3.5 Rules or Homebrew for Crowded Placement?

[Almus Rayne]

Hello all. So I have a quick question about occupying 5ft squares and creature placement. So I understand that the rules state only one creature can occupy a 5ft square at a time unless one creature is either helpless or actively grappled. But I get the sense this implies at a comfortable standing level which allows both movement or action.

However say there is a small room and you have a great many mindless undead that are forcibly packed in together and all are standing shoulder to shoulder to a room's physical occupancy limit. There is no sitting room, no movement room, and debatably no action room. Since they are undead things like comfort, oxygen, etc are not factors, the only objective is maximum occupancy.

Are there official or homebrew rules for this that make sense? This is not related to squeezing figurines onto a board, it is only for a narrative game, but one that still follows the logic of a 5ft grid map. Would it still be only one creature per 5ft? Can you sensibly reason more than one creature sharing a space and if so how and how many? Just looking for thoughts here. Thank you.

[emulord]

Im not aware of any rules for that situation, but for normal squeezing rules you can take up half your normal width, so if you assume you can squeeze width and depth, 4 medium creatures could fit in 1 square but they have -4 AC and -4 attack while doing so.

[Almus Rayne]

Im not aware of any rules for that situation, but for normal squeezing rules you can take up half your normal width, so if you assume you can squeeze width and depth, 4 medium creatures could fit in 1 square but they have -4 AC and -4 attack while doing so.

*nods* I like it.

[Tzardok]

I think there was a "mob" template somewhere, that did something similiar to how swarms work, except for bigger creatures. It was kinda badly designed, I think, but something in that direction could be helpful. It was in Cityscape, I believe.

[rel]

Those rules are for combat and don't cover creatures standing close together when not fighting.

A brief google search says you can get as many as 10 people into a square meter of floor space before they start getting trampled.
Five feet is 1.5 meters and undead are generally scrawnier than people and don't need to breathe so lets double that number.
Thus your skelebro closet can hold 20 creatures per 5-foot square if you take the time to pack them tight.

Ofcourse, getting them in and out takes minutes of time and they are completely, laughably, that untrained peasant just managed to inhume 3 at once without a roll, helpless while inside.