A few Heroes vs a Horde

[BhelliomRahl]

My Players are about to enter a battle zone. Two opposing Organisations have resorted to open warfare. Each side has 100s of lesser creatures; Zombies, Skeletons, etc. and Heavy Hitters Demons, Werewolves, Vampires, etc.

 

Unfortunately for the local populace they have been caught in the middle of this war. The players feel compelled to save them (The large Bounties on the creatures does not hurt either).

 

If the PCs go up against the Heavies it is quite manageable but with the lesser creatures such as zombies that are moving in groups of between 20-50 could become unmanageable (Time and Records) in a individual combat bases. My initial thought was to use the Mass Combat Rules from Hero Fantasy.

 

So a will end up with PCs attacking a group of 50 split into 5 units of 10.

 

I am interested if people can see any flaws with this plan or have used the same or different methods for handling similar situations.

 

[Cassandra]

Need more information. What kind of terrain is the battle taking place on? Are the hordes able to operate individually, or do they need the command and control of their leaders? What kind of powers do the heroes have available? Are each horde attacking a city from different directions with the population caught in the middle? What kind of powers do the heroes have available? Are there any natural terrain features such as a river or canyon that could allow the heroes to channel to the fight away from the city?

[Cassandra]

Let's say that we have a DC-Marvel Crossover where Darkseid and Dr. Doom are battling over Metropolis. Darkseid has a 125 Parademons while Dr. Doom has a 125 Doombots. Both Darkseid and Dr. Doom are 250 Point Characters, while each of the Parademons/Doombots are 100 Points each.

 

A combined Justice League/Avengers team is trying to stop them. The team is made up of Superman, Green Lantern, and Black Canary from the JLA, and Captain America, She Hulk, and Iron Man from The Avengers. Captain America makes a Tactics roll and deduces that the best way to keep the Invading Armies from entering the city is to keep them off the North Bridge, and drive them into the river, while taking out both Darkseid and Dr. Doom would end the invasion once and for all. Iron Man and Green Lantern block the entrance to the Bridge while Superman and Captain America go after Darkseid, and She Hulk and Black Canary go after Dr. Doom.

 

Green Lantern uses a Force Wall to block the paths of Doombots while Iron Man draws the Parademons into an airborne battle. Darkseid has kryptonite available to use against Superman, but Captain America deflects his Omega beam back at him, knocking him out. Dr. Doom entraps She Hulk with a sticky entangle, but Black Canary's sonic cry shock circuits his armor and he is defeated. Both armies, now leaderless, retreat.

[IndianaJoe3]

You could build the lesser creatures as swarms - this would let the characters mow through scores of creatures (each one representing 1-2 BODY of the horde) while keeping the total number of combatants down.

[BhelliomRahl]

Setting: Monster Hunter International.

Abilities: Human (Heroic) equipped with Armour (9-11rPD) and Modern Weapons ( Assault Rifle, Grenades, etc.)

Location: Seattle, Washington. - Main confrontation is in Washington State Park (modified slightly to fit my needs) - Terrain: Lawns, Woodland, Open Air Theatre (Event occurring at present), etc. Other confrontations will take place at various location around Downtown Seattle (Vancouver Method) - Terrain: Urban.

 

Unit Types: The Demons, Werewolves and Vampires are capable of acting independently. The Lesser Undead are built as Automation - Can follow simple commands given by creator/master. Control can be taken by a powerful spellcaster which are not present on the battlefield.

 

Civilians: It is a Saturday evening. There is a concert and other events on at the park (Armies planning to transform civilians into undead to bolster their ranks). Downtown is teaming with Night Life. Depending on PC action some area will of been cleared of civilians.

 

 

[Beast]

If the Heroes can choose where the normals are to be defended it becomes location,location location

where 1 or 2 of the heroes can defend the normals from the hordes and the others can put the sting on the heavies

[ayinde]

I would just build all your lessers as groups and call each group I monster

each group is made up of one type of monster and gets all the powers of that monster plus the fallowing

damage reduction 50% not vs area effect powers that cover entire group (25% for all other area effect powers)

rapid fire for there attacks (take on you take them all on!!)

