How many turns on the initiative is too many? Like, you have 4 PC's + X baddies gets to be too many? 10 seems like a good upper limit to me, but maybe that's not what its about? Is it more about how long a player has to wait for something to happen that involves their character maybe?
I'm sure this will differ by player and by table, but I'm curious at what point you stop having a good time.
I've never had so many enemies going that I got tired of waiting; if that happens it's always been because a player is moving through their turns slowly. I guess there is a theoretical maximum of how many enemies can be on the field before it gets cumbersome, but hitting that maximum will probably get them all instantly deleted by a caster AOE...
I was really slow early on, but once I memorized the amount of actions it was to do things, my turns got very quick. So far my experiences have not had more than equal number of players (5) in enemies. Seems to go by fast enough.
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This varies so much by GM as well, both in terms of speed and keeping the battles interesting. Part of that's tied to foresight:
Can I run this cannon fodder fast?
Do they have interesting moves that I don't need to think about?
For example, wolves are simple and have a cool ability that doesn't need a roll, Knockdown. Pack Attack makes their tactics straightforward both to you and to the players.*
Compare that to a dire wolf who has several options, adding Worry which tags on a roll and Grab which will later if/when a PC tries to escape. Though its tactics run about the same as a wolf, it'd take twice as long to run. "Yes, you're grabbed and prone, what do you do?"
Even worse would be a Warg w/ Avenging Bite, compounded if there's a small PC to Swallow Whole and add more rolling. One PC getting savaged by those Avenging Bites and that'll give the players a tactical puzzle (which is cool, but will slow down matters, especially if a grabbed PC gets surrounded and want to start Delaying, waiting for openings rather than chopping their way out.)
And if these bigger guys are appearing in great number (in a balanced battle!), a lot of that bonus rolling has little effect since PCs will save and/or escape. (Except those Avenging Bites, which might have an unexpected amount of impact, especially to the first person surrounded if they don't know what's coming!)
*Also wolves have great Reflex save so do well vs. AoE, unlike the following monsters.
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And of course if the numbers get large enough, convert to a Troop. Building one might be a better investment of time than the extra time spent at the table with masses of underlings. Having run many classic modules, I have to say Troops have been a godsend in making a significant threat and keeping to the spirit of mass combat and the effects of morale (effectively when the Troop "dies".)
ETA: Paizo, in the finale of a 3.X AP section, made an excellent batch of mass minions. They had Evasion to make bookkeeping easier vs. AoEs and only one attack (albeit an effective one). Evasion comes online much later in PF2, but it's something to consider at those levels.
Also, Ferocity. Though that does involve tracking who's used it each round, it does toughen up one's masses. :) Death to massive damage starts becoming a factor.
I have 7 players in my current campaign and I sometimes thrown 10 opponents against them. Once they fought an army with 14 separate tokens, where 10 tokens were troop units representing 4 creatures.
That can make for slow rounds. Therefore, my players often play games on their computers while waiting for their turns (our campaign moved online to Roll20 in March 2020). One day a player was quieter than usual and admitted afterwards that she was baking brownies during the game. They listen to the other players' turns and are quick to act when their turn comes up, so I don't mind.
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I usually try to limit encounters to have an equal number of opponents as PCs. Often at least some of said opponents are the same type of creature and usually do similar things, so combats go quickly. I also try to have everything setup in advance, so once I get initiative rolls from my players we jump right into it (usually less than a minute from when I ask for rolls).
I've been a player on the extreme end of huge battles and it was frustrating. We once played a 5e session for six hours that was all combat - I had four rounds (i.e. I did something roughly once every ninety minutes).
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This is where GM preparation really makes a difference.
If running offline, you could of course start a combat by putting down lots of minis, then assigning all of them initiative, then after a round and a half you've lost track of which of them has had how much damage. Or, you could be a bit more organized than that. Maybe you have numbered pawns, or colored pawn bases. And you have a good initiative tracker with a widget/card for each participant in the combat and you can just flip from one to the next. And since you prepared this combat, you already have a sheet of paper lying ready with a column for each NPC to track their HP/damage. These little bits of preparation make a big difference in how long things take.
When running online, if you have tokens set up for your NPCs with hit points that you can just say "-6 damage" and it'll do the math for you, and a button that just executes an attack macro, and an automatic initiative tracker - that's a lot faster than you typing in attacks into a dice roller as they come up.
I find that when I'm running the game, there's a lot of things competing for my attention. Simple things that on their own are easy become a bit harder when everything else is also happening. So the effort to prepare and automate them is really worthwhile.
And you really don't need to automate everything. Usually it's enough to have initiative, attacks and saving throws. It only makes sense to automate things the monster is going to do for sure and a lot. A skill they might not use at all? Not important to automate. That attack they're going to spam every round? Absolutely worth it.
Good, targeted preparation could allow you to comfortably run many more enemies, if you're so inclined.
I usually try to limit encounters to have an equal number of opponents as PCs. Often at least some of said opponents are the same type of creature and usually do similar things, so combats go quickly. I also try to have everything setup in advance, so once I get initiative rolls from my players we jump right into it (usually less than a minute from when I ask for rolls).
I've been a player on the extreme end of huge battles and it was frustrating. We once played a 5e session for six hours that was all combat - I had four rounds (i.e. I did something roughly once every ninety minutes).
I agree.
Usually the better encounters I played/made was 1 foe per player. It's not like outnumber a side is bad all time but theses battles tends to be much more sensible to bad RNGs or bad decisions from players than more well balanced battles.
