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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Nevvur" data-source="post: 7337097" data-attributes="member: 6783882">Some thoughts before getting into the maths:1) Are the NPCs allowed to abstain from the vote? If so, you can use this to tweak the results to your liking and create the appearance of a closer call for the purpose of drama after the dice have already been rolled. On a related note, how is the vote actually performed? Anonymously or openly? Names dropped in a hat? Raising of hands?2) If the difficulty in managing a large fight is a concern, NPCs can flee, cower, feint, stand back, or otherwise not participate in the brawl. This is assuming we're not dealing with a warrior culture and everyone has a battle axe on the table.3) If you allow NPCs to vote in absentia (e.g. they send a sealed letter stating their vote), you can increase the number of NPC votes to whatever number makes the maths ideal for your purposes. Obviously all such votes would belong to the "decided" category. This could be useful if you end up needing or wanting more voters while keeping the number of potential combatants manageable.4) Even if the NPCs can't or won't abstain, can the PCs? I don't know exactly how they won the right to vote in this situation or whether that's even relevant, but I'm curious to know, if you don't mind sharing? 5) I assume the PCs will all vote for the same claimant, whether its one of their own or an NPC. If that's uncertain, it becomes increasingly difficult to set an appropriate number of decided and undecided NPCs.6) The undecided NPCs can't all be truly, 100% undecided can they? If the PCs didn't intervene, wouldn't they have at least a slight preference? If this is the case, the PCs don't even need to convince the undecided voters who would've sided with them anyway.The more I think about it, the more I think a hard math approach to the problem isn't the right way to handle it. Your tired brain isn't nearly as good an excuse as the fact it's a rather difficult problem! It would greatly reduce the complexity to know whether a PC intends to become a claimant. Maybe that's something you can ask your players between sessions and let us know? (edit: just re-read this is for a one-shot, so I'm guessing the players don't know this vote is coming?) I'm still running some numbers, but I think 77IM has given a decent run down using a minimal number of NPCs to fulfill your stated goals. However, I don't think he's accounting for point 6 above. I'll drop in again later to see what numbers other people are submitting, but if my initial investigation suggests anything, you're looking at closer to 30 or 40 total NPCs to prevent the PC voting bloc from trivializing the encounter, assuming they don't make a claim themselves. If they do, I think you can safely reduce the numbers since it dramatically changes the perspective of undecided voters.</blockquote>

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