Picked up a copy of Final Sanction the other day.  Very impressive and an extremely well done demo.  The Horde rules look great and there are LOTS of opportunities to fight hordes in the adventure.

 Any idea how many actual guys would be in a horde?  I recall someone suggest that a horde point of magnitude could be between 2 and 100 enemies (I guess depending on whether they are Tau, Tyranids, or anything in between).  I wonder because if players destroy a 30 point horde, how many guys would that translate to?

It totally various in the power of the model that makes up the horde.  There is no 1-to-1 or set value relationship.  Generally, a 'weaker' base enemy would have a higher body-to-magnitude ratio.

For example, a 30 Magnitude Horde composed of an armed civilian mob might have 300 bodies.  A 30 Magnitude Horde of PDF might have 50.  (Note: these numbers are completely arbitrary and pulled from thin air).

I believe the initial Rebel Horde at the chapel in the demo adventure said there were thousands surrounding the chapel, but the book had the SM face a single Magnitude 40 Horde (I acutally used Magnitude 60, since I had 6 players). 

Unfortunately, there is no good answer for you.  Magnitude != number of bodies, and there is no set correlation between the two.

And no one, not under NDA, knows the answer since the actual rules haven't been published yet. 

I'm pretty certain that it's an inherently and intentionally abstract figure. Personally, I'm inclined towards 2-3 Magnitude per creature. It works out about right in most situations, as most standard attacks will kill with two successful hits on average, and it means that a Magnitude 30 Imperial Guard horde can represent a 10-man squad quite neatly. Then again, I'm quite inclined to represent an enemy force using several hordes of varying size rather than one big one.

I also included other factors in what makes up Magnitude.  Good defensive positions vs. being out in the open.  The hordes' access to accurate intel and open lines of communication.  Moral and motivation.  I think the whole point of rules like these is to leave it open and abstract so that I as GM can make that call if it becomes relevant.  Magnitude is as much a measure of "threat level" as it is actual number of members.

In fact I can see a Space Marine evaluating the opposition's threat level and actually refering to it by "magnitude".

Morale also has to be taken into account.  Gretchin or panicked civilians will break with comparatively few casualties while Tyranids will pretty much have to be killed down to the last critter unless a higher life form orders a withdraw.

 Another question on Hordes:

In close combat a horde can attack each combatant within range.

Ranged combat a Horde can attack once per first digit of their magnitude, is this per combatant or in total?

Santiago said:

In total.  But they can conceivably still perform semi- and full-auto fire with those attacks; or, it at least seems implied in the rules.

-=Brother Praetus=-

The other cool thing is that you could apply Hordes to just about everything, as the core concepts are still based around regular stat-lines, weapons, Skills, Talents and Traits. You could have even a Horde of Marines if you wanted. 

I love how easily extrapolated all the 40K RPG rules are. :)

BYE

N0-1_H3r3 said:

I'd say that was an exceptionally low ratio, bordering on the unsound. First because the rules in Final Sanction says

"One point of magnitude does not equal one individual enemy or creature but may represent tens or scores or even hundreds."

And secondly because it takes at least two Full Auto Bursts for Brother Sepheran to remove 30 magnitude from a Horde, but he can kill or incapacitate ten Imperial Guard in normal combat with a single Full Auto Burst. And he has Unrelenting Devastation so it should be easier for him to kill them as a Horde.

Thirdly it doesn't really leave space for Genestealer or Orc Hordes to have a lower ratio and leaves excessive space for higher ratios.

Magnitude 30 Human troops look to be around a Company to Battalion from Final Sanction. I rather doubt Space Marines are worth more than one magnitude each.

Dahak said:

And I don't care. I'm allowed to work to my own interpretations.

It also avoids creating frequent moments of absurdity when a single bolter shell kills several hundred creatures.

Dahak said:

Personally, I'd never include genestealers as a horde - they're sufficiently potent to be dealt with as individual creatures, and function quite well in that way. And, as I noted, I'd give Orks a higher ratio - an individual Ork is tougher than an individual human, and consequently each is represented by more Magnitude points. Essentially, the more tough and/or resolute a creature, the greater the number of magnitude I consider it to be worth within a horde.

In practice, none of the Marines seemed lacking for potency when firing at hordes...

Dahak said:

Yet collectively only count as an Enormous object - per the size listings in the Rogue Trader rulebook, that's about the same size as a Sentinel Walker or a Kroot Knarloc. I'd expect companies of men to take up significantly greater space.

Similarly, there are situations in Final Sanction make 'thousands strong' hordes impractical and detrimental to suspension of disbelief, such as placing 2 magnitude 30 hordes in the tunnels beneath the Imperial Stores

I did some calculations in another thread that could give some insight. They are made assuming that 1 magnitude equals one npc.If you don't like this kind of (basically pretty pointless) math exercises, just ignore my post ;). Horde rules used are from Final Sanction, I guess they might look different in the full game.

