So my PC's do this a lot. They barge into a building and all 4 floors are alerted to their presence. I am currently in a 24 enemy battle right now and they are fighting 4 on the first floor while all the other enemies now alerted are running toward the battle. They are running down the stairs and they will be adding to the encounter as they "get down there" I am finding it hard to keep track of all the enemies moves as they come down 4 floors so that I am adding them to the combat in a way that is realistic with their movement speeds. Any pro GM's out there have advice on how to simplify these calculations so I am not having to run through movement of 20+ enemies while my PC's wait so I space out their arrivals in a way that makes sense?
Thanks
Depends on how big the building is. Figure out how long it would take for a enemy would take to get down a floor in real time, then convert this to rounds. Also, not all the enemy should come running. Some will probably head to areas that need to be protected or other strategic locations. initially about half the enemy might show up.
I don't count out movement but instead run things cinematically. In other words, what would this look like in a movie or TV show? Some waves of enemies would get to the PCs right away, trying to dog-pile them. Other waves might arrive after the PCs finish a wave, look at each other and one of them quips "well, glad THAT'S over" at which point the next group of enemies barrels in.
Running large battles can also be kind of a chore, so I sometimes utilize the Troop or Swarm rules depending on the type of monster involved. Of course doing so favors PCs that deal AoE damage but it has made things more manageable for me.
My own experience has come from running megadungeons. The party may sneak up on a particular area, but once they engage in combat the sound travels to nearby chambers. For some reason a lot of the pre-packaged dungeons I use have more chambers (areas without doors/obstructions to entry) than rooms (areas WITH doors and such), so monsters, even from potentially opposing factions might be attracted by the din.
In these instances, where the monsters/foes aren't all uniformly the same type, I again fall back on cinematics. A low level group fighting a bunch of goblins, but two encounter areas away an ogre sits on a throne waiting for the goblins to bring him tribute. Said ogre might hear his goblin minions being attacked and come in to rampage, but I might wait til a round after the last goblins fall, foreshadowing the ogre's arrival with a battle cry coming down the hall or thundering footsteps or whatever.
In the end, the biggest thing to keep in mind is what the PCs can handle. If you've got several dozen enemies in a building and the PCs are getting low on resources, having ALL of these enemies converge on the party at once could be a TPK. On the other hand if a singular foe is very weak against the party, throwing 20 of them all at once into the room as reinforcements could up the challenge a bit.
I wouldn't invest a ton of thought into this tbh. I wouldn't even track their individual move actions by round. Dudes on 4th floor will join the fight in 4 rounds, dudes on 3rd floor will join the fight in 3 rounds, dudes on the 2nd floor will join the fight in 2 rounds, dudes on the 1st floor who aren't currently in the fight yet will join the fight in 1 round. Done and done.
Alternatively, if you want to be annoying realistic, have the guys on the upper floors start barring doors and setting up chokepoints/kill zones for the PC's to wade through like they're Harry and Marv from Home Alone.
Not sure I would have them appear every round; a round is only 6 seconds. Another way to do this would be roll a die every round and that is how many show up. I would probably go with 1d6-2 for each round. Use that in place of tracking movement and making perception rolls. Keep that up until every enemy that is going to respond has showed up.
Or, y'know, you can go the other extreme:
One game a few of my players were in years ago, their GM was using a virtual table top to manage the battle. PCs are in a large dungeon room with pillars, while monsters are coming from three nearby zones. Said GM, no joke, turned to his players when it was his turn in the initiative and said "hang on." At this point he took something like 10 minutes advancing tokens only he could see on the VTT from the three adjoining areas, based on individual monsters' movement speeds.
Bear in mind, the room the PCs are in has several closed doors and all of the monsters the GM is advancing cannot be seen by the party. All totaled the fight took an hour and 48 minutes according to one guy, but in the end the PCs actually lost very few HP and resources b/c their foes had to systematically approach, use move actions to open the doors which the Valet familiar of one of the PCs kept closing when it could, and some of the monsters had to Squeeze to enter, not to mention the fact that the room was 2 stories, filled with pillars and had a balcony on one side that one PC took up a sniper position on.
