Longer in pf2e than pf1e, gives a better experience overall but neither system plays well with large combats imo.
The action economy and how so many conditions function makes it slow though.
Having that many combattants on the table is unmanageable unless you take some shortcuts.
1) Although you may place that many figures/tokens on the table, you only really take account of the combattants actually facing PCs, and abstract the rest.
2) For combattants not actually facing the PCs, deal with it abstractly. Every round, knock down a certain number of figures/tokens on each side for combattants that are "out of the fight" (dead/injured).
3) Let the general success (or lack thereof) of the PCs be a barometer for the fight in general. If the PCs are prevailing against their direct opponents, let their "side" emerge the winner, with more enemy combattants taken "out of the fight" than allies.
Sure, you could use various "mass battle" rules to deal with the situation, but that generally just complicates things. The important thing for the DM is telling a good story, and letting the PCs shine within their sphere of influence.
Don't forget that battles are often won based on less tangible factors like morale. Let the PC's level of success against their direct adversaries be a barometer for the fight, and keep details of non-PC combat off the main stage.
Personally, I've always thought anything than more than about 10 combatant total took unreasonably long anyways, regardless of PF1 or PF2.
There are too many people with too many turns, and it's part of why I don't really like to have more than about 5 PCs in a group, and can have potentially an equal number of NPCs.
To me, having the PCs deal with throngs of enemies is best done by using something like the squad rules (can't remember if it's called squad but it's something like that) that ends up treating groups of creatures like a really large swarm.
I honestly have yet to see an rpg that handles large combat super well. If I were to do it though, I'd probs use one of the following approaches:
-Handle it like normal combat, with the PCs fighting a manageable chunk of enemies (maybe like an enemy commander, their retainers, and some grunts) and use the idea of a large battlefield as a backdrop more than a mechanic. Maybe cut out a small "arena" within the melee for the player's battlefield and treat the rest of the squares as difficult terrain, possibly with a chance of taking damage (since the "terrain" is really brawling soldiers). The outcome of the battle by the PCs then reflects the larger whole, so if the PCs are winning, their forces are doing better, and vise versa
-if each player is in command of a squad, take the same route fire emblem: 3 houses did. Play it out like normal, but know that each character piece represents a whole army that uses the stats of the pc. Probably have the army provide the character with a bonus and possible a new ability so it feels mass combat-y and not just regular 1v1 (like, maybe the the wizard's squad can cast 3 lightning bolts, or some sorts like that). Abstract the turns and actions to a larger scale. One strike mechanically only hits one guy, but in mass combat land, scale it up. If there's 10 soldiers in your enemy's squad, and you deal 20% of their hp with a strike, just say you killed 2 people. PCs and important enemies should never die from this abstraction though.
-if the results of the battle are more important than the act of actually mapping it out and gaming it, resolve it with a skill challenge. This works well of the PCs are taking more of a backseat, and are in the war room acting as tacticians. Make warfare lore the main skill, and let people aid using appropriate skills, like Craft to prove the troops with better arms or siege engines, Deception for a cunning, underhanded ploy, survival to take advantage of terrain, any recall knowledge to get intel, etc.
Regardless, most rpgs kinda fall apart on such huge scales because they aren't designed for them. It's best to fake it into working for a typical battle scale or use skills
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There are 2 big barriers as I see it, beyond D&D derivatives being bad at this in general.
1) The weakest enemies you can really use are 4 levels beneath the party and worth XP a piece. You can only really use 8-12 of those without breaking the XP budget. Anything less and your creatures can only hit on a 20 and will just be crit fodder.
2) 3 action economy means any given creature has more to do than just move and attack. Coupled with the above power difference though, their 3 actions aren't actually worth very much.
The troop template in PF1 was the best way to make this work, but I haven't heard anything about it being ported over officially yet. A couple of people, myself included, have converted PF1 troops fairly successfully. The tricky but is deciding how they interact with things like Swipe or Whirlwind Attack.
If you actually wanted to treat a bunch of enemies as distinct creatures, I'd probably give them 1 HP each and one attack per round. I'd just roll a fist full of d20s and say only a nat 20 hits.
The troop template in PF1 was the best way to make this work, but I haven't heard anything about it being ported over officially yet. A couple of people, myself included, have converted PF1 troops fairly successfully. The tricky but is deciding how they interact with things like Swipe or Whirlwind Attack.
I would really like to see your adaption!
I would really like to see your adaption!
The troop template in PF1 was the best way to make this work, but I haven't heard anything about it being ported over officially yet. A couple of people, myself included, have converted PF1 troops fairly successfully. The tricky but is deciding how they interact with things like Swipe or Whirlwind Attack.
To be fair I didn't come up with formal system so much as I just converted stat blocks I needed to use for my AP using the swarm rules for reference. It was also done under playtest rules. But I can post stat blocks if you like.
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Big combat not mass combat can drag on and give no challenge to the party. One method I have been using is if you have 40 Zombies attacking the party break it down into large swarms. for every 10-15 creatures create one huge swarm, use the swarm rules such as auto damage for the base attack weak to AOE attacks, resist slashes, times hit points by exchange ration eg X10 etc. the characters will mow down these very fast and you don't need to the book huge keeping. but because the swarms are doing auto damage they will still worry the party.
I have done this with Zombie, Goblins, Ice Mephits and Skeletons and it works fine. Player really freak out when they see a couple of swarms approaching.
cheers
Mark