Hello,
My group had its first Mass Combat between armies last Sunday in Kingmaker and some questions came up which we couldnt get cleared to our satisfaction. As i read it now you have two choose between three big choices:
1. Play yourself as your own 1-Man-Army.
In this case all your actions, effects, stunts and anything you do is subsumed into your army stats and you just treat the PC as any regular army. So like yes, you have memorized Wall of Stone, this i a level 5 spell, so +5 to OM & DV. Or you have access to level 7 spells, so that a +7 to those stats. Doesnt matter what spells exactly, its all expressed in the boost to your army stats for spellcasting.
--> This part we all found clear to understand as an option.
2. Command an Army on your side.
Become an army commander and give one or two Boons to the army you control, for minor effects. And a buff to the armys Morale, which can get significant if you are a CHA-based class, which the most typical Classes (Fighter, Chevalier) you would envision in a professional military role, arent.
Effectively the Sorcerer who has trouble remembering which side of a Lance is the dangerous part and Profession(Soldier) at "Zero / Not allowed to roll" is a significantly better Commander then the Fighter or Chevalier with Profession(Soldier) at a value of +22, who went to War Academy, trained for War for 5 years sinc he was 12 and had to memorize Clausewitz and Sun Tzu.
--> To me it seems like the difference between a Military Genius level Commander (+3 to Morale Checks and 2 Boons) and 08/15 rank-and-file dolt with no War-training at all is when you look at the actual effect this gives to the armies in the field very minor. Is this correct or were we missing something. Like really no effect on OM/DV at all as i see it at the moment.
3. Do heroic stuff
Try to influence the battlefield itself with potent magic to give your side a beneficial terrain modifier, or disrupt the other side's actions, perhaps assassinate the enemy Commander to negate his Boons. What you can imagine - and the DM has to give you adequat results for your effects on the fly if it suceeds.
--> Now the question is can you do *some* heroic stuff and still command an army?
Like bring a satchel of 50 Wall of Stone scrolls and plop them down in the battlefield while the battle is raging to plug gaps quickly, to give your side some benefits to DV. Or Bring a Daern's Instant Fortress and plop it down once the melee phase starts for an advantageous rally point. Or simply cast Control Winds at the enemy arms's archers in the Ranged Phase to hinder or perhaps completly stop their ranged attacks for this phase till Melee Phase starts.
Obviously you cant do heric stuff that takes some longer time to pull off when you are also commanding an army, but stuff that literally is done in under 6 seconds (cast a Standart Action spell with great AOE to influence the battlefield) should be possible? But we didnt find an answer to this.
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So, can anyone help me get some of this stuff clarified. Am i understandig the Mass Combat rules correctly?
Can you do some quick Heroic Stuff when commanding an army, or does being a Commander rigorously lock you out of all other ways to influence the battlefield completly?
Is the effect of the quality of an armies Commander really so minor?
And what happens when an army that is commanded by a PC gets destroyed? NPC is clear, but what chance does an PC get to escape / not to be killed "off-screen"? What action can he do to prevent this. I saw no guide for this situation.
I don't much care for the Mass Combat system. They seem like they were put together really quickly and leave a lot of questions.
My preference is to have the PCs fight a group of NPC heroes during the battle and then give one side or the other a small bonus to the mass combat based on the outcome of that fight.
To answer your other questions - Yes, you can become an army commander. It basically takes all your resources and you're considered to be casting spells, swinging a sword, or whatever your thing is while you're commanding your army.
PCs should NEVER be killed "off-screen". If a PC is leading an army that gets destroyed, the result should be a small fight using regular pathfinder rules of the PC and a few remaining members of the army engaging in a fighting retreat against a large contingent of the members of the opposing army.
The commander rules in Ultimate Battle by Legendary Games are a bit more flexible and robust regarding what PCs can get up to in mass combat. I'd recommend getting it (and Ultimate Rulership and Ultimate War) for anyone considering kingdom-scale adventuring (including mass combat).
I absolutely agree that PCs should never be killed "off-screen" (PC death should always happen at "character scale", not because the unit they're attached to got wiped out), and Ultimate Battle covers that.
