Armies

[Razanir]

My brother came to me asking about the CR of 1,000,000 kobolds. Don't worry, I talked him out of it. I know that CR breaks down after a while. But he's still insisting on an army, just one of 1,000 kobolds instead. I don't really know where the break happens or how you'd do mass combat. So what would you all recommend if he's insisting on having his players fight a massive army?

[M Placeholder]

Play the Kobolds like Tucker played 'em, and don't skimp on the traps, murder holes and chokepoints.

[Karl Aegis]

If you're powerful enough to kill a million kobolds in a single encounter there's no way you would get experience for that. Especially when you don't even give us class levels.

[The Grue]

This may be one of the few instances where Fireball is the mechanically optimal choice.

[Hamste]

For players against armies? Break it up into smaller battles and what the players do affect morale causing the enemy to break or turn the tide of battle. Have them fight their way to the general something. There are also mass combat rules somewhere if the players have their own army but can not remember where. If he insists on fighting them all it will be really boring but he can give them 1 hp and a low armor class/to hit so they die quicker...it would still get horribly boring though.

[Hamste]

This may be one of the few instances where Fireball is the mechanically optimal choice.

Nope there are druid spells with an even bigger area that can kill them so even then fireball is not optimal.

[atemu1234]

I'd say about CR 10-12, if you have the Monster Manual Warrior version.

[Flickerdart]

My brother came to me asking about the CR of 1,000,000 kobolds. Don't worry, I talked him out of it. I know that CR breaks down after a while. But he's still insisting on an army, just one of 1,000 kobolds instead. I don't really know where the break happens or how you'd do mass combat. So what would you all recommend if he's insisting on having his players fight a massive army?
Direct him to the rules for armies in Miniatures Handbook, and the Mob template in DMGII that can represent regiments of kobolds.

The CR of 1000 kobolds wouldn't even be that high - every doubling is a +2 (except for fractional CRs), so 4 kobolds are CR1, 8 kobolds are CR3, 16 are 5, 32 are 7, 64 are 9, 128 are 11, 256 are 13, 512 are 15, and 1024 are 17.

Such an army would have great difficulty doing anything to a 17th level character, though. I'd say that beyond level 5 or so, no amount of kobolds are going to manage anything. Guerilla tactics just don't accomplish anything against guys who can gas your entire force with one spell, or throw down summons that send your men into a panic.

[OldTrees1]

Direct him to the rules for armies in Miniatures Handbook, and the Mob template in DMGII that can represent regiments of kobolds.

The CR of 1000 kobolds wouldn't even be that high - every doubling is a +2 (except for fractional CRs), so 4 kobolds are CR1, 8 kobolds are CR3, 16 are 5, 32 are 7, 64 are 9, 128 are 11, 256 are 13, 512 are 15, and 1024 are 17.

Such an army would have great difficulty doing anything to a 17th level character, though. I'd say that beyond level 5 or so, no amount of kobolds are going to manage anything. Guerilla tactics just don't accomplish anything against guys who can gas your entire force with one spell, or throw down summons that send your men into a panic.

Well a literal army of kobolds can go nat 20 fishing and that can be dangerous to low-mid level characters. However I don't think that would be an interesting fight myself.

[Hamste]

Assuming only a natural 20 hits about 50 will hit and only 2 and a half will confirm. They do 1d3 for an average damage of 2 for 105 average damage assuming that all can attack with their slings some how (and ignoring the few that can attack with swords). This damage gets even less impressive if you have any damage reduction at all. A level 13 barbarian would be almost completely immune to the kobolds and a much lower druid could deal with them with out really being threatened.

[The Grue]

Nope there are druid spells with an even bigger area that can kill them so even then fireball is not optimal.

Of course Druid would be the mechanically optimal choice. I don't know why I would have thought otherwise.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Direct him to the rules for armies in Miniatures Handbook, and the Mob template in DMGII that can represent regiments of kobolds.

Representing large numbers of individuals as a single "creature" is definitely your best bet. If you have more than a dozen minions on the map, it's your best bet. Personally, I've had great success with this homebrew (http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2hjp8?Military-Unit-by-template), but really, all you have to do is stat out a standard brute-type character and give it the Swarm subtype and you'll get close.

