Opening Volleys

[Majestic]

It's not a huge deal, but one area I've felt isn't defined really well is Opening Volleys when the PCs are part of a larger-scale battle. Allow me to explain.

***WARNING: SPOILERS from 'Tales from Wilderland below'***

In two different adventures from 'Tales from Wilderland' (so far, out of the first three), there's been a larger battle that the PCs become involved in. Because there are other combatants, it makes it tough to know how exactly to do opening volleys (especially as regards attacks from opponents onto the PCs).

In the first one (in "Of Leaves and Stewed Hobbit"), the heroes join a small group in defending an ancient ringfort. I ended up using a D12 and determining randomly who got hit with each attack (among the defenders, so both PCs and NPCs). For the attacks (by the PCs), I had them hit some of the many (unspecificied number of) Goblins or Orcs, so they didn't really affect much (but of course the players didn't know that).

In the second one (from "Kinstrife and Dark Tidings"), the company is part of a much larger group (many Beornings). For that one, since the PCs made up a much smaller percentage of the overalll group, I had only a single opening volley attack one of them (at random). For their own opening volley, I allowed their attacks to be made on the Outlaw adversaries that would eventually be assigned to their group (so damage done in the opening volley was cumulative with the damage done in close combat).

Both of these seemed to work fine, but I felt like I was very much improvising. I think a newer (or less experiened) GM could have had a tougher time figuring out what to do.

Anyone do anything a little different? Think there's a better way to handle opening volley attacks in circumstances like these?

[zedturtle]

I would take a cue from other scenarios in Tales and roll a Feat die a certain number of times (depending on the strength of the opposition), threatening a PC each time a Sauron was rolled.

We skipped over Leaves but in Kinstrife I broke up the bandit assault into two segments... a night-time attempt by Valter to force a crossing (they ended up at the Old Ford) without committing his full strength and a big melee the next day. The night-time crossing we played out by the rules, for both PCs and NPCs... I think I counted it out and I made over 300 rolls for that battle. The defenders ended up forming up in convenient lines of 12 and for ranged fire it was just a matter of rolling to find out what row and column had been hit. If it was a PC, they took damage. If it was an NPC, they took damage and got a name. After the battle, we did a litany of those who had lived and those who had died. I think it worked really well.

Of course, it's one benefit of PbP where I could spend essentially all day (off and on) rolling up one round of battle and then post it in one fell swoop.

[Majestic]

That sounds like a great way to do it, zedturtle. You're right, though. Doing that many rolls at the table would probably not work out that well.