I love DMing. I love seeing what my players come up with. And I love playing/DMing higher-tier adventures almost exclusively (13-20).
And the question I sometimes get is “Can I cast an up-casted Conjure Animals to get 32 Wolves?” The answer is ALWAYS yes. But yet, I see DMs waffling or complaining or just outright banning such things because it’ll slow down the pace, be too difficult to manage, or any other of a myriad of concerns.
All I can say is: get good at dealing with mobs. Learn how to roll quickly, use a dice rolling app, or use the mob rules in the DMG... just get good at it. Here’s what you need to remember:
1) Speed is more important than rolling accurately. Use a dice roller to roll attacks or use mob rules, but do it quick. Spend more time describing a PC getting swarmed by minions than you do actually rolling. It’s chipping damage anyways usually and it’s meant to be visual!
2) Don’t get too granular with tracking HP for every little beast. Find the average HP and just remove a monster for every multiple of that number in damage that is done, or keep it singular and only allow one animal to get hit at a time.
3) Speak with your summoners in advance - tell them that they get very little time to command the swarm so if they don’t decide fast enough, the swarm attacks the nearest enemy. Make it hectic. Make it frenetic. It’ll add to the pace of having so much chaos in battle!
But please please please... don’t discourage it. Entire classes are built around summoning things and it’s awesome to play them and also discouraging when you hear your DM isn’t up to the challenge.
I use the 4E minion rule. Yeah, You could but that amount of magic will make all the hp 1 hen it becomes do they want a few wolves with full HP or a whole pack with 1hp each. In my games, the summoner goes with the minions and they get a few good hits in and take out 1 of the large monsters then they are gone quickly
I also use the 4E minion rule. It works too well. I like to limit the number the amount that can attack any given character at once to speed things up and you can batch the attacks using a dice roller app or several dice at once. Same with damage.
You can get the effect that is equivalent to X hit points, without tracking hit points per target, by rolling a dN (where N is max hp); if the result is less than or equal to the damage done, the target goes down, otherwise it survives. That doesn't work very well for things that have more than 20 hp, but it's fine for low CR stuff, a d12 works for most CR 1/4, a d20 works for most CR 1/2.
I love a good hoard. Actually my party in and of itself is a hoard. I play at my local game shoppe and they have D&D Wednesdays. That is where I heard about DNDB.
Started out with 6 players and I had to start saying no when it got to 10. Tomorrow night I have a battle lined up that will include about 35 enemies.
I tend to run battles pretty fast. I have all the monsters on a spreadsheet with an ID number and a color code. I use wooden disks with numbers on them and color codes. People tell me what number and color they are attacking.
A key to hoard fights are to have your numbers laid out in front of you so your not looking up bonuses and knowing what your spells do. I have sometimes used little tags on stands with a players AC marked on it so I don't have to constantly ask what their AC is. And I have to trust people. I let them know what they need to hit.
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I love DMing. I love seeing what my players come up with. And I love playing/DMing higher-tier adventures almost exclusively (13-20).
And the question I sometimes get is “Can I cast an up-casted Conjure Animals to get 32 Wolves?” The answer is ALWAYS yes. But yet, I see DMs waffling or complaining or just outright banning such things because it’ll slow down the pace, be too difficult to manage, or any other of a myriad of concerns.
All I can say is: get good at dealing with mobs. Learn how to roll quickly, use a dice rolling app, or use the mob rules in the DMG... just get good at it. Here’s what you need to remember:
1) Speed is more important than rolling accurately. Use a dice roller to roll attacks or use mob rules, but do it quick. Spend more time describing a PC getting swarmed by minions than you do actually rolling. It’s chipping damage anyways usually and it’s meant to be visual!
2) Don’t get too granular with tracking HP for every little beast. Find the average HP and just remove a monster for every multiple of that number in damage that is done, or keep it singular and only allow one animal to get hit at a time.
3) Speak with your summoners in advance - tell them that they get very little time to command the swarm so if they don’t decide fast enough, the swarm attacks the nearest enemy. Make it hectic. Make it frenetic. It’ll add to the pace of having so much chaos in battle!
But please please please... don’t discourage it. Entire classes are built around summoning things and it’s awesome to play them and also discouraging when you hear your DM isn’t up to the challenge.
Hope this helps!
I use the 4E minion rule. Yeah, You could but that amount of magic will make all the hp 1 hen it becomes do they want a few wolves with full HP or a whole pack with 1hp each. In my games, the summoner goes with the minions and they get a few good hits in and take out 1 of the large monsters then they are gone quickly
I also use the 4E minion rule. It works too well. I like to limit the number the amount that can attack any given character at once to speed things up and you can batch the attacks using a dice roller app or several dice at once. Same with damage.
You could also just use the "Mob Attacks" rules in the Combat section of the DMG.
You can get the effect that is equivalent to X hit points, without tracking hit points per target, by rolling a dN (where N is max hp); if the result is less than or equal to the damage done, the target goes down, otherwise it survives. That doesn't work very well for things that have more than 20 hp, but it's fine for low CR stuff, a d12 works for most CR 1/4, a d20 works for most CR 1/2.
I love a good hoard. Actually my party in and of itself is a hoard. I play at my local game shoppe and they have D&D Wednesdays. That is where I heard about DNDB.
Started out with 6 players and I had to start saying no when it got to 10. Tomorrow night I have a battle lined up that will include about 35 enemies.
I tend to run battles pretty fast. I have all the monsters on a spreadsheet with an ID number and a color code. I use wooden disks with numbers on them and color codes. People tell me what number and color they are attacking.
A key to hoard fights are to have your numbers laid out in front of you so your not looking up bonuses and knowing what your spells do. I have sometimes used little tags on stands with a players AC marked on it so I don't have to constantly ask what their AC is. And I have to trust people. I let them know what they need to hit.