Quote Originally Posted by Doorhandle View Post
Speaking of combat engine ideas, I have a fairly brillant one:

Conservation of ninjutsu: each side in a conflict has the same number of dice.

So for instance, if 5 players were fighting 5000 generic ninja, each player would have six dice for a total of 30 for their side, while at most 30 of the ninja could act, and not very competently at that as they would have 1 die each. Likewise, if it was 5 verses one über ninja, said über ninja would get 30 dice and could easily keep pace with the action economy of the players. Thoughts?
Given how the pure math stuff works out, 30 1-dice enemies would be pretty trivial to beat, but the idea is totally right and exactly what I'm looking for. One of the issues with the system is it makes tracking tons of enemies a pain in the ass; managing groups of foes by giving them a single dice pool (somewhat like a Swarm) just makes sense. For a new system if you wan't to make this, it might be a totally awesome base engine, but not sure how it would work in the framework I'm operating in.

How about this: there are three types of enemies: mooks, foes (name?), and bosses.

Mooks act with set stats, and don't get to allocate bosses. A mook might always attack with 6+1d6, and defend with 4+1d6. Mooks all die in a single hit, probably.

Foes are smaller groups of enemies than act with one collective dice pool. A group of six Foes might have 6d6 total to play with, but collectively allocates dice. Foes might also share a Hit Point track, but one dies immediately upon taking a Wound (Wounds reduce your Dice Pool), and their Hit Points reset.

Bosses are single characters who allocate their dice on an individual basis. They function basically like a PC, but with overall better stats.

This would let a GM fill a room with the Six Ninja Lords and the agents of the Clan of the Black Claw fairly easily, only needing to keep track of the number of generic ninjas left alive, and a single Character worth of other stuff.