Party vs horde

[HidesHisEyes]

Does anyone have any advice for running a combat against a horde of weaker enemies? As in like a hundred or more. Like a horde of zombies or a small army of goblins.

Obviously there’s no point trying to run such a scenario using the normal combat rules, mainly because it’s impractical but also because you don’t want to give the players the idea that they can or should try and win by actually killing every last creature. It’s more for scenarios where they’re beset by a horde but have an objective like “kill the necromancer” or “hold out for x amount of time” or just “escape”.

But I’m wondering whether it would be better to devise a system based on the normal combat rules or to just find a robust way to run it as a skill challenge of some kind. Currently I have worked out the broad strokes of a system that is somewhere in between.

How do you run this kind of scenario? Or do you just avoid it?

[Greywander]

Here's some things you might do. The key here is to streamline things so that they run quickly without bogging the game down.

Give them all the same initiative order (roll once for initiative).

Roll for groups of enemies instead of rolling individually for all of them.

Have enemies die on a successful attack roll without needing to roll damage (e.g. they have 1 HP or something).

Aggregate horde attacks into a single die roll. Damage increases the higher you roll (as if more attacks are hitting) and decreases the lower you roll (as if less attacks are hitting). If attack roll = AC, assume half the attacks hit and half miss.

Use average damage for enemy attacks instead of rolling for damage.

Treat groups of enemies as if they were single enemies, similar to how swarms are handled. They have one HP pool but get fewer attacks as their HP is depleted, and they can't be healed.

Ignore groups of enemies that are too far away to meaningfully contribute to the fight. Either wait for the party to approach these enemies, or have them move up once the party clears out the enemies in front of them.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

You could put a creature in every space on the grid that matters, give none of them ranged attacks so only the ones nearest the PC's take a turn, and give all of them 1hp or something in that direction? That would be playable, but probably boring. You could have a smaller number of creatures that keep coming out of hallways/magical spawn points?

[Unoriginal]

Does anyone have any advice for running a combat against a horde of weaker enemies? As in like a hundred or more. Like a horde of zombies or a small army of goblins.

Obviously there’s no point trying to run such a scenario using the normal combat rules, mainly because it’s impractical but also because you don’t want to give the players the idea that they can or should try and win by actually killing every last creature. It’s more for scenarios where they’re beset by a horde but have an objective like “kill the necromancer” or “hold out for x amount of time” or just “escape”.

But I’m wondering whether it would be better to devise a system based on the normal combat rules or to just find a robust way to run it as a skill challenge of some kind. Currently I have worked out the broad strokes of a system that is somewhere in between.

How do you run this kind of scenario? Or do you just avoid it?

Well if the PCs are in an actual combat situation vs so many enemies, unless they're very high level, they're certainly going to die, so two questions:

Have you read the rules on Chase scenes or the rules for big mob combat, both in the DMG?

How likely are your players to decide to attack the horde anyway?

[Tvtyrant]

Does anyone have any advice for running a combat against a horde of weaker enemies? As in like a hundred or more. Like a horde of zombies or a small army of goblins.

Obviously there’s no point trying to run such a scenario using the normal combat rules, mainly because it’s impractical but also because you don’t want to give the players the idea that they can or should try and win by actually killing every last creature. It’s more for scenarios where they’re beset by a horde but have an objective like “kill the necromancer” or “hold out for x amount of time” or just “escape”.

But I’m wondering whether it would be better to devise a system based on the normal combat rules or to just find a robust way to run it as a skill challenge of some kind. Currently I have worked out the broad strokes of a system that is somewhere in between.

How do you run this kind of scenario? Or do you just avoid it?

There is a thread on minions on the front page, lots of suggestions from that could fit here.

One that I like is morale, where the cruddier members of the horde flee if injured or when the leader members get killed. The party isn't really fighting the whole army then, but a series of seargents closer to their level and groups of grunts that break apart as their leaders die.

If you have ever watched Troy, pattern it there. Group of grunts and leader come up, leader attacks a good guy while grunts form a circle, then grunts take off when their leader loses and another leader has to bring his crew in.

Beat say 4 leaders and the others take off.

Edit: most people dont have the suicidalness required for nass casualties, so armies consisted of a small band of guys who were really i to it and a bunch of guys who werent. They would psyche up before the right, run enthusiastically into combat, watch uncle Phil die and then want out. If a group of superheroes attacked you and fifty of your pals you would be stoked that you were going to jump five people, then within a minute decide the guys who just killed forty people were going to get you and take off.

Historical rout percentage was 10% of a unit or army.

Edit: skeletons and zombies are actually much scarier, because they don't run away. 1000 goblins would probably require you to kill 30 and the rest are going to rethink their lives. 100 skeletons means you have to kill 100 skeletons. In that case I would have the party find and kill the Necromancer, the army would take a lot of "fireball then run away" tactics.

[Unoriginal]

There is a thread on minions on the front page, lots of suggestions from that could fit here.

One that I like is morale, where the cruddier members of the horde flee if injured or when the leader members get killed. The party isn't really fighting the whole army then, but a series of seargents closer to their level and groups of grunts that break apart as their leaders die.