 

with this set up your heavy hit monsters are as much of a problem as your lesser groups throw in a couple of lone lesser monsters that your heroes can take down to save npcs from and distract there actions and you have a fairly epic battle

[Christopher]

I personally like the approach of Warhammer 40k Deathwatch RPG here. A single normal human against a deathwatch marine doesn't even register as danger. Instead of battling single beings, those guys battle hordes of normal humans (be they a mob or a organized platoon). The same is done for swarming foes like the Tyranids.

Special Weapones teams are slightly better off, registering as a single Combat enemy with much lower amount of manpower.

Equal foes of course are handeeld as single, normal Characters for the Protatgonsits.

 

I though about applying this to Superheroic games, by taking a bunch of smaler foes (say 1-3 Wehrmacht Soldiers in a WW2 game) and making the whole unit a Character(sheet). The same could be done to Bankrobbers, Thugs and other foes in the 100 point area.

Though foes like tanks or Special Anti-Super agents would register as single Characters, as would real superhumans. But normal rank and file is so inferior they have to band togetehr to even be a viable target.

 

Anotehr approach would be to not let them fight the big hordes. The normal, large scale fighting is done by the average soldiers (Police, National Guard). Instead the characters go after Strategic Targets only, avoiding the bulk of the enemy forces.

If they were caught up in large scale battles their chances of survival could go way down. But if they go after important targets (the hostage Situation, Closing a Portal through wich deamon reinforcements arrive, a makeshift shrines that Desanctifies an area for the enemies advantage) they can have an impact while the larget scale battle rages in teh background.

[NuSoardGraphite]

You could build the lesser creatures as swarms - this would let the characters mow through scores of creatures (each one representing 1-2 BODY of the horde) while keeping the total number of combatants down.

 

This is an excellent suggestion. I would like to explore this option more at some later date.

 

[Doc Democracy]

I think the biggest problem for the system is how a single hero can prevent swarms of minor threats getting past and killing innocents. Or to be ore accurate, how the system facilitates the player in doing such heroic work. Personally, I think that there has to be some kind of PRE attack going on, making minions scared of going near the hero unless there are lots of em and I would be inclined to allow heroes to take damage in lieu of letting minions past - as a last resort thing. The key ask for the GM has to be to facilitate heroic action rather than bring the action down to mundane details that make it likely the hero will fail. That is a trap I have often fallen into... :-(

[Beast]

I think the biggest problem for the system is how a single hero can prevent swarms of minor threats getting past and killing innocents. Or to be ore accurate, how the system facilitates the player in doing such heroic work. Personally, I think that there has to be some kind of PRE attack going on, making minions scared of going near the hero unless there are lots of em and I would be inclined to allow heroes to take damage in lieu of letting minions past - as a last resort thing. The key ask for the GM has to be to facilitate heroic action rather than bring the action down to mundane details that make it likely the hero will fail. That is a trap I have often fallen into... :-(

to stop a horde you need

1 a choke point(pre attacks just makes them want to avoid you and go around)

2 numbers or attacks that can deal with the amount foes that fill the choke point

3 Ammo and/or endurance to keep dishing out death or serious hurt to turn them back

 

Location is prime ,if you do not have it you have already lost

[Christopher]

I think the biggest problem for the system is how a single hero can prevent swarms of minor threats getting past and killing innocents. Or to be ore accurate' date=' how the system facilitates the player in doing such heroic work.[/quote']

Never underestimate minion stupiditiy in this. Automaton level smarts could easily forget thier oriignal order once they see a combatant.

 

And even much smarter henchmen (human thugs) never choose to do the smart thing:

I once saw a video where 4 henchmen were fighting with one Hero in a fencing fight. The fight ended after 5 minutes when a innocent bystander was taken hostage.