For the finale of one campaign, I cut out dozens of cardboard squares. The back of notepads works well. I numbered them and put a red mark on one side so I could flip it when the monster was notably wounded. That was for the sake of the PCs/players to track visually without having to ask or take notes. Some were letters for unusual creatures.
One of my players spotted my tracking sheet which was full of entries and he gasped. With a chuckle, his friend assured him that it was only one sheet to which he replied that the writing was so small.
"And I have more on the back," I teased. Because the writing had been packed in and there were more on the back, for when the battlefield dead would be converted to undead and rise again!
But of course this was the culmination, and there were RPing repercussions and different phases that kept the pressure going without hitting the party all at once. Most battles should have fewer unless dealing with simple-to-fight/simple-to-run peons. I've whipped out hordes, but having them be one-shot creatures mattered a lot so that they operated like one large organism. As I've said above, that's unnecessary now w/ Troops mechanics so you could have your "armies" and only be dealing with a handful of stats and turns to track.
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Generally the game balance starts to fall apart of you try to have too many creatures in a combat anyway- while an extreme threat encounter technically can have 16 creatures that are party level -4, they will have trouble hitting PCs and can be wiped out pretty quickly by AoEs, and anything with a greater level difference than that gets even worse.
You are better off (for reducing number of turns,n umber of creatures) using troops - this makes those 20 goblins or whatever actually a credible threat while still having the coolness of the PCs fighting a horde of enemies.
I generally try to keep number of creatures other than PCs below 10 - if I want a mass amount of enemies, I use 1 or 2 troops with a leader enemy - as an example, a big epic severe threat fight for a level 12 party could be
1 Lich (L12)
1 Graveknight (L10)
2 skeleton infantry (troops) (L11)
This encounter only gives the enemy 4 turns and 12 actions to slow down the game, that all at least have some chance of actually threatening the party, but it actually represents the party fighting a massive 34 enemies.
You can also quickly add a troop to most factions by making some simple modifications to the City Guard Squadron (these can easily be hobgoblins for example just by changing their type which also makes them count for formation), Hellknight Cavalry Brigade, Shambler Troop (for disorganised enemies like goblins) and rancorous priesthood (any spellcasters).
Troops are really easy to make as they usually have the same kinds of abilities as other troops.
The only problem I find with troops is having enough minis to represent them (as you need 16 minis or tokens to represent one troop) but that is less of a problem for people who are already throwing 20 enemies at the party.
I think the types of enemies causes a difference as well.
10 kobold spearmen? Everything is the same, and you can probably take care of most of it by throwing out a ton of dice at once.
10 kobold sorcerers/clerics/etc? Then you are going to be looking up a variety of spells every single round. Similar problems come up with more complex enemies with a number of special abilities and spells.
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In my opinion, the number of turns per round are less important than the number of seconds per turn. Every time I've been bored by a fight, it was because the GM was taking ages to play each enemy, whatever their numbers. Big fights are fine if the GM knows how to handle his troops (even if the more monsters and the harder it is to handle everything properly).
I would not blame a GM if they gave the numerous, weaker enemies the same initiative (ie- 10 kobold spearmen) while saving unique initiative for the more powerful enemies (ie- kobold general).
That way, he doesn't have to remember if it was spearman #3 or spearman #7 that rolled better than the wizard.
Of course, this example might lean into the troop type enemy. But still, even with just 4 spearmen, it would be a useful shorthand.
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Yeah, I agree with thenobledrake. Large groups of enemies all moving at the same initiative and suddenly swarming a PC and focus-firing them down is.. it feels unfair as a player, like you got cheated with some kind of card trick.
I think troops are a good solution if you want the feeling of facing a mob. Alternatively, most VTTs have initiative trackers that actually make individual enemy initiative pretty lightweight to do.
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Yeah, a lot of player deaths have been due to clumping enemies.
Would advise developing better sorting methods if initiatives are a problem (or using a Troop which would avoid mass focus fire, an early AoE wipe, and other potential issues).
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I would not blame a GM if they gave the numerous, weaker enemies the same initiative (ie- 10 kobold spearmen) while saving unique initiative for the more powerful enemies (ie- kobold general).
That way, he doesn't have to remember if it was spearman #3 or spearman #7 that rolled better than the wizard.
I cannot recommend enough using something like Combat Manager to track initiative. I run all combats with it, with every opponent having unique initiative because the app makes it a cinch to track. It is built for first edition, so the monster stat blocks/spells/rules aren't useful for second edition, but for rolling/tracking initiative, conditions, and spell durations it is excellent. I don't think I'd ever run Pathfinder again without it again. If it ever gets updated for second edition I'd be even more excited about it. The best part about it is that the Windows version is free (and works better than the Android version, I am told).
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When running in real life (you know, before the apocalypse) I usually used cardboard pawns. One thing that saves a ton of mental effort is to draw or paint some numbers on your pawn bases. That way, any pawn you slide into the base is automatically numbered.
For running initiative, what helps me run a lot of enemies is to just have a stack of cards. Use one color for PCs, another color for enemies, and maybe a third color for bystanders. You could use playing cards and make Hearts the PCs and Spades the enemies if you wish. Then since you already numbered your enemies' pawn bases, and you have numbered cards, running through an initiative order just means looking at the top card of the deck, doing that turn for that pawn. And when the turn is over, put the card on the bottom of the deck.
For my initiative tracker, I use clothespins on my GM screen. Each PC has a unique color all baddies are black(with numbers on my side). I slide up whosever's turn it is, so at a quick glance everyone is up to speed.
I do group initiatives, I limit group size to 3.