th level fighter who would otherwise pound them into oblivion. Not every group of guards, or horde of goblins should have the option, and should be used were the story requires.
Option 1: Every man for himself:
Worst option, and generally at best leads to 1 successful hit out of 20 attackers. This method leads to way too many dice, and time wasted.
Option 2: currently existing option of Aid Another:
Provides guards a 50/50 change to all team up and each provide a +2 to hit. This options is only good at helping 1 person hit, and provides on average a +8 bonus to hit. Even then, he's still only doing 1d8+1 damage (depending on weapon). A minor injury before getting great cleaved into the ground. Still takes too much time to resolve.
Option 3: Grouped Combatants
The one thing about all those low CR creatures are that there are hordes of them around. These are generally people/creatures who have had to work together to survive. This mean that through teamwork, they are better able to hit their opponents, harm them by hitting them in the right spots, as well as keep each other from being hurt. This is done effectively by adding bonuses to an individual.
Bonuses:
Size: 2-9 Medium size individuals, take up space of 1 large creature, 10-16 medium sized creatures as huge, and 17-25 colossal, 26+ medium sized individuals as Gargantuan. (small creatures double these numbers while large halve)
AC does not change.
HP multiple the creatures HP by the number of creatures in the grouped combatants.
Increase BAB by 1 for each member of the group (excluding 1st). When BAB reached +6 of higher, they gain irrative attacks like any other creature. However, a Grouped Combatant can only ever target a single opponent. It is through their combined efforts that give them their success.
Group Damage: Once each round, on a successful attack, a Grouped Combatants does based on the number of members in the group.
---- 2-5 members: 1d6
---- 5-10 members: 2d6
---- 11-20 members: 3d6
---- 20-30 members: 4d6
---- 31-50 members: 5d6
---- 51+ members: 6d6
Damage Max: a Grouped Combatants entity can only take a number of HP's equal to the original creatures max HP from any attack that targets individuals. Any additional points of damage.
Extra damage: Grouped combatants take 50% extra damage from area effect spells. Also, Effects like Cleave, and Great Cleave can be applied to them as if they were multiple creatures, up to a max of the number of creatures adjacent to the initiator of the feat.
Reduction: Every time a grouped combatant takes damage equal to the original creatures max HP, it's BAB decreases by 1. The Group Damage will also lower as the number of individuals decreases.
All other statistics for a Grouped combatants are carried over from the original.
Option 3 was compiled from many different posts I've read from other people as a little of my own thoughts. Their use is entirely situational and shouldn't be applied where individuals would be a better option for the plot line.
Examples:
10 town guards:
AC: 16, HP: 110 (Damage Max 11)
BAB: +10/+5
Attacks: Longspears +12/+7 (1d10+3)
SA: Group Damage 2d6
50 kobold warriors:
AC: 14, HP: 400 (Damage Max: 8)
BAB: +50/+45/+40/+35
Attacks: Light Crossbows +51/+46/+41/+36 (1d6)
SA: Group Damage 5d6
Thoughts?
The example with the kobolds for your option three seems a bit high.
Generally, to speed up combats (since way back in the old Bloodstone modules, which had some large group battles), we houseruled that every 20 combatants in a 'unit' rolled one of each number from 1 to 20.
But that does nothing for the crappy damage, obviously.
Mutants & Masterminds has, in addition to the Aid Other action, a 'Combined Attack' rule that gives approximately a +10% damage per assisting character, so long as the assisting character is doing damage within about 25% of the base damage of the assisted attacker. (Damage in that system is a straight d20 roll, with attacks having a damage modifier, so it doesn't convert nicely to a D&D mechanic.)
I think a potential problem with either your option 3 or with trying to port over the M&M mechanic is that it scales linearly, when, for mob combats, it might be better to scale, uh, the other way (geometrically? logarhythmnically? funkadelically?).
With your option three, it seems that the 200 kobolds, divided into four groups of 50, firing their little crossbows, will be getting a number of hits in (particularly on softer AC mages, etc.) and doing 5d6 damage with each hit. That's kinda a huge difference.
