What's a good way to include many secondary combatants in a fight?

[Manbearcat]

@Storminator Thanks. Its much more clear what you're trying to accomplish. Personally, I would run this as a Skill Challenge with complications, surge loss, and ultimate outcome contingent upon the stakes and precisely what the PCs are trying to accomplish; success probably equaling the carnage they were seeking and failure equaling a lot of death and the carnage being blamed on them.

However, you're looking for that climactic fight here and are Skill Challenged out so I think a few techniques can facilitate what you're looking for:

1) Talk to your players before the session and request that they each scribe a free action encounter power that grants them outright authorial rights and has a mechanical impact on both sides of the combat; eg A townsfolk NPC picks up a rock and throws it at a Silver Flame minion (or swarm - causing of-level, medium damage expression to the swarm), braining him. As a result, one of the 4 powerful Silver Flame NPCs (or swarm if you're using them that way) lets loose a crossbow bolt and kills the rock-throwing town-folk minion (or swarm - causing of-level, medium damage expression to the swarm). Basically a minion trade-off or damage trade-off but narration of the fiction toward the end they are seeking (deadly conflict between the Silver Flame and townfolk).

2) Create a stock, of-level minion for each of the PCs to control in the ensuing combat (on the PCs initiative). Offset those PC controlled minions by upping your encounter budget by the same xp budget as the aggregate of the PC controlled minion budget. You can just narrate the rest of the conflict.

3) Complexity 1 or 2 Skill Challenge during combat to exhort/inspire/provoke the townsfolk toward the PCs end; a riot that ends in mortal combat, and massacre, with the Silver Flame. You're certainly well within your rights to just make the action a minor but, given you have 7 PCs and you want it to be climactic, you might want to make the action economy 1/round; Move Action. Whatever you do with the action economy of the Skill Challenge, it needs to be transparently communicated to the players. Victory might mean access to the encounter powers in 1 above, or control of a minion and their suite of powers as in 2 above (except you wouldn't adjust the encounter budget - the tangible reward for success in the Skill Challenge)

4) Regardless, I would still probably go with 4 elite (level n - 1 or n depending on how you want to budget) swarms (one for each of the powerful NPCs and several Silver Flame minions) that break out as an Elite standard on Bloodied (representing all of those minions being slain and the powerful NPC the only one left standing) and an elite Inquisitor Dorn (level n or n + 1 depending on how you want to budget) with leader subtype who serves as force multiplier.

5) I would find a way to bring a collapsing steeple into play (perhaps its loose and hanging - let the PCs know about it so they try to p42 some use of it). If the PCs don't trigger it, then just find an opportune moment when either PCs or a swarm of NPCs are adjacent to the church or on the steps; someone is pushed into the wall and the precarious steeple tumbles over, burst 2, L + 3 vs Reflex, medium damage expression + immobilized (save ends); difficult terrain on stone steps until the end of battle. Miss = half damage and shift outside of the burst to a square of the target's choosing. Perhaps there are some other gothic features to the yard - sharp hedges, spiked-iron gates/fence - that the PCs can take advantage of forcing the enemy into?

 

[Balesir]

I think I would definitely approach this as a single swarm per side, plus "characters". "Success" for the party might be getting both swarms bloodied, but on bloodying a swarm would disintegrate into fleeing minions. Each swarm would have a damaging aura, so the effects of them would be limited to a terrain effect on character movement and a damage effect for being in the front line or inside an enemy swarm; the trick would be to get the damage rates of the swarms even by goading the enemy characters, attacking the enemy swarm directly and so on. Maybe there are special attacks the swarms can do, triggered by a character action (command leadership). Maybe squeezing damages the swarm (crush effects). Terrain effects (collapsing buildings and such) might affect both swarms. Sounds like it could be fun!

 

[Storminator]

Not a lot of time now, but I've decided to change the focus here. I was going to try and include the secondary combatants in a minimally intrusive fashion, but instead I've decided to jump the encounter up to a huge set piece. I'll likely have 3 acts during the fight itself, and it'll take most of the session.

PS

 

[D'karr]

Not a lot of time now, but I've decided to change the focus here. I was going to try and include the secondary combatants in a minimally intrusive fashion, but instead I've decided to jump the encounter up to a huge set piece. I'll likely have 3 acts during the fight itself, and it'll take most of the session.

PS

I would look at a movie like 300 for inspiration of how combat pacing works well. You might also want to modify the conditions for Opportunity Attacks against the players for movement. Nothing bogs these things more than going back and forth about provoking an OA.

Before you start you might want to look at the tools at hand and see what the pros and cons are for each one. If you use minions you will have to roll for each one individually, but they die easily. If you use swarms/mobs you will have to roll less but they take a lot more time to defeat, and can be frustrating to attack because of their "half damage" from melee and ranged attacks.

So if I was to do this I'd use swarms but I'd decrease their hit points. Either don't make them the same level (use lower level (1-3)), or manually use their bloodied value as starting HP. When they reach the new bloodied value they can either become a few minions, or be entirely routed.

If you run it as a skill challenge decide ahead of time what kind of complications occur when the PCs fail a roll, and what happens if they fail the challenge entirely. Keep the handling as abstract as possible, movement does not have to follow counting squares. Have lots of description from the players and the GM side. You don't want something like this to turn into simply attack declarations and rolling dice. Make it descriptive not mechanical. Make it exciting. Imagine the PCs escaping from the Mines of Moria with a horde of goblins chasing them out, or fighting an orc horde at Helm's Deep. Use that type of tempo/pacing.

Best of luck with this, I love these type of creative encounters.