Two words: BURNING HANDS. That 15' cone of fire has incinerated many legions of kobolds and goblins, sometimes getting four or five at once. This also works for Dragonborn breath weapons.
In the few times I have DM'd where there were multiple combatants, I grouped them up to act on 1 initiative and when rolling for attacks, used a system where a couple roll 1 over the roll, couple rolled 1 under, and a couple rolled at the roll. So, if we have 15 combatants, I would make groups. Group 1 has 4 as does Group 2 and 3 while group 4 had 3. Roll inititive for the 4 groups. When it comes to a specific group in the round, roll for attack. 14 is the roll let's say. Because the group is a nice number, we can use half get +1 to the roll and the other half dont. Quickly figure out what hits and just roll damage. I usually use the same rolls for damage on who got it.
For the group that got 3 combatants, we can have 1 use the roll and the other two get +1 or -1 to roll. This made combat more fluid and less taxing to my head. Just an idea
I ran a combat where players were allied with a crew of NPCs and matched up against waves of raiding orcs. I believe there were about 30-40 orcs, sent in waves to constitute a series of encounters. Allied NPCs had limited spell access, basically a single spell slot per spell level, with the best casters having 2nd level access. This meant that all players had to manage for any given NPC was a basic cantrip and two spells. Other NPCs were basic ranged or basic melee attackers.
All told the combat took about 3 hours, and the capstone was a beefy Orog with two pet hellhounds. Players had taken some time to arrange defenses, and got a lot of work done with clever use of fog cloud and spike growth. Some of the defending NPCs were still cut down, with one being dragged out of a window by an orc who did particularly well on his grapple check.
All in all I would say it went well, but this was at a lower level. A multitude of higher level characters with more combat options and reactions would slow things down, but you can pick up the pace by amassing weaker NPCs into groups of 3-4, rolling their attacks all at once and using average damage.
If I have nameless NPCs fighting nameless NPCs in a large-scale combat, usually I just roll a win/loss per combat between them. Or if there is a direction the combat is supposed to go for narrative reasons then I wont roll for non-NPCs, I'll just storyboard the background combats for the PCs.
For having a large amount of enemies, I'll roll individually if they are less then 10, over that and I roll them all at once. As a DM though I also don't seek out opportunities to make my job harder lol.
My personal experience is that the more participants there is in a fight, the less you should pay attention to the actual rules, and the more focus on roleplaying.
4-5 decent enemies ? Fine, go by the rules. normal team VS 20 kobolds ? How about the barbarian's club swing makes them flying 2 by 2, and you don't keep track of their individual positions on the map ? 30v30 fight ? Come on, this would take a year to play by the book. Just make the players explain their actions, and as the DM, judge about the result according to the character's skills, a good old dice and your feeling about it.
I remember a huge battle we did, a few hundred soldiers attacking a small city. We improvised rules about catapult handling, directing groups of people and dealing with a lone wizard far too powerful for us with said catapults. We used our spells, maneuvers and everything, keeping track of our characters' exhaustion, etc. It was a really good session.
TL;DR : Fights in D&D grow more and more tedious to manage as the number of participants go up. Alleviate that by being less strict on the rules.
Are the 10-15 all PCs? Because, if so, then may Tyr bless you, because that seems like a pain to run. Either way, I usually just do a combat scenario where there are multiple skirmishes going on at once, but we only focus on the PCs.
So, say the 10-15 consists of the party + 5-10 NPC allies, have those NPC allies break off to keep part of a group busy while the party goes after the BBEG. Perhaps you are saving a town from a marauding group of bandits and there is a bandit captain leading them. The townsfolk are able to temporarily fight the bandits (which will happen off-screen), but the PCs have to take down their leader before the townsfolk are overwhelmed by the stronger force. This is also a good way to have an NPC ally die that will make the players feel as if they could've done something to stop it. "Had we only gotten to the bandit captain sooner!" or "We should've helped him instead of leaving them to fend for themselves!" is a good plot hook to drive the players to discover who sent the bandits in the first place.
