How do you make your mooks? do you put 3 fairly strong guys or 10 weaksauce folks? if a character tries to talk to one, do you make him a faceless NPC or give him a personality?
Do your mooks employ tactics or is it just attacking till they're done for?
also how do you do combat when DMing? I'm fairly new regarding combat and would love some tips that could help me improve
also post character art for people that could be considered mooks
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Depends on the purpose of the mooks.
I always love when the players try to talk things out so conversing with mooks instantly turns one into a character.
Combat is pretty much handled as the book describes, giving descriptions for attacks and such. The real meat of it is finding interesting stuff in the environment for the players and enemies to use.
I understand that, but what I'm talking about is how to make combat fun for my players
the current thing I do is put mooks with similar to lower stats and just play to win, but I'm not sure how that can end up going, I just want it to make it fun and challenging
there's also the fact with how players handle combat, my current players are quite skilled in combat, so a lot of fights end up being perfected with barely any health lost (Including boss fights that I myself tought where hard)
of course this leaves me kinda dissapointed since my players miss all the cool tricks and events that happen, and I end up making the fight harder on the whim to compensate (Which makes me feel somewhat like shit)
The main question is: How do I make combat fun and challenging to my players?
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What you are describing is literally impossible unless you playing something like D&D and the party is all casters and they are starting 500 feet from all the enemies and the enemies stay grouped together.
The trick to making fun combat (if you want to do the fight-to-the-death approach and always go for the throat) is to understand how your players fight in combat and then design around that.
well it comes like that due to my characters dealing high damage as well as good rolls VS. enemies that are on the same levels as them (But less in number) and with bad rolls
should I make enemies with a higher level? and the fight-to-the-death approach I do so because of the fact stated above, if the fights were already hard as they where I would play much easily
I like my mooks in plentiful supply and rich in character.
I love the 9 to 5 trope where most of their enemies are really chill guys with families and hobbies and company birthdays. Adds just a tinge of guilt.
But then they realize that killing them IS their job and getting killed IS an accepted hazard.
High dmg tends to mean low survivability in terms of health and such.
Put in ambushes where the enemies get some sucker punches in, situations where the enemies have environmental advantages or dangerous one-time-use items like bombs and such, or wear them down before hand with traps and hazards and the like.
>Adds just a tinge of guilt.
That is incredibly anti-fun.
i'll tell a stroy
Party :
Paladin (player)
Theif (player)
Shaman (allie npc)
Warrior (allie npc)
they are in a place full of ruins and have drawn the attention of the local ogre pack.
>ambus
>suprised
>ONE ogre crits twice
>both npc's killed (they had low health from last encounter)
>they try to pick them up and run
>they heal the shaman and pick up the warrior
>20 min of discussing if the leave the ogre
>the flee leaving him behind
>they run and after another 20 min of b-but my shaman dude they turn around and cast all their buffs and lay out a counter ambus
>they slay them and run back for the shaman
>thus everlasting friendship was formed
the encounter wasent supose to turn out like it did because of that one ogre that critted twice but hey the had fun,
the set up was 2 sheild and spear ogres who were close to the party when ambushing then there was 2 other ogres with great weapons charging from the flak and lastly there was an ogre archer in a crumbeling tower
Hmm
I'll try that, thanks
forgot to mention that the shaman got downed again right after being healed
>might have to think about how the people my character kills are actually people
>incredibly anti-fun
>i can't handle the idea of consequences to my actions
Or when I play a game with my friends I play to have fun, not to have to contemplate on the nature of killing as a form of problem solving.
monsters are bestial forces of nature
intelligent races are cunning, use tactics and are harder to bait into traps
except orcs. Orcs are fucking dumb
Love it when games form relationships naturally.
>i play them to have fun
Your "anti-fun," assumption that I take issue with is that you seem to be stating it as if it's an absolute truth; when instead it is your opinion. A shitty one, in MY opinion, but one you're allowed to have.
My group prefers playing games where the idea of killing a man includes realizing who that man is and that he might have a story we will never hear. Loved ones who wait to hear from him again. We feel more immersed. It's engaging.
If that's not your cup of tea, say so. But don't declare it as "incredibly anti-fun," as if that's all there is to it when in reality it's anti-your kind of fun. Stating it as you did just makes you sound like a petulant child whining about consequences to your actions.
What's frustrating for me is that I don't even care about your opinion. It's not the same as mine, but it's not like it can be argued; it's entirely taste-oriented. So whatever. My frustration is you stating it like you're some fucking philosopher or some shit. When in reality if you didn't bother me so much at the time by thinking your opinion was that important, then I'd not have bothered responding in the first place.
Mooks can be fun
>Group is assaulting an abandoned mansion, to which the rival search group managed to get first
>They possess highly technological weapons in the setting (read - rifles)
>There's only 4 of them cause I wanted it to be a breezy fast fight to kickstart a dungeon delve session
>They block the main stairway and only allow PCs to approach one by one
>My players get their shit-eating grins wiped as one of them starts scoring a crit after crit - 2 PCs are down already, though not dead
>They start to laugh it off ooc and discuss how they'd hire the guy
>Once the other three were somehow disposed of, decide that the critting mook drops his gun and surrenders
>He gets punched in the face but otherwise helps mend relationships with the rival dungeon delvers, provides a point of contact for the rest of the campaign and becomes a fun and semi-important recurring NPC
>We feel more immersed.
>We feel more immersed when we know we have caused human suffering
>That is incredibly anti-fun.
>Sounds like a philosopher
>Someone says their opinion
>Obviously they think their opinion is super important and should be shared by everyone
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That a skaven joke?
Yes
Is that warp-stone on a string that ends before it hits the edge of the picture?
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what is a mook? i have never heard of this term and as english as second language im not suprised
Disposable faceless nameless rank and file minions to the primary antagonist
huh, it seems i missed that, here take a fixed version
No prob Mr. Anti-Fun.
aa okay thanks you
1HP blobs that players get to obliterate with little though; they can group up and do ambushes though, and they're often deadly.
They make easy PCs; if you die, who cares, you're a mook, but if you can make it past the first few levels you've got a solid character off the bat with minimal preparation.
I like it when my PCs try to negotiate with the mooks. It makes sense that after they see their friend COMPLETELY OBLITERATED in 1 hit from one of the PCs that they wouldn't be so keen on fighting.
Read the angrygm's articles on encounter building.
Make a archetypical party in your head (never use your players for this) and run out the combat in your mind assuming they do the "best thing" for their archetype. Shoot guy shoots things and hangs back, bashy guy bashes things and holds the line, explody guy explodes as many baddies as he can. Then change the terrain, enemy tactics or situation to block these "best thing" approaches. Run it again in your head, see how it might go and stop here.
Bam, the players suddenly have to make choices in combat that mean something because they can't just do what they always do in combat.
Also more enemies is better than one big enemy because it gives the fight a natural progression and flow.