What system(s) beats 5e for minion combat?

[TyGuy]

As good as 5e is at streamlining the combat simulation genre, it's still bogged down a bit when players have an assortment of familiars/followers/minions.

Are there any systems that do a far better job than 5e at players controlling multiple creatures? What are the key features that make it faster?

[Pandamonium]

I've not seen a system to date that handles it better but that, in my opinion, is mostly related to that it usually is a question of the controllers being poorly prepared for managing multiple minions.

Personally I always have my next round planned out and that includes my minions.
If your group has a lot of minions I would suggest them using pre-rolled dice for attacks, saves and ability checks and using any average value on damage dice (Roll the checks out before the session like a lump of 20 rolls and check them off in order).

That or managing any and all followers and extra minions as a unit, this might bring down the use for wizards familiar and such.
Just try to think which minions and followers who don't need to act individually and put them together :)

[Toadkiller]

Chess maybe?

[Avonar]

13th Age streamlines it a bit. It doesn't use distances or movement speeds so there's limited time spent on placing each one perfectly. The summons do a fixed amount of damage if they hit so no damage rolling. They also all share a group HP pool so you aren't tracking multiple health values for them.

[Zhorn]

Have you tried using the Handling Mobs rules in the DMG (p250).
Group your creatures up by their +To Hit modifier, deduct that value from the target's AC and consult the table with the result, telling you how many attacks hit (1 in x many), apply average damage of the hit multiplied by the number of successful hits and your done. no dice rolling needed.

Example:
I have 20 goblins, each with a +4 to hit, they are attacking a creature with AC 19.
19 - 4 = 15
Consult table for a 15: 1 in 4
So with 1 in 4 hit rate, 5 of my 20 goblins land a hit.
Done

[MaxWilson]

As good as 5e is at streamlining the combat simulation genre, it's still bogged down a bit when players have an assortment of familiars/followers/minions.

Are there any systems that do a far better job than 5e at players controlling multiple creatures? What are the key features that make it faster?

Any (A)D&D variant (including 5E variants) that do action declaration only once per round, at the beginning of the round, instead of N times per round for N creatures in the combat, scales more smoothly than vanilla 5E for large numbers of creatures. In the simplest possible case, this just means a DM or a player rolling 8 attacks simultaneously using 8 d20s and 8 d6s for 8 skeletons (or 8 d20s and 16 d4s for 8 wolves), but the more you avoid breaking up the decision cycle the faster it gets. IMO that is the key feature that makes (A)D&D faster than 5E. The fact that there are fewer fiddly little abilities (bonus actions and reactions, etc.) helps a little bit on top of that, but the single biggest thing is just avoiding the huge mistake that is turn-by-turn action declarations.

[MrStabby]

I know some people enjoy Warhammer for that.

[Mork]

In 4e there were monster minion rules. basically if you outlevel a monster enough you don't track hp for that monster anymore, they just have 1 hit point (or they can take 2 hits). That way as a DM you don't have to track a ton of monster hit points if you want your 11th level charachters fight a dragon and a bunch of kobolds.

Players with minions.. What I try to do as a player is be sure to have a multiple color matching dice sets. I already do this if I have multiple attacks. I have a blue and green d20, and a blue and green 1d12 and if I get to attack with my greataxe I just roll all dice in one go.
That works up to.. like 4 combatants you control. depending on the number of dice you have.
When I DM, I've gone so far as to strongly discourage my slower players to the route of many attacks, or many minions, and try to focus on 1 big attack. I guess the same way a high CHA player will have an advantage playing a high CHA charachter, at my table high DEX/INT players have an advantage playing summoners :P

EDIT: as to what makes other games faster, Wargames (such as warhammer), have the advantage that the dice are usually smaller (a d6 instead of a d20), which makes the mental calcules easier. And you roll a bunch of dice at the same time. If I attack with 20 orks, each with 4 attacks.. I just grab 2 boxes of dice and roll 80 dice, and pick out all that are higher than a 4. So the trick is rolling as many dice as you can at the same time.
And I guess what also helps if you do the calculation before hand. I see a lot of people looking at their dice adding their modifier and then checking if this is more or less than the AC. If you know the AC, you can first calculate what you need to roll and then check dice which are higher or lower. At the least the way my brain works that goes a lot faster than calculating roll by roll.

[Kvess]

I think you can definitely get answers for games that do a better job of handling minion combat or mass combat than 5e, but you may not be as likely to find them on a discussion forum dedicated to 5e.

[Eldariel]

Miniature combat games like Warhammer are the first to spring to mind. In general, abstraction, abstraction, abstraction. Though I've found that with fluent usage of minions, the turns don't actually take that long.

[KorvinStarmast]

As good as 5e is at streamlining the combat simulation genre, it's still bogged down a bit when players have an assortment of familiars/followers/minions.

Are there any systems that do a far better job than 5e at players controlling multiple creatures? What are the key features that make it faster? You appear to be dealing with the case of "one druid controlling 8 wolves" versus ... what enemy?

Numerous enemies?
One big enemy?

What's your use case? I've seen any number of ways to deal with it.

