Effectiveness of ganging up

[tleeuwenburg@gmail.com]

One of the major unresolved aspects for my game is how effective ganging up in combat should be. Brutally effective? Enough to make the difference between barely winning and winning easily? Or maybe not so effective at all -- just enough to make a critical nth of difference?

When in doubt, I often look to reality for inspiration, just in case it's useful ... My understanding is that unless you're fairly well-trained, ganging up on an expert combatant is hard because you get in eachother's way, can't close properly etc. Maybe ganging up should only be a useful skill if you're trained in the skill? Maybe it should be exceptionally useful if you know how to take advantage of your numbers, but not otherwise?

Or is it better to look at it from the mechanical strategy perspective? Is ganging up something that should be encouraged to drive player co-operation? Is there some kind of pattern of combat that should be encouraged to make the players work together? Is there a risk of creating an 'only one way' combat system? I don't really like combat systems where each player essentially just acts alone to do whatever damage they can do.

This is even something I don't really like in DND, even where characters do have different character roles, they still don't have to be all that cohesive as a unit. Well, maybe that's just the games I've played rather than being true of more sophisticated players. However, a lot of the time I've played games where the 'healer' just sits around and heals, the fighter just charges in with no consideration of the situations, the magician throws their biggest fireball etc etc.

What's a better way, do you think? Should positional play be important? By this I mean things like hiding, ganging up, establishing ambushes and defenses etc? Should magical effects be as much about tactics and strategy as about direct effects?

Should what the players choose to do be the most important thing in a combat, or the extent of their skills? Should a canny group of players be able to punch above their weight "on the numbers", or should skill levels have more influence than that?

Questions, so many questions...

Thanks,
-Tennessee

[Seamus]

From the reality perspective, ganging up on someone in a fight, expert or not, is easy. If you have five normal guys ganging up on Mike Tyson, put money on the normal guys. Getting in each other's way isn't much of an issue. Fighting multiple opponents is one of the hardest things to do. I have never seen anyone succeed at it in real life.

[Jeff B]

I agree with Seamus in that "realistically", ganging up makes the fight virtually a foregone conclusion.  If the gang is truly intent on defeating or killing the sole opponent, they will almost certainly prevail.

I suggest cinematic values as the most important element of your decision. If you make ganging up quite effective, then populate adventures with fairly tough opponents, you'll create an atmosphere of more creative, and possibly more underhanded, tactics used by the players.  This might be a good thing.  Then again, the stereotype of a righteous fighter is to step up to danger, announce himself, and take the bull by the horns.  That won't work if the bull simply crushes the fighter.  In World of Warcraft, a character can be built for the purpose of being able to engage multiple opponents and stay alive, although he'll need help to actually bring them all down.  Not realistic but it does create an interest combat dynamic.

In many cases, "effective" and "necessary" are synymous in gaming.  If ganging up is effective, the players will come to consider it necessary.  So if that element is highlighted in your rules, you might be opening the pandora's box on having large parties, heavily populated with NPC's.  That could be really awesome or really a drag.  It depends entirely on what is wanted and how it's handled.  If a big party is a great asset, then leadership ability suddenly becomes very valuable.  And it would be awesome to have a character with social skills regarded as powerful, since no traditional RPG does this (my opinion).

I agree with you wholeheartedly that D&D provides for different roles but makes no allowance for group cohesion.  I believe the impact on roleplaying is far-reaching.  For example, anybody playing a thief in D&D somehow feels its their right to never engage an enemy face-to-face.  So they will let the fighter get overwhelmed with enemies.  The mage feels it's his right to stay "at the back" and never get near any opponent, so likewise the fighter and maybe the cleric take the brunt of the assault.  If the thief and mage are sufficiently stubborn, the fighter will die.  The GM therefore fudges rolls to save the roleplaying experience of the fighter, perhaps not realizing the situation is due to party ineffectiveness, not to bad luck or bad decisions on the fighter's part.

If you are investigating methods of creating a party dynamic during melee, I support and salute you and wish you well.  More such models and ideas are needed.  It would certainly be possible to have an RPG that is centered directly on group tactics and detailed combat, if only there are enough things for each character to do, rather than simply state, "I hit him again."

[chance.thirteen]

The only fight I know of where an expert fighter took on two foes, he one by dint of reacting fast and very agressively when they weren't expecting anything, and he struck with intent to disable. It was a mugging.

