Baaz Formation

Baaz are the backbone of the Dragonarmies, drilled relentlessly to fight as disciplined formations rather than as individual warriors. Each soldier is trained to hold the line, protect their comrades, and exploit openings with practiced precision. Alone, a baaz is a modest threat. United in formation, they become a formidable obstacle capable of challenging even seasoned adventurers.

A Baaz Formation represents a squad of draconians acting as a single tactical unit. Shield bearers absorb the enemy's assault while rear-rank warriors strike from relative safety, maintaining cohesion until the formation begins to break apart. As casualties mount, the unit's tactics, defenses, and offensive capabilities change to reflect the loss of trained soldiers rather than a simple reduction in hit points.

Like all Baaz draconians, each fallen warrior leaves behind a dangerous petrifying corpse, forcing enemies to carefully consider how and where they engage the formation. Though the unit fights as one creature for ease of play, each member retains the distinctive death throes that make Baaz draconians infamous.

I've been working on a homebrew monster system that represents disciplined military formations as a single creature rather than four independent monsters.

My goal wasn't to make stronger monsters—it was to preserve the feeling of fighting trained soldiers while reducing initiative, hit point tracking, and bookkeeping at higher levels.

Instead of tracking four creatures individually, the formation:

• uses a shared hit point pool,
• loses individual members as it reaches damage thresholds,
• changes its capabilities as members fall,
• retains each member's individual death effects,
• treats single-target non-damaging spells as affecting individual members while damage is still tracked collectively.

The attached Baaz Shield Formation is the first implementation of the system.

I'm less interested in whether the exact numbers (AC, HP, damage, CR) are perfect and more interested in feedback on the Formation mechanic itself.

Some questions I'd especially appreciate feedback on:

• Does this seem intuitive to run at the table?
• Are there rules interactions or edge cases I've overlooked?
• Does it successfully capture the feel of a disciplined military unit?
• Would you use a system like this in your own game?

I would mention as well that this would be the first of many such military formations such as archers, cavalry, standard militia, vanguard and flankers.

Thanks in advance—I appreciate any constructive criticism.