I am curious how most GMs here prefer to handle large combats with unimportant mooks. Do you have the players roll out every round and attack against 40 guys or merely a few in the begining and then gloss over the rest of the battle? I have found that the second option works best for me ... it allows the players to fulfill their desire for battle and throws them into danger for a short time, but prevents the engagement from becoming tedious. If there is a real villain/dangerous figure in the mix, I run the first few fights, then the last couple before he jumps in, giving a sense of continuity without taking up hours of game play.

How do you prefer to address combat and why?

First, I never had the "big battles" yet. Only a couple of opponents at a time.

I make use of the "colourfull mook" rules from CA (in effect, making an unname combat NSC going down after secound hit).

If it becomes clear that something is "only a matter of time" and the pc will not really get hit or hurt, I usally "sum things up". My pc are fine with this.

I use the mook rules from CA...with some small dapations such as firing in numbers/volley fire

I hate mook rules, both because they make several Talents near-pointless and because I hate the idea that "you're weak because you're not important to the plot," which I believe to be lame. (Fate points are enough.) Never used em; never will.

However, I am sure I will never run a combat against 40 combatants, prefering a more manageable, investigative style!

My players have come across a few battles so far, tech guard crushing a heretik base on Hesh and....another 1 that escapes me...

Anyway, for the tech priest battle I used some rules similar to the big battle fan made rules for WFRP. I've not got a link to hand but it was based off another RPG, each round the players would decide an action and roll a dice accordingly, certain results would dictate what happened in the battle around them (Ie, would an army charge, would they come across a general etc etc).

If that ever occured, I'd put them into a smaller groups, easier to manage. Say groups of 5 or 10. Deal with initiative as a whole, as well as attacks. I'd also go with sudden death instant rules there. For actual attacks though, I roll for the group, comparing to BS, but count it as a single person attacking. I'd rather not happen to have that freak occurence where they roll a 01, nearly every shot hitting, then times it by 5 or 10. That's a good, easy way to paste some PCs. I'd also rather not fudge die, unless extremely necessary.

For other things, I like to have the PCs have their OWN group of guys to simply come across and deal with the majority while they deal with say, the command squad, or something like that, you know? If it's my guys versus all of them, I'd rather be scared for the fact, but I take solace in that I don't plan those things to happen, and I know they would've done it to theirselves.

I've had a session where my players were working with a group of 50 Guardsman and fought off hundreds of Orks.

I simplified the stats for the Guardsman and the Orks, so instead of rolling two dice for every character I just rolled one. If the Guardsman got a 6 or better, or the Orks got a 4 or better, then they hit their target. I kept track of who got hit and if a Guardsman got hit once or twice, they were down - an Ork could take three hits. The exception to the rules were the PCs, who could drop an Ork in two or even one hit, depending on how much damage they rolled.

The Orks were attacking in waves of a dozen or so at a time, because I'm not going to be rolling 100+ dice at once! In any case, the simplified to-hit and damage rules for the NPCs made the battle flow quickly (to keep the players interested) and easily (to keep me from pulling out my hair). It was an epic mass encounter and it didn't take any longer to run than I would have expected a fight between the players and an equal number of fully-stated Orks.

Honestly, I'd break out my minis, my 6 sided dice and my Warhammer 40K rulebook (note to self: need more heretic minis).

There's a few significantly different themes that you could chase for mass combat. The first, and easiest, is waves of baddies coming at you. This ends up feeling like something akin to a zombie game, and I've had players ask me "no seriously, out of character... does this end??? " It emphasizes survival.

The second is to simply storytell the mass combat, while focusing on the PCs and their immediate dealings. This emphasizes the scale of the battle, where you play a small (but potentially vital) part in the combat.

The third concept is to put the characters in charge of a large number of subordinates, and use abbreviated rules for NPCs and spot fights to keep the players in the thick of it. This emphasizes the weight of command, and allows the players to influence the overall battle without having to be in every place at once.

The fourth concept I can think of off the top of my head is to use mook rules, and take a page from another classic RPG and implement something like the Carnival of Carnage where everywhere you turn there are targets to mow down as fast as humanly possible. NPCs on your side are moving cover basically to draw fire away from the bad guys, and the inverse incoming fire axiom of action movies (the more bad guys that shoot at you at once, the less important they are to the story, and thus the less likely they will ever hit you) comes into effect. The goal is to emphasize sheer, frenetic carnage and chaos.

LuciusT said:

Hehe, that was one of the reasons why I started to build a renegade Imperial Guard army for Wh40K. It's troops consist of robe clad cultists and mutant dregs alike. Perfect for Dark Heresy sessions as well.

Don't have any pictures though, but keep a look out. Somewhere down the line im gonna want to show of the fruits of my conversion labour.

Varnias Tybalt said:

Looking forward to seeing them.

TheFlatline said:

This is what I did for the Guardsman vs Orks scenario I detailed in my previous post. The players were entirely in charge of setting up defensive lines, what the various fallback points were, instructing where to place booby traps, trenches, blockades, etc. They came up with some strategies that were incredibly clever.

in the adventure iv just started the PC's are entering a warzone and for the bigger battles I was simply going to ignore the rest of the combat and focus on the part of the battle that the PCs will face, so the most they deal with at once is perhaps a squad of ten guardsmen, keep inititive order the same until the end of the battle even if it comes out of "combat time"

I don't roleplay anything but mass combat situations. I use DH not as a "secret agent man" kind of game, but as THE roleplaying system for the Warhammer 40k universe. I use the mass combat rules given by wildeyedjester and it tends to be carnage.

So to answer the thread - hundreds of people are handled via a skill roll per "mass combat round", and that is the direction the overall conflict goes for that day of combat. As for the players, they have their own roll to make based on Imperial Tactics skill, or <Ork, Chaos, Eldar, Tau skill here>. The amount they succeed on that roll, or fail it by, gauges a bonus or penalty to the "encounter" roll for that day. Rolling a 00 generally means that doom itself is attacking the <player force's> command HQ, and that the PCs probably won't survive the encounter. Rolling very low generally means that some mook got shot, and if the PCs help them, then it gives some VP to their force towards winning the battle.

I played a Guardsman one time. Straight recruit. No experience. World he came from (and which the regiment was raised from) used black powder weapons. We were sent to a recently invaded Imperial World where the Eldar had established a presence, thinking that an old (thousands of years old) colony was in danger, and that a few hundred Eldar lives might be spared if they intervened. It didn't go well.

Rolled high on the encounter table on Day Two, and a group of four Warp Spiders obliterated me, my squad, the Sarge, 9 NPCs in the background, and two Stormtroopers that were nearby (perhaps to save us).

...Eldar rock.