How many Mooks is Enough?

By Jason Langlois.

"A Fist Full of Mooks"

There was some discussion of how many mooks someone should throw at characters in Feng Shui. Numbers ranging from 3 to 12 were thrown out. However, I got to thinking there had to be a general rule you could use to figure out how many mooks to throw at a group. Here's my attempt to work one out.

I assume the average combat AV is 14, so in one attack, a PC can take:

• 4 Mooks with AV 5
• 2 Mooks with AV 7
• 3 Mooks with AV 6
• 1 Mook with AV 8 or 9

Using these numbers, we can have a general rule about mooks vs. PCs.

• Joke fight: 1/2 the number above for each PC.
• Nuisance: The number above for each PC.
• Threat: Twice the number above for each PC.
• Challenge: Three times the number above for each PC.
• Overwhelming: Four time the number above for each PC.
• Time to Surrender: Five time the number above for each PC.

So if you had a party of 4 PCs and you were throwing AV 6 mooks against them, and wanted the fight to be a challenge, you'd have 36 mooks for them to fight.

If you were trying to capture them with an elite Ascended troop, with AV 8, you'd want to send 20 of them.

Of course, these are pretty much just guidelines. If you've got a bunch of Killers with lots of Carnival of Carnage, you'll have to ramp up the number of sitting ducks... I mean, mooks they'll have to knock down before they can fight the named guys.

Running Mooks

Now that you've got this handy break down number, I'd suggest running the mooks in 'squads' based on the number of PCs. If you had the 36 mooks in the example above, you'd run them as though they were 4 groups of 9. Roll initiative for each group, rather than for 36 individual mooks. This should make managing the numbers easier.

• Worldbook

Last modified: June 21, 1996; please send comments to durrell@innocence.com.