WOIN [WOIN] How to handle minion groups?

[kingpin000]

Hi there,
I need some advice how to handle a enemy group like a zombie horde or stormtrooper unit. Could I combine several low level npcs to one entity?

 

[Morrus]

There's two ways you could do it:

1) Give each 1 HEALTH. 1 hit kills them. The heroes can mow through them.

2) Pool their HEALTH and do damage to the combined pool, removing a minion every X points.

 

[Fortuitous]

There are two ways I would do this.

For simple minions, I would use normal stat blocks and give them 1 health. 1 hit and they go down. This is for things like ninjas or low-end security guards for a NOW game. Enemies that can be a threat individually but should be easily dispatched.

For mobs and squads - groups of enemies that act as one - I would give them a flat amount of health per enemy - probably equal to their health dice pool (so a month made up of storm troopers with 5d6 health would be 5 health per trooper.) For particularly tough mobs (veteran troopers) I would double that. I would have them gain a +1d6 to attack rolls for every so many of their number - again depending on training (per 3 troopers, per 10 football hooligans). I would have the entire month gain 1 turn, but allow them to get free melee attacks against all targets within melee range. At certain size amounts I would increase the size of the mob - giving the players a bonus to hit them. AoE would get an additional 2d6 like.

This makes mobs dangerous. A football hooligan isn't dangerous alone, but get 30 of them pelting you with beer bottles and bricks or, god forbid, surrounding you, and you've got a hell of a threat. Now, disperse them with a molotov, a shotgun, or by putting enough bullets to get them to disperse and they're barely worth the time. Very forward heavy threat but with clear weaknesses, and gets weaker as it takes damage.

 

[Flips]

Another way to deal with them would be in the same way D&D or Pathfinder have swarms. Treat them as one really large creature, give them an aura where they do automatic damage and can occupy the same space as other characters. So a swarm of thugs might be a Huge or Gigantic creature and then you can set it at like 8d8 MDP, give it High Melee/Vital/Mental Defense and Low Range Defense and a reasonably large number of hitpoints with low soak. Or something like that. The values might change a bit based on the base creature.

 

[easl]

WOIN rules for crossfire and flanking can be used for minions - basically, let them fan out around a PC and their wimpy 2d6 attack becomes 5d6. The PC's would then be strongly motivated to not become surrounded by a group of "weak" minions.

Less RAW but keeping in theme would be to allow groups of mooks to use "assist" on attack rolls. Five grunts with Agi 3, Rifles 1 then attack as one unit with AGI 15, Rifles 1...subject to dice pool limits. So bigger numbers of mooks become multiple "units". Taking out a single mook then lowers the the attack value of the group by 3 AGI points/mook taken out, which I think works out pretty nicely in terms of story. The villain throws mooks at the PC's in order to delay them for X rounds as they accomplish their dastardly deed. The PC's can easily take out the mooks in X+1 rounds, but the story tension comes in trying to eliminate them faster and get to the villain before the dastardly deed is accomplished.

 

[Brian I]

WOIN rules for crossfire and flanking can be used for minions - basically, let them fan out around a PC and their wimpy 2d6 attack becomes 5d6. The PC's would then be strongly motivated to not become surrounded by a group of "weak" minions.

Nice - that's a great point. Allowing mob groups to engage and get crossfire and flanking bonuses, because that's what they do.

 

[Belisarion]

There's two ways you could do it:

1) Give each 1 HEALTH. 1 hit kills them. The heroes can mow through them.

2) Pool their HEALTH and do damage to the combined pool, removing a minion every X points.

There are two ways I would do this.

For simple minions, I would use normal stat blocks and give them 1 health. 1 hit and they go down. This is for things like ninjas or low-end security guards for a NOW game. Enemies that can be a threat individually but should be easily dispatched.

For mobs and squads - groups of enemies that act as one - I would give them a flat amount of health per enemy - probably equal to their health dice pool (so a month made up of storm troopers with 5d6 health would be 5 health per trooper.) For particularly tough mobs (veteran troopers) I would double that. I would have them gain a +1d6 to attack rolls for every so many of their number - again depending on training (per 3 troopers, per 10 football hooligans). I would have the entire month gain 1 turn, but allow them to get free melee attacks against all targets within melee range. At certain size amounts I would increase the size of the mob - giving the players a bonus to hit them. AoE would get an additional 2d6 like.

This makes mobs dangerous. A football hooligan isn't dangerous alone, but get 30 of them pelting you with beer bottles and bricks or, god forbid, surrounding you, and you've got a hell of a threat. Now, disperse them with a molotov, a shotgun, or by putting enough bullets to get them to disperse and they're barely worth the time. Very forward heavy threat but with clear weaknesses, and gets weaker as it takes damage.

Those are great ideas, pool the health, let them attack once as a mob with each contributing +1d6 beyond the first like with the Mob Attack exploit listed under civilian in N.O.W. or Pack Attack in O.L.D.
How would you handle XP in this group case? And how in the case just giving each minion 1 HEALTH?

 

[Morrus]

How would you handle XP in this group case? And how in the case just giving each minion 1 HEALTH?

Same as in any encounter. At the end ask yourself did they find it easy, medium, or hard. There's no need to change the XP system.