Apart from the DM that uses it, I think it would be very useful for those who summon a lot of creatures, cough, druids. Ironically, I contributed to it some time ago, although there wasn`t much discussion. What do you think of crowd handling rules? Implications of this system: the advantages and disadvantages do not require special rules. Just make a single throw with adv/disadv and apply the group modifiers to the result. Auto-Miss and Crits also work as expected. Since each group uses the same natural dice roll, a natural 1 means everyone is missing and 20 means everyone is critical. It`s funny: the 20 Hobgoblins deal 40d8+20 (200) damage! It was so fast that I feel like I know less about crowd rules now than before I watch All have +4 to hit and need to meet 20 AC, so you need a 16 to hit. According to the crowd attack table, 16 receive a hit for 4 creatures. There are 15 creatures, so 3 hits. The creature that deals the most damage gets all the hits and can use multiattacks, so the boss gets 3 multiattacks, each dealing 10 damages and causing 30. The reason I don`t particularly like DMG rules is that this calculation is the same as 12 boss attackers.
First, here are the rules of the crowd: www.dndbeyond.com/sources/dmg/running-the-game#HandlingMobs Blog of Holding found that these crowd rules can also work well for mass struggles. With pools of hit points for groups of monsters and with the damage calculator and crowd memory throwing, we could fight a war between 100 skeletons, 50 guards and 20 elven scouts. Each turn, damage is inflicted on the group, so many are killed and the amount of damage they inflict on the other side is reduced. We can learn from the mass combat rules of the arcana unearthed and apply all the damage at the same time, instead of one group going before the other to simulate the whole battle. Personally, I`m not a fan of the rest of the AU mass struggle rules, but the crowd rules work well for them. With this system, you could, for example, have an old red dragon fight against a hundred knights. I think a natural 20 means all the bandits are screaming. It`s very spicy, but it doesn`t require rule adjustment, and you can justify it by saying that in mass combat, a critical hit is a devastating attack from an advantageous position, and you just need to spice it up accordingly (storm downhill, turn the flank, shoot when they see the whites of their eyes). Since monsters represent large groups of creatures, the typical rules of size and space of creatures do not apply to them.
For example, fifty goblins will fill much more space than that of a gigantic creature (which would normally fill only 16 squares). The Crowd Size and Space chart below shows how much space the monsters fill. WotC has just relaxed the rules of mass struggle for 5th. media.wizards.com/2015/downloads/dnd/UA_Battlesystem.pdf sorry, only the first few short paragraphs were an answer to your question and the many longer paragraphs scolded me about how these rules need to be changed to be better. Of course, the rules do not say to calculate the benefit, and you really should, since the calculation in this case doubles the number of moves. The quick and easy way to calculate the advantage is to reuse the number “the attacker needs one to hit” for each attacker with advantage that is missing. So since 4 out of 5 scrum forwards missed and hit 1 out of 4, extra shot 1 is advantageous. And since 6 out of 7 distant attackers missed and 1 out of 5 scored, the extra 1 shot is an advantage. (Not according to the book, just a mathematically more precise house rule). I only use the normal combat rules, but I group monsters into units of 6. One unit rolls to hit another unit: it hits or misses as a whole. Let`s say you have a unit of 5 orcs hitting a unit of 6 pawns: Launch d6 orc damage, x5 for 5 attackers.
The farmer unit absorbs the damage until a farmer reaches 0, which becomes a victim, and we have 1 less farmer in the unit. It works fine when all attackers are equal (and they don`t have (disadvantage)), but these rules don`t add up if attackers do different damage or have multiple attacks and skew the math in favor of monsters much more than it should (as illustrated in the spoiler). The Book of Hordes is better than the DMG rules for monsters in almost every way. He essentially uses the concept of swarms and scales them for small and medium creatures in hordes that are treated as a gigantic creature on the battlefield. Some of the best homebrew for 5th I`ve ever found. I fought a big battle yesterday: 8 mid-level PCs and 10 gnomes against 20+ Drow and other different creatures, including a Drow spider tank and a sinister angel. With a wizard and a wizard PC and two drow wizards all throwing fireballs, mob attacks weren`t a big factor. With all those fireballs, I could have used rules to save the crowd. The best way to deal with crowds is to treat them as a field hazard or a complex trap.