So... there's THAT strategy.
Mark Hoover 330 wrote: So... there's THAT strategy. As inconvenient as it is as a GM, it is the fair way to play it. Especially if not all of them are armed or armored. It takes 5 minutes to don medium or heavy armors, so even if they are alerted, they might not arrive in a timely fashion anyway.
Preparation. If you know the location(s) where the PCs are likely to trigger an alarm and you know the response then you can work out the time taken to get to various points ahead of time. It should only take a few minutes but will help the session run more smoothly.
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Kasoh wrote: Mark Hoover 330 wrote: So... there's THAT strategy. As inconvenient as it is as a GM, it is the fair way to play it. Especially if not all of them are armed or armored. It takes 5 minutes to don medium or heavy armors, so even if they are alerted, they might not arrive in a timely fashion anyway. 1. Perception: measuring distance generally from where the PCs first engage in combat, the sounds of battle requires a DC -10 Perception check. This is modified by +1 for every 10' of distance between the listener and the combat, closed doors, solid walls, or the favorability of conditions; are the listeners engaged in labor, leisure, sleeping or worship activities, are there other noises like rushing water or wind, are the listeners in their own combat at the time, etc.
2. Distance: a creature, dependent on weapons and armor in combat, can double move every 6 seconds. If they thought their comrades were in danger of being slain, they might even be motivated to move at full speed and ignore stealth, or even to move at a Run action. A creature moving at a Run in Light or Medium armor could move anywhere from 60' to 120', maybe more.
3. Timing: if a creature is dependent on weapons and armor in combat, it likely knows how long it takes to gear up. It may even have an understanding of how long a combat round is compared to a minute's time. In other words, the creature may be able to weigh the pros and cons of taking 1-5 minutes, or 10-50 combat rounds to get properly geared up, then leave the safety of wherever they've been allowed to don all of this gear in order to get to a battle site.
During this exorbitant amount of time, one of three outcomes has likely already taken place: the PCs easily trounced their initial foes and have good positioning to repel others coming to reinforce the area, the PCs defeated their initial foes and are weakened, but either left the area or are clever enough to use the environment to their advantage, or the PCs are slain and the reinforcements aren't needed.
My point is this: if creatures are dependent on weapons and armor in combat and AREN'T geared up, they likely aren't going to notice the sounds of battle b/c they're engaged in other activities or they will notice but likely wouldn't arrive in any meaningful time frame to reinforce the initial fight.
On the other hand foes prepared for combat, wearing the gear their stat block gives them, can move 60' to 120' in a single round if moving with great haste, or 15' to 30' per round if moving with extreme caution. I would say the overwhelming majority of scenarios in which reinforcements arrive in a PF1 fight scene are ones in which the PCs' foes are prepared for combat and close enough to hear and respond to the sounds of battle, getting them to the fight scene within 1-4 rounds.
Hugo Rune wrote: Preparation. If you know the location(s) where the PCs are likely to trigger an alarm and you know the response then you can work out the time taken to get to various points ahead of time. It should only take a few minutes but will help the session run more smoothly. Not just preparation on the part of the GM either. Are the PCs raiding a humanoids' lair? Said humanoids are going to lay things out so guards can react quickly if the alarm is raised. Is it a monster lair? Even animals understand how to set up ambushes or might have pre-planned escape routes. Vermin might have pit traps, tatzlwyrms are described as making snares or "simple" traps, castles have guard towers and murder holes, and so on.
If your monsters/foes are on home turf, they should know how to defend it. They should've prepared scenarios: in case a fire breaks out, we do this; in case adventurers break in, we do this, and so on. If the party uses mass invisibility and teleport that's one thing, but if they just barrel into the ground floor of a guarded building, their enemies should have a plan to deal with them.
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If I think it's a possibility I usually just jot down some notes about how long it takes for reinforcements to show up and from where.
"If alerted this guy casts these three spells and then they show up on round 5" sort of thing.
or something like Alert triggers 1d4 automatic random encounters
Wow thanks all for the help. This gave me a lot of ideas on how to work this. Appreciate the time you guys put in to responding.
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