Appropriate amount of health for hoards?

Appropriate amount of health for hoards?

Appropriate amount of health for hoards?

There is a “battle” scene coming up, and I want to just let my characters go crazy on a bunch of zombies, letting them just kill them individually or on mass as they fictionally see fit.

Thing is I don’t know how much health and damage the hoard should have. Any suggestions on the topic?

13 thoughts on “Appropriate amount of health for hoards?”

  1. Why not stat the zombie horde up as a single creature? You could treat it as a solitary monster (D10 damage and 12 HP) adjusted for size (Large, Close, Reach, +4 HP, +1 damage or Huge, reach, +8 HP, +3 damage). Then narrate HP damage as the PCs killing multiple zombies at a time. When HP drops to 0, they’ve dispersed the swarm.

    If you wanted to be really nasty, you could write a custom move about attacks without the area tag only doing minimal damage.

  3. Well, then like I said, make a custom move that seriously reduces the damage of attacks without the area tag.

    Another option would be to make a few smaller creatures that are still big groups of zombies. Then you have 3 to 5 monsters that are all actually a single group.

  4. Zombie Horde Solitary

    A flurry of blows (d8x2 damage) 20 HP

    Close, Reach, Far

    Special Qualities: 3x normal health. Every health lost kills a zombie. 1 dmg for every zombie lost. The horde is very slow.Horde will eventually escape and attack city if not destroyed.

    Special Rules: Fighting a Zombie Horde (Joseph Madigan)

    When you fight the zombie horde, roll 2d6+STR:

    10+ choose 2

    7-9 choose 1

    You avoid being caught by the zombies

    You land a meaningful hit, roll damage against a zombie.

    You maintain your position in the face of the zombie horde

    You help another person escape the zombies

    When you’re caught by zombies, roll 2d6+STR:

    10+ You escape their grasp

    7-9 You aren’t mauled or eviscerated, but they worsen

    your position – pin you down, take a weapon away, etc.

    6 The undead horde tears you to shreds and feasts upon

    your bits.

  6. Have you read the Hazards chapter of Inverse World? That’s how I would handle a horde of a hundred zombies. They’re not enemies to be fought one at a time, but a challenge to overcome. The standard combat moves aren’t going to work here, since the best you can hope for is to stand your ground. So don’t treat it like a standard battle.

    Give the horde an instinct, moves, and tags like a monster, but not HP. You can give it a damage die for incidental damage at the front line, but generally the horde’s attack is going to be, “overwhelm and tear them to bits.”

  8. I like Mark Tygart​’s but I’d probably have you deal kill your STR in zombies, and allow rolling damage for more kills. Because it sucks to not kill ANY no matter what happens.

  9. Aaron Griffin Except you kill via fiction. If you roll 1 damage, you can still say you decapitated 7 of them in a single swing. Or you could roll a 10 and describe how you completely annihilated a single one.

  10. Id just say each zombie had 1hp. Depending on the damage roll and the characters position, they could argue more zombies being killed. I can’t say that there would be more than 8 zombies within a sweeping blow from a great sword. Soooo that would keep the players in check.

    100 zombies / ~10 damage is still 10 “attacks”. That sounds like a good amount of time.

  11. Robert Doe don’t forget, a Hack and Slash roll can entail more than just a single swing of a sword. It can be a short series of counters and strikes depending on how you narrate it. Something like the fight between Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker could have been resolved in one or two rolls in a PbtA game, even though it was a lot more involved in the movie.

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