We are the Gamers

[Edena_of_Neith]

LOL, Angcuru!
Heh. Kill it til it's dead. Good philosophy. (Of course, in D&D it can be downright painful, exhausting, and nerve wracking to kill something and make it stay dead ... some things need an awful lot of killing.)

Actually, Colonel Hardisson is right.
My article was shortened by the fact that I am not feeling well.

You won't find any articles discussing my characters, for I have none in play right now.
As for Edena, my cleric/mage, I need to convert him over to 3rd Edition.
If I wrote the full article relating to such a conversion, after doing it, it would very likely crash the ENBoards (and my head and fingers, for it would take upwards of 10 hours to write.)
Which is why I have not converted Edena. Too much work, and not enough resources available yet (don't ask ...)

 

[S'mon]

I don't frequent the IR threads much, so I forget how much butt you kick Edena. Forgive me...

One thing I was thinking of in the context. I tend to think that the combat would take less rounds than the 45 you mention. Yes, as far as time elapsed in the film, and the adjudicating of six-second rounds, I'm positive you're right. But on film, much as with books, I think it splits up where you see different characters taking their notable actions within the same round. Sure, all of the characters not on screen at the time can be going through their share of 'I miss. The orc misses,' but that's not how I see it.

Regardless, it's still probably an 8 hr. block of time spent. And I can't wait until I get to run my next one...

I agree that that was not a '45 round combat', whatever the rule books say about the notional duration of a combat round. That would imply the 9 heroes were on average killing less than 1 orc a round each, which doesn't seem right. And no D&D battle lasts 45 rounds, 6-10 is a long fight for most people.

Actually, given the amount that D&D 3e lets you do in 1 round, calling them 15-second rounds would be more plausible, Edena's analysis of the movie battle supports this I think.

A final point - 3e specifically tells the DM NOT to run fights with more than 12 opponents!
In 1e-2e, it could be done fairly easily. 3e combat is basically a miniatures skirmish game within an RPG (as I think John Nephew said at Gencon on Friday), and IMO only works well if treated as such.

 

[MerakSpielman]

ummm.... 45 rounds, 60 orcs = 1 1/3 orcs per round.

Still a little low... But Gandalf must have been saving his area attack spells for a more appropriate time.

 

[drnuncheon]

ummm.... 45 rounds, 60 orcs = 1 1/3 orcs per round.

Still a little low... But Gandalf must have been saving his area attack spells for a more appropriate time.

"What do you mean you didn't memorize fireball? What kind of wizard are you?"

"Well...I used up all my slots casting knock..."

"Yeah, we saw how well that worked. The short one had to figure it out."

"Only in the movie!"

"Well, what spells do you have left? Magic missile? Dhield? Dare we hope for a hold portal?"

"Er...light." (uncomfortable pause) "Oh, and smite bridge."

"Oh, that'll be useful." (muttered) "...stupid wizards..."

J

 

[Wippit Guud]

Can't wait for the D&D Mass Combat book. And those prepainted miniatures!

Finally, I can have those orcs actually attack the village the PCs are defending...!

We did that in our TT last week. I don't know where Cor modified the rules from, but a group of 8 level 2 adventurers, and about 120 villagers (half lvl 1 warriors, half conscripts) defended a touwn against an army of... well, it's still an ongoing seige, but the best guess is:

200 kobolds
100 campaign-specific orcs (modified)
6 campaign-specific ogres (modified)


Basically broke down to 1 attack roll every 30 minutes, which moved you up or down a scale from '0'. first unit to get to '+3' won the battle, and could then move to help other sides.

Went through 2 days fo the seige in about 60 minutes. Then they went and changed tactics on us...

 

[Seule]

In a game I play in, we had a mass combat such as you describe last week. It was the 6 or so PCs of about 6-7th level against about 10 goat-men (don't ask), 20 gnolls, 15 human warriors, a winged elven archer, a couple of Gnoll heroes, 6 scorpion-dogs, and a wizard. I'm probably missing some. It took 10 rounds of combat or more, played over about 3 hours. Nasty.

--Seule