[OldTrees1]

Assuming only a natural 20 hits about 50 will hit and only 2 and a half will confirm. They do 1d3 for an average damage of 2 for 105 average damage assuming that all can attack with their slings some how (and ignoring the few that can attack with swords). This damage gets even less impressive if you have any damage reduction at all. A level 13 barbarian would be almost completely immune to the kobolds and a much lower druid could deal with them with out really being threatened.

Yeah, but DR is not common even if it is not rare for melee characters, the party is made of more than just melee characters, and crits tend to exceed DR.

So while it might take a mol of kobolds to challenge a mid level party, it is not off the table*

*Excluding certain builds like persistent fast healing or an army slaying Bloodstorm Blade

Again, I do not think facing nat 20 fishing foes to be enjoyable.

[Grek]

Ideally, you want to allow the kobolds to roll for as few things as possible. Whenever you can, just take their average result and multiply it by however many kobolds you have.

Let's assume you're talking about this (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/kobold.htm) kobold. Let's also assume that the 1000 kobold army elects to divide itself up into twenty bands of 50 kobolds each, who then organize themselves into 7x7 columns (with a single scout per band, who doesn't march in the column) when engaged in battles. This lets you keep track of 20 figures each of which has a space of 25 feet instead of 1000 with their individual spaces - much easier to handle.

They're all armed with slings, giving them a range increment of 50'. Each column is 35' square, so each band will want to close until their nearest rank is 15' from the enemy for maximum accuracy. Each kobold does a mean of 1.33 damage (remember, all attacks that hit do one damage!) on an attack that hits. Each kobold has an attack bonus of 3, meaning that 5% of the kobolds will roll a natural 20 on any given volley, another 5% will hit AC 22, another 5% will hit AC 21... all the way down to 5% that hits AC 5 and 5% that always misses. 5% of 50 is 2.5, so we're looking at about 3.5 damage per AC number that the kobolds can hit after crits*. There's some variance there, but not much - law of averages and all.

A good estimate for the damage of any given volley would be to take (23 - Target AC -2 per 50' of distance)*3.5 to get the amount of damage that a volley a given kobold band does to a single target, rounded up and with a minimum of 3.5 damage per volley per band. The entire army focus firing at one person does 70 damage per AC they can hit. Depending on how a character is specialized, that might be dangerous or it might be trivial. There's 5th level wizards who could defeat that and 10th level fighters who couldn't.

Skills-wise, just assume it takes a natural 20 on some skills (listen, spot, search, knowledge, survival to track; anything where one kobold getting lucky means the whole group gets the benefit) takes 10 on others (profession, craft, survival to get food, etc; anything where twice as many kobolds means an average of twice the result) and always rolls a 1 on the rest (Move silently, hide, etc; anything where one kobold can screw it up for everyone) for the sake of simplicity. Only roll for the skill checks of the individual kobold vanguards, and only then when one is actually encountered alone.

Health-wise, use something like the swarm rules. Each band has 49 hit points. Single target attacks inflict 1 damage. Area attacks inflict 1 damage per square. SoDs do one damage per target they allow. Save for half has no effect - half is still enough to take out a kobold. Save negates and save partial have their effectiveness reduced by a percentage equal to (Save DC-2)*5% for Fortitude saves and (DC-1)*5% for Will and Reflex saves, to a minimum reduction of 5% - some of those kobolds are going to roll natural 20s on their saves, after all.

*Math Tip: Slings crit for 2x on a natural 20, so you can multiply your average non-crit damage by 1.05 to get your crits-included average damage! Due to the way I constructed it above, this even accounts for the confirmation roll.

[Hamste]

Of course Druid would be the mechanically optimal choice. I don't know why I would have thought otherwise.

Poor fireball even in its best light it is still losing out. At least it can be used with assault Necromancers though there is probably a better spell even in that.

[endur]

When you are building your army of 1000 kobolds, remember to think like an army commander.

If you have ever built an army for Warhammer or a similar game system, you will have lots of grunts, but you will also have elite troops, commanders, spell casters, monsters, etc.

So if you have 1000 kobolds, figure at least 100 are elite kobolds (above level 1). With that many kobolds, you might have other creatures in the army (dragons, half-dragons, other draconic or reptilian creatures). Your army commander is going to be pretty tough to control 1000 creatures. You will also have spell casters, some low level and some high level.