Introducing harried effects.

[Tvtyrant]

I was thinking of a mechanic that would make mobs more effective against both characters and monsters. One of the ideas I came up with was harried/harrass as an effect where each attempted attack upon you above your con score reduces your AC for the turn by 1. So with a con of 18 you get 4 attacks a turn that don't effect your AC, and each further one lowers it by one. My justification for this is that you literally cannot dodge attacks from every direction in 6 seconds, as each dodge will put you in the position to get hit by a different attack.

[tyckspoon]

If you've got that many opponents in a position to make an effective attack you can already get a similar effect with the Aid Another rules; you only have to hit AC 10 for that. Each successful one can funnel another +2 into the chosen striker.

That said, if you really want to play with it you need to decide if you're going to base it on number of attackers or number of attacks. If it's number of attacks, it makes natural weapon routines a lot more dangerous- just one or two opponents with the usual claw/claw/bite could 'harass' a single opponent, even if, say, they're both standing in front of a guy with a shield and not even flanking him (which, both realistically and especially fantastically, should not be too hard a situation to defend.)

[Tvtyrant]

I was thinking more as a way to balance mob archery, which realistically should do better then it does.

The natural weapons example is a good point, but it would only lower the ac by two for the final attack of the second ones sequence, which is hardly devastating.

[tyckspoon]

If you have a big enough mob, it's already dangerous through autohits. If you don't.. well, I'm personally not too concerned if 10ish mook archers have a hard time putting down a high AC target, but consider the Volley rules in Heroes of Battle to convert their group attack into a Ref save instead.

[NNescio]

I was thinking of a mechanic that would make mobs more effective against both characters and monsters. One of the ideas I came up with was harried/harrass as an effect where each attempted attack upon you above your con score reduces your AC for the turn by 1. So with a con of 18 you get 4 attacks a turn that don't effect your AC, and each further one lowers it by one. My justification for this is that you literally cannot dodge attacks from every direction in 6 seconds, as each dodge will put you in the position to get hit by a different attack.

You mean Con Bonus. Or Con Mod, but I doubt you allow for negative values.