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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kid Charlemagne" data-source="post: 3914176" data-attributes="member: 93">I ran a combat recently with 10th level PC's taking on around 30 NPC's mostly 2nd-3rd level.  Key Elements:-Interesting battlefieldThe PC's were defending a church they had just reclaimed from an evil cult.  There were three doors in front, as well as two bell towers that the bad guys could climb in through that led to doors near to those three entrances.  Also, a slightly tougher group of bad guys were coming into the main church sanctuary from a hidden place inside.  The PC's had to defend multiple locations, mostly with two or three PC's trying to hold off a half-dozen NPC's each.  PC's were running from place to place trying to back up each other as needed.-Attack in WavesThe assault happened in about three waves, so that things were drawn out, and PC's had the opportunity to be drawn out of position, leaving vulnerable spots in their defenses.  This also has the effect of not letting spellcasters overwhelm the enemy with one or two spells, as does the multiple routes of attack mentioned above.-Simplify where possibleI had a couple of major NPC's who were seriously detailed out, but most were generic - in this case 2nd level barbarians led by a handful of 4th level barbarians, supported by three 3rd level clerics.  Each one was pretty simple and generic - same stats, same HP, same AC.  I tried to give each type a shtick - the barbarians all used dire flails as their weapons, explained as a cultural thing.  The clerics had a feat that allowed them to drain HP from people in their area and recover it as HP for themselves, explained as a cultist specialty.  I wrote down a lot of the sta block info in a super-simplified, almost 1E looking stat block ( Barb 2, Atk +4 1d10+4, AC 14, for example) while keeping the full stat block handy if I needed it for skills, etc.  I built all the NPC's in E-Tools, which made this easier.Put these all together and it created a pretty memorably intense combat that had a lot of PC's near death, forced them to sacrifice their Shield Guardian to protect their flank at one point, and was very well-received by my players.</blockquote>

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