If you have ever watched Troy, pattern it there. Group of grunts and leader come up, leader attacks a good guy while grunts form a circle, then grunts take off when their leader loses and another leader has to bring his crew in.

Beat say 4 leaders and the others take off.

Edit: most people dont have the suicidalness required for nass casualties, so armies consisted of a small band of guys who were really i to it and a bunch of guys who werent. They would psyche up before the right, run enthusiastically into combat, watch uncle Phil die and then want out. If a group of superheroes attacked you and fifty of your pals you would be stoked that you were going to jump five people, then within a minute decide the guys who just killed forty people were going to get you and take off.

Historical rout percentage was 10% of a unit or army.

This is kinda underestimating how hordes are powerful in 5e.

100+ goblins are more than likely to win vs a standard party, and they'd know that. One volley of arrow is likely to be a TPK.

In the cases of Undead, well, they're not known for retreating.

[Tvtyrant]

This is kinda underestimating how hordes are powerful in 5e.

100+ goblins are more than likely to win vs a standard party, and they'd know that. One volley of arrow is likely to be a TPK.

In the cases of Undead, well, they're not known for retreating.

Unless you live on a perfectly flat plane, 100 archers arent drawing line of site to a party. Just looking out my window the elevation changes forty feet, there are 12 trees and two ditches. And that is with artificial flattening and mowed grass. On a farm or in the woods maybe twenty goblins are drawing LoS at a time, less if we work on it.

The goblins themselves would block LoS most of the time, and compacting them as close as possible renders them immediately vulnerable to a single fireball.

To avoid getting sneak attacked by invisible wizards they are going to draw up in squads, so the party has 1 squad in melee and two at range in a round. If 3 squads die the rest are going to book it and come back later.

Think about how difficult it is to spot a deer long enough to shoot it while hunting. You have 100x the range, days to find one, and three seconds of LoS to hit it. Now imagine it is shooting fireballs and laser beams at you, and hitting it doesn't kill it.

[Unoriginal]

Unless you live on a perfectly flat plane, 100 archers arent drawing line of site to a party. Just looking out my window the elevation changes forty feet, there are 12 trees and two ditches. And that is with artificial flattening and mowed grass. On a farm or in the woods maybe twenty goblins are drawing LoS at a time, less if we work on it.

The goblins themselves would block LoS most of the time, and compacting them as close as possible renders them immediately vulnerable to a single fireball.


One, units of 100 archers or more deployed on battlefield should certainly be able to aim at a small party

Two, they have no reason to be huddled together extremely close, given that they're goblins and not highly-regimented hobgoblins, but a single fireball is still not going to do much vs so many goblins. Yes, it would be scary, but not that scary (most of them will have seen magic in action if they ever fought in a battle, and a bunch of goblins dying in one go isn't that surprising either).


But let's say that only 1/5 of the troops are in a position to aim at the party with their bows. If there is 100 goblins, that's still 20 attacks. That's a lot.



To avoid getting sneak attacked by invisible wizards they are going to draw up in squads, so the party has 1 squad in melee and two at range in a round. If 3 squads die the rest are going to book it and come back later.

What.

One, why would the other goblins just stand there and do nothing? Even if they all had to go in melee, they would just overwhelm their enemies.

If you give them the option to attack at distance, the PCs are likely toast.



Think about how difficult it is to spot a deer long enough to shoot it while hunting. You have 100x the range, days to find one, and three seconds of LoS to hit it. Now imagine it is shooting fireballs and laser beams at you, and hitting it doesn't kill it.

This makes no sense.

It's not a hunt, it's a battle. The goblins have to aim and shoot at a small party, and even if some miss there is more than enough of them to deal massive damage to the PCs.


You're really, really underestimating how strong numerical superiority is in 5e.

[EvilAnagram]

One, units of 100 archers or more deployed on battlefield should certainly be able to aim at a small party
This is an interesting position.

In D&D, one person of small or medium size would take up a 5×5-foot area, or 25 square feet. That means 100 people, densely packed, would take up an area of about 500×500100×25 feet, or 250,000 2,500 square feet. Are you maintaining that in any terrain, those people, spread out as they are, would all have consistent line of sight on any point in the battlefield? In an urban battlefield? A hilly or wooded battlefield? Even though at that point the twenty allies standing between you and the target are definitely providing cover?

[Doug Lampert]

This is an interesting position.

In D&D, one person of small or medium size would take up a 5×5-foot area, or 25 square feet. That means 100 people, densely packed, would take up an area of about 500×500 feet, or 250,000 square feet. Are you maintaining that in any terrain, those people, spread out as they are, would all have consistent line of sight on any point in the battlefield? In an urban battlefield? A hilly or wooded battlefield? Even though at that point the twenty allies standing between you and the target are definitely providing cover?

Huh? 100 people taking up 25 square feet each take up 2,500 square feet. NOT 100 times as much in two different dimensions at once.

If your math is off by two orders of magnitude, then you're likely to draw incorrect assumptions.