Or you could reverse it if the PCs are the lower-powered characters. I have always found it interesting to have the uber-NPCs go off to fight a BBEG that would be an almost instant TPK for the lower-level PCs and have the PCs fight a lieutenant or perhaps just a powerful "minion" (not 4e-type minion obv) of him/her/it. You know, a "We'll hold them off, you stop the ritual!" kind of situation. It's a good way to introduce a recurring villain who they will later fight; and even show some of his/her abilities without the PCs risking dying as a result of them (and let them prepare for said ability if they remember it way down the line).
You could also choose to do it as a progressive encounter. Set it up for Skirmishes A, B, and C and just resolve them at the same time. The PCs start out in Skirmish A. This plays out like a regular encounter, meanwhile use the monster's/NPC's CRs to see what happens for skirmishes B and C. If the PCs' allies are weaker than the PCs, have the NPCs in B and C take some sort of damage (say 1/4 - 1/2 of their health) and have the enemies of that encounter take some sort of damage to match (if one side is obviously stronger than the other you can have the stronger side take less damage and the weaker side take more - but hold off on killing anyone in the first phase of this encounter). You can then have the PCs rush to aid one of the remaining skirmishes and run it as a combat encounter with the weakened forces and treat the third skirmish as you did before, leaving the allies and enemies even weaker (possibly even killing off some of the weaker forces on both sides). Then the PCs go and mop up the last skirmish if necessary, or if you want one side to win the third skirmish, have the winning forces come in while the PCs are fighting to reinforce the appropriate side. If the PCs' allies are equal in strength (or stronger) have their encounter end at the same time (or before) the PCs' encounter (possibly coming to help the PCs if necessary).
The skirmish route can be easily adapted if it's mostly/all PCs, but have the skirmishes occur as one large encounter. The best way to do this is to have each encounter be in a separate place (separate sides of town being invaded, for example). The best example I can think of for this is the LotR movie; The Two Towers. The battle at Helms Deep is filled with multiple skirmishes with both PCs (the main characters) and NPCs (the no-named soldiers) alike. Aragorn and Gimli fight on the bridge, while Legolas fights on the top of/inside the keep. Meanwhile, another battle (the Ents attacking Isengard) is happening at relatively the same time. So, though they were separated by a large distance, the two battles (all three skirmishes) are being resolved at the same time. So, have everyone roll initiative and take their actions as normal. This will actually help break up the monotony of normal combat, because the PCs in one group can see what is happening to another group, but can't help or intervene (which provides a little bit of tension). It also prevents them all from targeting one BBEG, as they should all be too busy fighting their own encounters.
“It is a better world. A place where we are responsible for our actions, where we can be kind to one another because we want to and because it is the right thing to do instead of being frightened into behaving by the threat of divine punishment.” ― Oramis, Eldest by Christopher Paolini.
Have you ever tried playing one of the Adventurer's League's "Epic" adventures? Technically speaking, we had multiple tables in the same "fight". So whatever laundry list of monsters we fought was essentially divided equally among the tables for fairness. Then, each table had different "cards" with things like Advantage on Saving Throws, things like that. Additionally, we could send monsters to other tables, or accept monsters from other tables. That way if they were struggling we could help. This gave a really cool scale to the fight, with just enough interactivity that we felt like our parties were fighting side by side. It was fun, and not tedious at all! It really edges the meta-game line, but in a fun, multi-party, environment.
In the first campaign I ran with my group, they (and an army of npcs) fought a 4000 + army of orcs during the climax. I ran the orcs as several swarms each with 100 hp. Mechanically did not reflect the realism but I believe that came with my storytelling.
Was just playing in a game where our party of 6 and a group of a dozen or so soldiers ambushed a villain with 20 or so bodyguards. Ran it like a normal combat encounter. Most of the lesser henchmen on both sides died fairly quickly so by the end of the encounter it was more like a standard fight. In total the whole thing took us about 90 mins with a small break in the middle give or take. It really helps to have one player run the allied NPCs. Keeps things moving.
It was pretty fun to be honest. First time we really ever tried to get tactical and plan our attack carefully, as opposed to just kicking down the door and swinging swords.
