Big Irish's Big Epic Battle Rules For use with Savage Worlds by Sean Patrick Fannon, 10/24/2011

Purpose: I've become known as the Guy Who Runs Big, Epic Games at conventions (and elsewhere), but I've discovered that there is a strong need for me to make things move faster and more efficiently when I'm filling the table with hordes of bad guys. These rules are intended to make such games possible while still maintaining a high level of F!F!F! Bad Guy Sheets: These will be created, printed, and handed out to all of the players participating. They will have minimal information in order to facilitate the players running combats with such entities on their own. Horde Extras: Those identified as such are the easiest to deal with. They are mean to only be dangerous as part of the masses. As such, all Wild Cards can Blow Through them. This means if you hit one and Drop him, your attack automatically applies to the next adjacent one (probably Dropping them, too). Blow Through only works once per attack, but every attack in a Round can have a Blow Through effect. Blow Through does apply to Shooting and magic attacks, but not Throwing (unless it's an Ogre throwing really big rocks). Horde Extras are listed in the following format: Attack: d6, Damage: 2d6, Shaken: 5, Drop: 9 The Shaken and Drop numbers are based on the Hero's attack roll; damage doesn't even enter into it. If you hit, you Shake the minion. With a Raise, they Drop. Extras: These are regular Extras, as per Savage Worlds. Their numbers will be presented as follows: Attack: d6, Damage: 2d6, Parry: 5, Tough: 6 [Kill: 10] In these cases, Heroes will have to roll both to hit and follow up with damage, but all the necessary numbers are still there for easy resolution. Blow Through does not work with regular Extras. Team Initiative: This should be used early on, when the Heroes are primarily against Horde Extras and Extras. Once enemy Wild Cards enter into things, Heroes should go back to receiving individual Initiative cards. If the team has a Hero with Leadership Edges, she should be the manager of the Team Initiative; if not, whoever has the highest Knowledge: Battle; or you could just let whoever volunteers to have the job. Whoever ends up doing it, they should receive a bonus Bennie for the extra work. When dealing Initiative in this situation, the team gets a single card that applies for everyone. If anyone on the team has Quick, the whole team gains that benefit. The same goes for Level Headed (and Improved Level Headed). This can seriously speed things up; when the team's Initiative comes up, everyone can handle their

actions more or less simultaneously, consulting the Bad Guy Sheets to do so. If anyone has a special action that needs more attention, the team works out when that happens and then calls the GM into it. Group Attack and Damage Rolls: Another innovation is to apply the logic behind Double Tap and Three-Round Burst to groups of identical Extras. Whether in melee or at range, the GM can roll their attacks as a single Group Roll, adding +1 to the roll for each additional Extra (as with Gang Up Bonuses), up to a maximum of +4. Anything that affects Gang Up affects this equally. If the attack hits the Hero's Parry, a single Group Damage Roll is made. This damage is modified by the same bonus as the Group Attack Roll; it is similarly affected by anti-Gang Up Edges. Example: Dirk is surrounded (again) by ratzin five, to be exact. Attack: d6, Damage: 2d4, Shaken: 5, Drop: 9 [+1 Gang bonus] The heroes have the Initiative, so he gets to attack first. He rolls a 12 to hit, far more than the Drop Number of 9 listed. This means his attack Blows Through to another ratzin, and that one is Dropped, too. Now it's the ratzins' turn; there's only three of them left, but their special ability means the group gets a +3 Attack and Damage Bonus. A single group roll is made; this means a d6 for their Attack rating, and a Wild Die (also d6), and the whole thing is rolled at +3. Dirk's Parry is a 7; if the ratzin Group Attack Roll is 6 or less, they all miss. If it's 7 10, they hit; on an 11+, they hit with a raise. On a hit, a single damage roll of 2d4+3 is applied to Dirk's defenses, accounting for their entire group of ratzin. If they got the raise, the roll would be 3d4+3. If Dirk had One Against Many, the +3 bonuses discussed above would have been eliminated from both the Group Attack and Group Damage rolls. Group vs Group Combat: With either ranged or melee attacks, if one group of Extras (Horde or otherwise) attacks a group of Horde Extras, use the Group Attack rules above, as well as the Blow Through rules. In addition, each additional Raise means one extra Blow Through result. Example: A group of seven archer Extras with a d6 Shooting fire on a group of five Horde Extra ratzin (Shaken: 5, Drop: 9), they roll a Group Attack (1d6 Shooting, 1 Wild Die) at +4 (the max for a Group Roll). They end up with a final result of 17, which is compared against the normal target number of 4 for ranged combat that's a hit with 3 raises! The hit indicates a shaken ratzin, but the first raise means he's dead, and Blow Through kills a second one. There were two more raises, though, so two more ratzin also drop! The one remaining ratzin is fairly certain to run...