[HR] An optional system for speeding up large combats: mobs.

[Sam Baughn]

I've seen something like this written up on the forums previously, but I had various issues with it, so I decided to try my own version:

Sometimes combat in GURPS can take too long. When exceptionally competent fighters need to fight a large number of average opponents, the sheer amount of dice rolling can become tedious. In such situations, combat can be speeded up by using mobs.

Basic rules for mobs:

A 'mob' is simply a group of individuals who are treated as a single entity for combat purposes. Each mob represents about 8-10 average humanoid warriors (in mass combat terms, a typical mob is one element of medium infantry of average quality with basic equipment).

In order to make combat with mobs run as quickly as possible, they have several special rules. Rather than rolling to attack normally, mobs simply score 1d hits every turn; these hits can still be parried, blocked and dodged as normal. All hits are assumed to target the torso and do 1d+2 cutting damage (this is an abstraction of the various ways in which a mob can attack).

Each mob may target up to two different individuals and gets 1d hits against each one. Against any target of SM+3 or larger, mobs may make 2d attacks (but may not attack anyone else). No more than one mob may target any one individual, since the 1d attacks already represent as many individuals as can reach a single target with normal weapons. Against another mob, assume that the mob hits 1d times but no defence rolls are allowed.

A mob occupies ten hexes and can be targeted by any attack which can reach any of it's hexes. Attacks against mobs need to roll to hit as normal. Mobs have defence rolls of 10 (which represents all their blocks, parries and dodges) and DR 2 (this is an abstraction of the various levels of armour the individuals in the mob wear on each location). Attacks against mobs may not target hit locations and all hits are assumed to strike the torso for damage purposes. Area attacks multiply the injury they cause by the number of hexes hit, while explosive attacks triple their normal injury and fragmentation attacks score 2d hits automatically with no defence roll.

A mob is 'dispersed' (becomes unwilling to fight in the face of casualties and runs away) after taking 40 hit points of injury - typically enough to kill one or two members of the mob and inflict some injuries on most of the others. The whole mob is driven off even if the injury was all caused by an attack which was only capable of killing a single individual - in that case, the mob is routed after seeing one of their number killed in an exceptionally gruesome fashion.

Attacks which inflict fatigue damage are assumed to cause an equal amount of injury in hit points instead to mobs. Attacks which cause irritating conditions cause 1d injury to a mob per individual they would normally affect (assume mobs have a resistance roll of 10 in all cases), while those which cause incapacitating conditions cause 2d per individual they would normally affect. This is because a mob's hit points are an abstract measure of it's general state of health and willingness to fight rather than a track of exactly how much injury the members have taken.

(continued in next post)

[Sam Baughn]

Options for mobs:

Special attacks: mobs are a significant threat to most fighters, but can have difficulty penetrating heavy armour. If a fighter has DR 5 or more on their torso, you can use one (or both) of the following options to make mobs more threatening. Mobs can target limbs, but reduce the number of attacks they make every turn by one in order to do so. They can also make all-out attacks for +2 damage every attack, while sacrificing their defence rolls.

Survivors and regrouping: if it is important, assume that a dispersed mob consists of 1d+3 survivors, each with 1d-1 hit points of injury. The survivors of several mobs can be rallied into new mobs by an individual with the Leadership skill. Assume that three dispersed mobs provide enough healthy survivors to make one new mob. Alternatively, the survivors may be regrouped with existing mobs who have been injured but not dispersed: assume one mob worth of survivors is sufficient to restore a damaged mob to full hit points. In either case, this takes 3d minutes and a Leadership roll.

Variant Mobs:

Underequipped mobs: a mob without armour and armed only with clubs (or bare hands) has no DR and reduces their damage with every attack to 1d crushing. This can be used to represent rioters (who are typically also inferior quality) or martial arts movie style goons.

Different weapons: a mob can do 1d+1 impaling or 2d crushing instead of 1d+2 cutting damage.