I don't think most games can deal with the realistic timing and decision making that a fight between so many has going on. Instead, you decide what factors you want to matter, and you make sure they matter. Some factors I think of are:

Hesitation from non-expert or disorganized fighters due to morale or indecision
A target so tough they can actually ignore the threat of some or most attacks, or take a light blow in order to deliver a powerful one
The mook factor: are your characters supposed to blow through legions of lesser foes, and if so in what style? Like a martial artist vs normal men (Iron Monkey vs soldiers), like swashbucklers (Three Musketeers vs Cardinals men), or something close to equal, where you should actually feel a threat from each foe, but concessions to fortune or story make the heroes more likely to last.

[Eero Tuovinen]

You've said nothing that would even begin to answer your question, Tennessee. The pondering on realism is a complete non-sequitur unless we've established that your game is trying to reflect reality in some manner for some purpose.

Why are there fights in your game? Why are there multiple, unequal opponents? Are there duels? If there are different numbers of fighters at different times - why?

If the answer is just that you're simulating some imaginary world and are not acting intentionally to introduce this situation, then you need to draw on the mechanical inspiration - "technical agenda" - that originally got you this far in designing your game. How does your system reflect the imaginary setting and situations in the mechanics? What would be an elegant and sensible way for this system to depict this sort of situation? More often than not your original choices in laying out the system suggest a means of handling this sort of thing.

If the answer is that you want to say something with multicharacter fights, then create rules that reflect that message.

If the answer is that you don't actually have a particular interest in multicharacter fights, but you think that you should address them, then I suggest that you draw on whatever universal method you have for handling various conditions in your combat system. If multiple opponents means no more to you than any other conditions of the fight, then treat it exactly like any other condition. (This might seem radical, but there are actually plenty of games that treat ganging up like this - a game like Heroquest, for example, routinely has any helpers provide a static bonus for the main character engaging in a conflict, thus making the main character somewhat stronger. The exact same mechanic is used for any other beneficial conditions the main character might have.)

Which, if any, is the case for your game? Is it something else? Looking at the real world or a given genre of literature might provide an inspiration, but we have no way of knowing what sort of inspiration would be useful for you if we don't know what a fight means in your game, what is its purpose.

[tleeuwenburg@gmail.com]

Thanks all for your comments. I think, say, a four-on-one battle (between equally armed opponents) should basically always result in a victory by the group of four. What about two-on-one?

I'm imagining a game like Hero Quest or similar, where it is quite feasible to target enemies one-by-one and so gang up on opponents to take them out first. This is not a bad strategy (if you have initiative of course). I am currently thinking I might have two related sets of rules -- one for playing combat encounters like a board game (Hero Quest style) with movement and rules expressed in terms of squares, then another which can be used abstractly or perhaps using a whiteboard, expressed in terms of distance.

Regardless, taking cinematics into account is a great suggestion. I want combat not to be overly deadly for the players (I am trying to aim for a survivability of about 4 average encounters). I don't really see cutting down hordes of people with ease as being central to the game, but I wouldn't mind having some popcorn monsters around for the fun of it.

The major issue with making ganging up very effective is that the enemies can use it too. If it's simple a higher-initiative-goes-first game, then low-power enemies with a high initiative could perhaps too easily overwhelm a single player by ignoring the rest of the party. Perhaps you should only be able to target an un-engaged enemy if your initiative is substantially higher than the next enemy.

The other issue is whether to have a 'movement phase' and then a 'combat phase'. That way if everyone gets to move before actions occur, you can defend a friendly character by backing them up against being outnumbered. That could reasonably represent the fact that it's just not sensible to outnumber one enemy while leaving your back exposed to another charging enemy. However, I'd quite like to allow some characters to have the ability to interfere with the choices of others, so perhaps there should be a magic phase which actually happens first. Spells can then muck up what movement and actions the others can do, rather than only taking effect in the second round or being direct damage/healing spells... or perhaps some spells can be 'instants' that occur before movement. Perhaps some magicians could focus on 'instant' spells to take out opponents quickly, while others are less combat-oriented...

In terms of why are there fights, well that's reasonably well covered. I'm basically building a fantasy heartbreaker, as people call them, because I want to build something slightly different that I think is "better". For me, this involved conflict of multiple kinds, including combat. There are going to be other forms of conflict, such as political negotiation, map-following, exchanges of ideas, magical effects etc. Roleplaying groups tend to have 3-5 players plus a GM, so the party size is fixed around 4. As such, I want most fights to be even in terms of numbers, which means I have to word out how to have fights between 4 people on one side, and say 1-10 on the other side. I want to include classic fantasy elements like the dungeon crawl, but also support other alternatives. Army v army isn't something I would want to simulate, but skirmishing is a possibility.