[EvilAnagram]

Huh? 100 people taking up 25 square feet each take up 2,500 square feet. NOT 100 times as much in two different dimensions at once.

If your math is off by two orders of magnitude, then you're likely to draw incorrect assumptions.

Yeah, I did that math at a stoplight. It was quite bad.

Still, the point remains that 2,500 square feet is quite a bit of terrain to provide equal lines of sight.

[Unoriginal]

This is an interesting position.

In D&D, one person of small or medium size would take up a 5×5-foot area, or 25 square feet. That means 100 people, densely packed, would take up an area of about 500×500 feet, or 250,000 square feet. Are you maintaining that in any terrain, those people, spread out as they are, would all have consistent line of sight on any point in the battlefield? In an urban battlefield? A hilly or wooded battlefield? Even though at that point the twenty allies standing between you and the target are definitely providing cover?

If you want to go by-the-book, there is no rules saying that combatants provide covers, and in fact it's made pretty clear that you can hit an enemy even if several allies are in your line of sight/the arrow's trajectory.

Now, when I did my "hobgoblin army vs one lvl 20 Fighter", I DID say that enough combatants in the way would provide total cover vs an enemy, on a flat surface.

Keep in mind, though, that arced shots are a thing in archery, and that the goblins on the back of the group should be able to do it.

In any case, as I said, even if only a fifth of the goblins are able to fire, it's still 20 attacks (if there is only 100 goblins, since OP said 100 or more). Spread through your typical group, it's 4 per persons. Assuming only 1-2 hits, it's still a wound. And the horde has every reason to feel confident that enough of those volleys are going to take you down. Now, those are low-key estimates.

Imagining one third of the goblins are able to fire (still pretty conservative, they should know one thing or two about spreading out). It means 33 attacks, so 6 attacks for everyone, with 3 of the PCs that get one additional. Let's assume 2 of those are hits. Already more significative damage.

And if you go per RAW and say the 100 of them are able to shoot, it means 20 attacks per PCs.

Now, that's with bows only. You don't want to get swarmed by even 33 goblins.

[Tvtyrant]

One, units of 100 archers or more deployed on battlefield should certainly be able to aim at a small party

Two, they have no reason to be huddled together extremely close, given that they're goblins and not highly-regimented hobgoblins, but a single fireball is still not going to do much vs so many goblins. Yes, it would be scary, but not that scary (most of them will have seen magic in action if they ever fought in a battle, and a bunch of goblins dying in one go isn't that surprising either).


But let's say that only 1/5 of the troops are in a position to aim at the party with their bows. If there is 100 goblins, that's still 20 attacks. That's a lot.



What.

One, why would the other goblins just stand there and do nothing? Even if they all had to go in melee, they would just overwhelm their enemies.

If you give them the option to attack at distance, the PCs are likely toast.



This makes no sense.

It's not a hunt, it's a battle. The goblins have to aim and shoot at a small party, and even if some miss there is more than enough of them to deal massive damage to the PCs.


You're really, really underestimating how strong numerical superiority is in 5e.

I think you are really, really underestimating how much brush there is outside where there aren't lawn mowers.

1. Armies are big and loud, adventurers are not. The army doesn't know where you are (not being telepathic) but where sounds are coming from.

2. Anywhere wild full concealment is trivial beyond 10ft. Archers are not going to be targetting you except in the group immediately in front of you.

3. Goblins are people. They have the information in front of them (sounds and screaming) and human motivations. When screams and booms occur in the bushes nearby some are going to run in, some are going to stand around none plussed, and some are going to run screaming the other way.

4. A unit is considered no longer fit for service after 10% losses, and routs regularly occur below that threshold.

Almost any scenario involves the party ambushing the army, with the army unaware until the party is on top of them. The army is going to be broken up by terrain, and have a narrow number that can see the party at a time. As long as the parties opening salvo kills a significant number of goblins, the rest are going to take off. That doesn't even involve the party casting cloud spells or illusions to enhance their concealment, just bushes and trees.

[EvilAnagram]

If you want to go by-the-book, there is no rules saying that combatants provide covers, and in fact it's made pretty clear that you can hit an enemy even if several allies are in your line of sight/the arrow's trajectory.

Now, when I did my "hobgoblin army vs one lvl 20 Fighter", I DID say that enough combatants in the way would provide total cover vs an enemy, on a flat surface.

Keep in mind, though, that arced shots are a thing in archery, and that the goblins on the back of the group should be able to do it.

In any case, as I said, even if only a fifth of the goblins are able to fire, it's still 20 attacks (if there is only 100 goblins, since OP said 100 or more). Spread through your typical group, it's 4 per persons. Assuming only 1-2 hits, it's still a wound. And the horde has every reason to feel confident that enough of those volleys are going to take you down. Now, those are low-key estimates.

Imagining one third of the goblins are able to fire (still pretty conservative, they should know one thing or two about spreading out). It means 33 attacks, so 6 attacks for everyone, with 3 of the PCs that get one additional. Let's assume 2 of those are hits. Already more significative damage.

And if you go per RAW and say the 100 of them are able to shoot, it means 20 attacks per PCs.