XGtE has excellent rules for complex traps. Because when you`re dealing with crowds, that`s exactly what you`re fighting against: a complex trap. Therefore, you just need to attach the elements of the complex trap to a host of monsters, and presto: it`s an easy encounter to walk. I think that`s where context and history come in. My PCs have been with most of the guards for about 10 sessions now, and they`ve become very fond of some of them. All guards use the “named character” rules when reduced to 0 horsepower – they can do death rescues (which I of course let the players roll). I know what will happen is that Lathander`s weak cleric will rush to stabilize them. Also, the PCs will attract the most fire because the bandits already know who they are and they are really dangerous. You`re right that every PC has a different air conditioner, but always remember, “OK, that crowd hits X once every 4, 5, or 6 bad guys” for each of your players will be less work if you compare that to rolling the dice 4, 5 or 6 times. Especially in a game with a large number of crowds.
At one point, my group managed to aggrocate all the monsters I had in an encounter and simply picked up an attack from 20 different monsters. I would have liked to know these rules for this meeting. Now, the DMG gives some rules for executing monsters, mainly in the amount of damage they cause. And that`s helpful. But that still doesn`t address the insane number of hit points a crowd will have, the fact that characters can only attack a certain number at a time, and other complicated issues that will severely limit game time. A mid-level encounter designed to distribute only 300 XP per character at level 10 simply isn`t worth it. The following is my solution to this riddle: advanced crowd rules. When we have bigger battles, I might find other rules I need (after all, the mail chain rules are much longer than this blog post), but for now, it looks pretty good for fighting big D&D skirmishes.
Few things say more “epic” than skillful heroes trampling countless hordes of inferior servants. The 5th rules are unfortunately not suitable for such meetings. With this model, player characters can fight elegantly against a large number of enemies without requiring too much micromanagement or dice, or trampling on the philosophy of limited precision design. Although 5e already has rules of mass struggle, I personally don`t like how incompatible they are with a man-to-man scale. Think of this model as a variant. If the mob has had a ranged weapon attack, they receive the barrage action, a ranged weapon attack that targets any creature of their choice within a 20-foot radius. a point at hand. When hit, a target takes damage calculated four times the damage cube of the base creature`s most damaging ranged attack. For example, the same crowd of orcs performing the barrage with their spears would inflict 22 (4d6 + 8) penetrating damage on a single hit. An MD constantly has to play many creatures, but a player who can launch 5 attacks in one turn is a game changer for them. That`s why the invocation is so cool.
Obviously, area attacks will be particularly effective against crowds. Since we probably don`t have a hundred creeping claw figures on a grid, we have to estimate how many monsters in a crowd will be hit by a particular explosion. 4x the number given in our Spirit Theatre Combat Guidelines is a good start; About 16 for a fireball, 12 for lightning or burning hands. You can choose more or less, depending on circumstances and negotiations (“of course, you can hit 30, but you have to drop the fireball on the whole game”). The constant elements of the crowd make it possible to have an impact when it is not the turn of the crowd. At the end of each creature`s turn, or when a creature performs an action or moves, look at the constant elements of the crowd to see if any of their effects are triggered. AC 17-18 5 rats our swarm serves 5 points per spin All you need to know in advance is the AC and attack bonus of your players. You calculate the numbers you need in battle, and from that moment on, you no longer need to roll the dice for your creatures. If you`re running a dozen or more little monsters, that`s a lot of time saving. Typical battles in D&D have a group of characters, usually four to six, fighting against a similar number of monsters.
From one to maybe twelve.