Roderick and Ellen Robertson:
> The rule I use is "break up the opponent's troops so each Player Hero has
> at least one enemy to face" - so a mob of 75 trollkin wouldn't fight as a
> single entity, it would have 4-5 (or 8-10, or 12-15, depending on how
> well-equipped the heroes are to face multiple opponents, where the story is
> going, etc.) mob leaders and split the rest up as followers.
I think that's an excellent rule of thumb; making them just one# collective entity would tend to lead one into somewhat erroneous lines of thinking... (e.g., using your 15/300 monstrosity to bid 45AP per action, which is a "modest-sized" bid out of 300... -- but more to the point is a kamikaze attack by several trollkin at once, or the whole group of 75 attacking the same person, which the single rating tends to distract one from.)
> In general,
> treating a group of opponents as a single entitiy is good for the heroes (no
> MA penalty, probably a low Ability rating, just a sh*tload of AP to knock
> down), while treating the mob as individuals is bad for the heroes (Still a
> low AR, and a low # of AP per "Enemy unit", but Lots of Multiple Attacker
> penalties, and a "reset" of APs as the mob cycles fresh troops into the
> fray
This is true. A "realistic" system of collective ratings would compensate for this rather more, upping the collective TN somewhat, as well as adding the APs. But it's not at all easy to see how to do this systematically, and probably not worth worrying about enough to bother doing in an ad hoc manner.
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