Uh, how am I supposed to manage a horde of 2d6.w monsters attacking the same target?

Uh, how am I supposed to manage a horde of 2d6.w monsters attacking the same target?

Uh, how am I supposed to manage a horde of 2d6.w monsters attacking the same target? I roll 2d6 once at a time for every monster taking the worst die of the couple and then I take the best result from all the rolls as the damage dealt? There’s no way I can roll just once?

19 thoughts on “Uh, how am I supposed to manage a horde of 2d6.w monsters attacking the same target?”

  1. Those are old rules. Splurge for the PDF!

    Wait, what? No! Get your hands off the dice!

    Have the player roll the highest damage and add 1 for each additional monster that can attack the him or her.

  2. Roll your 2d6 per monster all at once, and choose the second highest? If there are multiples of he highest number rolled, use that number. This isn’t a rule anywhere, but seems a faster way to resolve the damage and keep the game flowing.

  3. Andrea Ungaro while it isn’t RAW, a GM dishing out fixed damage is neither gamebreaking nor against the RAI. So it’s up to the group as usual. Also, in the red box every monster had a fixed damage output. In my group, the more dice are rolled the happier we are! 😀

  4. Are we speaking about the same game? To quote from page 22 of the pdf:

    Damage From Multiple Creatures

    It’s a brave monster that goes into battle alone. Most creatures fight with someone at their side, and maybe another at their back, and possibly an archer covering the rear, and so on. This can lead to multiple monsters dealing their damage at once.

    If multiple creatures attack at once roll the highest damage among them and add +1 damage for each monster beyond the first.

    A goblin orkaster (d10+1 damage ignores armor) and three goblins (d6 damage) all throw their respective weapons–a magical acid orb for the orkaster, spears for the rest–at Lux as she assaults their barricade. I roll the highest damage, d10+1 ignores armor, and add +3 damage for the three other goblins. Adding it all up I tell Lux she takes 9 damage ignoring armor as the acid leaks into the scratches left by the spears.

    This is it. There is no other way.

  5. Page 355:

    “Moves can also change the basic structure of the game. Consider this one, to avoid the use of damage dice:

    “When you would deal damage, instead of rolling the dice, substitute each dice with the listed number. d4 becomes 2, d6 becomes 3, d8 becomes 4, d10 becomes 5, d12 becomes 6.”

  6. But that’s an option, not the base game. Still, it wouldn’t be 5 damage in this case, but rather 3×2=6 plus 1 for each attacker after the first… It’s not the same as saying “ok, whatever, take 5 damage” which is GM fiat.

  7. Worth noting as well that when you get beyond a handful of monsters they’re more like an environment that a creature. This is something were looking at for the war supplement.

  8. Re: a mob of 30 goblins, I believe the intention of the rules, as usual, is fiction first. The creatures referred to by “If multiple creatures attack at once” would be limited to the ones who are actually in a position to hit the character and attempting to do so, probably 4 or 5 at most. Unless the character is facing massed missile fire, in which case duck. I do like that rule for providing simple motivation for not letting yourself get flanked or surrounded. And it implicitly makes stabbing reach weapons more deadly, as they’d let a second rank of goblins be able to hit you.

  9. yeah, the 30 goblin situation is what we’re looking at in the supplement. The thing we’re pursuing right now is treating the mass of those goblins as an environment, which gives the GM certain moves. The goblins that are directly engaged with the players are treated like normal monsters, the rest are a backdrop that can do things like inflict some damage (from random stabs and ranged fire), introduce a new combatant, separate them, etc.

  10. Well, sure. The fiction could support lots of things, such as using the the “Separate them” GM move to simply declare that some characters are swarmed, borne down, and carried off. But on the flip side, most gamers dislike “save or die” situations in the rules. I was just pointing out that the Multiple Attackers rule does not necessarily turn into Save or Die just because there’s a thousand orcs in the hall.

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