Hello!

A quick question. Say a Magnitude 40 horde of Tau Firewarriors is engaged in combat with a Space Marine, can this Horde still make ranged attacks against other targets, or is it "locked in combat"?

Thanks!

If large enough, hordes may make both melee and ranged attacks, but the GM needs to exercise extreme discretion in this account.

This does not allow the individual characters in a horde to make ranged attacks while they are engaged, nor to make ranged attacks and melee attacks.

INSTEAD

The GM accepts, in hordes large enough (in physical individual bodies, not magnitude), that some within the horde can not reasonably participate or be threatened (immediately) by the hand to hand combat and thus are free to make ranged attacks.

A rule of thumb, at least as many magnitude must fight equal to the maximum damage bonus from the hordes magnitude against a single enemy.

Once engaged, as many of the individuals as possible must fight the attacker. You cannot choose to have fewer people fight so the Horde can have more individuals shooting out.

When the horde is engaged with multiple enemies, the rule of thumb is not as specific. Depending on where the other enemies are at they may be engaging the same individuals as the first attacker, or all different individuals. It is up to the GMs discretion AND the stated intent of the players, as long as their characters are capable of doing what they want to.

Even if only 20 magnitude is fighting though, there are still more magnitude too focused on, or preparing to get into, the hand to hand to worry about anything else. Or they are simply more powerful characters and more than 20 magnitude worth of individuals are actually engaged (but skilled fighters benefit less from weight of numbers).

Again it is up to the GM to exercise reasonable, appropriate, common sense discretion when allowing this. A horde with 15 individuals is probably not going to be able to make attacks if engaged even by a single guy. A on the other hand, a horde with 30 individuals would have so many individuals all over the place many of them could not possibly be engaged, but this doesn't mean all of them could reasonably shoot the same target. (i.e. 20 magnitude unengaged =/= 20 magnitude horde attacking a single target, maybe two 10 magnitudes attacking individual targets (with only 10 magnitude bonus damage) up to the maximum number of attacks allowed by the unengaged magnitude).

Long story short: GM discretion, but it should only ever be done if the horde is particularly massive in number of individuals. This is totally thematic (as most things related to hordes).

I'll just finish by saying, the GM's job is not simply to fight or kill off the party. His job is to role play the enemies and ensure everyone (not just himself) enjoys themselves.