Great White Games/Pinnacle Entertainment Group

[louism]

Yet another new-to-Savage-Worlds GM here and I'm running my first sessions soon. The module I've chosen has a couple of combats involving a lot of extras, the biggest one being ~19 bad guy extras + 1 wildcard vs ~15 good guy extras + 4 PCs. How do you normally handle extras tactically?

Do they perform tricks and tests of will vs other extras or the PCs? Do the players use their extras to set up big attacks from their guys? In other words, are they supposed to be dumbed down because they're extras or do they work to their full potential until that first wound brings them down?

I'm a bit concerned about running such a big battle in my first game with the system, but this is likely just a one-shot with my group and I want to explore as much of the system as I can. Any advice is appreciated.

[Clint]

[Zadmar]

Ninja'd by Clint, but I'd already typed up my post, so I'll post it anyway.

Personally I'd split the 15 good guy Extras among the PCs, so they each control 3-4. Then I'd split the 19 bad guy Extras into 4 groups, each group with its own initiative card, with each group primarily focusing its attacks on one of the players. The Wild Card villain would lead one of the groups and focus on whichever PC looked the toughest.

Generally speaking I'd have each group performing the same action, because it's faster, although you certainly don't have to do it that way. If a group of 5 extras with d6 in Shooting are going to shoot their weapons at a player, then I'd just roll 5d6, resolving all of their attacks simultaneously.

[Kevin]

On the tactics end, I'd advise you to "play to win." If you hold back to make it easier on them, they'll likely demolish you, quickly and without a lot of fanfare.

But if you play strategically and use your environment, your players will notice, and they'll start doing it to. Overall, a much more cinematic and entertaining encounter. SW is the one game I've found where a healthy dose of player/GM competition actually improves things.
_________________

[louism]

Thanks for the advice Clint, Zadmar, and Kevin. I feel much better about running a bigger combat now.

[ogbendog]

I did a fight similar to this with about 12 goblins vs 5 PCs.

I decided that goblins worked in groups of three. 6 hung back, taunted and moved closer, then through spears.

the other 3 moved up, 2 would do Agility tricks, and the third would then attack, hopefully vs the -2 parry.

[cpk666]

[Kevin]

Counterpoint to the above …


When I say "play to win," I mean play tactically and strategically. Don't go easy on them and give away the victory, because this will be BOOOOORING!! Use everything in your toolkit to your advantage—special maneuvers like Tricks and Wild Attacks, but also group tactics like laying down cover fire to move a different unit into flank position, and so on.

What I DON'T mean is to metagame—to use information you only have because you're watching the fight from the God's-eye-view. You're not trying to win the fight, after all. You're trying to win the fun. Picking the PCs off one at a time because that's what gives you the greatest mechanical efficiency is an easy way to assure victory, but it's also cheating.



So to answer your question:

[Zadmar]

[louism]

Thanks again for all the advice. It'll really help my first game run smoother.

[cpk666]

[louism]

[Wibbs]

Sounds like it went pretty well. The Gatling Decision was also the first Savage Worlds adventure I ever ran, so I can identify with your experience

The way you describe it, I suspect that the combat slowed for a couple of reasons.

The first would be a lack of familiarity with the system on the part of the players. I can assure you that once people learn their characters, what rolls they need to make etc it speeds up enormously.

You reference the second reason in your post, and I think you are spot on. Ganging up, called shots, wild attacks, tricks, Intimidation and Taunt are invaluable tools to use and in general, good teamwork with these can make an enormous difference to how quickly combat runs for. In particular, Ganging up and Wild Attacks can be brutally effective. The best way of introducing these to your players is for the NPCs to use them. There's nothing quite like seeing your character Shaken by a puny intelligent type using a Smarts trick to get the penny to drop.

Another thing that might have made a difference is that Deadlands uses a variant on Bennies called Fate Chips. These have different colours that affect their abilities, and the weakest of these is equivalent to a standard bennie. I suspect that not using these might also have slowed things down, as more powerful versions allow players to add d6 to their rolls.

Lastly, what was the general bennie flow like? If bennies were a little scarce that would likely make the players more cautious and less willing to try 'dangerous' things that might have ended combat faster.

Anyway, just my two cents,

Wibbs

[Nordicnomad]

I think the big thing you have to watch with this system is the average fighting and shooting of the posse characters vs the target numbers you're throwing at them.

If skills are roughly equal to the target number, they should be fine in winning against a big group of extras. But it'll take them a pretty long time to get the job done.

For example a wild card with d6 fighting, fighting a target with d6 parry will fail or critically fail 70% of the time. So he'll roughly kill an extra once in four rounds.

But if his fighting is d8 against a parry of 6. It's about 50-50, so he'll only take two turns to kill a mook on average.

And if his skill is twice the target number, like d8 shooting vs tn 4 he can kill 4 extras in 5 rounds typically.

That's a huge swing in fight length and deadliness with on change I die type. You can get an idea of what you fights should on average look like with the probability calculator

here ==> http://cameralovesyou.net/swprob/swprob.rb

Until you get a good feel for how things run. But you should see how quickly a character can go from ineffective with a d6 skill to a death dealing god at d10 with edges that increase his number of attacks and provide bonuses to hit and damage.

Just make sure important villain npc's you think are invincible, and are important to plot line are kept out of reach or have an exit strategy. They tend to get one shotted when pc's start dropping all their bennies and getting creative to try and take him out.

[Clint]

[Nordicnomad]

Oops. Just meant to type "6 parry" not d6. So used to making everything a die type... :/

Just using it to illustrate the effect a die type equal to target number has on fight length.

[Zadmar]

[Nordicnomad]

[Zadmar]

[ogbendog]

yeah, -2 to parry doesn't effect the chance of getting shot, unless they are fighting guys with pistols.