One advantage of the dungeon crawl is that it can be played very much like a board game without demanding any storytelling or problem-solving ability from the players. This is ideal for newcomers who have never played before and aren't very familiar with what RPGs entail. So I would like to support that.

Thanks,
-Tennessee

[chronoplasm]

Regardless, taking cinematics into account is a great suggestion. I want combat not to be overly deadly for the players (I am trying to aim for a survivability of about 4 average encounters). I don't really see cutting down hordes of people with ease as being central to the game, but I wouldn't mind having some popcorn monsters around for the fun of it.

Perhaps you could build some sort of 'dial' into your system? Let the group decide whether they want a more gritty or cinematic game and slide the numbers according to their tastes.

[sblock]
The other issue is whether to have a 'movement phase' and then a 'combat phase'. That way if everyone gets to move before actions occur, you can defend a friendly character by backing them up against being outnumbered. That could reasonably represent the fact that it's just not sensible to outnumber one enemy while leaving your back exposed to another charging enemy. However, I'd quite like to allow some characters to have the ability to interfere with the choices of others, so perhaps there should be a magic phase which actually happens first. Spells can then muck up what movement and actions the others can do, rather than only taking effect in the second round or being direct damage/healing spells... or perhaps some spells can be 'instants' that occur before movement. Perhaps some magicians could focus on 'instant' spells to take out opponents quickly, while others are less combat-oriented...
[/sblock]

You might be able to do this with 'simultaneous action' rules. For example: The DM and the players could write down their actions on note cards, then reveal these note cards all at once. The actions are announced and resolved all at the same time. You might need some way of determining 'priority' if say... two characters try to move into the same space at once.

l

[decline]

from real life...and not sure how  much this helps.
only about 8-10 people can get punches in on you with a modicum of effectiveness at the same time.

i got jumped by about 30 some odd kids once. here are the lessons i quickly learned.
1. don't kick, it just makes you loose balance what with everyone punching you.
2. i could only really effectively land jabs as any kind of swing tended to hit 2-4 people on its way to the person in front of me which resulted in the end of the swing not landing with much momentum.
3. really busting up one person scares the crap out of everyone else.
4. if they had kicked me instead of punching me when i finally fell over i would have been done for.
5. grabbing, bending and twisting anything i could grab, and clawing and poking and squeezing worked wonders.
6. running after a car load of people afterward yelling "oh yeah! f*** you! come on back!"  will only cause them to come back.

the final outcome?  well i am first to admit that i got my ass kicked, but seeing as how i figured they were going to put me in a coma and didn't, i won in that aspect.  falling down was the biggest problem, and i was so exhausted staying up was quickly not becoming an option.  while large portions of it were all a blur i know i got about 4 of them really really hurt, which probably caused about half of them to back off and leave.  in the end my face was swollen in all directions by about an inch, and i had an indentation (a rather perfect one actually) of a brick on my back.  i was trying to stay focused on whoever was directly in front me, but they could swap out so fast it was nearly impossible to do so.  with so many punching and grabbing at you you can't really break free easily to keep going after the person once they step back.

and in case it needs to be said, nobody actually stands around in a large circle attacking you one or two at a time like in those kung fu movies.  so once you have engaged one of them, everyone can just come running in and pile on.  so unless everyone is just really hesitant, i don't see how someone could keep enough people at enough distance to take them all on....

[Seamus]

from real life...and not sure how  much this helps.
only about 8-10 people can get punches in on you with a modicum of effectiveness at the same time.

i got jumped by about 30 some odd kids once. here are the lessons i quickly learned.
1. don't kick, it just makes you loose balance what with everyone punching you.
2. i could only really effectively land jabs as any kind of swing tended to hit 2-4 people on its way to the person in front of me which resulted in the end of the swing not landing with much momentum.
3. really busting up one person scares the crap out of everyone else.
4. if they had kicked me instead of punching me when i finally fell over i would have been done for.
5. grabbing, bending and twisting anything i could grab, and clawing and poking and squeezing worked wonders.
6. running after a car load of people afterward yelling "oh yeah! f*** you! come on back!"  will only cause them to come back.

