Forums of the Megaverse®

So there are a lot of things in Palladium that have 1000's of hp/sdc/mdc. Giant monsters, vehicles, etc.

I'm thinking of running a battle against a powerful super being that will require groups of supers to take it down (possibly with military support). So my question is, how do you run a fight with large numbers of combatants against huge targets? I only have three players so they would be the focus while the battle rages around them. Besides handwaving, what can I do?

a lot of it comes down to what the players do, of course, and what the strategy is.

If the tactic is just 'git em' Well, you're going to lose a ton of guys. Honestly if it were me, I'd just set a certain amount of damage the PCs need to deal to kill it. If you don't approve of that. I'd say take the NPCs that are involved, average out some damage, assume they deal damage 1/4 of the time and apply that every round.

If the tactic is 'we gotta stall this guy so the missile can hit em' then you already have your win condition, or at least a big chunk of it, and the PCs know what they're up to.

You don't have to do a lot of damage to disable something if you target key areas. This is where the players have to actually think and not merely try to slug it out. Unless a character has Supernatural Strength they shouldn't be trying to slug it out anyways. Getting on top of it and trying to pry open a hatch or compartment to disable it makes more sense.

Stone Gargoyle wrote:You don't have to do a lot of damage to disable something if you target key areas. This is where the players have to actually think and not merely try to slug it out. Unless a character has Supernatural Strength they shouldn't be trying to slug it out anyways. Getting on top of it and trying to pry open a hatch or compartment to disable it makes more sense.

That won't work versus a creature/super though, as I mentioned above.

Even if that were the case I don't recall doors and hatches in most ship stat blocks. What stats would you use?

Tywyll wrote:

Stone Gargoyle wrote:You don't have to do a lot of damage to disable something if you target key areas. This is where the players have to actually think and not merely try to slug it out. Unless a character has Supernatural Strength they shouldn't be trying to slug it out anyways. Getting on top of it and trying to pry open a hatch or compartment to disable it makes more sense.

That won't work versus a creature/super though, as I mentioned above.

The GM can determine the penalty to a called shot to shoot vulnerable areas. Those areas would be shots direct to hit points. Statting out the exact amount of HP for given body areas would be necessary. You don't have to do the full amount of SDC and Hit points to damage something if you are hitting strategically.

Tywyll wrote:Even if that were the case I don't recall doors and hatches in most ship stat blocks. What stats would you use?

You would have to stat out the amount of damage necessary to break an object open. This is where you have to be creative as a GM