Even under the 'quick and dirty' system, with 200 rolling, and the 'assumption' that 10 of them will roll 20s, that's not terrible damage, 10d6 or so. One of them might even confirm a crit and do a few extra dice. :)
The difference is huge, and I think it's worth testing to see what would be the CR of that thing. I only see a problem with DR. What am I going to tell my DR 7/- barbarian that he just got hit for 5d6 by 50 kobolds several times in a row?
The odd of any kobold doing damage to him with a light crossbow are around 0.1% (0.05*0.05*0.4, 0.4 representing inaccurately the chance of inflicting damage upon a critical hit) under the current rules.
He could slay thousands of kobolds in a single battle. Indeed silly, even if at level 20 he is sort of a epic Herculean kind of figure. But taking like 20d6-45? Hmmm.. from 50 kobolds?
Also, there should be a cap in the number of monsters.
Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
Apply the Mob template from DMG2, problem solved. :)
D&D came from tabletop battle simulation and evolved into a adventure agme of high fantasy. If the PCs attained a high enough level they are nearing godhood, facing all powerful Dragons and otherworldly beings.
They shouldn't be affected at all by any number of lowly minions at that time.
If you don't like that, consider switching to the E6 system, as it holds the answers to your problem much better than pumping up low level mobs in a system that doesn't really support it.
In your example with the 200 kobolds it will be either no challenge at all (with a control winds spell or something similar) or a terrible drawn out affair that heavily threatens the whole party.
golden pony wrote: He could slay thousands of kobolds in a single battle. Indeed silly, even if at level 20 he is sort of a epic Herculean kind of figure. But taking like 20d6-45? Hmmm.. from 50 kobolds?
Also, there should be a cap in the number of monsters.
The most damage he could take is 1d6 from each hit + 5d6 from the group damage, for a total of 9d6. The group damage specifically stated that it can only be used once each round. (an afterage of 30 pts of damage from a small horde)
As for cap at the number of monsters, I was still pondering it, and was originally thinking of "as can fit in the space of a gargantuan creature", but it wasn't fully worked out in my mind yet.
Set wrote: I think a potential problem with either your option 3 or with trying to port over the M&M mechanic is that it scales linearly, when, for mob combats, it might be better to scale, uh, the other way (geometrically? logarhythmnically? funkadelically?). I actually tried to do an pseudo logrithmic/exponential. I increased the damage at the ratio 5/5/10/10/20.
The entire idea of the group damage option was that even the best warrior, simply cannot avoid all of the different simaltanious attacks. Just using the 50 kobolds example, 50 bolts flying through the air at the same point in space is almost a veritable wall of bolts.
The mechanic of adding to the BAB is a rought approximation of statistics, yes a +50 is going to hit most things, but then rolling 50 separate attack rolls will almost guarantee at least two 20's rolled, maybe a third. Multiple attacks have always stopped at 4, except with monks flurry & rapid shot, thus limiting the approximation equally.
Again, all of this depends on your storytelling goal. If you want a scene where Jackie Chan defeats an entire army single handed to reach the BBEG, then you should be running the guys separately and not doing this. If you want a a scene where the heroes have a good chance of being overrun by the large numbers of foes (to have a possible prison break adventure), then this is a possible better option. I mean as a DM you could always rules, "You are overrun by their numbers" and be done with it. This just gives something tangable for players, and a small chance out.
] Apply the Mob template from DMG2, problem solved. :)[/quote wrote:
I vague remember the mob template, but it doesn't always do what might be wanted, like massed missile fire or grappling. I think it was mostly just trample damage, but my memory may be faulty.
Regarding Aid Another, I got rid of the 50/50, and changed it to Aid Attack and Aid Defense, classifying them as universal feats. You can check them out here if you'd like.
The mob template give two attack options : Expert Grappler, which allow grapple checks in addition to other attacks and without being flat-footed, and Trample. In addition, it deals 5d6 bludgeoning damage to a creature whose space it occupies.
It gives 30hd to a group of 48 small or medium creatures, with appropriate saves and BAB.
It isn't always what we need to simulate group combat, but it's a good starting point. I think using normal iterative attacks for a group is too abstract. Change the 5d6 bludgeoning to 5d6 slashing/piercing/bludgeoning according to their weapons damage, and it fits well.
For missile fire, there's the volley rules of Complete warrior and Heroes of battle.
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