-

No horde rules:

30 enemies with knifes, each with SB:+3 and WS 30. One attack per enemy.
Damage roll: 1d5+3 (RF on 10)
Mean damage per attack: 5.78 (no RF), 10.78 (1 RF), 15.78 (2 RF), 20.78 (3 RF)
(.78 rather than .5 due to 1d5 being rolled with a d10, 9 not being RF)

Total soak for a space marine: 16 (from the extra characters). To third order in RF,
=> 30*(0.3*(0.97*(5.78-16)+0.029*(10.78-16)+0.00087*(15.78-16)+0.00003*(20.78-16)+...))= [damage cannot be negative]=
=0.001

No threat at all, you'd have be to extremely unlucky to get injured.

With horde rules:

30 enemies with knifes, a magnitude 30 horde. Still WS 30 and SB3. One attack for all of them (melee vs one opponent).
Damage roll: 1d5+3+2d10 (can you get RF on the 2d10?, assuming no, the expression becomes so cumbersome if I have to include that ;) )
Mean damage: 16.78 (no RF), 21.78 (1 RF), 26.78 (2 RF), 31.78 (3 RF)

Total soak is still 16,
=> 0.3*(0.97*(16.78-16)+0.029*(21.78-16)+0.00087*(26.78-16)+0.00003*(31.78-16)+...)=
=0.28

Damage is up by a factor of 300 by using the horde rules (even more when considering dodge/parries). It's still not a lot of damage though, a space marine will not be hindered at all by such a horde unless being very unlucky.

Doing the same with better equipped cultists, using mono-swords (1d10+SB, 2pen), same WS

No horde rules:
Total damage:
30*(0.3*(0.97*(8.5-14)+0.029*(18.5-14)+0.00087*(28.5-14)+0.00003*(38.5-14)+...))= 1.29

With horde rules:
Total damage:
0.3*(0.97*(19.5-14)+0.029*(29.5-14)+0.00087*(39.5-14)+0.00003*(49.5-14)+...)= 1.74

assuming they have ranged weapons with manstopper ammo (1d10+3, 2 pen).
BS 30.

No horde rules:
Total damage:
30*(0.3*(0.97*(8.5-14)+0.029*(18.5-14)+0.00087*(28.5-14)+0.00003*(38.5-14)+...))= 1.29

With horde rules:
Total damage:
3*0.3*(0.97*(19.5-14)+0.029*(29.5-14)+0.00087*(39.5-14)+0.00003*(49.5-14)+...)= 5.23

I've made a few simplifications, the biggest one being no RF on the extra horde damage (2d10 in this case). That will probably cause the horde damage to go up a bit (~10%).

So if you want a horde to have the same average damage output as regular enemies you can calculate a npc/mag ratio (for a given type of enemy) that makes this true (on average).

The exact number of npcs/mag needed to get the same total damage out depends on the enemies/equipment. Just divide the value for total damage for the horde rules with the damage from the non-horde rules to get a number. E.g., for the mono-sword cultists above, the figure is 1.34*(number of people in melee with the horde). For the ranged horde, the figure is 4.1. For the knife-horde the figure is ~300*(number of people in melee with the horde).

Tangential question:

How often do you (or your GM's) do RF for NPCs and especially for adversaries? I only do it on boss-style characters, but never on regular guys.

BYE

gruntl said:

Your math needs a slight adjustment.  Manstoppers increase the pen of the weapon to a total of 3, not 2.  But otherwise things look more or less right.  I would definitely not allow for RF results with a Horde, as I also do not allow most mooks to score it either.

-=Brother Praetus=- 

Something else to consider; just because a horde's Magnitude is dropping it doesn't neccessarily mean that people are dying; the horde is simply becoming less of a tactical threat.  As I ran Final Sanction I described Magnitude reduction in several different ways:

• Enemies killed (of course).
• Enemies wounded and unable to continue or being medi-vac'd out.
• Some of the enemies losing the nerve and falling back.
• A good tactical position degrading (making the horde less effective).
• Ammo running low or weapons being damaged / overheating / failing.
• Horde fatigue and combat weariness.
• Colaterial damage (falling debris, dust, etc.).
• The enemies' tactical plan being disrupted.
• A strong "squad leader" being killed or incapacitated.

Abstraction is the key.  That's how in our game a heavy bolter in one turn was able to inflict 18 Magnitude damage while firing 10 bolts.  I love these types of rules because they have the potential to really bring out GM and player creativity.  When you have rules designed to work a little more abstractly you have to watch trying to "pin-down" universal specifics such as "1 Magnitude always equals 12.5 enemies".  Embrace the abstraction and allow your creativity to intrepret the things that happen as you go.  You'll find your game becoming more engaging and vivid without wasting so much time with the minutia of rule specifics that don't neccessarily add anything to the game.

RenoDM said:

And that's exactly how I ran the Horde rules when I playtested Final Sanction. The entire point of the Horde rules is to make it more abstract and easier to work with in mass combat. As Reno said, just because 1 point of magnatude is taken down doesn't mean any of the NPCs that make up the Horde have been killed.