Druids and summoning small armies

[Nonah_Me]

So I have a player, fairly high level (14, soon to be 15) who has a habit of always summoning large multiples of animals. 12 giant crabs, 8 bears, etc. What's a good way to deal with attack rolls, damage, movement of these creatures without bogging me down?

[BruceLeeroy]

Talk to your player and tell him that if he's going to play a minion master he needs to step up his game. Efficiency is key. Plan the movements of his minions when it's not his own turn, have their stats handy on index cards or whatever, roll attack rolls and damage at the same time, etc. I've imposed time limits on minion masters before. I feel that a player is being selfish if they choose to play a style that negatively impacts the other people at the table, whether it's chaotic stupid, the amnesiac wizard (what does my spell do again?), minion master, klepto kender, etc. Selfish players get talked to about their behavior, and thankfully I've had the good fortune to have a community of mature players who are willing to adapt their styles to accommodate.

Another possibility is handling the behavior of the minions in an abstract way. For instance, you could simply narrate their actions and bypass the dice. "Your horde of bears wrestles with the pair of hill giants, inflicting bloody wounds, but for all their ferocity, the hill giants are standing strong, knocking them away before they can grapple effectively. 30 damage this round."

You could also have the player set up a dice roller online to roll groups of attacks and damage all at once.

[Ninja_Prawn]

Another possibility is handling the behavior of the minions in an abstract way.

The DMG has rules for this. I don't know how good they are - I haven't used them myself and they felt kind of half-baked at first glance - but they might at least give the OP a starting point.

[rhouck]

I play a druid who summons minions frequently. Here is what I do to speed the game along:

1. Have any creature I want to summon on index cards. The index cards I made are photocopies out of the MM so they have ALL of the stats, so there is never a "crap, I need to look up their Wisdom score..." I pull the index card out so when my turn comes around, I say "I summon X".

NOTE: obviously this does NOT match the official interpretation that the DM always chooses the summon. If do have cards for most of the creatures so I could roll most choices, but that definitely makes it harder for the player to plan ahead. I avoid abusing the system (e.g., no Pixie bombs) and so my DM allows me to choose the summon.

2. I have enough dice to roll for EVERYTHING at once at needed. For example, if I have 8 wolves attacking with Pack Tactics (advantage), I have 16 d20s. Moreover, they are color coded (i.e., I have two white, two light blue, two orange, etc.) so that I can roll all at once and easily see the advantage dice pairings and figure out who hit/miss.

Then when it comes to roll for damage, I have a pile of d4, d6, d8, whatever is needed so I can roll it all at once. Often it is 4 wolves attacking one target, and 4 attacking another, and so I'll do one set of to-hit rolls on one, then resolve damage, followed by the other 4 to-hit rolls, and damage.

3. My DM changed the minions from having their own initiative to just attacking on my turn to keep things simple (so I don't have two turns). Moreover, we just allow all of the movement all at once (i.e., move all 8 wolves at once), rather than resolving each of them on a separate turn.

4. My "minions" are tokens with a big number on each. I have a notepad that I number out (e.g., summoning 8 minions, then I write out numbers 1-8 on separate lines) and write in the starting hit points for each. This allows me to quickly record damage (e.g., DM says "I attack #4, it's a hit, take 6 damage" and I can mark off 6 hp for minion #4), as well as status effects, etc.

As we sometimes have 6-8 PCs, I am cognizant of how minions can bog down the game and plan my play accordingly (e.g., I don't summon every fight (even if it might be the best strategy), I don't make them attack 8 separate opponents, etc.). Plus PLANNING AHEAD is incumbent on me, which means being prepared with stats and LOTS of dice. If I was DMing and a player tried to summon 16 wolves with a 5 level slot and only had one of each dice, I'd be extremely unhappy... heck I'm annoyed when PCs don't roll both d20s for advantage/disadvantage at the same time!

[Slipperychicken]

For damage you can use the "average" value presented next to the damage dice. Instead of rolling 1d8+4 (average 8.5), the attack simply deals 8 damage on a hit, and 16 on a critical hit. That means you only have to make the to-hit rolls, and not the damage rolls.


When I played a 'minion master' type in pathfinder, I always planned my monsters' moves long before my turn happened. I thought of it as a matter of courtesy to the DM and the other players.

[Demonslayer666]

I highly recommend the RPG Roller app for both players and DMs. It has saved me lots of time. It's cathartic to roll your d20 to hit, but when you need the odd rolls like 4d12, or large numbers of dice, it comes in really handy.

I would also recommend using the law of averages instead of rolling for the whole group. If a third of the group hits on average, then just do automatic damage like BruceLeeroy said. That will take away some of the fun of rolling, but it's necessary for efficiency's sake. That may also persuade him to summon fewer creatures.

[gullveig]

The DMG has a house rule somewhere which says something like "For each X attackers that each one need a Y on a die roll, you can consider one of them had success in that attack and ignore the dice rolls. The X and Y are provided in the table below."

I made some calculations and tinkered the table to be something like "How many monsters are needed to attack an target as such we have 75% chance to at least one of them hit the target?"

### Mob Attacks Table
( Target AC - Monster To Hit ) => Number of monsters need to one automatic hit
AC-ToHit -> # Monsters
01-05 -> 1
06-10 -> 2
11-13 -> 3
14-15 -> 4
16 -> 5
17 -> 7
18 -> 9
19 -> 14
20 -> 28
###

Example:
Target has AC 14.
Monster has To Hit +4.
14 - 4 = 10... Looking at the table you see that you need 2 monsters to make an automatic success.
[EDIT 1] Lets say you have 4 monsters like that, you can rule that 2 of them hit the target without the need of rolls.

I hope this is helpful to you.

[EDIT 2] I can explain more about the math and the 75% magic number if you wish...