Did I go too far?

[Calthropstu]

The last session I ran for the Jade regent adventure path, I decided to greatly deviate from the prescribed battle plans.
The hobgoblins in the first level under the pagoda in book 4 had a prescribed battle plan that literally makes zero sense, especially for hobgoblins, and ESPECIALLY considering they've been at war for 60 years. With only one magic weapon on the whole floor, the shadow dancers could have wiped out the entire floor with their shadows EASILY. So I had the orcs use a fighting retreat, realizing they were completely outmatched, sending a messenger to alert everyone that a massive attack was under way. I had the hobgoblins gather all their people, arm with bows and try to set up a massive ambush.
The combat was so big, it took more than half the session, and ended with more than 20 elite hobgoblins still standing. I essentially gathered the whole floor and threw them at the pcs at once. To be fair, the pcs are holding their own. They immediately set up invisibility and neutralized the ambush with some well placed web spells.
The map is a colossal mess, with numbers everywhere.
Did I go too far assembling about 50 or so enemies to attack the PCs?

[Venger]

Of course you did. That's way too many enemies at once. Even if it's not an overwhelming encounter, rolling that many dice is just tedious. Have them fight a smaller number of stronger foes.

[daremetoidareyo]

If I'm using more than 12 monsters, I'm using mooks. 1 hp bad guys with all of the powers of normal bad guys.

In any crew of sentient creatures, if you start losing more than 50% of your numbers, a tactical retreat is only a round or two away

[ATHATH]

If I'm using more than 12 monsters, I'm using mooks. 1 hp bad guys with all of the powers of normal bad guys.

In any crew of sentient creatures, if you start losing more than 50% of your numbers, a tactical retreat is only a round or two away
Maybe the Law of Conservation of Ninjitsu is why organized monsters generally tend to fight the PCs in small groups instead of all at once.

[RoboEmperor]

I had a DM who got pissed that the party defeated the encounters with relative ease, so he put all the encounters on the floor into one room. Half the party died every time he did that. My opinion of that DM? Complete utter ****ing sadistic piece of **** who shouldn't be DMing. I left when he did that twice.

[Anxe]

I do that to my PCs occasionally and those are reliably some of the best sessions I've run. They have to start prioritizing targets, looking for alternative ways to achieve victory, and considering retreat. If it's consistently level appropriate encounters they can get complacent.
But most importantly,
ALWAYS LEAVE A PATH OF ESCAPE

[Bohandas]

Of course you did. That's way too many enemies at once. Even if it's not an overwhelming encounter, rolling that many dice is just tedious. Have them fight a smaller number of stronger foes.

Yeah, even a lot of D&D computer games can't handle that many monsters in a fight (in Atari's Temple of Elemental Evil for example if you summon extra monsters into the already crowded fight under the moathouse they'll just stand there and not do anything because the game can only deal with a limited number of creatures). You need the Miniatures Handbook mass combat rukes or something, or maybe the mob template (from Cityscape IIRC. I think it was actually in 2 books but I'm completely blanking on the other one)

[Venger]

Yeah, even a lot of D&D computer games can't handle that many monsters in a fight. You need the Miniatures Handbook mass combat rukes or something, or maybe the mob template (from Cityscape IIRC. I think it was actually in 2 books but I'm completely blanking on the other one)

heroes of battle also has mass combat rules, but like the others, they're pretty terrible. despite its origins, 3.x isn't a miniatures wargame, it's predicated on each combatant being an individual. when you try to mix the systems, things get kind of weird.

[Yahzi]

heroes of battle also has mass combat rules, but like the others, they're pretty terrible. despite its origins, 3.x isn't a miniatures wargame, it's predicated on each combatant being an individual. when you try to mix the systems, things get kind of weird.
One response is to group ordinary soldiers to create a single large creature. You can do that in two or three pages of rules (like I did in Generals of Prime (http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/218006/Generals-of-Prime)).

The simple version? Put 5 ordinarys into a squad that takes up 10 x 10 ft, make their HPs equal to the sum of all them, give them +4 AC and +4 to hit, and let them make one attack roll per turn. Now 5 guys can use Aid Another to make an effective fighting unit, while reducing dice rolling and action economy to something manageable.

[Eldariel]

Yeah, it's fine, you didn't do anything wrong and logic takes precedence over everything in D&D if your fun stems from verisimilitude (and yes, a world with magic and monsters does not preclude internal consistency and logical enemy behaviour). In this case you did the logical thing and it lead to some clunk - but that can be abstracted away enabling everyone to just enjoy the thrill of the fight.

I remember the first D&D 3.5 session had us face like 20 Orcs and 4 Ogres in open grassland at level 1 at 200' (a party of 6 + 1 level 4 NPC Ranger). Entangles turned the fight into a shooting gallery, but it still felt pretty awesome essentially trying to stem a near-endless tide. Still, rolling javelins for each Orc was a waste; just roll 5 at a time or abstract them into units where you roll like two dice for the whole unit or such.

It's relatively easy to cut away excess and just enjoy the fight. Now rolling fewer or more times does change the distribution of rolls you get but you can just roll with it; makes for more extreme cases (lots of hits, lots of misses) and as with all randomness, it favours the enemies.

[rel]

I think 3.5 unlike earlier editions doesn't handle large numbers of combatants very well. As such there is in my experience an understanding between the players (remember GM is just another player) that no one brings an army to the fight.

The GM doesn't have all the monsters form into a giant warband and the other players ignore the hireling rules, army creation abilities and leadership feat.
Because at the end of the day no one wants to wait around for someone move 100 models and make all of those attack rolls.

Further an adventure path is in my experience a structured railroad. By playing one you are aggreeing to follow the plot, ignore any common sense notions you may have and enjoy the setpiece fights and cliche and badly written story. Fun. But a different kind of fun to hex crawling.

The GM agrees not to have the Big Bad discover the evil overlord list and retrain their laughable build while the other players agree not to determine who the big bad is and kill them off early, or join the big bad and rule the galaxy together, or set fire to the campaign city and move to sigil.


That said, whether or not you went too far depends on the assumptions surrounding your specific game.
The internet peanut gallery cannot answer this for you, you will have to talk to your fellow players.

[EldritchWeaver]

PF has the Troop subtype, which is basically swarm rules for bigger enemies. Helps cutting down the number of chaff.

[ZamielVanWeber]

People hit a lot of good stuff but some small add ons: first off I do not know the party's level but beware that they do not accidentally not earn EXP for fighting so many enemies at once; if the return is unusually low for the encounter then you might want to consider giving a little extra; also the module assumed a string of small encounters and having a huge one can tax their resources more than the string of small ones would so being aware of that is important.

[Calthropstu]

The floor they are on has only one exit going to the next level. They can either sleep here guarding that door, or retreat upwards and camp outside. They made an alliance with the spiders above, and the hobgoblins are going nowhere.
As for the party, they are 10th level and have wiped out the normal hobgoblins, leaving only the elites with class levels. The boss hobgoblin is down to 5hp and it's only a matter of time before the whole group collapses into disarray.
The PCs have the battle in the bag without a single casualty. It helps that the entire party is casters (Oracle, druid, wizard, magus).
Two also have leadership.
So it's pretty much over. But I want to give it to them. Make them feel they earned it rather than hand wave it. It was a pretty epic win for them.