Vs. The Horde

I have an encounter idea where the players might be encountering a huge horde of creatures (somewhere between 12 and 50). (It can be bypassed with clever play.)

In my mind, I can see them either

  1. Fleeing
  2. Setting a Clever Trap
  3. Finding a Choke Point to Fight
  4. Alerting the Locals and Returning with a Militia, probably after doing 1).

For options like 1 or 2, I’m thinking of maybe having only part of the Horde mobilize at first to oppose the party members- instead of fighting 50 things, they’re fighting 5 or 6.

For 3), I’m thinking of a mechanic where the enemies can gain reinforcements between combat rounds, refreshing their disposition somewhat and getting more creatures in the fray. I suspect unless the PCs have dramatically higher dice pools than what the Horde gets to roll, this would be very, very tough, because all it takes is a few Attack vs. Attacks for the horde to press its vast advantage.

  1. Seems like a Battle/Wage War, which of course we don’t have rules for yet.

I like it. I assume that the horde has some other reason to exist than to kill the party, so it makes sense that only a small detachment would pursue them if they fled. The choke point fight is interesting… sounds like a check farm though :slight_smile: either that or inescapable death :slight_smile: (either way, it sounds epic)

  1. I’d make this a fixed Ob (maybe the nature of the pursuers, as you can’t make this a meaningful versus test, and a flee conflict of 5 vs 50 is also pretty doomed), succeed and they get away, then they could choose other options (including engaging a smaller group) from there. A compromise could be a follow up conflict where they have to fight 5 or 6 as you mentioned.

2 and 3 should effectively do the same thing, allow them to choose where and how they encounter the horde, or some portion of it.

  1. I think we’ve got the tools necessary for Battle, we just have to put them together. Dispo = Commander + Will. Attack/Feint = Commander, Maneuver/Defend = I’d go with Steward personally, but you could do Will if you’re being generous. Weapons can be any kind of specialized troops (Cavalry is maneuverable, +1d on maneuvers, etc).

I agree with jovialbard.

You could play it as the characters hacking mook after mook and each time the opposing team regains hit points with a Defend action it represents some reinforcements joining the fray (instead of the same creatures recovering). This will look heroic and epic, which is a little against the whole “murder hobos” setting the game presents, but I’m sure your players will love it.

Also you can create a monster with a special rule like: in large numbers, when in conflict this creature can regain hit points above his original Disposition. You can even arm it with a 2s Defend weapon called Horde!

Edit:

This would be awesome, too. I would give the monsters a greater Might since they are an army instead less than half a dozen of unemployed thugs :stuck_out_tongue: But if they get to convince the local authorities…

Stay cool :cool:

I don’t think I’d let them go above their original disposition, because that would imply they are somehow bypassing the choke point (unless they can somehow bypass the choke point). I think the idea of having them regenerate between rounds until a certain percentage are killed and they decide it’s not worth it, say 10 or 20 tops? You could roll the full 50 dice and see what the total pool of mobs willing to die is, and then just have the hobos fight them 3-5 at a time.

I would go Commander for Attack/Defend and Steward (or something else) for Maneuver/Feint. I feel like this is a situation where the straightforward things use the same skill, and the tricky things use a different skill. Though, if you are leading the battle from the front lines, I could see Fighter for Attack/Defend and Commander for Maneuver/Feint. There’s a lot of ways to slice it, I’m curious to see how they’ll handle it in the official version.