Battle vs horde of weak monsters, how to make this fun?

[Ancalagon]

Good stuff folks, I'm very thankful!

I'm familiar with Gates of Firestorm Peak, and I believe you're referring to Encounter #71 in the Twisted Caverns which uses this map?

That is it, thank you for posting the map! Have you run this adventure?

Reading through the original encounter's writeup, it seems clear that the players are intended to devise ways to slow down / halt / minimize the number of gibberlings able to reach them. I make this assertion based on text like:

• "a large bonfire can hold gibberlings at bay for 1d4+1 rounds"
• "the party might very well determine that their best option concerning this room is to merely run for their lives"
• "If the PCs manage to barricade themselves behind a sturdy door or something similar, the gibberlings batter upon it for 1d10 rounds before losing interest"
• "Groups of 12 gibberlings fight together"

I believe the intention of the original is that your problem #1 is actually a feature intended to encourage out-of-the-box strategic thinking. So in addition to the mechanical advice you've already received, I'd suggest reframing the challenge from "kill 100 gibberlings" to "defining how/where/when the battle occurs in order to survive it." That's a much more holistic view.

Definitely. It is quite likely that a combo of spirit guardian and fear spell (from the warlock) will drive the gibberlings off. However... this is a short term solution, and it should add tension to the rest of the map. In fact... maybe that is the real purpose of the encounter... not the fight in per itself, but the party constantly being on guard, wary of the horde re-forming and giving chase.

Maybe they start throwing rocks or bone javelins?

Gibberlings are ... not very smart. But a smattering of random missile fire is definitely possible. AND the brood gibberling are definitely going to spit brain slugs at the cleric.

... said cleric is a slugman. Go Yoon-Suin!

- Use groups of 5 or 10 gibberlings, rather than 100 individuals. Each group does the same thing together. (Watching you take care of Team Monster's turn will be BO-RING if you don't.)
- As noted above, Minions are your friend. 1 HP each but normal AC.

Individual gibberlings have about 4-5 hp... ie insta death from most PC hits. I definitely will be running them as unit, rolling a bunch of d20s at once etc. Most of them wont' able to attack at once due to lack of space.

- As noted above, many of the gibberlings can be concatenated into a swarm.

I reallly don't like swarms because of how they interact with area of effect spell. If you fireball a swarm with 200 hp *everything should die*. Besides, I believe that they are too "big" to be part of a swarm.

- Have a handful of "gibberling boss" foes. They do smart things, and hopefully the PCs will notice them as important keys to defeating the mob.
- If the PCs start steamrolling the encounter, have most survivors run away. They can show up again later, having led a powerful friend or two into the PCs' path.

The noted brood gibberling will be trying more cunning/vicious things, like spitting brain slugs from range (that burrow into you to eat your brain). And yes, the gibberlings have poor morale.

 

[Zardnaar]

Redo them as CR 1/8 critters perhaps and use a cleave rule inspired by an older edition perhaps. 1 cleave per level when swarmed, make the Gibberlings +2 to hit or something. Functional minions from 4E I suppose except no evasion ability.

 

[Quickleaf]

That is it, thank you for posting the map! Have you run this adventure?

I started to run it, back in the 90's, for a large group of friends but it was more of a weekend gaming marathon one-off, not part of an actual campaign.

Definitely. It is quite likely that a combo of spirit guardian and fear spell (from the warlock) will drive the gibberlings off. However... this is a short term solution, and it should add tension to the rest of the map. In fact... maybe that is the real purpose of the encounter... not the fight in per itself, but the party constantly being on guard, wary of the horde re-forming and giving chase.

Yeah, I think that's a better way to think of it – not as a tactical encounter but as a (possibly ongoing) challenge to be navigated. The inclusion of a battlemap really speak to that era of gaming more than anything; it was intended to be used with the Battlesystem rules and many players would seek out monsters to kill simply for the XP... So at the time I could see players thinking "hmm, that's a nice little chunk of XP...but they don't have much treasure...should we open up a fight with a fireball (...and a bunch of other 'smart play' tactics) or attempt to avoid a fight?"

