Crissa wrote:If Gnolls can use it... Can we hire Gnolls to use it?
-Crissa
Ideally anyone could. Or rather, anyones. In 4e you could control or hire monsters to gain access to their powers, but I suspect many 4e DMs to handwave this option with Rule 0 as "They would never follow your orders."
Since I'm insomic tonight and feel like I'm tearing apart from weather barometric pressure changes, I'll restate the variable criteria I have in mind for Group Tactics. More of a brainstorm (lol) than any plan solid:
• Minimum number of units met for the specific tactic; many would simply scale output to the number of beings involved, but stages of increased output such as a Town or City of course need
more people.
(Out of my ass I'll say at least 4 people for a Pack, 10 for a Village or Company, 100 for an Army, 1000 for a Town, 10,000 for a City, and so forth)
Each scale increase for a Group Tactic would be tied to an ECL to help find equivalency with magic and monster challenges, but there's so much to consider I don't know at this point how 1000 people = X level PC party.
• Each unit involved has a similar form of attack or defense (ranged, melee, thrown, spell of a certain school, race, skill, etc) but specifics don't matter. They'll all either deal damage, help move, or stall enemies since the micro scale of individual 1v1 spells doesn't mean shit against an army.
• Members involved all within about Close distance from each other. The spacing would be fluid and indeterminate but essentially "Line of Sight", unless units were bound by, say, sound calls or ESP of some sort. I don't care and so on.
• Group is led by a single character or share the exact same objective in mind. Anyone not cooperating is not counted towards the group minimum.
A GT would operate pretty much like a power for an individual but on a larger scale. Per encounter might work best for frequency.
The most import part in combat between varied sizes of groups is that 10 people could still try to defeat 100; the larger group could have some kind of defense that reduces damage coming from sources of a smaller group size and/or level. 300-movie, etc.
Dents would be made but as a whole the aspect of chance and firepower wouldn't make as much a difference as the ability to overwhelm the enemy with superior numbers.
As for HP and defenses, I'm loathe to say that mixed-member groups need to be homogenous in composition, but if you have an army of Fey roaming around with over 50 different species/races and weapons there's no way in hell you could take in to account that kind of diversity; it needs to be abstracted.
Mix in non-Fey (say, small Devils of the Outsider HD type) and you can't even use d6s for HP.
I'd say use base 10 per individual but even then it might work better if it's 10 HP for the group per +1 CR or Level of the individual; tiny units would need to add more individuals to contribute while a single giant might use a Town or Army size attack (and yes, Crissa, range scale with character size too since the giant is using a specific Tactic with inherent base range).
How it works:
I'll use the Gnolls as example (yay furries) and pop out a decent pack of 6. They'll use arrows since it's efficient and stealthy.
• As mentioned, the GT might be "Lurking Ambush" which allows them to Take 10 on Hide/MS/Stealth and use the highest modifier for the whole group; this Gnoll with the best ranks & mod in the skill is the Leader for now.
• They might get some kind of synergy bonus such as a +1 to, say, perception (one roll each turn for the whole group) and attack rolls for each member beyond 4, but the true power lies in what a Group Tactic does.
• If the Pack wins Init against PCs, they activate Lurking Ambush on the surprise round. It's a Standard action that allows stealthy movement at the same time, no roll needed.
• An attack roll would be too much for large numbers of NPCs so (for now) I think the PCs should make a save for half. DC is set by the Leader's
Damage dealt to PCs in an indeterminate area all within range of the Gnoll weapon (longbow).
Damage dealt depends on the number of characters but also from the size of the group minimum; it'll be 1d8 + 40 base damage for the Pack size (10 per bow) + another 5 per Gnoll (or other archer) beyond the minimum.
The tactic can be re-used until Gnolls die enough to bring the pack below the tactic's minimum of 4; at that point it's a battle of individuals.
Or if this is too much (I don't know, still dabbling for now) the mass of Gnolls could be treated as a single being with far more HP than any individual one, a single attack or save-special, declining combat output as they take damage in increments of -10 HP, and 'disperses' when HP drops below a certain threshold. There is no split in to individual combat once the group's number drops too low since they can't fight effectively on that scale anyway; they have no choice but to flee or take the hits without use of the better tactics.
You're probably playing WarHammer at that point but I'd like it simpler than that, and with no WarHammer; this is RPGs.
This group tactic concept would all probably work best if the PC party is also considered a single 'entity' that behaves in a similar manner; breadth of combat options, best defenses, saves, senses, movement speed, all increase relative to party diversity but redundant members (multiple warriors and no mages, or the opposite) would stack small bonuses on top of the base amounts.
I wish I could sum this in less words. Maybe I can...
TL;DR: Group Tactics as special powers for big, sloppy, gestalt conglomerates of characters that 'Take 10' a lot.