I thought I'd share a few ideas about Hordes to help dispel some of the steroetypes.

First, when it comes to calculating Horde Magnitude as individuals, I use (and have for quite a while, now) the following ratios:

A Magnitude of 1=

• 3 Weedy/Scrawny creatures
• 2 Average-sized creatures
• 1 Hulking creature (typically reserved for stampeding herds of Grox or Lumox)

This help when determining how large an area they cover, as well as determining the number of stragglers and fleeing individuals…and when a Player asks how many finger bones he can collect for his trophy necklace.

Next…
Speaking from a personal perspective, I've been using hordes like heaving lumpen masses of flailing angry flesh, and I feel stupid for having done so. Every Horde encounter I've included in my games could have looked so much better from the other side of the GM screen had I thought of this a long time ago.

Just because it is a Horde does not mean the individuals that make up its Magnitude are linked at the hips.

A Magnitude 40 Horde of Imperial Guard could be two 10-man units, one with a Flamer/Heavy Flamer and led by the courageous Colonel Werner Klemperer (significant attached NPC), the other with a Plasma Gun and a Heavy Bolter (in heavy Cover), both working in concert to flank a small, rag-tag band of heretics and traitorous Chaos Marines from two different directions, to drive them into cover with suppressing fire and burn them where they hide with righteous fire, thus reducing the deleterious effects of enemy Blast and Spray weapons on their Magnitude strength and still operating under the Horde mechanics. One detachment of the Horde can be engaged by the PCs, either with melee or at range, but only so much death can be dealt before you have to turn 'round and chase after the fleeing remnants (that is if the Horde as a whole failed their WP Testafter taking 50% casualties).

Rather than behaving as two 20 Magnitude Hordes, it still behaves as one 40 Magnitude Horde (in so far as number of attacks and Damage caused) but it is more versatile in terms of mobility, utility, and cinematics.

Alekzanter said:

So all the strengths of being a big Horde with the weaknesses mitigated by allowing it to defend and take damage as multiple smaller Hordes? No, thanks. Horde rules are already pretty sh*tty, but this is just a terrible idea. Better to just use the mooks' individual profiles and to realize that Zealous Hatred will give the mooks higher damage over time, the mass of fire will reduce the usefulness of defensive Reactions, the mooks tend to have weak armour and low Wounds so they die quickly enough to one or two hits, and then… there's no need for the abominable Horde rules.

I quite liked the advance horde rules in The Tome of Blood. The horde traits, formations and victory points all bring flexibility to the rules that allow you to run a variety of mass combat scenarios.

Hooly said:

Never heard about it. Would it be to much of me to ask you for soem additional info about this?

So all the strengths of being a big Horde with the weaknesses mitigated by allowing it to defend and take damage as multiple smaller Hordes? No, thanks. Horde rules are already pretty sh*tty, but this is just a terrible idea. Better to just use the mooks' individual profiles and to realize that Zealous Hatred will give the mooks higher damage over time, the mass of fire will reduce the usefulness of defensive Reactions, the mooks tend to have weak armour and low Wounds so they die quickly enough to one or two hits, and then… there's no need for the abominable Horde rules.

As far as I can tell, there's no rule saying large Hordes either take damage or defend differently from small Hordes, so I'm not really sure what you're complaining about here.

As for the Zealous Hatred rules, I'd mention two things. Firstly, I thought those rules were off by default for NPCs and secondly, I personally don't want to be rolling twenty separate attacks for twenty separate NPCs all of whom have only a one in ten chance of doing anything at all the the player characters.

Large hordes do take more damage than smaller hordes because of the larger magnitude bonus, especially in melee combat.

I don't think hordes should be used in mags of more than 30 or so, though.

I kind of think that Hordes can really have any size. At the present I got a Chosen and a Psyker who are gathering and army in the Underworks of Hive Tarsus and they've got several hundred warriors to march into battle with. I would be pain to run with ten small Hordes instead of one superhorde when clashing with other mutant settlements.

First, when it comes to calculating Horde Magnitude as individuals, I use (and have for quite a while, now) the following ratios:

A Magnitude of 1=

• 3 Weedy/Scrawny creatures
• 2 Average-sized creatures
• 1 Hulking creature (typically reserved for stampeding herds of Grox or Lumox)

'Magnitude' isn't just a function of physical size, it's also supposed to take into consideration the quality of the individuals making up the Horde. So, if you are fighting Imperial Guard, a Horde of green Conscripts will consist of more individuals than an equal-Magnitude Horde of regular Guardsmen, and a Horde of Stormtroopers will consist of fewer individuals than an equal-Magnitude Horde of Guardsmen.

Yeah, a lot of the Magnitude is not physical people, but their morale. When a Horde loses Mag, that can also be people running, panicking, etc. You're not necessarily literally killing them.

Which is why lots of Master-level NPCs have Horde-regeneration abilities defined as enocuraging or terrifying them.

Another example is the Pink Horror who's got a special ability along the lines of 'reduce all magnitude damage by half, rounding up' when a horde, to simulate the splitting into two blue horrors when dying.