D&D 5E The Mob Rules!

[Rune]

Perhaps if we add half-damage on a miss?

If you add +1 to hit/creature in the group, you probably won't miss.

 

[Gorgoroth]

Aye,

I agree that a statistical method would work best + fastest. Because as soon as you have quite a few rolls, you are very likely to get average damage anyway.

Just multiply the to-hit chance by the average damage, and spread it around the targets. Maybe an extra -1 to hit in there for all the chaos involved in mass battles.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

When dealing with large numbers of attackers, say in a massed archery situation, I deal damage statistically: If the archers need to roll an 18 or higher to hit, that's a 15% hit rate.

So 15% of the archers hit, and each does average damage.

Note that you'll never get lower than a 5% hit rate, since natural 20s always hit.

In melee, I handle mobs as groups of 8, since that's the maximum number that can attack someone in normal combat. (I ignore the "Combat Conga Line" I often see in D&DNext. It's a perversion of the rules, in my opinion.)

Spoiler

Due to the lack of AoO rules, event sequencing and allowing everyone to "Move/Attack/Move", I watch DMs run a conga-line assault, where monsters take turns threading through a hole in the line, attacking one character, then conga-dancing back out the same way, one after another. Having 20 people attack the same target from the same square, all in six seconds, may be technically legal, but it's wrong.[/spioler]

Handling them in groups of 8 still gives them Advantage (or in previous editions, Flank Attack bonuses). That's not quite enough to handle statistically in a lot of cases, but it does keep the dice rolling down to a sane level.

Spoiler

That tactic (Combat Conga Line) only worked in the first packet. There have been AoOs to prevent it since August, and we're now on the 3rd packet.

 

[Greenfield]

Thanks for the update. It was obviously an abuse, and I'm glad it got fixed.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

Yep, I'm pretty satisfied with the designers' consideration and responsiveness to user feedback. I'm not happy with everything they do each packet, but they've told us they are intentionally "pushing" things to the edges in some cases to see what people like.