Mooks

[darrenan]

I am planning on adding some support for Mooks to the 13th Age Ruleset and the small group of players I have helping me test changes to the ruleset were discussing the best way to go about it. I'm curious to get other opinions about how other GMs run mooks in FG and what folks would like to see.

My initial idea for implementing this is:

When an encounter is added to the CT, we first check to see if any of the NPC groups in the encounter are mooks.
If there are, a special hidden CT entry is created for each mob of mooks which tracks HP for the mob. Encounters can have multiple mook mobs in them.
Individual mook entries in the CT will have initiative as normal, but will not have conventional HP tracked. Instead, on both sides of the screen (player and GM) mooks show up as either Healthy or Dead, no other status.
When individual mooks are attacked and dealt damage, the damage dealt ends up being applied to the hidden mob entry and not to the individual mook.
In the chat window, the GM is informed of how much damage was done, how many mooks should be removed from the field, and the remaining HP in the mob.
The GM is then free to remove the individual mooks that they wish based on targeting, situation, dramatic effect, whatever, and narrate it however they please just as the core rules tell you to do.


However, one of the other members of my group was wanting HP tracking on individual mooks, which isn't really how mooks work according to the rules, but might make more sense to players and consistency with the world. It might also make more sense to players who are used to the way other rulesets work in FG.

I'm open to any and all thoughts and suggestions. Fire away.

D.

[ChrisRevocateur]

Please don't do what your player suggested. If automation gets added to the ruleset, I want it to work the way the actual rules work.

[Bradius]

It would be great if proper mook automation was a thing. And couldn't you do individual tracking by just making the npc not a mook essentially?

[DarkEbon]

For me, the ideal would be that when a mook is killed, the chat window provides a new damage (the rollover amount) which the GM can then apply to another mook if appropriate.

[darrenan]

For me, the ideal would be that when a mook is killed, the chat window provides a new damage (the rollover amount) which the GM can then apply to another mook if appropriate.

That isn't how mooks work according to the rules. Individual mooks don't have HP, so rolling damage over from the one to the next doesn't make sense. There is a single pool of HP for the entire mob of mooks, and the number of mooks remaining depends on how many multiples of mook HP have been dealt:


Mook hit points: A mook’s hit point value is one-fifth that of a regular monster, or even less. A 1st level kobold mook has 6 hit points. The difference from a regular monster is that damage accrues to the mook mob, and for each chunk of 6 damage that the kobold mook mob takes, it loses one mook.

If you do what you're suggesting then you could end up with more mooks still active if you rollover damage to different individual mooks.

[DarkEbon]

True, but we've been playing 13th Age on Fantasy Grounds for 18 months now, and the party has reached level 9. The software couldn't support the actual rules easily for that time, so we've adapted. I guess it's easy to forget after so much time that what you're doing isn't actually the correct thing!

[Blackfoot]

I was thinking, it might be nice if there was a tick box to 'kill' one particular mook vs another... if ALL the mooks have the total HP and the Total Damage... plus some sort of reference for how many mooks should still be alive.... or maybe something that shows how many are left to KILL off...

Example: Total Mooks: 7 ... total mob HP: 63
The mob takes 21 damage... each member of the mob shows the following:
---- as positives ----
Total Mooks: 7 Total HP: 63
Remaining: 7 Remaining: 42
Mooks to KILL: 2

Total Mooks: 7 Total HP: 63
Remaining: 5 Remaining: 42
Mooks to KILL: 0
---- as negatives ----
Total Mooks: 7 Total HP: 63
DEAD: 0 Damage: 21
Mooks to KILL: 2

Total Mooks: 7 Total HP: 63
DEAD: 2 Damage: 21
Mooks to KILL: 0

The mooks would all show this info plus a tick box showing ALIVE or DEAD for that particular mook.
or something like that...

[darrenan]

The first iteration of the mook support feature will go Live next Tuesday.

[DarkEbon]

Is there a way to handle separate mobs of mooks? Some official adventures include mooks being split into multiple mobs.

[darrenan]

Yes, each group of mooks in an encounter will get it's own mob NPC. Or you can create each mob of mooks in its own encounter. For example:

49266

[darrenan]

And now that I look at that screenshot, I realize the GM has no way of knowing which mob each mook belongs to. Also the two mobs have the same name and aren't getting numbers appended to make them unique. I'll see if I can get both of those issues resolved today, so the fixes will be there when it goes live Tuesday.

[DarkEbon]

Thanks - this looks like a good solution.