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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Victim" data-source="post: 1652327" data-attributes="member: 78">Try it.  Let's use the 16th level fighter in the 3.0 DMG, since that's the one I have.  The fighter has grapple check of +20, AC 30, touch AC 13, an attack bonus of +24/+19/+14/+9 with his sword and does 1d10+9 damage.  Of his feats, the most relevant in this case is Great Cleave.For his opposition, why don't we say first level human warriors.  They'll be just like the 1st level DMG fighter, except with 2 fewer HP.  They have 18 AC, 10 HP, an attack of +5 that does 1d10+2 damage, and a grapple of +3.Our 16th level fighter is completely surrounded by the horde of warriors.  I'll even give the little guys the initiative.  First they'll attack conventionally.  24 guys (since some have reach weapons) attack.  That's 1.2 hits per round for an average of 9 damage to the fighter every round.  He lasts 13 rounds against these attacks.  The warriors could use aid another with their spears, but when we include the cover modifier, their aid action will work only about 1/2 the time.  And each sword guy needs 2 successful aids in order to make a difference.  If all the reach guys aid one of the sword guys, then the average hits per round actually drops.Now the fighter's counter stroke.  He takes a full attack action, and power attacks for 1.  His first attack has 95% chance of hitting and automatically KOs enemies.  Once Great Cleave in taken into account, he has a 66% percent chance of dropping the 8 foes nearest to him in one move.  His second attack is similarly effective.  So between his first 2 attacks, he probably kills all the guys who started next to him.  After a 5 ft step, his third attack is against guys with reach weapons (no shield) so it misses 15% of the time.   He has a 44% chance to kill the last 5 guys within reach with this attack.  His fourth attack should help finish the job.  He's killing 10-13 guys a round.  That's more than 100 guys lost, and possibly more than 150, not 50.  The possibility of trip attacks which help the warriors hit proabably indicates that the low end is more likely - of course, the fighter could use his potions of endurance and healing to get another couple rounds of life.  Now let's try grapple attacks:Warriors attempting to grapple the fighter will, at some point, have to make an opposed grapple check.  The warriors only have a chance of success if the fighter rolls a 1 or 2.  The chance of one warrior beating the fighter is .75%.  If 8 guys are grappling, then the fighter's chance of beat all of them is 94%.  In other words, the warriors are probably better sticking with trip attacks.  Especially when we look at the other factors involved.Attempting a grapple provokes an AoO.  The soldier first attempting the grapple has an excellent chance of dying on this attack, and the attack can kill all the other warriors in reach (see above).  Unfortunately, this fighter doesn't have Combat Reflexes yet, so only gets the first AoO.  Then the soldier needs to hit with a touch attack.  He has a 55% chance of this, and will probably have aid another helping too.  Then there's the tiny chance of getting a hold.  If they do get a hold, each guy does less damage than before so the fighter lasts longer.  On the fighter's turn, he has several options.  He can attempt to escape from the grapple and will probably succeed on his first try (see above, also note that less than 8 foes will likely have succeeded).  He has 3 more too, although his chance goes down each time.  Once he's free, the warriors have to start over.  If he gets free right on the first shot, he can start to kill all the guys within reach again.  He could also attack with a weapon (like a shield bash) in the grapple.  The fighter would take significant penalties, but could probably bash one or two guys grappling him easily.  He can still use Great Cleave too.  Grappling doesn't affect his AC enough to meaningfully increase the chances to hit for those outside the grapple.I'd estimate that the warriors would kill the fighter faster with conventional attacks.Additionally, we're dealing with an NPC fighter with a standard arrary, NPC wealth, DMG default choices on feats and items, and no buffs.  Also, I forgot to give the fighter a race too.   <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f641.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":(" title="Frown    :("  data-smilie="3"data-shortname=":(" />  Even with the standard array and NPC wealth, it'd be possible to make far more effective army killers.  If you let a couple of mid level casters buff him up before dropping him in the middle of the army, he'd probably do much better.  Give him Adamantine armor, armor of Invulnerability, or make him a Barbarian or Dwarven Defender and then DR take the sting from the natural 20 hits.</blockquote>

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