Beast of Many Backs

Dealing with multiple opponents is often needlessly fiddly. If they are all the same, then why should you think so hard about them? And why, on top of that, should they get that same treatment as a PC would? Symmetry is seductive.

So you come across a room with 7 orcs and they all have slightly different stats, but ultimately close enough.

7x Orcs skill/stamina

1. 6/5
2. 5/5
3. 5/5
4. 6/6
5. 5/6
6. 6/6
7. 5/6

Instead of rolling for each of them separately, harming each of them separately (and somehow remember which is where), you can just do some maths to them. 

Add all their stamina together, accurately or roughly. Let's go rough and call it 35 stamina.

Pick a skill that represents the groups competence. In this case, I like 6.

Give them 1 attack per absorbed member. So 7.

Now we have :

7x Orcs 6/35 7atks

Roll once for them each turn to generate the groups attack total. Whatever each of the members are doing, this is the number. Ignore fumbles and critical hits, treat them as just being the numbers rolled. It's not as granular as rolling individually, but it does the job.

How do we kill it though? Easy, divide the stamina by (number of members)+1 and kill one of them (and reduce the attacks by one) after each divide after the first.

In our example, it divides into 4 and a bit. Chop it up roughly and call it a day.

This track below is backwards, count down (up?) from 35 and the last dies at 0.

1. -
2. -
3. -
4. -
5. DED
6. -
7. -
8. -
9. -
10. DED
11. -
12. -
13. -
14. -
15. DED
16. -
17. -
18. -
19. DED
20. -
21. -
22. -
23. DED
24. -
25. -
26. -
27. DED
28. -
29. -
30. -
31. DRAMATIC BUFFER
32. -
33. -
34. -
35. -

Obviously keep anything interesting as a separate monster.