The Oni
2013-08-27, 01:02 PM
The Troop Rules, I understand, are a recent addition to Pathfinder that are basically Swarms for human-sized critters; they're used for armies of low-level mooks that band together to be an actual threat. I love this idea, and it happens to fit flawlessly with the theme of a homebrew class I'm designing right now.
Now, I've heard of Swarms, but I've never encountered either Troops or Swarms in a game to compare them to. I'm flying blind here. My main experience in Pathfinder is also PFS, so I can't just ask the GM if we can fight a Swarm instead of regular mooks just to sate my curiosity.
The crux of the matter is that I'm homebrewing a class feature which allows this class to functionally "shapeshift" into a Troop under certain conditions. The problem is that the Troop subtype seems very, very strong, and there are very few examples of Troop monsters. Further complicating matters is that this Troop is based off Russian soldiers wielding firearms, and not typical medieval or High Fantasy fighters (apparently some PFS members wandered into Russia circa 1918 and Rasputin is the dungeon boss, lol).
A time or resource limit might work to temper the awesome power that a Troop can potentially wield, but as any tabletop gamer knows, any rule that can be exploited eventually will, so I'm hoping to give the unit enough weaknesses that it can still be thwarted even if the powergamer finds a way to extend it to 30 gods-damned rounds.
I need to come up with a good, roughly equivalent stat conversion from player-to-troop so that a Troop full of soldiers doesn't utterly dominate the opposition. The class feature doesn't come about until midlevel, so it's OK if there's no Level 1 equivalent troop (that seems silly anyway).
My Very Limited Source Material (http://paizo.com/paizo/blog/v5748dyo5lewb?THE-RUSSIANS-ARE-COMING)
Now, I've heard of Swarms, but I've never encountered either Troops or Swarms in a game to compare them to. I'm flying blind here. My main experience in Pathfinder is also PFS, so I can't just ask the GM if we can fight a Swarm instead of regular mooks just to sate my curiosity.
The crux of the matter is that I'm homebrewing a class feature which allows this class to functionally "shapeshift" into a Troop under certain conditions. The problem is that the Troop subtype seems very, very strong, and there are very few examples of Troop monsters. Further complicating matters is that this Troop is based off Russian soldiers wielding firearms, and not typical medieval or High Fantasy fighters (apparently some PFS members wandered into Russia circa 1918 and Rasputin is the dungeon boss, lol).
A time or resource limit might work to temper the awesome power that a Troop can potentially wield, but as any tabletop gamer knows, any rule that can be exploited eventually will, so I'm hoping to give the unit enough weaknesses that it can still be thwarted even if the powergamer finds a way to extend it to 30 gods-damned rounds.
I need to come up with a good, roughly equivalent stat conversion from player-to-troop so that a Troop full of soldiers doesn't utterly dominate the opposition. The class feature doesn't come about until midlevel, so it's OK if there's no Level 1 equivalent troop (that seems silly anyway).
My Very Limited Source Material (http://paizo.com/paizo/blog/v5748dyo5lewb?THE-RUSSIANS-ARE-COMING)