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Message: <blockquote data-quote="MNblockhead" data-source="post: 8179673" data-attributes="member: 6796661">Thanks for your comments.  I guess I'm looking for fun and fair ways to avoid having to resolve hundreds of enemies in a trickle. If I have, say 100 enemies.  Well that's not that hard using swarm stats, DMG optional mob rules, and VTT automations for area of effect spells. But if I have 500 or more monsters coming in at a trickle (e.g. 2d6 per round), I find that unsatisfying. ESPECIALLY when players are smart and set up choke holds and spirit guardian blenders, etc. I'm trying to come up with some heuristics for these scenarios.   E.g.,If there is little to no chance of the party taking damage (e.g. they've set things up very intelligently with terrain advantages, walls of force, and/or areas of effect that are going to kill everything coming their way  with them picking off the stragglers easily) then I'll just handwave it and simply make a rough calculation on how long it will take. If the mobs are powerful enough to hurt the party in mass but the trickle is so small that the party is picking everyone off before they can really pose a threat, I will say that even dumb animals may pool together until their are enough of them to make a swarm and attack. That way there are are a smaller number of combatants (swarms) that the party can fight.  Much more interesting and easier to manage. Instead of 2d6 giant rats or killer frogs every round, say that everyone 1d6 rounds a new swarm appears. Divide the total number of baddies in the pools into a number of swarms that seems right for their size and type.  I'd use story math more than trying to be exact. For more powerful enemies where swarms would make them less dangerous, I would instead say that they hold back until they have sufficient numbers to do at least a bit of damage each round to the character with the highest A/C in the party based on the DMG mob rules.  So if it takes at least a 10-unit mob to make one auto hit on an A/C 22 character, I would have them at least pool numbers until that number. Even better pool the mob until there are enough to auto-hit almost every character.   I might also use the 4e style mob rule where if you hit one, it dies, rather than tracking hit points.   This really only works where there is sufficient space for it. And my players are smart enough to not expose themselves to getting mobbed like this. I actually find it rare these days where I can apply the option DMG mob rules because my players have learned to avoid putting themselves into positions where they can get mobbed.</blockquote>

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