How do you handle Mooks?

[Golurkcanfly]

One thing that's become more and more apparent to me as a GM is how awkward it can be to create high-level encounters with many lower-level monsters without making combat incredibly slow due to how monster HP scaling works.

At 5th level, a 1st-level monster goes down relatively fast. At 15th-level, an 11th-level monster is comparatively more durable. This results in slower combats and enemies that don't fulfill the cannon fodder role as well.

Other systems have tried various solutions to this problem. 4e has a dedicated Minion enemy type, which has average stats, few abilities, and flat damage, but dies in a single hit. 13th Age has Mook Mobs, which are groups of enemies with a shared HP total where damage can "spill over" to the next mook when one dies. PF2e has Troops, but these have strict movement rules and other caveats to them. Another method I've seen recommended for PF2e is a template that cuts a monster's HP to 1/3rd and reduces the Level by 1 with no other changes.

However, none of these methods seem terribly satisfactory on a first pass, and I'm having issues determining which to use.

How do you guys handle mooks in a way that they can fit into an encounter budget?

[Tender Tendrils]

Troops is honestly the best solution for making large numbers of enemies work. If the movement rules are too much to deal with, a solution is to just make them move and act like a gargantuan creature that doesn't have a flexible shape (which is how swarms work).

The only other solution I have seen that makes large numbers of chaff enemies work is to have the entire system have really flat numbers (like 5e, where an enemy that you out-level by 10 levels can still hit you because your AC has only increased by like 1 or 2 in 10 levels).

[Perpdepog]

It really depends on what you want the mooks to do. If you want them to be a threat that can dish out damage, then troop rules seem like your best bet, or mobs, or whatever the rule is that you're borrowing.
If you just want them there to eat up the party's actions and don't really care about damage, then 4E's/Mutants and Masterminds'/whoever's minion templates and rules will serve you better. No reason to limit yourself to just one rule, either.

[SuperBidi]

I handle mooks per the rules. Sure, they don't die in a single hit, but having a monster that can be hit on a 5 and who fails its saves most of the time is very satisfying to my players.

As a side note, Incapacitation is what should eliminate mooks. If your party disregards Incapacitation spells, mooks can become a real threat and indubitably a slugfest. And I think many parties disregard Incapacitation to focus on anti boss abilities.
I personally don't hesitate to put my players against a bunch of spellcasters casting Magic Missiles and other auto hit spells to teach them that at high level you need a way to deal with mooks.

[voideternal]

Agreed about incapacitation. I remember all mooks pretty much instantly vaporized when the rogue in our Age of Ashes campaign got master strike.

[Golurkcanfly]

The issue with Incapacitation is that the abilities just aren't common enough for martials save for Scare to Death. And when everyone is building for it, it's rather dry.

[Captain Morgan]

Well, yeah, martials don't have much of it, but casters have plenty. And mooks are one of the places where casters are meant to shine. Do your players not have any?

[Deriven Firelion]

At high level well built characters crush through mook hit points. A combination of AoO spells and effects, lots of critical hits, and lots of reaction attacks just murder these guys. Even at lvl 10 and 11, the average critical hit is 50 plus points on average.

When I was playing at 15, the average critical hit was reaching 80 to 100 plus and my players were getting lots of them against mooks. A whole group using even simple and obvious tactics like flanking crushes groups.

So it hasn't been much of an issue in my experience. Though if you lack AoE spells and effects, it can take a little while to crush them down.