We had a 'many versus many' case where I had the minions on both sides do an opposed ability check. Add one to the die roll for the number you have more of than the other side. This went fast. (I will admit that adjudicating for differences in armor class has not come up: had it been hobgoblins in chain/shield my hack would not have worked so well)

Example: 8 wolves versus 10 orcs. The Orcs got a +2 to the opposed check. If the wolves win, 1 orc goes down, if the orcs win, 1 wolf goes down; a nat 20 on the opposed check means two go down if the 20 wins.

If a PC is fighting with the wolves, or an NPC leader with the orcs in this case, the opposed check is with advantage. Leaders cancel each other out.

It went fast with a battlefied covered in combatants.

Various control effects will offer advantage or disadvantage (Haste/Slow) but the players in that case didn't try for battlefield control - they were going after the tougher opponents ...

Of course, being an old D&D veteran I apply morale checks (using 2d6, which I borrow from Original D&D) once one side goes to less than half of their number. Add a modifier for the leader being present, subtract a modifier if the leader flees or goes down. Roll below a 7 and "break and run/disengage" is assured unless some kind of buff like bless or an aura that negates fear is present on the side who sees themselves losing.

[TyGuy]

I've not seen a system to date that handles it better but that, in my opinion, is mostly related to that it usually is a question of the controllers being poorly prepared for managing multiple minions.

Absolutely! Slow players really exacerbate the issue and there's a wide gap between the time of an efficient player and a slow player. Some can be addressed with simpler rules, but nothing beats a player that's on the ball.


13th Age streamlines it a bit. It doesn't use distances or movement speeds so there's limited time spent on placing each one perfectly. The summons do a fixed amount of damage if they hit so no damage rolling. They also all share a group HP pool so you aren't tracking multiple health values for them.
Hmm without positioning, it kind of reminds me of an old turn based JRPG. I like it. This kind of sounds like converting things into swarms, with the shared health. Definitely food for thought.


Have you tried using the Handling Mobs rules in the DMG (p250).
Group your creatures up by their +To Hit modifier, deduct that value from the target's AC and consult the table with the result, telling you how many attacks hit (1 in x many), apply average damage of the hit multiplied by the number of successful hits and your done. no dice rolling needed.

Example:
I have 20 goblins, each with a +4 to hit, they are attacking a creature with AC 19.
19 - 4 = 15
Consult table for a 15: 1 in 4
So with 1 in 4 hit rate, 5 of my 20 goblins land a hit.
Done
I haven't used those rules yet. Sounds decent for a DM, but for slower players that wait until their turn to start figuring things out, the calculations required for every new number of minions sounds like a minor setback.


Any (A)D&D variant (including 5E variants) that do action declaration only once per round, at the beginning of the round, instead of N times per round for N creatures in the combat, scales more smoothly than vanilla 5E for large numbers of creatures. In the simplest possible case, this just means a DM or a player rolling 8 attacks simultaneously using 8 d20s and 8 d6s for 8 skeletons (or 8 d20s and 16 d4s for 8 wolves), but the more you avoid breaking up the decision cycle the faster it gets. IMO that is the key feature that makes (A)D&D faster than 5E. The fact that there are fewer fiddly little abilities (bonus actions and reactions, etc.) helps a little bit on top of that, but the single biggest thing is just avoiding the huge mistake that is turn-by-turn action declarations.
That is an excellent point and a great argument for 1 initiative to manage per player.


I think you can definitely get answers for games that do a better job of handling minion combat or mass combat than 5e, but you may not be as likely to find them on a discussion forum dedicated to 5e.
Agreed. But the 5e board will have a higher concentration of people intimately knowledgeable of 5e and its shortcomings.



Players with minions.. What I try to do as a player is be sure to have a multiple color matching dice sets. I already do this if I have multiple attacks. I have a blue and green d20, and a blue and green 1d12 and if I get to attack with my greataxe I just roll all dice in one go.
That works up to.. like 4 combatants you control. depending on the number of dice you have.
When I DM, I've gone so far as to strongly discourage my slower players to the route of many attacks, or many minions, and try to focus on 1 big attack. I guess the same way a high CHA player will have an advantage playing a high CHA charachter, at my table high DEX/INT players have an advantage playing summoners :P

EDIT: as to what makes other games faster, Wargames (such as warhammer), have the advantage that the dice are usually smaller (a d6 instead of a d20), which makes the mental calcules easier. And you roll a bunch of dice at the same time. If I attack with 20 orks, each with 4 attacks.. I just grab 2 boxes of dice and roll 80 dice, and pick out all that are higher than a 4. So the trick is rolling as many dice as you can at the same time.
And I guess what also helps if you do the calculation before hand. I see a lot of people looking at their dice adding their modifier and then checking if this is more or less than the AC. If you know the AC, you can first calculate what you need to roll and then check dice which are higher or lower. At the least the way my brain works that goes a lot faster than calculating roll by roll.
Yes, rolling matching sets is super useful. I think simply giving the players the DC/AC numbers so they can figure themselves can save a little time, but it also opens the option of having them pre-roll before their turn in some cases.



Thanks for all the tips everyone!

[Xervous]

Anything that cuts out decision making steps will speed things up. The biggest decision point 5e has retained is multiple distinct attacks that are declared and resolved separately from one another. Forcing all rolls to occur at once as seen in war games, or having rules for abstracting multiple attacks (mob rules) will cut down on the decision point delay.