the final outcome?  well i am first to admit that i got my ass kicked, but seeing as how i figured they were going to put me in a coma and didn't, i won in that aspect.  falling down was the biggest problem, and i was so exhausted staying up was quickly not becoming an option.  while large portions of it were all a blur i know i got about 4 of them really really hurt, which probably caused about half of them to back off and leave.  in the end my face was swollen in all directions by about an inch, and i had an indentation (a rather perfect one actually) of a brick on my back.  i was trying to stay focused on whoever was directly in front me, but they could swap out so fast it was nearly impossible to do so.  with so many punching and grabbing at you you can't really break free easily to keep going after the person once they step back.

and in case it needs to be said, nobody actually stands around in a large circle attacking you one or two at a time like in those kung fu movies.  so once you have engaged one of them, everyone can just come running in and pile on.  so unless everyone is just really hesitant, i don't see how someone could keep enough people at enough distance to take them all on....

Kicking can get you in trouble is street fight if you are not accustomed to it, and you don't know when its appropriate to do. If you are going to kick, in my view, you are better off kicking low if you are going to kick (the only time I would kick above the waist line is a one-on-one situation, where the other guy is much bigger than me and I the power of the kick is worth the risk of throwing it. Against a group of 30 people, your only real option is to run away, and fight until you have a chance to run away. But it is a pretty hopeless scenario. If one or two grab you, there isn't a whole you can do. As you point out, they don't come at you one at a time like a kung fu movie (and they certainly don't line up for you to you can punch one and back kick another, then spinning hook kick three guys to the ground).

[tleeuwenburg@gmail.com]

Thanks all for your real-world comments. Obviously those experiences would be terrifying, and I don't want to disrespect the awful reality of real violence. My sympathies to anyone who has been through a gang fighting experience.

That said, this is an RPG forum and I think it is okay for me to continue to focus on putting together game mechanics. Probably what can be taken from these experiences is that at some point, being outnumbered becomes overwhelming, regardless of almost any other factor. Unarmed, any large group could overwhelm any individual. An armed individual with a brutally effective weapon like a sword could perhaps reasonably fend of a large number of unarmed assailants through swift response. A knife might be somewhere in the middle.

The question is how to take this away from the real world and back into game terms that can be easily played. My combat system is based around the idea of rolling a certain number of dice (A sword might base off D6 and the weilder have 2 dice worth of ability, inflicting 2d6 damage). Perhaps each additional attacker might get one free bonus dice per number of outnumbering. So if there is a three-on-one fight, all three assailants would fight with two extra 'free dice'. A three-on-two fight would give each of the three in the outnumbering party one extra die. That way, one person who was quite skilled could take on two unskilled opponents reasonably, but would be quickly outmatched by two equally skilled opponents.

I think there will also need to be a very limited number rules governing weapon effectiveness depending on the weapon of the opponent. I thought perhaps that vs an unarmed (or knife-armed) opponent, a swordsman would gain one extra die. So a 2d6 swordsman vs say 2d4 unarmed would become 3d6 vs 2d4 to account for the weapon advantage, which should give them a crushing advantage. A fight against two unarmed opponent would then have two resolutions of 3d6 vs 3d4, which means that on average, the swordsman will still have a solid advantage. The swordsman would take some damage 16% of the time, and on average inflict 3 damage on each opponent per turn. That might not be enough of an advantage, but it does work out.

By contrast, a 2d6 swordsman fighting two 2d6 swordsmen would take 7 damage (3.5 from each opponent) per turn due to the bonus dice from outnumbering.

I'm not sure if the balance is quite right, but the advantage is in the right place each time. A swordsman fighting against three unarmed opponents will inflict an average of 0.5 damage per turn, so is a nose ahead in terms of each roll, but will start to take much more often since there will be three rolls per turn.

So, what is the appropriate balance for a swordsman fighting three unarmed opponents? Perhaps we should assume an unarmed opponent will be making use of improvised weapons rather than being a completely unarmed passer by with nothing but fists. Maybe each weapon needs a bonus vs unarmed...

I was thinking of something like the following schedule of weapon v weapon bonuses:
  -- Unarmed vs Unarmed: no bonus
  -- Knife vs Unarmed: +2 vs unarmed
  -- Sword vs Knife or Unarmed: +1D6 (or extra dice of appropriate size for other weapons)
  -- Sword vs Sword: no bonus
  -- Spear vs Sword: +1 vs sword or less

So having simple 'reach' as in spear vs sword gives a +1 advantage...

