Best way to handle A LOT of opponents with advantage?

[YRUSirius]

How would you handle a ton of opponents (like more than 10) with advantage on attack rolls?

Ten opponents with advantage means effectively rolling 20d20. 20 kobolds outnumbering the PCs could mean rolling 40d20s.

Move them as one mob unit, then roll all d20s and then count the successes until the count of successes reach the number of opponents? Is this fair? What about criticals? Making a tally while rolling?

-YRUSirius

 

[GX.Sigma]

I had this exact situation in my first playtest session when my fighter burst into a room with 40 kobolds. I decided to "forget" their advantage trait.

I think a +3 bonus works.

 

[the Jester]

I would just roll paired d20s- blues for kobold #1, greens for kobold #2, etc- but I have a lot of dice.

 

[FireLance]

My thought was: just roll 1d20 with a +4 bonus. For the crit, allow a crit on a roll of 19-20.

 

[YRUSirius]

I would just roll paired d20s- blues for kobold #1, greens for kobold #2, etc- but I have a lot of dice.

I'm not sure I really want to roll THAT many dice at once.

-YRUSirius

 

[Fifth Element]

Move them as one mob unit, then roll all d20s and then count the successes until the count of successes reach the number of opponents? Is this fair?

No, that wouldn't be fair. If you had a lot of double-successes you can skew the results.

Wouldn't the easiest thing be to roll (for 10 attackers) 10d20, and then reroll the misses once?

 

[YRUSirius]

Yeah, that was a 'quick' solution I read somewhere but forgot later on.

-YRUSirius

 

[the Jester]

I'm not sure I really want to roll THAT many dice at once.

Heh... during my epic 3.5 campaign, we had a table rule that if you didn't roll all of your dice for an effect at once, we'd all call you a wuss for the rest of the session. Lots of 100-dice rolls by the end of that campaign!

 

[Blood & Bones]

Oi-vey! Too many dice! Then again, 3rd edition had the same problem when it came to confirming critical hits. At that point, I think I would treat it as a swarm or a mob, at least until a good number of the beasties were knocked out.

 

[dd.stevenson]

Just put a pair of dice in a whiskey glass and shake the glass 18 times. Takes, like, a minute or so--which is more than I like, but not too terrible to deal with now and then.