5 vs army

[Valagan]

My favorite scene in lotr is the fellowship attempting to rescue boramir at the end of the movie. My players next session are going to stumble onto the main villains massive army and I know my players they will not run and I don't want them to, not at first. My question is how do I send 100+ orcs at my players and manage to make them feel like this is epic but we are going to be overwhelmed. In lotr they were one shotting but they knew it was hopeless. Is there like a swarm rule for medium size or army rule?

[Deadmanwalking]

There is!

The Troop Subtype is precisely what you're looking for. Sadly it's not a template, and you'd thus need to design your own 'squad of Orcs' monster, but those rules should be a great help.

[BigP4nda]

minion rules will help a lot here. One hit one kill basically

[BigP4nda]

as for the overwhelming part, thatl come in itself with numbers, you don't have to do anything, even if they kill everything in one hit, all of them total can maybe kill 15 guys, maybe 8 more through AoO, thats only 23, make them face 80+ they will be surrounded easily and constantly, the mages and ranged fighters on the team will like that the least. overwhelming is not difficult at all, don't sweat it it will come on its own

[666bender]

we once faced a hoard of 1000 zombies (at lvl 15+).
the monster on their own could not hit us BUT we used the swarm roles, and dm added huge bonus on the bull rush \ overrun they tried, he claimed that for each 10 zombies killed (smashed) he added +X.
they threw us of the cliff....

[Bandw2]

there's also rules on armies, and how a single unit can be an army... though it's abstracted out to all hell.

[Corvino]

If you want them to fight a bit but then escape, make sure there is a pretty obvious retreat path or two. Something like a rope bridge, or a boat, which will allow them to fight defensively back to a single point, then to prevent pursuit by collapsing the bridge or casting the boat off.

[Nermal2097]

Did this once with a party of Dwarves holed up in an isolated farmstead with some advanced firearms. A column of 1000s of zulus, sorry Elves, came at them. Sustained fire from the rifles and a few fireballs here and there helped stop the tide. Was a fun session.