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Wherever the monsters and monster creation rules first appear for 2e (whether in Core or Bestiary 1), can the design team please create a robust method of turning low level monsters into deadlier higher CR gangs?
There are a few troops in 1e and they're pretty great but they need to be hand crafted pretty much so there aren't many of them as they haven't been very supported.
It would be spectacular if support for them was baked into the core of 2e adversary design. The ideal situation would be that any monster created for whom it makes sense would be able to turn into a 'troop' or a 'swarm' based on its intelligence. Loner monsters or others for which troops or swarms don't make sense just wouldn't have the swarm or troop tag.
Maybe each monster could include a tag that would specify it can join a troop or swarm of its fellows and optional rules on special ability the 'gang' might have? Then the troop or swarm 'template' itself can take care of the rest based on the base monster's numbers?
Wouldn't it be great to be a group of 6 level 20 characters facing off against say 3 troops of werewolves and 6 swarms of dire wolves or something? and be able to easily throw that together right from the start?
This sort of thing seems hard to force into a monster creation system later on so a new edition is a great opportunity for the base game to provide this tool to GMs right from the get-go.
Naw... you should have to wait six bestiaries in too!
Some sort of "group level" system might work well with what we know of PF2?
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I've pondered this awhile and I don't think a troop template would work, partly because the bulk of a troop's strength would come from the template and there are HD involved which can be scaled (or at least should be to match the CR needed).
It'd be like trying to make a swarm template.
That said, I really, really want troops right off the bat. I miss large-scale battles a lot, even if they're faux because troops hide the true numbers. PCs have faced humanoid armies from the get-go, so it'd be nice to see a range from the "kobold commoner" from B2 up to (and perhaps past) the "troll hordes" in G3.
I think having base monsters like w/ animated object would work, where there are different scales of troops to pick from (even if they're the same size.) Then the GM could use "horde points" to buy special abilities for their monsters, which might include things like missile weapons (w/ area affect options), regeneration (not just for trolls, but for armies w/ healers), better armor, gibbering for insane hordes, grapple, undead traits, etc.
And if that's too complicated for book 1, a nice set of generic humanoid armies would be nice, maybe three to express a range of challenges, maybe with tweaks for type of humanoid.
Cheers
I am almost certain there will be Swarm rules in the playtest bestiary, and troops are a pretty simple permutation of them, you basically just ignore the size restriction and apply an appropriate class graft to the humanoid swarm.
Swarm/Troops can easily have boatload of HPs and a few extra actions via 'Quick'ened.
Swarms work fine. The rules capture the narrative of tiny bugs crawling inside your armor, biting with attacks you can't dodge.
Troops, in PF1, are not as tight narratively.
I run a game with four paladin PCs, and I wanted them to go against an evil army. But troops that auto-damage made the difference between the lightly armored paladin and the tanky one moot. Also, the cleave based character should shine against an army of moooks.
So I tweaked the mechanics.
First, I figured out how much damage a minster of that level should do, and gave the troop four attacks that would add up to 150% of that. They had high attack rolls - akin to eight guys aiding on main attacker - and could use their four attacks for a mix of swords and bows.
If reduced below half their starting HP, they lose cohesion and now only get two attacks. Also, each troop has a 'drop threshold': an attack that does that much damage counts as dropping a foe for the purposes of powers like Cleave.
It worked really well without adding that much complexity.
Don't really like the idea. Groups, mobs and units as monsters does weird things to the balance and feel of the game.
It fits locusts and rats, but for people, its jamming an old Avalon Hill style board and table wargame unit (or on the other end, a town's population) into something you kill in a couple sword strokes.
Very jarring thematically and at odds with the much more detailed combat system in use.
A template would be hard to apply universally, but perhaps one troop of each CR, 1-20? Just to give us a general power level from Paizo's perspective?
Wouldn't have to be detail heavy - heck, pack 'em into 2-3 pages in an appendix.