Overrun ruling in a comical situation

[No brains]

I want to have a horde of small creatures beset my players as they travel. It's already planned to be an easy fight, but I want to plan for them deciding, "I 'leadfoot' the wagon right through the horde."

First off, it's supposed to be an easy fight. I want them to feel powerful for beating a big number of monsters. If they want to do it right by using their powers tactically, I would salute them. But if they want to literally plow through the encounter, that's about the amount of effort they are expected to expend anyway.

Second, Overrun in the DMG is a thing, but that technically only allows a creature to overrun two creatures if I read the rules generously. "Can be done as an action or bonus action". I feel like that allows a call for it being done with both.

The horses pulling the cart are large, have hooves, and it could probably build momentum before hitting the mass of small creatures. The creatures will likely die from one hoof attack and survivors would have to save versus wagon wheels.

Oh yeah, and I have to figure out how much damage the wagon would deal when it runs over the creatures. Also the save DC/ attack bonus for that.

I'm going to sell this as a dangerous option since the horses would be vulnerable to Opportunity Attacks and the wagon itself may not fare well crunching through critters. Even so, I would have to commend my players' crazyness if they want to go through with this. Maybe their horse will eat a few OAs before getting eaten and maybe a player will fall off the wagon into the horde, but maybe the players will think it's worth it in the end.

[druid91]

I'd probably look to the falling damage rules for inspiration as far as 'Building up speed' goes. Maybe instead of 'For every ten feet fallen' it's 'For every uninterrupted 10 feet you're allowed to build up speed, add 1d6 to your crash pool. On impact, deal damage one die at a time until the thing you crashed into is dead/unconscious, then move to the next critter, continue dealing damage, so on.'

[Kane0]

Animal handling check to push the wagon straight into a bundle of hostile creatures. Anything in the way takes [damage value] with a Dex save for half. Failure on the save shoves them out of the way and they get no opp attack.

[druid91]

Animal handling check to push the wagon straight into a bundle of hostile creatures. Anything in the way takes [damage value] with a Dex save for half. Failure on the save shoves them out of the way and they get no opp attack.

That could be pretty darn broken since it gives no limit to the amount of time you spend trampling things.

[Man_Over_Game]

I'd treat it like a trap or environmental effect, listed in p. 121 of the DMG.

Make it a Dex save, knocks prone and deals massive damage on a fail, half on a Save,, but allows the targets to retaliate against the horses (but the targets might be knocked prone, for Disadvantage on their attacks).

[JackPhoenix]

If the creatures actually have small size, they are two size categories smaller than large horses. The horses can move through their space as through difficult terrain, though they can't end their movement there.

[Wizard_Lizard]

I'd probably look to the falling damage rules for inspiration as far as 'Building up speed' goes. Maybe instead of 'For every ten feet fallen' it's 'For every uninterrupted 10 feet you're allowed to build up speed, add 1d6 to your crash pool. On impact, deal damage one die at a time until the thing you crashed into is dead/unconscious, then move to the next critter, continue dealing damage, so on.'

I guarantee someone will cheese this, and speed up for 100ft or something.

[Kane0]

Is this going to be used once in this specific fight or do intend for this to be a recurring thing?

[No brains]

Good ideas all around! Sorry if I don't quote you, but everybody added something!

If momentum is a real issue I'll consider falling rules, but the creatures are so small and have so little hp that I don't think they'll stop the wagon very much.

Animal handling to push the horses into charging might be a good idea. It makes perfect sense, but the plan already sounds ridiculous and dangerous enough that I would rather have my player's common sense stop them rather than a silly die roll.

If I do half damage on a dex save, I'm going to have to set a very low actual damage number since these small creatures are pretty puny. Like on a 4d10 (recommended for falling rubble), a goblin dies most of the time even when it saves.

Good point about large creatures being able to pass through small creatures' squares. I think that's what's going to let this work.

Momentum cheese is going to be a balancing act because the more speed spent on momentum, the fewer ranks of the horde the horses can break. For example: a riding horse COULD go 120ft in a round for 12d6, but that's 12d6 vs 1 rank of creatures. I'm not certain I'll use it because it's overkill, but it's worth noting for other people wondering about this idea in the future.

I'm only planning on this happening one time, but establishing how this works could come up again in the future.

One idea I had was to have the players on the wagon roll a save if one or both of the horses are downed as one side of the wagon loses power and starts dragging. I don't know if the wagon would FLIP on them, but it would probably lurch hard enough that they would get thrown off.

[Quietus]

How complex do you want to make it? I would do it as such -

- DC 10 animal handling to get the horses to do this at all, unless they are war horses.
- Use that "falling" rule, up to a max of the horses speed. So a total pool of 6d6 damage.
- horses do not attack the enemy, they run straight through the space. This may draw opportunity attacks, any creature that makes an opportunity attack does not save against the damage
-save is dexterity, DC is based on the character doing the driving. DC = 8+wisdom +proficiency (if proficient with land vehicles or animal handling). Successful save =no damage, and thrown to the side out of the way.

Now here is where the tricky part comes in - that 6d6 damage isn't what gets done to each target. It's a pool of damage, distributed the same way the Sleep spell does. Average roll is 21 damage; you hit the first target, they fail their save or attack the horses, you do enough damage to do them to 0. Say it had 6 hp, you have 15 left in your pool of "momentum" damage. If you are only riding over two or three, you're okay. But hit a fourth, you run out of momentum (as represented by that damage pool), your carriage is stalled, probably damaged, and now you're surrounded by mooks and you have a broken wheel.

[No brains]

I'm not sure I would want to do it like sleep because sleep is one of the smart ways they can handle this encounter. :smallbiggrin:

Then again, I could gently prod them: "Your suicidal carriage blitz will start with a set pool of damage that will reduce as you knock out creatures, just like the sleep spell. Yes, the sleep spell you can cast. As an action. At range. No save. With less potential for carnage."

But that will warrant: "That's exactly the problem I had with sleep!" *revs horses*

I think a good compromise between figuring the save DC for this and whether or not to use a Handle Animal check is to make the check the save DC. It would reflect not only motivating the horses, but also steering them properly.