A Mass Combat Suggestion

[Talynonyx]

For the evil campaign I am DMing for one of my groups I have been attempting to implement mass combat. However my two attempts up to this point have been... not disastrous but overwhelming with the amount of dice rolling and HP tracking. So I came up with what I believe could be a fun system with low paperwork and little dice rolling.

Minions and Groups

Please take a look and let me know what you think, also please feel free to ask for clarification of anything. I'll be using these rules this coming Sunday for the first time and will be refining them after that.

[Dal Selpher]

Google docs is blocked at the office, so I'll try and give this a gander later tonight. My group has run some large scale battles before and I'd be interested to see how others approach the "unwieldiness" of it.

[snags]

there is a adventure named drow wars made to go from lv1-30, and in it there are some good rules for mass combat. and how you do the battles and xp.

[Rezdave]

SCAP introduced rules for "Mobs", which are similar to Swarms but made up of intelligent creatures of sizes larger than the usual swarm.

If you have access to Dungeon #113 (IIRC) or the SCAP hardcover it has the rules for Mobs. I know some people have used them in the past for this sort of thing.

You might consider comparing the extant Mob rules to what you're home-brewing for ideas. Basically, it becomes more traditional D&D-type Mob-vs.-Mob combat, which may not be as simplified as you want, but might be.

Perhaps most importantly, since it uses more traditional mechanics it's easier for Players to pick up Mobs and run with them, but also lets PCs interact directly in the battle without automatically being folded into a "Unit/Group/Stack".

FWIW,

Rez

[Dal Selpher]

After reading through the doc, I'll second Rez's suggestion regarding mobs. The doc still seemed like an awful lot of paperwork and tracking to me. That might just be me though.

The last time I ran a mass combat, I wanted to make sure the players weren't waiting for their turns to come back around, so I went with a very abstract and loose system.

They knew they were walking into a fight a 5 day march away, so I gave them an opportunity each day for one of them to address the troops. They'd then make a diplomacy check vs a set DC and if they beat it I marked down a +1 on the side of the sheet. By the time they got to the fight, I had a +5 in the margin.

Once combat started, I rolled an opposed check each round for the good troops vs the bad troops. The +5 in the margin applied to the good troops roll. Each time one of the PCs did something heroic in the field, I added another +1. Each time a PC took a major blow, the bad troops got a +1. When the bad troops reinforcements showed up in round 8, they got a +4.

The first side to win 15 opposed rolls won the large battle.

It kept battle extremely quick, kept the heroes engaged and gave them an extremely important and active role in overcoming the opposing forces. Their heroics brought their side's modifier up to a +16 if memory serves while the bad guys only had a +7. To date, it's my groups favorite encounter that I've ever run. (It was also on a battle mat that was nine battlemats taped together in a 3x3 grid, so the wow factor there probably helped too)

Adjust the numbers as necessary, but it took very little bookkeeping on my part and my players really, really loved it.

[Rezdave]

Dal Selpher wrote:

Each time one of the PCs did something heroic in the field, I added another +1

This is closer to the Victory Point mechanic used in STAP.

It is a simpler, even more streamlined system, detailed in Dungeon #143 in the adventure Tides of Dread.

R.

[Felgoroth]

Dal Selpher wrote:

After reading through the doc, I'll second Rez's suggestion regarding mobs. The doc still seemed like an awful lot of paperwork and tracking to me. That might just be me though.

The last time I ran a mass combat, I wanted to make sure the players weren't waiting for their turns to come back around, so I went with a very abstract and loose system.

They knew they were walking into a fight a 5 day march away, so I gave them an opportunity each day for one of them to address the troops. They'd then make a diplomacy check vs a set DC and if they beat it I marked down a +1 on the side of the sheet. By the time they got to the fight, I had a +5 in the margin.

Once combat started, I rolled an opposed check each round for the good troops vs the bad troops. The +5 in the margin applied to the good troops roll. Each time one of the PCs did something heroic in the field, I added another +1. Each time a PC took a major blow, the bad troops got a +1. When the bad troops reinforcements showed up in round 8, they got a +4.

The first side to win 15 opposed rolls won the large battle.

It kept battle extremely quick, kept the heroes engaged and gave them an extremely important and active role in overcoming the opposing forces. Their heroics brought their side's modifier up to a +16 if memory serves while the bad guys only had a +7. To date, it's my groups favorite encounter that I've ever run. (It was also on a battle mat that was nine battlemats taped together in a 3x3 grid, so the wow factor there probably helped too)

Adjust the numbers as necessary, but it took very little bookkeeping on my part and my players really, really loved it.

Not to thread jack or anything but could you send me your system via email or something? I have a large scale battle planned for my campaign and I've been trying to figure out how I'd like to run it. My email is [e-mail]

[Dal Selpher]

Felgoroth wrote:

could you send me your system via email or something?

Email is away!