Mass Combat and Sieges

[VikingIrishman]

So, my players have reached a point in my game where they will soon be under siege and controlling large numbers of soldiers to ward off the attackers. I know there are quite a few different systems out there for mass combat, but I've never personally used any of the, and I've never seen siege rules.

So what I'd like from you good people is your suggestions on effective and simple mass combat rules and siege rules that you've used to good effect.

Thanks in advance.

[DM_aka_Dudemeister]

You're welcome.

[VikingIrishman]

And thank you.

I've been strongly considering picking up the Kingmaker AP. There's been a lot of buzz about it, and it seems to be one of the best AP out currently.

[Pooh]

There's a 3rd party set of mass combat rules for pathfinder that I picked up a few weeks ago that looks pretty good. Unfortunately its at a friends at the moment so I can't give you its name right now. I'm playing pathfinder there tomorrow (Sunday) so I'll try to remember to pick it up and so give the information then.

It treats a unit as a block of NPCs with identical stats so you use the same attack/armor/saves etc. that you would for 1 character. The friend who has it says it has a bunch of the features that he liked about a D&D set of mass rules from years ago.

Anyway, I seems easy to build units and fast and straight forward to use in a game setting. Your PCs would fill the role of leaders and would still fight as individuals.

Pooh

[Pooh]

The set of rules I was refering to is "Warpath" by Adamant Entertainment. I picked them up at my local game store.
It is a 64 page soft bound set of rules.
Its table of contents has the following chapters:
Battle of Scarlet Dawn (Description of a mythical battle)
Introduction
Design the unit
Battlefield manouvers
Spells & spell like abilities
Leaders & command
Post Battle
Quick mass combat
Siege warfare
Point buy battles
<illaenus the marsh-lord (a warpath scenario)
Running the game
Open game license

So you see it covers most or all of the bases.

I haven't had the oportunity to play a game yet but it looks pretty good from a read through.

Pooh

[VikingIrishman]

Fantastic! Thanks for the info. Adamant Entertainment has a decent track record, so I'll have to check it out.

[princeimrahil]

When my group recently used the Mass Combat rules, we modified them a little bit to create some cool siege-and-relief possibilities. Specifically, we determined that each "day" of a battle consisted of five rounds of combat, meaning that smaller armies, if they could just "hold out" in a fortified position, could later be joined/reinforced by other armies marching from farther away. If you want to add a "timer" for the PCs, you might try something like that.