The important thing to note is that the mass combat rules are extremely abstract. The Legendary Games Ultimate series goes a long way to providing more detail, and The Very Last a Book About War by Dire Destiny is an excellent middle-ground for granularity. The old D&D book Heroes of Battle presents some fantastic ideas on how to integrate PC activity into warfare, but the mass combat itself left a bit to be desired.
Personally, I'd strongly consider using mass combat for the overall battle, The Very Last Book About War for the PCs unit, and the full Pathfinder combat system for the PCs themselves. It would require some bookkeeping, and everyone would need to pay attention as the scale goes up and down, but it could give some excellent results. As a GM, you'd have to be very flexible on incorporating how the PCs actions influence things at the larger scales.
So we were correct in our understanding of the rules? It is simply that they are very clunky and restrictive.
Are there any common houserules for Mass Combat, because i am a bit reluctant to getting new books just to fix this?
You're not wrong, but this is where Ultimate Battle comes into its own.
Not copy/pasting, but here's how it works in UBat:
A commander provides a Leadership Bonus (LB) to OM/DV and Morale for his unit (this replaces the normal Morale bonus provided by Cha and Profession (Soldier)).
LB is +1 per 5 ranks of Profession (Soldier) (halved for ranks provided by magical means such as Headband of Vast Intellect). Increase the bonus by +1 for each of: BAB +6, BAB +11, BAB +16, Cha mod +3 (or higher), Wis mod +3 (or higher), Leadership, Skill Focus (Profession (Soldier)). Cha or Wis mods that meet the minimum must be the commander's permanent modifier (so no boosting with Owl's Wisdom just before the battle, but a Headband that's been worn for 24 hours is fine).
So, by these rules, a 20th level fighter with 20 ranks in Prof (Soldier), a Wisdom of 12 and a Cha of 8 is packing a LB of +8, compared to a 20th level Sorcerer with Cha 36 and a Wis of 16, wearing a Headband that's granting 20 ranks of Prof (soldier), and so is providing an LB of +5.
[Edit: If you're unsure about Ultimate Battle, take a read of Endzeitgeist's review, where he pulls out all the stops to give a breakdown of the benefits this product provides. It is WELL worth the price tag, and Legendary Games have a sale on New Year's Day (40% off all products using NEWYEAR40 as a coupon code on their webstore).]
[Edit 2: Unfortunately, most people don't seem to houserule Mass Combat - they either don't use it; suffer the limitations; buy Ultimate Battle; or use one of the other options. The problem being that it's ridiculously easy to break something in the Mass Combat rules, even with the best of intentions. My advice, in case you hadn't guessed, is UBat.]
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Official Pathfinder Mass Combat rules (which are from Kingmaker AP I believe) are great if you want to resolve fight quick and easily, but if you want massive combat where PC's actions mean something, even by little, you have two choices I think; change or use alternate Mass Combat rules, or use several high ranked army officers and bosses that party has to defeat as major army events.
I personally took the first option and made alternate Mass Combat rules similar to the Pathfinder Mass Combat rules. My PC's killed around 130 orcs in the last two sessions with the help of city defenders. They were fairly pleased with the bloodbath :P
Adam
We indulge in mass combat quite frequently in my home game, and a few years back I decided I wanted a system where PCs could interact directly with units and regiments on a 1:1 basis. So I developed the troop subtype and rules that eventually showed up in Rasputin Must Die! These rules work incredibly well, because you're working on the same scale as PCs, and if your 15th-level barbarian wants to hulk out and take on a few troops of orc warriors on his own while the bard inspires allied troops to victory, more power to them. The primary advantage is that no one has to learn anything new--if they can run their PC, you can hand them a few troop statblocks of their own to command and they can start rolling dice.
Unfortunately, despite our best efforts, we haven't been able to convince the bosses to include the base build statblocks in a Bestiary, and the proposed Armies of Golarion book has never made it to the schedule. Fortunately, my friend Charlie Bell stepped up in Wayfinder #11, and Pathfinder AP #100 has two troop statblocks. Between all of those, you should be able to extrapolate building your own using the Bestiary Monster creation tables. I do have some well-tested ancillary rules for building troops and troop-versus-troop combat that don't show up in the subtype or any published product, but I think you'll find that they run pretty smoothly as-is.
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There is a fun and exciting system for mass combat detailed in this book which puts the focus on the PCs leading armies into battle and having a real impact on the fight in a tactical way.
You may want to check it out.