Plus my character is a Hunter Ranger with Horde Breaker, plus I took a dip in Fighter to get Battle Master maneuvers. Lots of fun for larger battles.
I feel like with large scale combat there should be a few hero-like enemies that the players have to deal with, An enemy that stands out among the crowd. So like in every 100 or so enemies, have a warrior with better equipment, a magic item, or a spellcaster. It adds a bit of spice to large scale combat
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Hell yeah I am going to Polymorph the boss into a Rabbit. I have always wanted a being a pure evil stuffed into a ball of fluff.
I feel like with large scale combat there should be a few hero-like enemies that the players have to deal with, An enemy that stands out among the crowd. So like in every 100 or so enemies, have a warrior with better equipment, a magic item, or a spellcaster. It adds a bit of spice to large scale combat
Yes actually in the unearthed arcana mass combat I seem to recall that you can open " small window" during the mass combat and run en encounter normally, for the players to shine.
Although fighting in big groups does take forever and is somewhat tedious, I have noticed many benefits from fighting with lots of people. For example; once my group and I, we where fighting a large group of bugbears in a narrow hallway, this allowed the stronger characters with high AC to be at the front and take all the damage for all the other members. Those that where behind where able to shoot and cast freely the bugbears from behind the protection of our friends since the bug bears had absolutely no way of causing any harm to us since there where lots of people in the way of their attacks. Those bugbears where also really bad that day, they all kept missing all of their attacks and somehow and I miraculously did not accidentally shoot one of my friends in the back of the head. I have been in a situation like this multiple times and if there we where not a group as big as we where my character would have probably died.
When in doubt retreat and regroup. Look at your situation. When I am the DM I always see my friends characters jump into battle and when they get overwhelmed they back out. Also guarding is a good tactic. Also never underestimate running away. You might get judged for it, but who is walking out of there alive? Not your friends, but you. Hope this helps with big encounters, and happy adventuring!
I know there was an UA on army-scale combat, but do any players or DMs have good experiences with combat that might have 10-15 participants?
I feel it always starts to get tedious, but it's easy to have a group combo down a BBEG if there aren't minions and stuff with it.
Two words: BURNING HANDS. That 15' cone of fire has incinerated many legions of kobolds and goblins, sometimes getting four or five at once. This also works for Dragonborn breath weapons.
In the few times I have DM'd where there were multiple combatants, I grouped them up to act on 1 initiative and when rolling for attacks, used a system where a couple roll 1 over the roll, couple rolled 1 under, and a couple rolled at the roll. So, if we have 15 combatants, I would make groups. Group 1 has 4 as does Group 2 and 3 while group 4 had 3. Roll inititive for the 4 groups. When it comes to a specific group in the round, roll for attack. 14 is the roll let's say. Because the group is a nice number, we can use half get +1 to the roll and the other half dont. Quickly figure out what hits and just roll damage. I usually use the same rolls for damage on who got it.
For the group that got 3 combatants, we can have 1 use the roll and the other two get +1 or -1 to roll. This made combat more fluid and less taxing to my head. Just an idea
I ran a combat where players were allied with a crew of NPCs and matched up against waves of raiding orcs. I believe there were about 30-40 orcs, sent in waves to constitute a series of encounters. Allied NPCs had limited spell access, basically a single spell slot per spell level, with the best casters having 2nd level access. This meant that all players had to manage for any given NPC was a basic cantrip and two spells. Other NPCs were basic ranged or basic melee attackers.
All told the combat took about 3 hours, and the capstone was a beefy Orog with two pet hellhounds. Players had taken some time to arrange defenses, and got a lot of work done with clever use of fog cloud and spike growth. Some of the defending NPCs were still cut down, with one being dragged out of a window by an orc who did particularly well on his grapple check.
All in all I would say it went well, but this was at a lower level. A multitude of higher level characters with more combat options and reactions would slow things down, but you can pick up the pace by amassing weaker NPCs into groups of 3-4, rolling their attacks all at once and using average damage.
