Mooks - a good idea?

[Squire James]

My problem with mooks is that I fail to see why they would engage in an extended combat with the PCs. Even the stereotypical fanatic willing to commit suicide for their cause would consider fleeing if their suicides appear to be for nothing. In other words, they need to have a decent chance of inflicting real harm on the PC's if they are going to work at all.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

Theres a converted Fung Shui adventure called Burning Shaolin with d20 mook rules. The gist of it was something like this.

Mooks have 6 HP. Anything that deals less than 6 HP doesnt kill them, anything that deals 6 or more kilsl them or knocks them out (players choice) - no more HP tracking for mooks.

Mooks only hit on a 20, and deal d6 damage. Anytime a 6 is rolled on damage, they can roll again (open ended). Mooks cant crit.

Players may perform a whirlwind attack against mooks as a full round action, even if they dont have the feat. If they have the feat, they can perform it as a standard action. This explains why mooks always come at the hero one at a time.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

My problem with mooks is that I fail to see why they would engage in an extended combat with the PCs. Even the stereotypical fanatic willing to commit suicide for their cause would consider fleeing if their suicides appear to be for nothing. In other words, they need to have a decent chance of inflicting real harm on the PC's if they are going to work at all.

You've never seen a movie where endless hordes of nameless guys in jumpsuits charge the main character to be summarily dispatched? Its not realistic, but neither is D&D.

 

[Psion]

I do think this is a pretty damned cool idea.

And I believe that Atlas Games did a writeup on Faceless Hordes in Burning Shaolin that would make for very good reading. They gave them 4 HP and ruled that any hit that did that or more took them immediately out of the fight, while anything less than that was not counted.

Had they stopped there, that would have been a good start.

They tacked on a bunch of other rules that made it more complicated than it needed to be.

The rules give characters a saving throw based on armor modifier to avoid hits by faceless hordes, a lucky shot rule to make them more dangerous, rules modifying how certain feats are applied to faceless hordes, and special rules for the number of attacks you get when you are only attacking faceless horde. I consider it quite unlikely that in a heated combat I would want to process all of these rules in each blow exchanged with faceless hordes. It seems like the extra burden associated with all of this would work counter to the purpose of streamlining the task of beating up faceless mooks.

 

[el-remmen]

I think it works for some styles of game and doesn't for others.

Personally, it is not something I would use often enough to even spend time thinking about rules to cover it. If I wanted someone to be easily defeated then I would wait a number of hits that equal "easy" for that circumstance and then say "They fall bleeding to the ground".

But generally speaking, I have too much "old-school" flavor in my gaming style, and prefer every round and every hit point be played out. If your 15th level characters take on some measly kobolds (the old kind w/o class levels ) then you'd better expect to roll initiative and make evrey roll and choice, because anything is possible - and personally I find a certain satisfaction if the small chance the kobolds had to hurt the PCs actually occured.

 

[The_Gneech]

Actually, all you need to do to create a "mook" situation really is have an encounter of (Party EL) -4 or so. The PCs will go through them like paper!

-The Gneech

 

[Calico_Jack73]

Your reasons for using mooks sound a lot like the reasons I had for switching to Castles & Crusades. No more skills and no more feats... prep time dropped by roughly 80%

 

[Dykstrav]

If you're looking for a mook rule, I'd just rule that you automatically inflict maximum damage with any attack against a mook. This would largely allow you to drop 1-HD critters with a single hit.

I don't like the idea of mooks strictly having 1 hit point. They'd get killed by tripping and falling down the stairs, nicking themselves with a knife when cooking dinner, or slamming a door on their hand.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

The idea of using mooks is fine.

However, I'm curious why you don't just spend the ten minutes to stat up a generic 1st level human warrior and use those stats for the mooks? This then has the advantages that they pose a (slightly) greater challenge to the PCs than you'd indicated, and they have a 'real' set of stats, which makes assigning XP easier (and might also be beneficial if you have a player who is a stickler for accuracy).

That would be my prefered solution. One "mook" character statted up -- probably a level 1 warrior dressed in the appropriate race, but really the same character, created once at the beginning of the campaign.

 

[RFisher]

My problem with mooks is that I fail to see why they would engage in an extended combat with the PCs. Even the stereotypical fanatic willing to commit suicide for their cause would consider fleeing if their suicides appear to be for nothing. In other words, they need to have a decent chance of inflicting real harm on the PC's if they are going to work at all.

• They don't know they are going to go down in one hit. Until they do. Then it's too late.
• When you greatly outnumber your foe, you figure the odds are in your favor.
• They can inflict real harm. They still get attacks, & the PCs can still miss. Until the PCs have lots of attacks/round, the PCs can't kill them all before they get a few attack rolls in.
• Sometimes you'd rather take the chance of dying in battle than suffer the guaranteed death or fate-worse-than-death due to displeasing the BBEG.

Has anyone said that mooks can't flee when the situation becomes obviously hopeless?

Besides, if it doesn't make sense to you, don't bother considering it.

Heck, I fail to see why PCs would engage in extended combat with an obviously superior foe, but I've seen it happen again & again. (^_^)