Now, that's with bows only. You don't want to get swarmed by even 33 goblins.

What level party are we talking? Because around level 10 I'd put money on heroes.

Assuming typical party is Champion Fighter, Thief Rogue, Evocation Wizard, and Life Cleric, I doubt it would TPK. Every party member can take 5 hits from a goblin arrow at that level, and the wizard and cleric can easily crush the entire army. I mean, a fireball can take out a 40×40' area, which is 8×8 goblins, or 64 goblins (square goblins?).

Check my math. I'm bad at math today.

Anyways, a wizard would have to roll under 12 points of damage on 8d6 for any of them to live. And the cleric can cast Flame Strike after that.

Even if it was five fighters, they can easily kill a sixth of the army in a single turn. At level 20, they should kill half the army in two turns.

[MaxWilson]

Assuming typical party is Champion Fighter, Thief Rogue, Evocation Wizard, and Life Cleric, I doubt it would TPK. Every party member can take 5 hits from a goblin arrow at that level, and the wizard and cleric can easily crush the entire army. I mean, a fireball can take out a 40×40' area, which is 8×8 goblins, or 64 goblins (square goblins?).

...if the goblins are packed shoulder-to-shoulder, and if you pretend the Fireball is square instead of round.

Shortbows have a range of 320', which means the goblins can spread out to cover roughly 322K square feet without sacrificing the ability to engage the PCs. (In practice they can spread out a bit more due to 5E's movement rules allowing shoot-and-scoot, and the fact that the party's location is an area, not a single point.) A Fireball covers about 1.25K square feet. 320^2 * pi / (20^2*pi) = 1/256, so if the goblins wait patiently without moving until the wizard finishes Fireballing them all, it will take 256 Fireballs to kill them all.

4 10th level PCs could theoretically beat a horde of five hundred goblins, but if they approach it as a straightforward Combat As Sport fight, they're going to lose unless the DM roleplays the goblins as exceptionally dumb and cowardly.

[Angelalex242]

Then again, a single bigshot has been able to take swarms countless times in literature.

Otherwise known as: How many first level dwarves does it take to kill the ancient red dragon Smaug?

[PhoenixPhyre]

Then again, a single bigshot has been able to take swarms countless times in literature.

Otherwise known as: How many first level dwarves does it take to kill the ancient red dragon Smaug?

Literature is literature. Games are games. Neither is the other. Tropes and stories that work in one may or may not work in the other. Especially across very different settings.

[Angelalex242]

Literature is literature. Games are games. Neither is the other. Tropes and stories that work in one may or may not work in the other. Especially across very different settings.

Perhaps. But it's an interesting thought experiment. Assuming every Dwarf in the lonely mountain went all out at trying to kill Smaug, about how many dwarves would it take to change Tolkien's history?

[Tvtyrant]

...if the goblins are packed shoulder-to-shoulder, and if you pretend the Fireball is square instead of round.

Shortbows have a range of 320', which means the goblins can spread out to cover roughly 322K square feet without sacrificing the ability to engage the PCs. (In practice they can spread out a bit more due to 5E's movement rules allowing shoot-and-scoot, and the fact that the party's location is an area, not a single point.) A Fireball covers about 1.25K square feet. 320^2 * pi / (20^2*pi) = 1/256, so if the goblins wait patiently without moving until the wizard finishes Fireballing them all, it will take 256 Fireballs to kill them all.

4 10th level PCs could theoretically beat a horde of five hundred goblins, but if they approach it as a straightforward Combat As Sport fight, they're going to lose unless the DM roleplays the goblins as exceptionally dumb and cowardly.

This is terrible strategy on the goblins part. The characters could simply sit bow length away and shoot the outliers, then kite the horde. As they can shoot and retreat as fast as the goblins advance they just trade arrows with the outer most goblins until the goblins die out, the attrition favors them as they can run away and heal while the goblins can't revive their dead.

[AvatarVecna]

I've run a few encounters like this, and gotten some feedback on them, and here's some of my takeaway. For all of my examples, I'll be using 100 kobolds, since that's (sort of) what the first one I ran was like.

1) Separate your horde into groups that run on the same initiative; whether this is making them into "squad units" or just having a whole bunch of kobolds on the same initiative happen to all be next to each other, it'll make your life easier than finding the 10 kobolds in the pack of 100 that rolled initiative 5 or whatever.

2) Speaking of that thing I just said: as an alternative to 100 individual kobolds, run 10 "squad units"; essentially, make a homebrew monster that has similar HP/DPR to the 10 kobolds, but has only the one action and HP pool to keep track of. This allows you to simulate how teamwork aids them in hitting harder without having to actually handle tactical combat for 100 individuals. This will speed up your game, which makes things more fun for everybody involved. Additionally, check out the swarm monsters that already exist, and note how decreased HP affects their damage (my advice here would be granting gradually fewer attacks, rather than lowering the damage of a single attack, but you could do it either way). the downside to this approach is that you'll almost certainly end up having to build the monsters in a way that shuts down single-target non-damaging effects (Hold Person, Charm Person, etc), but people weren't likely to be using those against a horde anyway, so this probably won't be a problem.

