Playing out the player group as a small part of a large army on army battle?


Advice


Curious if any rules or pre-made campaigns have delved into the possibility of the player group being part of a much larger force of allies participating in a large scale clash with an similarly sized enemy force.

For example, the group volunteers to help a human army as it makes a daring night time raid against a heavily entrenched Orcish Warcamp whose owners have been assaulting the nearby human bastion relentlessly for months.

With the soldiers mustered they launch a surprise assault in order to distract the bulk of the horde and keep the greenskins attention long enough for the heroes (perhaps with a few extra soldiers and a sergeant helping them) to get in through a gap made by friendly artillery to set light to the Orcish larders and workshops, and then kill the chieftain commanding the hoard.

The attackers can only press the attack for so long before they will be routed by the superior numbers of greenskins so the heroes don't have the luxury of time to complete their objective, if they take to long they risk not only wasting countless friendly lives on this gamble, but risk death or worse, capture by the green tide.

Should the succeed however, without a strong chief to keep the horde as a unified force, the lesser chieftains under his command will jockey for position amongst themselves, which will inevitably lead to full blown civil war among the orcs, making routing them from the homeland they have invaded not easy but feasible for the first time in many long months.

So, is it possible to set up such a scenario to play out? By possible I mean without having to keep track of several hundred individual NPCs position and actions, yet allowing the heroes to use their powers and talents to influence the battle (such a Barbarian letting out a warcry to rally fleeing soldiers to stand and fight, or a mage altering the weather to suit the attackers objective).

Any feedback would be appreciated as always.

Shadow Lodge

There are rules for this sort of thing in Ultimate Campaign, or also the 3rd party supplement The Very Last Book About War.


Weirdo wrote:
There are rules for this sort of thing in Ultimate Campaign, or also the 3rd party supplement The Very Last Book About War.

Sadly I can't find anything about either in the SRD, maybe I'm not looking in the right places.


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Here are the rules for mass combat in Ultimate Campaign. You may want to look at kingdom building to figure out the rules. What Paizo recommends is you fighting like the general or some other large boss, while one party member might lead the army against the rest of the enemies. I'd just read through it and see what inspires you.


As others have stated, mass combat rules exist. If you're looking for specific instances of pre-made adventures where it's played out to maybe use as an example, I recall several mass combat scenarios in Wrath of the Righteous.


Alright, thanks for all the feedback, I appreciate it as always. :D

Sovereign Court

Isn't it better to make daytime raids on orcs? They have light sensitivity but can see in the dark far better than humans can.


Reign of Winter: Frozen Star also has a large scale battle scenario, the party takes on small battles while others fight around them.

Can give you more info if wanted but wanted to leave it spoiler free.

Silver Crusade

I've thought about doing that as well, but ended up railroading them under the battle (players not impressed). If I had a do over I would consider two options depending on their preference:

1) Make them officers in charge of a group of soldiers. There would be a mechanic in place to simplify the rolls for the soldiers in charge, but also have them act each round (so barbarian can hack down and demoralize enemy, while the bard inspires their group, and the illusionist tricks the enemies facing his, etc). Or I would:

2) Make the battlefield a dungeon with a quest item at the end (capture enemy general, retrieve magic item, etc). Using a time limit would make it feel more like the battle is happening around them, with a number of secondary quests that pop up and turn the tide of the battle (stop the advancing enemy, bolster the wavering troops, destroy the siege equipment, etc).

Keep us posted with what you do!


DalmarWolf wrote:

Reign of Winter: Frozen Star also has a large scale battle scenario, the party takes on small battles while others fight around them.

Can give you more info if wanted but wanted to leave it spoiler free.

I was in a PFS adventure where that happened


One thing that can help is having normal morale checks applied at a wider scale in an open battle.

Simply put, it's not *only* those a group is immediately facing that start 'leaking courage' when they start seeing entire squads annihilated in moments.

In fact, in a direct reverse of what you'd expect "only the PCs" to have to do, enemy officers/heroes/etc that take notice are going to be burning resources or risking exhaustion in hopes of intercepting as fast as they can, because every round where that armored freak and his buddies are left alone brings the entire flank closer to collapse.

Or, ya know, if the party's mid-level Path of War initiators, then you can probably just put the entire battlefield on one ridiculously large map and watch them get all hot and bothered.

Grand Lodge

Heroes of battle is a 3.5 book that how to do lots of cool army style things without mass combat.

Might be a hard find though.


I like how exalted handles things. I realize that intertwining the two may be hard, but basically the heroes are the stars of the show and the army is an equipment bonus, extra attack, extra damage, extra health. For a caster he would probably operate better on his/her own, unless surrounded by acolytes that boost caster level, and spells per day. It's a bit out there, but it would be easy to implement (hard to balance).


A caster already does plenty on his own if he plays it even remotely un-dumb. Not even smart, just, not mentally impaired.

Even something as simple as Widened Bless (that's 100ft around you) can make a cumulative 5% on a massive chunk of one's forces. They hit a little better, thus kill a little faster, thus inflict more damage AND suffer fewer losses against the enemy. Pair it up with Prayer once you get into the melee and the effect in regards to armies can be incredible.

Fireballs may not seem like much, but to a phalanx of 'warriors' it could easily mean a dozen or more dead. In one instant, immediately followed by assault, that can break a line.

Likewise, even cruddy low level summons can tarpit enemy forces, and the stronger stuff can easily be equivalent (or at later levels far, far superior) to increasingly large military units too.

The caster simply becomes an RTS player brutalizing the battlefield left and right, usually avoiding being "in" the action but rather dictating it all.

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