Light infantry mobs: have less armour and lighter weapons. DR is only 1 and damage is -1 per attack.

Heavy infantry mobs: heavier armour gives DR 4.

Inferior quality mobs: are untrained and unmotivated combatants with poor quality equipment. They -1 attack per turn, -1 damage with all attacks and are dispersed after only 30 hit points of injury.

Superior quality mobs: highly trained and motivated warriors with better than average. They get +1 attack per turn, +1 damage with all attacks and take 50 hit points of injury to disperse.

Small mobs: consist of 3-5 individuals. They get -1 attack per turn, can't attack more than one target, only occupy 5 hexes and are dispersed by half the usual amount of injury.

Frenzied mobs: get +1 attack per turn and +1 damage with all attacks but have no defence rolls. They may not make special attacks.

Inhuman Mobs:

Brute mobs: hobgoblins, orcs, lizard-men, half-ogres, minotaurs and similar stronger-than-human creatures get +1 damage with all attacks. Note that such creatures are often only equipped as light infantry or may be of inferior quality.

Hulking brute mobs: actual ogres, half-giants and other large creatures come in mobs of about half the numbers usually used (they are not available as small mobs, since one or two creatures would be better handled as individuals). They get -2 attacks per turn but double basic damage with each attack (so a normal mob would do 2d+4 cutting and an underequipped one would do 2d crushing) and +1 DR.

Zombie mobs: get -1 attack per turn, have Injury Tolerance (Unliving) and take three times as much injury to destroy as it would to disperse a normal mob. These are fairly weak zombies raised with the standard zombie spell; 'horde zombies' with superhuman strength and even greater endurance would be 'superior quality' (and also generally underequipped and frenzied).

Skeleton Mobs: get -1 damage with each attack, +1 DR, have Injury Tolerance (Homogenous) and take twice as much injury to destroy. Again, these are the standard issue you get with the zombie spell.

(additional notes in next post)

[Sam Baughn]

Guidelines for using mobs in play:

Mobs are really only intended for low tech-level, high power games like Dungeon Fantasy, where PCs are expected to fight their way through dozens of foes in hand-to-hand combat. At lower power levels mobs are rather too lethal to be any fun and in high-tech settings units of melee fighters who stay grouped together become a bit anachronistic.

A single mob is a fairly tough opponent for even 'heroic level' characters like Dungeon Fantasy adventurers. I would recommend using a single mob alongside one or two competent individuals or mid-sized monsters as a major fight for a party of four to six 250-point characters. If you don't have that many PCs or they aren't at that power level, then consider using a small, under equipped or inferior quality mob and a single 'boss' against two to three 250-point characters or four to six 150-point characters. If you are dealing with much less than that, it's probably better to handle combats against individuals using the normal rules.

Characters who want to wade through normal mobs with ease using normal weapons and armour and without special powers will typically need combat skills of 20 or more and the weapon master advantage or similar 'epic level' abilities. To be able to handle a mob without serious risk you need multiple defences at 15 or better (or enough armour to shrug off all but the hardest blows from the mob) and the ability to make three or four attacks (probably doing two to three dice of damage each) per turn. That's quite possible at about 300 points, reasonable at 400 and downright routine at 500. Character who can buy significant amounts of special abilities like supernatural defences or damaging powers may find it simple enough even at much lower points totals: DR 10 and a ten dice Innate Attack can be had for under 100 points and allows you to butcher mobs with little risk to yourself.

If you want a cinematic game without really high points totals, you can downgrade the opposition. Inferior quality mobs are only about two thirds as dangerous as normal ones and the light infantry option can make them even less of a threat. To speed things up a bit you can make them frenzied, which neatly eliminates the penalties for number of attacks and means you don't have to roll defences for them.