Just some thoughts... thanks again for everyone's posts, consideration and time.

Regards,
-Tennessee

[chance.thirteen]

You might allow the differing weapon classes to be used as an offensive or defensive bonus. That way if can represent the advantage of reach and threat, where the less has to be more wary of the greater.

[Creatures of Destiny]

How about some system where the effectiveness of ganging up starts low but increases exponentially from round to round or that it creates a kind of death spiral effect.

The outnumbered party could spend attacks trying to avoid being bundled - jabbing and moving that the opponents are unable to concentrate their attacks. A successful attack roll could limit the number of attackers who you need to face - but of course you're using up your attacks to do this way. If you get hit, then every opponent gets a bonus, and these stack up so it gets worse and worse. Also if you incorporate fatigue rules then they too would favour the group - as members of a larger gang get to take a breather once in a while.

But on the other hand a nimble defender could use hit and run (whack one guy, run away and hide, jump out and whack another guy) and this system would encourage such tactics.

If you have "hit points" that are partly a measure of skill/luck rather than actual toughness/wounds than you could simply have ganging up cause the outnumbered party to automatically lose HP and coordinated attacks to increase HP for all members of the gang. Of course you wouldn't want to call them "HP" if you use them that way.

As for reach - if should be doubel edged - in a field a spear has the advantage over a dagger but in a small cabin the bonus would be reversed - how about giving each weapon an "ideal" distance bonus. For example a sword fighter vs a bravos with knuckle-dusters and broken bottles would have a distinct advantage as long as he has space. Once they geet close/or if he falls over than that advantage is lost. In game terms an attack roll could be "spent" to change the nature of the fight - lots of real sword fights involved wrestling and kicks (mainly used to push a close opponent back to where you can hit them better with a sword)

[tleeuwenburg@gmail.com]

One thing I want to do is give the soldier class unique abilities in terms of tactical effectiveness. A group of soldiers will just know how to work together, whereas other groups of people can't extract the same advantage. So I might take some of those suggestions in terms of soldier class abilities rather than incorporated into general combat mechanics. A group of soldiers will be able to fight in a co-ordinated fashion, herding their opponent, wearing them down, etc whereas other class types who are more expert in single combat won't be able to do quite the same things.

I am somewhat reluctant to introduce the 'ideal range' rules because it will make each encounter that little bit more complex. However, what I might do is have the rules apply essentially in the campaign rules, and have some campaigns have say ship-fighting rules, tunnel/cramped environments etc etc. That way the GM can plan those sections of the game and manage the rules more easily, without having to encumber every encounter with calculations of reach.

I'd like to be able to include tactics such as hit-and-run, wearing people out etc, but I want to find a way to also streamline that so that not every encounter has to calculate the effect of many factors. What I want is for each player to become familiar with the rules for their character, but not have to be overly concerned about cross-comparisons with every opponent. So maybe a spear would actually provide +4 but only in the first turn, or until they take damage (representing the point at which their enemy has closed to range).

I haven't figured out how to deal with breaking from melee combat, either to flee or to move and engage an alternative opponent. In general, this will be difficult. For example, it takes your action for the turn to defend. So if you are attacked, you have to use your turn to fight that attack. Only if you have the initiative or are unengaged can you choose to do anything other than keep fighting your current enemy. Again, I may look at varying this for the soldier class who might be able to move while defending, or similar. Perhaps a soldier character who inflicts damage on an opponent can also move both characters one square (representing herding your opponent while engaged) in order to bring about a numerical superiority or escape from being outnumbered.

That way, you don't just move to engage then remain static. But neither can you disengage freely.

Perhaps players with the right abilities could also choose to forego inflicting damage, and escape the combat to move instead. This represents gaining the upper hand, then instead of continuing to fight, taking some other action instead.

Thanks all for all the food for thought. It really, really helps.

[Jasper Flick]

So far it's been all about people running up to each other and bashing, stabbing, kicking, until someone goes down. If that's what it's all about, then all's good. Will your game have stuff like ranged weapons and explosives? They could change things dramatically.

[KeithBVaughn]

In my game: Planets of Peril, I use each additional opponent as a degradation of the fighting ability. If the character chooses to concentrate on one opponent he can bring full force to bear but all other opponents get an unopposed attack.

Keith