AW: [DL] The Crucible - large combat situations

[<markus.finster@chello.at>]

You could try the new Quick-Combat System, as detailed in The Unity:

I don't have it with me at the moment, but combat rounds are measured in timespans of 2-5 minutes, every round players roll their shooting and substract 3d6 bullets. next, you check on the quick-combat-table the result of the shooting-roles: the higher the rolls, the more casualites a player caused. for medium or low rolls, they suffer wounds (hit locations are determined randomly and the wounds can be chipped). you can rule that bigger/meaner enemies take more "casualties" to take down (i.e. in the unity adventure you need 3 casualties to eliminate an automaton).
any npc's fighting on the player's side: just randomly substract a few of them (1d4 or so) each combat segment (remember: 2-5 minutes instead of 5 seconds).
With that, the fight should be quickly over.
In close combat, substitute fighting for shooting.

At some point you could choose to switch over to normal combat (when there are only a few left or when a dramatic approbiate point is reached.

That would be option number one.
Or, Option number two: Assign one or two tasks to the players. Like, "Take out these snipers!" or something and don't care about the npc's. if the players are sucessful, their side wins, if not, they lose.
In the second case, you should think about tactics used by both sides and decide, how many casulities each side will suffer.

Markus