A game doesn't need to be cinematic to feature weak mobs though. There are plenty of realistic ways PCs could end up fighting against a group of untrained thugs wielding substandard or improvised weapons, like bar brawls, riots or peasant conscripts on the battlefield. It's perfectly believable that a group of well equipped and trained warriors could fight off several times their number of such rabble.

It's probably best not to use tactical combat options, hex-grids and miniatures when fighting mobs. The whole point of them is that they are a simple, abstract method of speeding up combat against unimportant foes.

I'd suggest only using mobs when the PCs have a pretty good chance of beating them. Mobs are meant to be faceless hordes of underwhelming opponents: if they were capable of threatening the PCs, they should probably be handled as a number of individual fighters.


Additional Notes:

A mob attacking a fighter with Block 14, Parry 14, Dodge 12 and DR 4 against cutting attacks (a typical DF knight or holy warrior with mail armour and a medium shield) can expect to get 0.6 hits per turn, causing an average of 2.3 hit points of injury every time. This comes to about one and a half hit points of injury every round. Against less skilled characters (say parry and/or block at 12 and dodge around 10-11) they might hit twice as often and against those with only light armour, they can do roughly twice as much damage.

With skill 16 the best attack option is probably a rapid strike or deceptive attack, both landing a hit on the mob about once every two turns (with Weapon Master or Trained by a Master and skill 18, making a rapid, deceptive attack, this would increase to an average of one hit per turn). A normal DF fighter can probably manage around 2d+1 cutting, 1d+3 impaling or 2d+3 crushing, or about 8-10 points of actual injury to the mob with every hit (or about 5 hit points every round on average). A less combat oriented character of a similar points level would probably only be doing about half that much damage. This means that even a fairly combat optimised 250 point fighter should expect to take around 15 HP of damage (and a significant risk of death) finishing off a mob single-handed and it might well take three or four less combat capable characters to deal with one.

When assigning the numbers to mobs, I assumed that each individual member of an average mob was a ST 11 fighter with weapon skills around 12, wearing a mixture of mail, scale and leather armour and carrying an axe, mace, broadsword or spear and a medium shield. I assumed that about six members of the mob would be able to reach any given (one hex) target through a mixture of occupying surrounding hexes, moving aside to allow other members to move in and weapons with sufficient reach. Theoretically, ten individual 20-point fighters should be a fair fight against a single standard mob, assuming they retreated when they had received casualties equivalent to what I estimated would be enough to break up a mob (I guessed 10% actual fallen with the survivors on average missing about 30% of their hit-points, which seems like a reasonable point to run away to me).

It's difficult to give exact threat levels in GURPS, butas a general guideline, I'd say an inferior quality mob is about 60% as dangerous as a normal quality one, while a superior quality mob is about 150% as dangerous as a normal one. Light infantry are maybe 80% as good as medium infantry, while heavy infantry are maybe 20% tougher. Underequipped mobs are around 60% as effective as normally equipped ones. A small mob is a bit less than half as effective as a normal sized one. Brutes and hulking brutes are maybe 20% more dangerous than normal mobs, while skeletons and zombies are about twice as nasty as humans. A frenzied mob is actually a little less effective than a normal one. Changing the weapons to do different damage types shouldn't affect things either way on average, but can make a big difference if your PCs are especially vulnerable to a certain type of damage.

There you have it. It took me a few hours to write up and it's rather limited in it's use, but I'm fairly satisfied with it so far. Of course, this is very much a work in progess, subject to revision as new ideas occur to me and flaws become apparent, so I'd appreciate any comments.

EDIT: It's worth noting that while my initial ambition was to have a system somewhat compatable with Mass Combat units and the standard mob is roughly equivalent to a medium infantry element, 'light' and 'heavy' infantry don't really match up with the stats they get in Mass Combat and while 'inferior quality' mobs are somewhat on a par with inferior quality troops (although not quite as bad), 'superior quality' mobs don't really correspond with anything in Mass Combat (although good troops, or normal troops with good equipment would come close). It might be worth re-writing the categories to match more precisely.