 

[Scary]

Hello

I'm currently running a large dungeon from 2nd ed (The Gates of Firestorm Peak) and I'm converting it to 5e. It's been going well so far (it's a good adventure, with only a few small errors) and in general converting from 2nd ed to 5e is not very difficult, although there is one problem – cannon fodder. Because of bound accuracy, cannon fodder is more dangerous in 5e – even a lowly goblin has +4 to hit, while in 2nd ed they would have the equivalent of +1 or even +0 to hit.

The party has passed a major milestone, and I am getting the next segment ready. There is one big battle happening soon-ish, and there is even a big map printed for it as part of the adventure (imagine a long 20 foot wide corridor with a few obstacles and *lot* of side passages). And well... it's 95% cannon fodder, and I'm not quite sure how to run this properly in 5e.

The party members are all level 6 and consist of a paladin (ancient), cleric (knowledge), warlock (tome/old ones) and monk (fist), along with 2 semi-useful NPCs

The foes: one HUNDRED gibberlings. The gibberlings are basically demented angry humanoid, think the tasmanian devil from loony tunes, with the fighting power of a goblin. Individually, they are very weak, but there are so many of them. There are a few brood gibberling (tougher gibberlings that can spit brain slugs at people) but 95% of them are the "regular" kind.

How do you run a horde of weak creatures and have the challenge work? I see potential problems here:

1: if I "convert" the to hit number, with so many incoming attacks the PCs are going to take a lot of damage. Combine this with any sort of pack tactic (pushing, shoving, grappling etc) and it's going to get super messy and potentially TPK territory

2: However, if the cleric casts spirit guardian, the area of effect damage will obliterate any gibberling that comes into range – even if they make their save, most of them will die from the damage due to low HP. The rest of the party will easily be able to mop up the few that manage to make it through.

3: Killing 100 monsters seems tedious (I intend to have many of them run away when it becomes obvious that they can't win).

Any advice on making this battle fun/interesting would be welcome

Thanks!

Ancalagon

Check out Matt Colville's video on youtube, he discusses running Firestorm and he has great tips using minions. Specific video for Firestorm is Campaign Diary's 12&13, I recommend his bad guys 15 video as well, enjoy!!


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[Ancalagon]

Check out Matt Colville's video on youtube, he discusses running Firestorm and he has great tips using minions. Specific video for Firestorm is Campaign Diary's 12&13, I recommend his bad guys 15 video as well, enjoy!!


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Oooh thanks! I will have to check that out.

 

[Scary]

Running the game & Campaign Diary are very good and he also does a bunch of other videos, most are on D&D

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[Scary]

Gygax of our Time!!

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[Enkhidu]

...Maybe they have a maddening wail that forces Concentration checks or imposes the frightened condition?

Use this. Gibberings, well, gibber. And when they do they impose a concentration check of ever increasing difficulty (to match the suggested 1d4+1 rounds of the bonfire in the module - make sure that by round 4 the checks will cause (almost) certain failure.

 

[Ancalagon]

Check out Matt Colville's video on youtube, he discusses running Firestorm and he has great tips using minions. Specific video for Firestorm is Campaign Diary's 12&13, I recommend his bad guys 15 video as well, enjoy!!


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Ah, sadly he changed the adventure so much that it wasn't much of use to me anymore :/ I've converted to 5e, and I changed the motives of the bad guys to fit better with my campaign, but my run is much closer to the original module.

... also he made a huge mistake with the gaseous form. The PCs shouldn't even have known about the cave in, it was hidden by a well constructed wall.

 

[Sunseeker]

When I've done it before, it was essentially role-play.

The number of enemies was more a function of "Has everyone had a chance to get in on the action?" than any sort of specific number of bad guys. Statistically, if I roll enough dice, the enemies are going to crit, so instead of rolling for it, I just narrate in the enemies getting some good hits. The players get to do the same, once we've gone around the table a couple of times I'll start narrating that the enemy numbers are thinning, members are retreating (or if they have gotten reinforcements, that they are increasing).

It's more a matter of narrative attrition. With enough enemies, I'm going to win....unless the players do something awesome, so why not just let them declare doing something awesome? If it's within the realm of their character's capabilities, it just happens. If they start declaring they're summoning gods of battle and dropping space-colonies on the enemies well...I'll nip that in the bud.