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Message: <blockquote data-quote="KarinsDad" data-source="post: 2915674" data-attributes="member: 2011">If you read the entire post, I did mention that it is ok to break groups up into smaller groups. The point is to have a certain amount of randomness / distribution and not have them clumped together in big groups in the initiative order. With your group here, you could do 3 orcs in a group, 2 ogres in a group and 2 bad guys for a total of 12 groups.But, quite frankly, it is all about organization. DMs who have good organizational skills will not think this is any big deal and ones who do not, will.You still have to go through every single NPC initiative, regardless of what it is. If you roll all the orcs as a group (or smaller semi-groups), you still have to move around the board in some fashion and have them act and not forget any of them and not do any of them twice and if a semi-group breaks up their location (e.g. one at one end of the board, two at another end, some more at a third location), you still have to make sure you remember which NPCs are in the semi-group, if a semi-group has one NPC who readied or delayed, you still have to move his initiative, etc. Similar organizational issues occur.Just this last Sunday, I had 50 Hobgoblins, a few of which are special, against the party of 6 PCs and 2 NPC cohorts. No problem at all. No headache. The players did laugh at how thick the stack of cards was getting. And in this case, I did not roll initiative except for 4 hobgoblins. On round one, a new hobgoblin came in (from a considerable distance, so they did not actually fight on round one, just approach) after every two other cards (PC or NPC), so 18 total combatants after round one. On round two, a new one came after every card. So, 36 combatants after round two, 54 after round three, and all 58 early on round four. This emulated them stopping what they were doing, grabbing weapons, being awoken from a nap, etc. I also have a description of each orc (with colored stars on the miniatures, but numbers on the miniatures works better) and put an indicator on my sheet down when an orc approached as to direction (e.g. nw, sw, etc.). That way, I roughly know which part of the board the orc is on and can generally find him in a matter of a second or two.But, no problems. No headaches.So for our group, the "headache example" you listed above is a cakewalk.It is only a headache if you make it one by how you handle it. If you are organized, the initiative order is no big deal. You still have to go through every NPC every single round, decide what they do, roll if necessary, and determine results.If you have 50 similar orcs and want them all to act on round one, assign two of them an init of 1, two a 2, two a 3, etc. That's 40 orcs and then just roll for the other 10 orcs. 10 rolls instead of 50. You do not have to roll for all of the orcs, you can assume a certain amount of statistical average. Nobody really cares after round one anyway.</blockquote>

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