If I have nameless NPCs fighting nameless NPCs in a large-scale combat, usually I just roll a win/loss per combat between them. Or if there is a direction the combat is supposed to go for narrative reasons then I wont roll for non-NPCs, I'll just storyboard the background combats for the PCs.
For having a large amount of enemies, I'll roll individually if they are less then 10, over that and I roll them all at once. As a DM though I also don't seek out opportunities to make my job harder lol.
My personal experience is that the more participants there is in a fight, the less you should pay attention to the actual rules, and the more focus on roleplaying.
4-5 decent enemies ? Fine, go by the rules.
normal team VS 20 kobolds ? How about the barbarian's club swing makes them flying 2 by 2, and you don't keep track of their individual positions on the map ?
30v30 fight ? Come on, this would take a year to play by the book. Just make the players explain their actions, and as the DM, judge about the result according to the character's skills, a good old dice and your feeling about it.
I remember a huge battle we did, a few hundred soldiers attacking a small city. We improvised rules about catapult handling, directing groups of people and dealing with a lone wizard far too powerful for us with said catapults. We used our spells, maneuvers and everything, keeping track of our characters' exhaustion, etc. It was a really good session.
TL;DR : Fights in D&D grow more and more tedious to manage as the number of participants go up. Alleviate that by being less strict on the rules.
In the DMG there is a paragraph in the optional rules section where you can find a method to make large encounters faster.
The Unearthed Arcana Mass combat is for hundreds of npcs. Like during a war or a siege.
I would say 20vs.20 go with the DMG. If you want to test a war go Unearthed Arcana.
Are the 10-15 all PCs? Because, if so, then may Tyr bless you, because that seems like a pain to run. Either way, I usually just do a combat scenario where there are multiple skirmishes going on at once, but we only focus on the PCs.
So, say the 10-15 consists of the party + 5-10 NPC allies, have those NPC allies break off to keep part of a group busy while the party goes after the BBEG. Perhaps you are saving a town from a marauding group of bandits and there is a bandit captain leading them. The townsfolk are able to temporarily fight the bandits (which will happen off-screen), but the PCs have to take down their leader before the townsfolk are overwhelmed by the stronger force. This is also a good way to have an NPC ally die that will make the players feel as if they could've done something to stop it. "Had we only gotten to the bandit captain sooner!" or "We should've helped him instead of leaving them to fend for themselves!" is a good plot hook to drive the players to discover who sent the bandits in the first place.
Or you could reverse it if the PCs are the lower-powered characters. I have always found it interesting to have the uber-NPCs go off to fight a BBEG that would be an almost instant TPK for the lower-level PCs and have the PCs fight a lieutenant or perhaps just a powerful "minion" (not 4e-type minion obv) of him/her/it. You know, a "We'll hold them off, you stop the ritual!" kind of situation. It's a good way to introduce a recurring villain who they will later fight; and even show some of his/her abilities without the PCs risking dying as a result of them (and let them prepare for said ability if they remember it way down the line).
You could also choose to do it as a progressive encounter. Set it up for Skirmishes A, B, and C and just resolve them at the same time. The PCs start out in Skirmish A. This plays out like a regular encounter, meanwhile use the monster's/NPC's CRs to see what happens for skirmishes B and C. If the PCs' allies are weaker than the PCs, have the NPCs in B and C take some sort of damage (say 1/4 - 1/2 of their health) and have the enemies of that encounter take some sort of damage to match (if one side is obviously stronger than the other you can have the stronger side take less damage and the weaker side take more - but hold off on killing anyone in the first phase of this encounter). You can then have the PCs rush to aid one of the remaining skirmishes and run it as a combat encounter with the weakened forces and treat the third skirmish as you did before, leaving the allies and enemies even weaker (possibly even killing off some of the weaker forces on both sides). Then the PCs go and mop up the last skirmish if necessary, or if you want one side to win the third skirmish, have the winning forces come in while the PCs are fighting to reinforce the appropriate side. If the PCs' allies are equal in strength (or stronger) have their encounter end at the same time (or before) the PCs' encounter (possibly coming to help the PCs if necessary).