3) No matter how you go about this combat, a small group of PCs vs an army of mooks is gonna end up being a very grindy game, and doing the same thing round after round without an end in sight can get kinda monotonous. Shake things up with special units here and there - commanders, tanks, or even just slightly more powerful mooks. The variety will keep interest better.

4) As an add-on to point 3, try to have goals beyond just grinding your way through NPC fodder. Perhaps the horde is being fought as a distraction for an ally to escape, so the PCs need to keep the horde's attention without losing concentration on whatever spells are aiding their allies' stealthy escape. Perhaps the enemy seeks to weaken the defenses of a stronghold so that later reinforcements can tear through much easier, and the PC's job is to keep them from getting to set-up whatever sabotage the horde is working on the defenses - or maybe, as a tie-in to point 3, there are siege units being defended by the horde that the PCs need to reach and take down before they get through the stronghold's defenses.

5) Trust in the CR. I know it looks like a lot of HP to grind through, and I know it looks like a lot of potential damage each round, but if you're really worried, run some basic simulations; a defense-focused champion Fighter 20 with regular gear can grind his way through something like 100 kobolds who are all constantly attacking him before he goes down, while giving him adamantine plate and a +3 shield looks like it doubles (possibly even triples) that number. And that's the best scenario for one of the worst classes for this kind of situation. Give that Fighter a Life Cleric to keep everybody up, an Evoker Wizard to blast away, a Thief Rogue to set up traps, and an Evoker Wizard to blast away, and you could easily have your party taking down quadruple-digits worth of these low-CR dudes. The edition is built to handle this situation well, so don't shy away from the huge numbers on principle.

[strangebloke]

TBH, unless the party charges into the enemy formation like a bunch of fools (which is the usual assumption, for some reason) a party of High level PCs can destroy an army that has hundreds of times their numbers.

High level PCs have things like Pass Without Trace, Firewall and Dominate Person and other such things that can completely no-sell an army. PCs are really good at assassination and hit-and-run tactics. Additionally, while small groups of real-world fighters can absorb tons of casualties and keep pushing on, larger groups of real world fighters generally break ranks and flee after a loss of 10% of their forces. Granted, orcs or kobolds or hobgoblins or whatever might have better discipline, particularly if they're led by a manifestation of their god or whatever. Goblins are characterized by extreme cowardice, amongst other qualities, though, so I don't see them sticking around after another fireball eats up another 20 goblins.

I think that the whole "100 goblins kill anything" idea is a little bit overblown. Not to say that anyone's math is wrong, just to say that a large mass of humanoids is a slow meaty mass that doesn't recover HP quickly and doesn't have a great perception ability. It's easy to fixate on that damage without considering all the weaknesses.

[MaxWilson]

This is terrible strategy on the goblins part. The characters could simply sit bow length away and shoot the outliers, then kite the horde. As they can shoot and retreat as fast as the goblins advance they just trade arrows with the outer most goblins until the goblins die out, the attrition favors them as they can run away and heal while the goblins can't revive their dead.

It's unclear what strategy you're envisioning here but it doesn't match with the math I did, so apparently when you say "this strategy" you are envisioning something I'm not actually talking about.

My point is that the goblins have no incentive to hang out in Fireball Formation.

[Tvtyrant]

It's unclear what strategy you're envisioning here but it doesn't match with the math I did, so apparently when you say "this strategy" you are envisioning something I'm not actually talking about.

My point is that the goblins have no incentive to hang out in Fireball Formation.

If the goblins spread out to avoid fireballs they no longer have the same range, limiting their ability to swarm the party with arrows (their main threat). The party can retreat while shooting arrows as quickly as the goblins can advance while doing it, so the number of goblins capable of reaching the party is static.

Since the party can heal and goblins can't, due to dying, and the parties bad archers being better then the goblins at archery, the party would easily kite the entire horde over a few days. Even more so with mounts.

[Unoriginal]

I think that the whole "100 goblins kill anything" idea is a little bit overblown. Not to say that anyone's math is wrong, just to say that a large mass of humanoids is a slow meaty mass that doesn't recover HP quickly and doesn't have a great perception ability. It's easy to fixate on that damage without considering all the weaknesses.

Oh, 100 goblins don't kill anything. But I honestly don't think a group of PCs of a lvl lower than, say, 11 can't handle them in a direct manner.

Once less direct tactics get employed, well, it's a different story.

[strangebloke]

It's unclear what strategy you're envisioning here but it doesn't match with the math I did, so apparently when you say "this strategy" you are envisioning something I'm not actually talking about.

My point is that the goblins have no incentive to hang out in Fireball Formation.

Well, first of all, goblins don't generally wage war like hobgoblins or orcs. They raid caravans and steal stuff and hide in their forts and get pummeled by bigger races. I don't see them as moving a horde in a great march. Same goes for kobolds, really.

