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<blockquote data-quote="roguerouge" data-source="post: 4471037" data-attributes="member: 13855">What I want is a mob template that's a challenge to a fighter, not an auto-kill nor a laborious walk in the park. The problem with the Ars Ludi suggestion is that the DM is still rolling a ton of dice and slowing the game down. The idea of a swarm and automatic damage is a huge time-saver that's intuitive and improves pacing. The problem with the DMGII approach is that it not only makes no sense, it makes for bad game play, despite those two advantages.First off, one 5d6 fireball should utterly decimate a mob of commoners (20' space) as it disables each individual in the mob automatically. Instead, it merely does 26.25 [(5d6)*1.5] on average to an entity with 135 HP. And its save is +9. And it doesn't because &quot;of the mob's mentality and physical mass.&quot; Any enterprising player hearing that is immediately going to hire 20' space worth of commoners for his next dungeon crawl. And no matter what happens to them, he'll get 70 percent of them back.Second, +34 to grapple is just a bad idea for game play reasons. The mob template should work for soldiers, but doesn't, because a smart general would instruct his soldiers to throw their swords at the enemy and then grapple them. Third, as stated, the melee feats that are designed to work against a mess of low HP combatants should not suddenly be taken away from the fighter. That's just unfair. DMs should eliminate the grapple option for mobs as a house rule. They already get a nearly identical ability by doing 5d6 bludgeoning to anything they end their turn on, plus they have the option to bull rush, overrun and trample. Nothing's lost for flavor and you solve one of the two major problems with mob rules.How you solve the fireball problem, I don't know.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="roguerouge, post: 4471037, member: 13855"] What I want is a mob template that's a challenge to a fighter, not an auto-kill nor a laborious walk in the park. The problem with the Ars Ludi suggestion is that the DM is still rolling a ton of dice and slowing the game down. The idea of a swarm and automatic damage is a huge time-saver that's intuitive and improves pacing. The problem with the DMGII approach is that it not only makes no sense, it makes for bad game play, despite those two advantages. First off, one 5d6 fireball should utterly decimate a mob of commoners (20' space) as it disables each individual in the mob automatically. Instead, it merely does 26.25 [(5d6)*1.5] on average to an entity with 135 HP. And its save is +9. And it doesn't because "of the mob's mentality and physical mass." Any enterprising player hearing that is immediately going to hire 20' space worth of commoners for his next dungeon crawl. And no matter what happens to them, he'll get 70 percent of them back. Second, +34 to grapple is just a bad idea for game play reasons. The mob template should work for soldiers, but doesn't, because a smart general would instruct his soldiers to throw their swords at the enemy and then grapple them. Third, as stated, the melee feats that are designed to work against a mess of low HP combatants should not suddenly be taken away from the fighter. That's just unfair. DMs should eliminate the grapple option for mobs as a house rule. They already get a nearly identical ability by doing 5d6 bludgeoning to anything they end their turn on, plus they have the option to bull rush, overrun and trample. Nothing's lost for flavor and you solve one of the two major problems with mob rules. How you solve the fireball problem, I don't know. [/QUOTE]

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