Random thought to avoid massive NPC assists on one player.

[KankWhisperer]

Once an NPC assists a room is flagged NO_NPC_ASSIST for NPC_ASSIST_DELAY. (Let's say 1 second)
The flag is removed after NPC_ASSIST_DELAY, and hopefully another NPC will enter the fray.

So it would take 10 seconds for 10 NPCs to attack, hopefully giving PCs time to do something.

In addition, when an NPC attempts to assist it looks at a list of PCs/NPCs that are in combat against PCs/NPCs in its own clan and chooses a random one to do a 'kill random pc/npc" on the other team instead of using the current assist command and pile on the one player. This would also allow the guard command to be useful in making your formation.

With the delay hopefully more people on the guy getting assisted on's side can be involved and spread out the carnage.

[slvrmoontiger]

Delay I agree with... Random target, I'm not so sure. I think this would all depends on the intelligence or combat experience of the NPC... A soldier for instance is going to look at a group attacking a fellow soldier and pick the one that it can peg off the quickest, that's probably the one that's being hit by its buddy. A critter would be a different story and would probably just pick someone in the group at random.