Hobgoblins or orcs, though, have plenty of motivation to bunch up. Wizards greater than fifth level are (depending on the setting) pretty rare. Walls of humanoids that can fight in formation are not. A formed-up wall of orcs will smash a bunch of orcs that eschew the 'fireball formation.' spreading out means that you can't fight toe-to-toe, so unless you're really fast, you'll get retreat. If you're spread out when you retreat, you'll be more spread out after you retreat. If an orc army is expecting adventurers, they might spread out, but even then, rushing the caster down en masse might be a better strategy.

IRL we had scorpions and trebuchets and the like which could hit a lot of people in an area but it wasn't like this stopped major forces from fighting in relatively (by modern standards) tight formations. Spreading out works for modern militaries only because there are so many things that kill clumped up soldiers now. Any bright-eyed combatant these days can pretty easily lay hands on the materials to build a mortar or an IED. In fantasy settings, there's probably only 1 wizard who can cast fireball for every 1000-10000 peasants, depending on the setting, and he has to get pretty close before he can even do damage, and even then he's only killing 40 to 50 guys, tops. On the scale of your average goblin clan, those are devastating losses, but your average goblin clan doesn't remotely resemble a horde.

If you're a caster in the army and the enemy army has a caster as well, and he tells his men to spread out, you tell your men to bunch up and you counterspell his fireballs while your pike square thoroughly routs his army.

[MaxWilson]

Well, first of all, goblins don't generally wage war like hobgoblins or orcs. They raid caravans and steal stuff and hide in their forts and get pummeled by bigger races. I don't see them as moving a horde in a great march. Same goes for kobolds, really.

Hobgoblins or orcs, though, have plenty of motivation to bunch up. Wizards greater than fifth level are (depending on the setting) pretty rare. Walls of humanoids that can fight in formation are not. A formed-up wall of orcs will smash a bunch of orcs that eschew the 'fireball formation.' spreading out means that you can't fight toe-to-toe, so unless you're really fast, you'll get retreat. If you're spread out when you retreat, you'll be more spread out after you retreat. If an orc army is expecting adventurers, they might spread out, but even then, rushing the caster down en masse might be a better strategy.

If you actually game it out you will find that the optimal strategy for hobgoblins against a melee threat like a wall of orcs is to have a few hobgoblins out front, wielding shields and Dodging, while the rest of the hobgoblins maintain a dispersed formation and kill the enemy troops with their bonus damage.

If the hobgoblins clump up and engage all the orcs in melee they will take more casualties.

Orcs aren't as good at ranged combat, and have more incentive to clump up--but you're the one who brought up orcs, not me.

[Doug Lampert]

Yeah, I did that math at a stoplight. It was quite bad.

Still, the point remains that 2,500 square feet is quite a bit of terrain to provide equal lines of sight.

It's smaller than my house. It's smaller than my front yard, it's substantially smaller than my back yard.

My house and yard aren't all that big.

Farm fields in the middle ages ran 2-3 acres per person in the settlement and they'd have two such fields (one fallow, one farmed, both as flat and open as possible). A single acre is 43,560 square feet, or over 17 times the required area for the goblins.

The backyard gardens inside the village maintained by the wives and children for vegetables are likely more than 2,500 square feet.

[EvilAnagram]

...if the goblins are packed shoulder-to-shoulder, and if you pretend the Fireball is square instead of round.

Shortbows have a range of 320', which means the goblins can spread out to cover roughly 322K square feet without sacrificing the ability to engage the PCs. (In practice they can spread out a bit more due to 5E's movement rules allowing shoot-and-scoot, and the fact that the party's location is an area, not a single point.) A Fireball covers about 1.25K square feet. 320^2 * pi / (20^2*pi) = 1/256, so if the goblins wait patiently without moving until the wizard finishes Fireballing them all, it will take 256 Fireballs to kill them all.

4 10th level PCs could theoretically beat a horde of five hundred goblins, but if they approach it as a straightforward Combat As Sport fight, they're going to lose unless the DM roleplays the goblins as exceptionally dumb and cowardly.
It seems seems to me that the point of featureless white rooms is to measure simple abilities and strengths. Once one side uses the tactics or attempts to turn the terrain to its advantage, the exercise becomes moot.

"Goblins can spread out!" So? An adventuring party would have to be willfully stupid to let an army get the drop on it. Even an army with the meta knowledge required to spread out to an insane degree (or are you arguing that mass archer groups would historically spread out to 1 person per 3,000 square feet?).

If you're suggesting that when all factors favor the 100 goblins in every way, they have a good chance, I'll concede the point. However, I don't think your point means much, if anything at all. An adventuring party could ambush an army and inflict massive casualties before vanishing into the night. It's probably as realistic and effective a strategy as you could conceive. An adventuring party that bumbled into a column of goblin archers marching down a road would probably have a decent chance of routing them. Adventurers have an advantage in a siege, in urban warfare, in forests, and in grasslands. Hell they have an advantage in clumps running at each other. If they are dropped into the middle of a group of perfectly spaced out goblins over thousands of square feet in a featureless plain, the goblins have an advantage. Whoopty do.


It's smaller than my house. It's smaller than my front yard, it's substantially smaller than my back yard.

My house and yard aren't all that big.

