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I use Dynasty Warriors console/PC game as an example. There are those normal enemy forces, what you kill whit few hits. And in one scenario, you can easily kill hundreds of them.
But how is it in rpg's? You kill few mobs one by one, hitpoint by hitpoint.
I have dreamed of making a game of legendary warriors, whose swordsmanship and battle skills cannot be compared with common folk and soldiers. Those, who run through battle field and swing their sword. Instead of taking 10 blows to one enemy, they kill 10 enemies with 10 blows. Fast and furious and deadly.
But how to make this work? Seriously, in rpg's combat usually is quite slow phased, and you don't get these situations, where in few turns hero character has cleared one room full of guards.
I am not aware, if there already is a rpg system what can handle mass combats. Where is one agains tens. Or hundreds.
I have a small idea though, what I am working out to make this happen. It is just idea, what I need to write down and test it.
I hope, some day my player can be asian warrior with a sword, who can run through the battle field to attack the main boss. And kill or wound several minions with less to no effort.
I think the concept of system I am working on could be universally adapted to any system, but I will also make it additional rule, or even legendary hero supplement(tm) for Ydin.
3 comments:
D&D 4E has minions, though you're still limited to few attacks per round, but with some melee area attacks you can get quite many kills.
Finnish game E.N.O.C. takes this concept a bit further with unnamed and named enemies, where those unnamed drop like flies if you even gaze there.
Exalted, I think, has some kind of method dealing with this few vs. 10000, but the PCs in that game are usually demigods.
@Nestori: Haven't read that yet, but I suppose it is fast and destructive (towards aliens) system.
@kka0s: Haven't read E.N.O.C. so not sure about it's details, but other rpg's have similar system about enemies. For example in oWoD there are those weak enemies with much less health, you can quite easily incapacitade with one hit. Add celerity and potence and you kick quite hard those average nameless gang members.
Exalted yet again system I am not familiar with. Powerful character's I've heard with massive dicepool.
What I thought was that you don't necessarily handle monsters as individuals, but mere a group. So instead of killing those 10 koblins separately, you kill the bunch of koblins.
If there is like 10 koblins there is 10 damage steps. Higher the damage step, higher damage they do. So basically if you deal 4 points of damage, you kill 4 koblins in one turn decreasing their power as a group. This kind of system I was thinking about. That would make a feel of swiwrling blade cutting at least three heads off in one turn.
A bit like Dynasty Warriors style, where enemies are in groups, and you run towards them repeatedly pressing attack button and hitting or killing multiple opponents with one or few strikes.
In 3:16 you don't roll for damage. You roll straight for killcount.
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I once hurled some masses against my players, in a D&D 3.5 setting. Once there were many skeletons. No individual skeletons were operated, but instead they moved as a mass, where every square within the mass was expected to have 4 skeletons squeezed in. According to rules, that caused some penalties to skeletons, but on the other hand, I made a generalized attack rule for all the skeletons so that a "stack" of skeletons attacked something like as one. Players would also kill skeletons as much as their damage allowed them to, i recall. Say, for every 5 points of damagea dealt, one skeleton was considered as perished, though as well I could just have given 500 hp to the skeletal horde and after it "dies", just scatter few random skeletons to smooth the end.
I also used a somewhat extended rule of this for mass combat. There I used average attack, AC and combined hp for regiments of (whatever) 100 units. For example, 100 orcs would have attack bonus of +3, AC 15, damage 8 and 500 hp. Basic damage would be 100 x 8. Then attacking regiment rolled 3d20 attack roll, picked the median roll (excluding smallest and largest), say 10 adjusted attack bonus, (+3) and compared that to enemy regiment AC. For every difference up or down, total damage would be modified by 5% per difference, being 50% on par.
Half damage, if melee regiment is not having a complete frontal assault on it's enemy.
Also half damage, if regiment has lost more than 3/4 of it's total hp.
This was quite effective methdo, and on bonus side, it was compatible with standard D&D statblock entry, so you could make a regiment with any kind of stats.
As for special abilities though one needes to be creative to apply them fluently.
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