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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Anthony Jackson" data-source="post: 4375242" data-attributes="member: 73145">There is a fantasy staple encounter which I call 'holding off the horde'. The basic idea is that you have a functionally unlimited supply of monsters which, however, only appear at a limited rate, and the job of the PCs is to prevent the monsters from breaking through for a relatively small number of rounds, until some other event happens which permanently solves the problem. Typical examples would be holding a demonic portal until it can be closed with a ritual, holding a gate until the drawbridge can be raised, holding breach in a wall until reinforcements can arrive, and so on.The question is, how do you run this in a way that's balanced and interesting? One obvious method is to, for example, have one monster per round come through the portal, but the net effect of doing that is that the PCs either reliably slaughter each monster as it comes through (in which case you have a boring slog-fest) or the PCs fail to kill monsters as fast as they appear, in which case they rapidly get overwhelmed.One possible solution is to base the rate at which monsters come through the portal on what's already through the portal. For example: Set aside 6 monsters, plus 6 minions, and assign each one a number. At the start of the combat, two monsters come through. Every subsequent round, roll a d6. If the monster with that number is not currently on the board, it comes through the portal (at full health, with all encounter powers refreshed). Otherwise, a minion comes through.That option seems potentially interesting, but I haven't tried it, and I'm not sure how strong each critter should be -- I'm guessing the total of all monsters should be something like 150% of a normal encounter, but that's just a guess.Thoughts? Better ideas?</blockquote>

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