Paladin of Overconfidence: I stride out ahead of the army and demand the city to surrender.
DM: you do realize there's about 200 archers with longbows on the walls that could hit you if you do that?
Paladin of Overconfidence: I have an AC of 25, they can't hurt me, I do it!
***
Mass attack option makes it a little easier to deal with huge battle groups than individually rolling hundreds of attack dice. It uses a little math, but don't be frightened by the word statistics, it's really pretty simple.
The question to start with is what percentage of attackers can hit the target. With the above example, the Paladin has a high AC, but even if his AC were 100, any roll of 20 would hit him. That means that 5% (or 1 out of 20) of the archers will hit the Paladin. So 10 archers out of 200 will autohit their target- with critical hits. The Paladin takes 20d8 damage round 1.
I've used round numbers for this example, but you can apply similar math to any such mass ranged attack. At AC 20 or higher 5% of the attacks hit, each point of AC lower raises the % of hits by 5, so an AC 11 character will get hit with half the attacks.
Thus was the superiority of arrows over armor demonstrated at Agincourt.
You can roll 3d6 to generate a basic bell curve to vary the %. (Roll of 11=no variation. 12+ roll gives 3d6-11=% increase, roll 10- gives 11-3d6=% decrease.) With actual statistics the higher the number of attackers, the lower the variation from statistical probability, meaning the bell curve gets so tight it practically disappears with huge mass attacks. (Side note-this is also why PC HP tend closer to the average hp/level as a character levels up.)
Note that the mass attack option only applies to ranged attacks. M sized targets can only be engaged in melee by a maximum of 6 characters.
Before applying mass attacks to a character, make sure the character understands the risk before applying damage, as with the example above.
A kind DM will also allow a dex save for half damage.
This is an old topic, but I was scrolling through the Homebrew pages looking for something in particular. Just wanted to say: the DMG also presents a method for dealing with mob attacks. To your credit, though, I like the randomness of your idea better, as with the published one it's a case of "okay, there are X people attacking, therefore you take Y damage, and you will continue to take Y damage until there are no longer X people attacking".
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Paladin of Overconfidence: I stride out ahead of the army and demand the city to surrender.
DM: you do realize there's about 200 archers with longbows on the walls that could hit you if you do that?
Paladin of Overconfidence: I have an AC of 25, they can't hurt me, I do it!
***
Mass attack option makes it a little easier to deal with huge battle groups than individually rolling hundreds of attack dice. It uses a little math, but don't be frightened by the word statistics, it's really pretty simple.
The question to start with is what percentage of attackers can hit the target. With the above example, the Paladin has a high AC, but even if his AC were 100, any roll of 20 would hit him. That means that 5% (or 1 out of 20) of the archers will hit the Paladin. So 10 archers out of 200 will autohit their target- with critical hits. The Paladin takes 20d8 damage round 1.
I've used round numbers for this example, but you can apply similar math to any such mass ranged attack. At AC 20 or higher 5% of the attacks hit, each point of AC lower raises the % of hits by 5, so an AC 11 character will get hit with half the attacks.
Thus was the superiority of arrows over armor demonstrated at Agincourt.
You can roll 3d6 to generate a basic bell curve to vary the %. (Roll of 11=no variation. 12+ roll gives 3d6-11=% increase, roll 10- gives 11-3d6=% decrease.) With actual statistics the higher the number of attackers, the lower the variation from statistical probability, meaning the bell curve gets so tight it practically disappears with huge mass attacks. (Side note-this is also why PC HP tend closer to the average hp/level as a character levels up.)
Note that the mass attack option only applies to ranged attacks. M sized targets can only be engaged in melee by a maximum of 6 characters.
Before applying mass attacks to a character, make sure the character understands the risk before applying damage, as with the example above.
A kind DM will also allow a dex save for half damage.
This is an old topic, but I was scrolling through the Homebrew pages looking for something in particular. Just wanted to say: the DMG also presents a method for dealing with mob attacks. To your credit, though, I like the randomness of your idea better, as with the published one it's a case of "okay, there are X people attacking, therefore you take Y damage, and you will continue to take Y damage until there are no longer X people attacking".