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Old 01-18-2018, 07:01 AM   #4
Anaraxes
 
Join Date: Sep 2007
Default Re: pirate ship crew vs. pirate ship crew with PCs

The Fate Core mechanic for "mobs" treats some number of identical NPCs as a single entity for rolling. They have all their hit points ("stress boxes") which can overflow from one mook to the next, so you can theoretically take them all out with one hit.

Naturally, you might well want to narrate the defeat of four or six mooks with different details for each. They're not really all moving identically and falling down in sync, each run through the heart simultaneously.

Fate also suggests an even simpler mechanic, which is treating a mob as an "obstacle" -- that is, pretty much a single die roll to overcome against a passive difficulty rating. This might be used for the mookiest of mooks that aren't even worth a fight scene to defeat. ("You don't need to see their identification" to clear a squad of stormtroopers from your path, perhaps.)

FFG's system (Genesys, in its new generic spin, or several Star Wars flavors as it's best known) also has a group rule -- "minions", in their jargon. It's pretty similar to Fate and Savage Worlds in that a group of minions fights as a single unit, with a single hit point pool and one attack roll. Minions also have simplified character "sheets" - no detailed skill list, but perhaps a single number for the whole group, nor do they take "strain" damage, instead converting all results to "wounds" (the lethal kind), and they die easier (exceed their wounds total and they're dead, which isn't the case for PCs).

It'd be easy enough to adapt this style of design to GURPS. Just group your crewmembers into squads, and treat them as a single unit. You might add up their HTs, just use one HT score (if a single PC is supposed to wipe them all out), or give them a bonus, like HT +1 or +2 per extra pirate in the squad. They're all skill-12 and Active Defense 10 (or however tough you want to make them).

The better crew for the PC ship has their training and better equipment reflected in better squad stats. Maybe those squads fight with skill-14 and PD 2.

The other mechanic I've seen a lot is just to narrate the battle between mooks based on the success of the PCs in their individual fights. It's only the PCs that are making a roll, and their outcome is the outcome of the fight. (There's no way for this design to simulate an outcome where the PCs beat the chief bad guys, yet their mooks lose to the other mooks, leaving the PCs to clean up the bad mooks before lamenting the loss of their own.) The mooks are really just set dressing here, described, but not taking part mechanically.

You can blend this style with the previous one in a manner similar to GURPS Mass Combat. Mook squads fight it out with their unit stats (Mass Combat has its own system), but PCs can take a bonus or penalty for risk in their personal fight, which translates into a similar bonus for their own side. PCs get to make a Heroism roll, modified by their risk bonus; success brings a bonus to other rolls in the system that reflect their significant action having affected the victory. (Details would be mostly narrative, as "you heroically give the commander a +1 to his Strategy roll" isn't very dramatic.) If they want to hang back and hope their troops win, they can be cowardly; if they want to be big damn heroes and lead the mooks to victory, they can earn a bonus for the extra risk. Mass Combat does the whole battle in a couple of rounds, with a "Misfortunes of War" result roll to find out what happens to the PCs. You could do that, or keep using the regular GURPS combat rules for more detailed and suspenseful resolution with some intermediate ebb and flow, perhaps just applying the PC's chosen risk bonus/malus to all the mooks on their side. (Either add up all the PC choices, so a hero and a coward cancel out, or make the party agree on their overall risk bonus.)

(Yes, it is kind of silly to summarize Mass Combat in a David Pulver thread. I'll take refuge behind the fact that forum posts are really talking to a lot of people at once, not always just the immediately preceding post or the one replied to. David certainly doesn't need me to tell him how Mass Combat works. But as long as I'm running down the stuff I've heard of for, uh, mass combat in RPGs, it certainly deserves a mention.)

Last edited by Anaraxes; 01-18-2018 at 07:06 AM.
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