Epic Battles

[DM with a vengence]

I've noticed that most battles with a fair EL tend to be over in just a few rounds, so I'm been trying a new tactic to make battles a bit more epic.

The first level party is fighting 33 goblins, 9 goblin warriors, and 6 goblin adepts with me throwing them at the party in groups of 4-8. As soon as the party takes out one group another group appears from some direction and attack the caravan the PCs are guarding.

It adds tremendously to tension because they've been in continuous combat for like 10 rounds and the cleric just went down, leaving the rogue to make a run for his scroll of Cure Light Wounds and try a read magic device check while the fighters attempt to keep the goblins away long enough to save the cleric.

So what tricks do you use to build up tension, or what changes would you suggest to make monsters tougher but not much more dangerous to the party.

 

[hong]

Do you mean you've done this fight already, or you're thinking of running it and seeing what happens?

My advice, if it's the latter: don't do it. A 1st level party will be hard-pressed to deal with even a dozen goblins, let alone three times that number with spellcaster support. A fighter with 13 hp and AC 17 seems pretty studly at first, but just 2-3 hits from a shortsword can take him down. When you're fighting enough mooks, those hits will add up very fast.

Now fights against hordes of lowly enemies _can_ be fun, but wait until the PCs are maybe 5th-6th level at least.

 

[Zappo]

Not necessarily. The goblins are attacking in small groups (bad tactic), and the PCs are in an advantageous position. Since they are guarding a caravan, it's likely that there are a few more people, who can be given a crossbow. It's a very tough fight, but not impossible.

 

[hong]

Not necessarily. The goblins are attacking in small groups (bad tactic), and the PCs are in an advantageous position. Since they are guarding a caravan, it's likely that there are a few more people, who can be given a crossbow. It's a very tough fight, but not impossible.

Another thing to keep in mind is that at low levels, you don't have a lot of margin for error, so the distance from "very tough fight" to "total party kill" is small. Consider that one crit from a shortbow (3d6 points) will often be enough to knock down a 1st level PC. If you really want to run this fight, be prepared to do some fudging.

 

[Piratecat]

Not necessarily. If the first two waves got slaughtered, the other goblins might not be as... aggressive.

To get back on topic, waves of enemies is a great tactic. even at higher levels, it minimizes the number of creatures caught in a fireball. Sagiro does this to us all the time, and it does make for epic fights.

 

[The Sunderer]

Now some may hate this idea....

Very occassionaly I use Non-Specific Hit Points.... By this I mean that I do not actually assign Hit points to an enemy but just sort of see what happens... Everything else applies so the PC's get AoO etc,

This villians are usually the "boss villians" of a series of scenarios, and have usually been bult up in the players minds. I tend to have a threshold HP limit (usually what I rolled) and after that the players will have to get particularly inventive in their attacks and actions before they will take this guy down....

Before you scream foul, I have only used this home rule once in the last year and a total of 4 times in my entire Role playing career of 20+ years...

You have to be very careful, but it can be very rewarding.

I suppose my Feng Shui is showing

 

[Galfridus]

I've had a lot of success with the Three-Way Fight. Create two groups of NPCs with different motives: each opposes the PCs, but also opposes each other. Then, once the fight is underway, there should be a nice series of shifting alliances as each group realizes they must team up with someone if they are going to win; but at the same time, they have to make sure their "ally" doesn't get too strong. It's also a great way to combine roleplaying and combat.

 

[Henry]

My players may kill me if they hear this, but I don't always roll hit points for the monsters. I used to (in 2E) assign average hit points, and went a little higher for the lieutenants and chieftains. I also don't specifically record all the hit points for my NPC's, because it slows down combat when I do so. Instead, I figure how much damage they've been taking, and if its above the average, they drop.

I could keep track better, but if it's a large combat, it gets harder to do so.

 

[Gargoyle]

That's what I do, Henry. And they can bite me if they don't like it. They've only got one character each to take care of...I have millions.

 

[wsclark]

One additional tactic to use is have the goblins etal. attack with the intention to subdue. This makes it harder for them to hit the PC's but could lead to the capture of them. It's fun to do from time to time. I had 21 goblins overwhelm six 1st level PC's this way once, primarily because I didn't want to kill the PC's off because of the extremely poor tactics they used (they decided to hole up in a small shack and the goblins burst into it from three sides; it wasn't pretty but the PC's did manage to take down 14 of the pesky critters).