Farm fields in the middle ages ran 2-3 acres per person in the settlement and they'd have two such fields (one fallow, one farmed, both as flat and open as possible). A single acre is 43,560 square feet, or over 17 times the required area for the goblins.

The backyard gardens inside the village maintained by the wives and children for vegetables are likely more than 2,500 square feet.
If your house was filled with goblins, would they all have equal lines of sight to any given point?

[MaxWilson]

If the goblins spread out to avoid fireballs they no longer have the same range, limiting their ability to swarm the party with arrows (their main threat). The party can retreat while shooting arrows as quickly as the goblins can advance while doing it, so the number of goblins capable of reaching the party is static.

Since the party can heal and goblins can't, due to dying, and the parties bad archers being better then the goblins at archery, the party would easily kite the entire horde over a few days. Even more so with mounts.

If there's a static 300 goblins (minus casualties) firing arrows at 5 PCs, why do you imagine that the individual superiority of the PCs' archery makes up for the vastly greater quantity of the goblin archers?

I absolutely agree that mounts change things, and so does outranging the foe, but only by preventing those 300 goblins from ever firing an arrow at you in the first place. 300 archers is still 300 archers, and if you try to take them on in Combat As Sport fashion you will probably die, barring special builds. (Yes, we all know how to build a party that at 10th level can take on 300 archers in straight-up combat and live, e.g. four PCs that are all Fighter 1/Fiendlock 2/Shadow Sorcerer 7 with Heavy Armor Mastery and plenty of sorcerer slots banked, but I don't think we're talking about that kind of party in this thread, are we?)

[strangebloke]

If you actually game it out you will find that the optimal strategy for hobgoblins against a melee threat like a wall of orcs is to have a few hobgoblins out front, wielding shields and Dodging, while the rest of the hobgoblins maintain a dispersed formation and kill the enemy troops with their bonus damage.

If the hobgoblins clump up and engage all the orcs in melee they will take more casualties.

Orcs aren't as good at ranged combat, and have more incentive to clump up--but you're the one who brought up orcs, not me.

Generally, medieval combat is waged between forces so large that only a fraction can engage at once. A large part of winning such a fight is having as many guys contributing to that front line fight as possible. Pikes and spears are great weapons because you can hit with three rows of guys all at once. DND isn't designed for mass combat, but if you actually sit and roll attack rolls and everything this is still how it works out.

If your archers in the back are spread out, fewer of them will be within range of the front lines (or the enemy archers) which means that you're not hitting them as many times as they hit you.

x=ranged fighter
0=melee fighter

Your 'ideal formation' (lets assume that the back row here is the last one that can hit the enemy.):
x x x x x 00
x x x x x00
x x x x x 00
x x x x x00

20 archers in range of enemy.

My formation:
xxxxxxxxxx00
xxxxxxxxxx00
xxxxxxxxxx00
xxxxxxxxxx00

40 archers in range of enemy. Moreover, the guys in the front aren't going to be as tempted to run because their mates are right behind them, physically pushing them forward.

Of course in reality you'd want way thicker melee lines than that, and the archer line could be way deeper, but the point stands.

Unless you were saying that the hobs shouldn't have a tight front line?? But then you're really confusing me. Whoever the enemy is, they can just run past you and eat the OA and then you're surrounded and you lose.

[sambojin]

Two groups of 20-30 halberd/glaive/pike wielding gobbos with PAM (yes, they've mastered heavy weapons), two groups of 20-30 gobbo archers with Lucky (rerolls ahoy!), and two groups of 5-8 direwolves (to stop them just running away and kiting. 50' speed and proning will do it) is thematically fitting and should stop the party thinking they have a chance. Maybe throw in a lvl5 fighter/BM lieutenant or four, with good armour and stats, for problem control (superiority dice are ace against PCs).

Melee will get butchered by the long spears, ranged will get picked apart by arrows, there's two groups of everything so even two fireballs won't take out enough of them, and the direwolves solve kiting problems (and often take a fireball and not really care). Chuck in a group of 5 Raven swarms if you're worried they'll just fly off while kiting (air proning is always good).

Just so they *know* they're not meant to be attacking this, murder something irrelevant straight away if they decide to fight. Familiar, pet, summons, hirelings, whatever. Just immediately destroy them if they look like they're not just going to *nope* out of there. They should get the message.

Then you've just got to work out how you actually want to make them beat it. By talking to their chief/warboss/lieutenant/shaman? Raising the alarm for the nearby town? Tracking them back to the real army? Stopping the local lords from hunting them and pushing them onto a war footing? Finding out why their god/demon/spirit/whatever is angry? Finding out who *their* enemy is and assisting them against it? By stealing a mcguffin from their leader? The choice is yours on just why there's a small army there.