The skirmish route can be easily adapted if it's mostly/all PCs, but have the skirmishes occur as one large encounter. The best way to do this is to have each encounter be in a separate place (separate sides of town being invaded, for example). The best example I can think of for this is the LotR movie; The Two Towers. The battle at Helms Deep is filled with multiple skirmishes with both PCs (the main characters) and NPCs (the no-named soldiers) alike. Aragorn and Gimli fight on the bridge, while Legolas fights on the top of/inside the keep. Meanwhile, another battle (the Ents attacking Isengard) is happening at relatively the same time. So, though they were separated by a large distance, the two battles (all three skirmishes) are being resolved at the same time. So, have everyone roll initiative and take their actions as normal. This will actually help break up the monotony of normal combat, because the PCs in one group can see what is happening to another group, but can't help or intervene (which provides a little bit of tension). It also prevents them all from targeting one BBEG, as they should all be too busy fighting their own encounters.
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“It is a better world. A place where we are responsible for our actions, where we can be kind to one another because we want to and because it is the right thing to do instead of being frightened into behaving by the threat of divine punishment.” ― Oramis, Eldest by Christopher Paolini.
Have you ever tried playing one of the Adventurer's League's "Epic" adventures? Technically speaking, we had multiple tables in the same "fight". So whatever laundry list of monsters we fought was essentially divided equally among the tables for fairness. Then, each table had different "cards" with things like Advantage on Saving Throws, things like that. Additionally, we could send monsters to other tables, or accept monsters from other tables. That way if they were struggling we could help. This gave a really cool scale to the fight, with just enough interactivity that we felt like our parties were fighting side by side. It was fun, and not tedious at all! It really edges the meta-game line, but in a fun, multi-party, environment.
In the first campaign I ran with my group, they (and an army of npcs) fought a 4000 + army of orcs during the climax. I ran the orcs as several swarms each with 100 hp. Mechanically did not reflect the realism but I believe that came with my storytelling.
Good Morning Gamers!!
Was just playing in a game where our party of 6 and a group of a dozen or so soldiers ambushed a villain with 20 or so bodyguards. Ran it like a normal combat encounter. Most of the lesser henchmen on both sides died fairly quickly so by the end of the encounter it was more like a standard fight. In total the whole thing took us about 90 mins with a small break in the middle give or take. It really helps to have one player run the allied NPCs. Keeps things moving.
It was pretty fun to be honest. First time we really ever tried to get tactical and plan our attack carefully, as opposed to just kicking down the door and swinging swords.
Plus my character is a Hunter Ranger with Horde Breaker, plus I took a dip in Fighter to get Battle Master maneuvers. Lots of fun for larger battles.
I feel like with large scale combat there should be a few hero-like enemies that the players have to deal with, An enemy that stands out among the crowd. So like in every 100 or so enemies, have a warrior with better equipment, a magic item, or a spellcaster. It adds a bit of spice to large scale combat
Hell yeah I am going to Polymorph the boss into a Rabbit. I have always wanted a being a pure evil stuffed into a ball of fluff.
Although fighting in big groups does take forever and is somewhat tedious, I have noticed many benefits from fighting with lots of people. For example; once my group and I, we where fighting a large group of bugbears in a narrow hallway, this allowed the stronger characters with high AC to be at the front and take all the damage for all the other members. Those that where behind where able to shoot and cast freely the bugbears from behind the protection of our friends since the bug bears had absolutely no way of causing any harm to us since there where lots of people in the way of their attacks. Those bugbears where also really bad that day, they all kept missing all of their attacks and somehow and I miraculously did not accidentally shoot one of my friends in the back of the head. I have been in a situation like this multiple times and if there we where not a group as big as we where my character would have probably died.
As far as larger than normal battles are concerned you could try the Mass Combat option part of the newer Unearthed Arcana sections. http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/unearthed-arcana/mass-combat
When in doubt retreat and regroup. Look at your situation. When I am the DM I always see my friends characters jump into battle and when they get overwhelmed they back out. Also guarding is a good tactic. Also never underestimate running away. You might get judged for it, but who is walking out of there alive? Not your friends, but you. Hope this helps with big encounters, and happy adventuring!
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