Not by one of the Henchmen (who should have gotten wise after the first 4 minutes of getting thier backside handed to them). But by thier boss who had been in the same room as non-combatant the whole time.

[Sean Waters]

I would be inclined to use a bit of dramatic licence. Instead of just building a huge map and populating it with vast arrays of forces and letting the players get on with it*, I would prepare a small number of dramatic encounters, then have the outcome affect the flow of the overall battle. So, in one a group of demons are tearing into a cottage and there are screams from within. Demons being heavy hitters, you have about 1 to 1 or 2 to 1 with the PCs and let them crack on. In another a large group of zombies is menacing a group of humans who are running through the woods. Easy enough to take out individually, the zombies and humans are scattered and have to be tracked and sorted out. In another a Lieutenant Vampire commands a pack of werewolves and there are clearly too many minions to completely mop up so the heroes have to be cunning and create a distraction allowing them to take out the Vampire, which then spooks the werewolves enough that they lay into each other.

 

Think of it like a movie: you don't just put our hero on the screen battling a horde of minions for an hour (well, except int he 3rd Matrix film), you do montage shots of them battling their way through to the enemy bigbad, or individual scenes of short battles.

 

You can do all kinds of 'dramatic' things, without having to worry about how the overall thing actually plays out. Look and feel, that is the ticket.

 

If you do fancy 'big battles', create the (say) skeletons as automata with 64 Body and +8 to hit, and treat the horde as a single large amorphous creature. The 64 Body represents 64 skeletons - each point of damage you do takes one out. The +6 to hit is the fact there are a lot of them, an inherent multiple attacker bonus - add limitations to the power reducing utility if they can not surround the target, and reducing in efficiency as the Body drops (half body reduces the bonus by one).

 

Build the defences at least partially so that they do not work against AoE attacks - big bangs take out more opponents than individual attacks.

 

 

*Unless they like that sort of thing

[Tasha]

My Players are about to enter a battle zone. Two opposing Organisations have resorted to open warfare. Each side has 100s of lesser creatures; Zombies, Skeletons, etc. and Heavy Hitters Demons, Werewolves, Vampires, etc. Unfortunately for the local populace they have been caught in the middle of this war. The players feel compelled to save them (The large Bounties on the creatures does not hurt either). If the PCs go up against the Heavies it is quite manageable but with the lesser creatures such as zombies that are moving in groups of between 20-50 could become unmanageable (Time and Records) in a individual combat bases. My initial thought was to use the Mass Combat Rules from Hero Fantasy. So a will end up with PCs attacking a group of 50 split into 5 units of 10. I am interested if people can see any flaws with this plan or have used the same or different methods for handling similar situations.

One thing that can help us help you is to place questions like this into the appropriate Genre Folder (ie Champions if it is supers, Fantasy Hero if Fantasy, etc. Otherwise you have to tell us what powerlevel the PC are set at.

 

If they are standard 175pt Heroic Normals then they really have no chance of winning such a battle head on. Assuming that the attackers have no coordination skill that would cause the PC's DCV to plumet to half. The numbers of attackers will eventually overwhelm them with even 2d6 normal attacks. If the PC's have high enough Defenses that they can ignore the Zombie attacks, then the Zombies just become movable terrain requiring the PC's to make Casual and normal strength rolls to move though.

 

I would just run the whole thing with a gajillion minis. I would just assume that the zombies are all one hit Creatures and allow the PC's to mow through them with their favorite attacks. I would do this for enough phases that at least a turn passes and/or the Players seem to be getting bored by the whole thing. Then I would switch gears and just assume that the number of zombies taken out in that first turn is their rate of Zombie destruction. Assuming ammo supplies are good. If they are using melee against the zombies, it may be a good time to pull out eh Long Term Endurance rules. LTE can give the players a sense that their PC is actually getting tired and by killing tons of zombies.