The actual troops don't need to be stat'd individually. They're more of an amorphous blob of HP (whatever*gobbos remaining) with a bucket full of attacks (that can incidentally draw line of sight quite well if one part of the blob can see them). It loses HP in goblin sized chunks that makes it a bit smaller and gives it slightly less attacks, but unless someone is specifically going to take on any particular unit in a weird way that *needs* single units, don't bother too much with individuals. Just assume stuff like hold person doesn't count, because the unit sort of carries the affected individuals along with it. It's like a mega-swarm that covers many squares. Think "unit swarm" or "oddly shaped gigantic creature that loses attacks and size when it loses a certain amount of HP" rather than individuals. About 6-10 PAM attacks for the long spears (remember the bonus attack, represents mass shield bashing and incidental blows) and 10-20 lucky arrow attacks for the archers seems fine to represent unit weight and coordination (or volley fire) while not being able to bring all the attacks to bear at a single point. Scary, but reasonable. Murder a third/half the unit, and it starts losing attacks one at a time for each gobbo worth of HP lost after that. Hit zero attacks, unit routes.

Doesn't mean a third or half the unit actually died. Just that a fair few did, and they routed as a group.

[Tvtyrant]

If there's a static 300 goblins (minus casualties) firing arrows at 5 PCs, why do you imagine that the individual superiority of the PCs' archery makes up for the vastly greater quantity of the goblin archers?

I absolutely agree that mounts change things, and so does outranging the foe, but only by preventing those 300 goblins from ever firing an arrow at you in the first place.

They don't though. At most ten of them are, the rest are too far away to hit you.

The only way we get 300 archers shooting the party is if the party wants to get into melee with them, and then only if they blow a bugle one a featureless plane. Otherwise terrain makes this impossible, or they simply stay out of the arrow range of the majority of goblins.

[MaxWilson]

Generally, medieval combat is waged between forces so large that only a fraction can engage at once. A large part of winning such a fight is having as many guys contributing to that front line fight as possible. Pikes and spears are great weapons because you can hit with three rows of guys all at once. DND isn't designed for mass combat, but if you actually sit and roll attack rolls and everything this is still how it works out.

If your archers in the back are spread out, fewer of them will be within range of the front lines (or the enemy archers) which means that you're not hitting them as many times as they hit you.

x=ranged fighter
0=melee fighter

Your 'ideal formation' (lets assume that the back row here is the last one that can hit the enemy.):
x x x x x 00
x x x x x00
x x x x x 00
x x x x x00

20 archers in range of enemy.

My formation:
xxxxxxxxxx00
xxxxxxxxxx00
xxxxxxxxxx00
xxxxxxxxxx00

40 archers in range of enemy. Moreover, the guys in the front aren't going to be as tempted to run because their mates are right behind them, physically pushing them forward.

Of course in reality you'd want way thicker melee lines than that, and the archer line could be way deeper, but the point stands.

Unless you were saying that the hobs shouldn't have a tight front line?? But then you're really confusing me. Whoever the enemy is, they can just run past you and eat the OA and then you're surrounded and you lose.

Er, you've given yourself twice as many hobgoblins as you've given me. Of course an army 2x as large beats one only half the size. That isn't about formations, that's just numbers and Lanchester's Squared Law. You've got twice as many aggregate HP and twice as much DPR.

Look, just try it. Take a hundred orcs and a hundred hobgoblins. Run two battles, one where the hobgoblins stand shoulder-to-should and fight the orcs, and another where the hobgoblins adopt a dispersed formation with an armored outer crust (hobgoblins with shields out for AC 18, Dodging if they're on the front lines) spaced 10' apart (so orcs who rush by take opportunity attacks with Martial Advantage). Put about 25% of the hobgoblins in the armored crust, and if the frontage is wide enough that that requires multiple rows, go ahead and stack the rows every 20' or so. Have the other hobgoblins shoot arrows at anyone they've got Martial Advantage on.

My crude Monte Carlo model says that hobs fighting in shoulder-to-shoulder formation will win about half of the time, taking an average of 83 casualties over 100 fights, whereas orcs average 89 casualties. But if hobs switch to shield wall formation with 25% shieldwall, hobgoblins win almost all the time, taking an average of 31 casualties to the orc's 99. (I had to make a few simplifying assumptions in my model to make it tractable, including completely denying any attacks to any hobgoblin assigned to shield wall, in exchange for making the orcs unwilling to Disengage through the shield wall or eat opportunity attacks. I believe this is fair to the orcs. Sim code is here: https://repl.it/repls/PristineThirstyInformationtechnology)

In any case, not only will the hobgoblins in the dispersed formation do better than hobgoblins packed shoulder-to-shoulder against orcs, but they will of course also eat fewer casualties against dragons, Flameskulls, PC wizards, and everything else that has AoEs. Instead of a single Fireball taking out 50 hobgoblins, it will only take out about seven.

[MaxWilson]

They don't though. At most ten of them are, the rest are too far away to hit you.

The only way we get 300 archers shooting the party is if the party wants to get into melee with them, and then only if they blow a bugle one a featureless plane. Otherwise terrain makes this impossible, or they simply stay out of the arrow range of the majority of goblins.

That doesn't follow. If the party is shooting at ten goblins, the party moves 30' (unless they have offsetting features like mounts or the Mobile feat) while 300 goblins Dash 60'. Won't be long before they've got 300 goblins shooting at them.