Mass Combat and the Party [spoilers]

[Tempestorm]

Question,

For those that have already ran Sword of Valor, how did you include the entire party with only one army to command? I know there is the 2nd rescued mercenary army later but that is still only two armies and I have five players.

For those DM's who have not ran it yet... what do you plan to do to include everyone in the mass combat portions with only one army?

I was thinking of adding an additional 100 soldier army with the ability to break them up into squads of 50. This would allow four small armies and then the 200 mercenaries would be a 5th.

Just curious what other are doing/planning to handle this.

[Tempestorm]

No one has any input on the mass combat attributes of Sword of Valor?

/shrugs

Guess I will go with my idea of cutting the 100 Paladin army into two armies of 50 and then adding two armies of 50 Cavailiers and an army of 50 Crusader Clerics.

This will give each of my 5 players an army to control. I will simply have to beef up the enemy ranks a bit to compensate.

[Klokk]

started with a party of 12 with one guy that wanted to play but had to work our game night until this week. split the party.. it was too much to keep people interested when everyone at my table has adhd to begin with.

For my party of five.. I gave them each an army of 25 paladins. Split enemy units into armies of 50. When they 'recruited' new armies I would split into 50 and combine two of the 25 unit paladin armies into 50 units.

For my party of seven.
1 player as general, he is playing a 3rd party class Warlord, for this purpose.
100 human paladins
100 mongrelmen rogues
100 human commoners with leather and silver military forks (pitchforks)
100 human caviliers
100 elven rangers (rifles)
100 dwarven guntanks

For enemies It will be on par.. This 2nd table 5/7 are very into 40k battles so were going to be using their terrain and such and play out the battles that way still using PF rules but just with the real terrain.. So I just may have them go against the equliivant of a colossal army split up a into a few battalions. They are breaking into a place that's been controlled by the demons for many a years.

[Dreadwave]

My group with exception to the party Crusader Cleric of ragathiel despised the fact that they had to lead an army of Paladins. In fact it grounded our progress to a halt for almost an hour.

Eventually we compromised. The Cleric can lead the army into battle while the rest of the party does commando operations to weaken the opposing army before the clash. How they'll do this I'm still working on. I'm sure they'll try to cut off the leadership and draw more attention than they should. Allowing the cleric and her army to overwhelm the frontline.

So far the Cleric has.
-Fired the Iomadae Paladins(by telling them to operate a soup kitchen or something....I kid you not)
-Replaced the Paladins with Battle Clerics of Ragathiel

It doesn't help that the rest of the party comprise as
-An Aasimar barbarian who remembers the Mendev crusaders abandoning Sarkoris(grudge)
-A low Templar cavalier who's in it for the glory and money.
-A Hellknight Paladin whose parents were killed by the Inheritors Inquisitors. Along with the whole getting tortured by Cultists because the orphanage wasn't properly defended.
-A Crusader Cleric who is the above's twin sister. She failed at becoming a paladin and was booted out of the orphanage for assaulting quite a few of the Inheritors Clerics.(lucky timing)

[Lochar]

On a random note, exactly where did the cleric find 100 or so level 3 battle clerics of Ragathiel?

And your party is a trainwreck not even bothering to wait to happen, backstory wise.

[magnuskn]

Yep. If your players come in with the motivation to mess up the system (which I strongly suspect is what made them create characters which seem to want to make a mockery of the "good characters AP" motif of Wrath), then I'd expect the rest of the AP to not last very long.

[Level 1 Commoner]

Indeed 100% trainwreck party setup. Did they even read the Player's Guide?

[Rojosama]

Has anyone done to above route of splitting the army into smaller armies? I have a party of 5 as well and was wondering how to keep them all engaged in a fight where one person controls all the action.

[Tangent101]

Why not create a challenging encounter comprised of what the players would be facing in the army, and let the players fight those? The general battle depends on how they're doing in the fight.

[Tempestorm]

I did as I mentioned above. I added more troops giving my players the ability to control an army of 50 each.

I gave them the following:

1st Calvary, 100 Paladins that could be split into two armies of 50 each
2nd Calvary, 100 Cavaliers that could be split into two armies of 50 each.
3rd Calvary, 50 Crusader Clerics as a support unit.

This allowed my five players to, if they chose, split the ranks into smaller units and command them or keep them in forces of 100. This of course meant that I had to bolster the armies that they faced but it has worked out pretty well.

[Pogybait]

The mass combat rules thus far are cinematic fluff. The party brought along NPCs to strengthen the Army; Irabeth to lead, Anevia for scouting, and Aravashniel for lore (all of them for bonuses).

They would discuss strategy in transit or upon the eve of battle; and then would alternate rolling the dice for any engagements.

There simply does not seem enough meat on the mass combat rules to worry at the level of details I see so many above. The party spends more time engaging the NPCs inbetween events or in the party excursions; the army with the pending siege just serves as a "clock" of sorts by tracking their resources.

So far; in the first few battles "knights of Kenabres" seem so overpowered with their high OV that they are winning the battles with a single high die roll which has us digging in the books to see what is wrong.

[Seannoss]

For the campaign I am running I ditched the mass combat rules as they don't anything to the story. At best they let you tell the story in the book and at worst you have to figure out how the PCs succeed without having an army.
The army of paladins is overpowering, however, an army of all out attacking dretches could one shot them fairly easily as they are adding +19 to their damage rolls.