Mook rules?

[Obergnom]

I am looking for good Mook/Minion houserules for 3.5.

You know, the kind of rules that removes the bookkeeping (even at 10th level some characters manage not to do so much damage a low level creature like an oger dies with a single hit) and allows me to use them "en masse" without a resolution time problem.

Recent situation: A challenged my party with rylkar (MM5 ratlike creatures)... I do not have my book with me, but the weaker ones basicaly have a lot of attacks (3) that were unable to hit exept when rolling a nat 20.

Aiding another was possible, but somehow unreasonable (the were kind of enraged) and boring.

Thinking about it, players have a lot of AC but few HP compared to monsters. Thus a first rule could be to allow some kind of inverse power attack for monsters. Reduce the damage by 5, get +5 to hit. (It is a DMs tool, one shuold not abuse it for unlimited damage in combination with power attack for 2-handed weapons)

Reducing the number of attacks and adding further +2 to hit might also help.


I was really suprised by the way the encounter worked out... it was kind of boring, the players AC did not matter (a 20 is a hit, no matter if your AC is 24 or 32), I was rolling many d20 which again takes some time, and the creatures have just enough HP to be able to stand the single attacks most of my players were able to make.

what are your mook rules or tricks to make such encounters more fun and less work? I wing a lot of my sessions and sometimes I just feel like "Hey, they could encounter an orc tribe right now..."

 

[Psion]

Did you read the "one big pile of hit points" that was on the front page last week?

Here's the whole article, from Ars Ludi:

One of these guys has already taken 7 hit points of damage. Now if I can just remember which one…

I’ve run lots and lots of games where I’ve tracked the individual hit points of every orc on the battle map. Every GM comes up with their own clever methods of remembering which figure took what damage, but in the end it’s a lot of work for little benefit, and it just gets worse the more critters you add and the later at night the game goes.

A simple alternative is the hit point pile: track the total damage done to similar creatures as one big pile. Ignore which particular creature was hit. Just keep adding up the damage, and when the total is enough to kill one, the one that just got hit dies. Set the pile to zero and start over again (excess damage is lost).

There are twenty gnolls and each has 13 hit points. Fred attacks one for 7 damage, then Charlie attacks a different one for 4 damage — that’s 11 damage on the pile so far. Next Anastasia attacks a third gnoll for 6 damage, which kills it even though it had never been attacked before. The GM knocks over the figure Anastasia attacked and sets the damage pile back to 0. Nineteen gnolls to go.​

If you have different groups of creatures use separate piles for each one (one pile for the goblins, one for the wolves). For unique creatures or very small groups just track hit points the normal way.

Pig Pile

Because damage is concentrated on a single enemy at a time, opponents die faster when you use hit point piles.

This is less of an issue than it seems, because smart players already tend to gang up on one opponent until it is dead instead of wounding a bunch of different enemies that could still fight back. It’s logical, but unfortunately it smells lame - in the real world a bunch of knights don’t surround one enemy on the battlefield at a time, but without facing rules to penalize you it’s often the smartest choice in d20.

Hit point piles give the players the benefit of ganging up on one guy without embarrassing themselves by actually doing it. Tactical benefit + aesthetically pleasing.

Two Piles Are Better Than One

There are a few potential pitfalls of in-game logic and metagaming:

- An unlucky character could keep hitting the same opponent over and over and again but never take them out because someone else keeps getting a killing blow.

- A lowly court jester can take a stab at a theoretically “fresh” enemy and kill him if other characters have already done damage elsewhere (this only seems strange when you think in terms of hit points, not a real fight).

- If your players are tactical metagamers they may try to do things like have a weak attacker go when they think the total is almost enough for a kill so that a stronger attacker doesn’t waste damage on an “overkill,” but if your players are that motivated to track this kind of thing a simplified system is probably not for you anyway.

The solution? Run two piles at a time instead of one. Decide which of the two piles to add the latest attack to as you prefer (or just alternate) and don’t tell the players. Does it seem like Fred has been beating on that gnoll for a while? Add his attack to the most damaged pile. Did a hobbit just kick someone in the shins? Add it to the undamaged pile, not the pile that’s an inch from death.

Running two or even three piles is still simple and fast, and certainly less overhead than tracking individual hit points for each critter.

I sort of resist "bag of HPs" monsters, but gotta admit, when you are fighting the horde, it has its place. I sort of like Spycraft and True 20s "any mook can die at any time" take, and this seems like a simpler hack to get that freewheeling feel into the game than trying to back in damage saves.

 

[Obergnom]

hey, thats a pretty good solution. I like it better than the Death Saves...

Edit: So, a hypothetical EL10 Encounter, 12 Ogres, would form a stack of 348hp (or two stacks at 174hp) and attack with +15/2d8 each... thats what I would do to create a challenging, non boring encounter.

Sound great.

32 Ghouls (EL10) would form a 416hp (or 2x 208hp) pool and attack with a single attack at +8/1d4... they will still just scratch most armored opponents... but being only CR1 opponents that should be allright. (this would work using a rule that allows them to give up attacks for an extra +2 to hit)

 

[Phlebas]

or use MOB rules from DMGII / Cityscape......

 

[Stormborn]

Atlas Games Burning Shaolin (Penumbra dual stated product for d20/Feng Shui) has very good mook rules that I have used before. They are available, or were, on Atlas Games website as a pdf download for free. At the moment, however, I am having trouble getting to them.

 

[Psion]

Atlas Games Burning Shaolin (Penumbra dual stated product for d20/Feng Shui) has very good mook rules

I dispute that.

They have a good start in the idea of "if a hit does 4 damage, the mook drops, otherwise it's not even worth recording."

But after that, they tack on a bunch of exotic special case rules that don't really simplify anything.

 

[Scurvy_Platypus]

They are available, or were, on Atlas Games website as a pdf download for free. At the moment, however, I am having trouble getting to them.

Here's the link to find the rules:
http://www.atlas-games.com/product_tables/AG3400.php

 

[Primitive Screwhead]

When I have *lots* of mooks on the battlefield, I use a pile of little D6's I have... red for enemies and blue for freindlies.

Mooks come in various types:
1 hit Mooks... the # on the die shows the current hit points
2 hit Mooks... On a 'solid' hit of 5hp or more, if the # of > 3, turn to less than 3. If < 3... dead
3 hit Mooks, as above but 1..2, 3..4, and 5..6
6 hit Mooks, as above but each # counts

For more variation, I tend to *roll* the mook dice into place at the start of combat.

'Named' mooks.. or if you need to know which one is carrying the McGuffin, is either an actual figure or a different die type/size

Simple, easy.. altho until I told my players about the difference in color they were rather perturbed about the 50 dice scattered about a certain battlemap


Mob rules work pretty well if using against the PCs, makes a bunch of Mooks actually dangerous. I also like the Skirmish rules {smaller than mobs but still enough to track as one critter}

 

[Tonguez]

I get rid of hit points and instead just use 'Hits'

a 1 HD orc mook will die on 1 successful hit
a 3 HD ogre mook will die on 3 successful hits

basically its normal attack rolls sans damage roll