Hey, one of my players has a campaign idea they want me to dm for where all the PCs are commanders and are in charge of armies with everything from special forces to fantasy elements. What would be the best way to do a sort of army scale DnD campaign
Never tried battles on that scale but I’ve bounced around the idea of having my players face an army of skeletons in CoS. I would work out the percentage for attacks, damage etc and apply it to speed things up. I think players would really lose interest if you’re rolling tonnes of dice. So if a monster has str 12 that’s a plus one, vs average AC 16 would require a roll of 15. So 1/4 of attacks will hit, if there’s 60 soldiers then 15 hit and 45 just miss. If they have longsword doing 1d8 damage then that becomes 5, so 15 monsters each do 5 damage. This way the turns go quickly, you can spend longer on epic descriptions and the players aren’t waiting hours for the armies to do attacks
Dragonlance has the attached board game. There’s some third party supplements, I think Strongholds and Followers but Matt Colville covers it. Some people love it, others not so much. Not to be snarky, but D&D isn’t really built for mass combat. If you’re looking at a one-off session it could be fun to make something work. But if you want a larger, whole campaign, you might be better off looking at other systems.
2E had the Birthright Campaign Setting that included some mass combat and Commander/Stronghold interactions. Strongholds and Followers loosely follows the same path.
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“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities .-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-. An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more. Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
A while ago, I had a siege take place in my homebrew campaign. The way I did it, is provide three different sections/walls of the castle, the party could protect. I then gave each player a token representing a team of one type of soldiers (swordsmen, archers, shielded polearms). As a free action, the player could command their soldier token to either move up to 30ft, or attack.
The party would focus on a particular objective taking place during the siege. For example, near the beginning of the siege, the party were defending the eastern wall from giant spiders that were scaling the defenses, holding the objective for 1d8 rounds. Then on the northern wall, enemy boats were attempting to use the river to breach water gate and take the wall, sink the 4 shielded rowboats while dodging arrows and cutting the ropes off the wall. The climax was at the western wall, where a hill giant with an explosive backpack was lumbering towards the wall. The party had to kill/restrain it/delay it, before it reached the wall and created an enormous opening for the invading army.
I'm working on a campaign in which I want my party to gather allies and assemble an army for an epic showdown. Currently I'm toying with the idea of maybe 3 separate "flanks" of the battle and the party has to choose where to put what forces they gather in addition to themselves, and if they'll split up to command different flanks xnxx. I really want this to feel like an epic scale battle, but don't want to get bogged down with a million dice rolls. Have any of you run battles like this? Do you have any suggestions for how to orchestrate this so it isn't a slog? Any advice is greatly appreciated.
Hey, one of my players has a campaign idea they want me to dm for where all the PCs are commanders and are in charge of armies with everything from special forces to fantasy elements. What would be the best way to do a sort of army scale DnD campaign
Never tried battles on that scale but I’ve bounced around the idea of having my players face an army of skeletons in CoS. I would work out the percentage for attacks, damage etc and apply it to speed things up. I think players would really lose interest if you’re rolling tonnes of dice. So if a monster has str 12 that’s a plus one, vs average AC 16 would require a roll of 15. So 1/4 of attacks will hit, if there’s 60 soldiers then 15 hit and 45 just miss. If they have longsword doing 1d8 damage then that becomes 5, so 15 monsters each do 5 damage. This way the turns go quickly, you can spend longer on epic descriptions and the players aren’t waiting hours for the armies to do attacks
Dragonlance has the attached board game. There’s some third party supplements, I think Strongholds and Followers but Matt Colville covers it. Some people love it, others not so much.
Not to be snarky, but D&D isn’t really built for mass combat. If you’re looking at a one-off session it could be fun to make something work. But if you want a larger, whole campaign, you might be better off looking at other systems.
For some good army management rules, look up the Legend of the Five Rings RPG.
BECMI had war machine rules in the companion set.
Sea machine was also published in dragon.
they use percentiles, and could be used in/with 5e.
You can also convert them to d20, which myself and others have done.
Game over man... Game over! -- Pvt. Hudson
2E had the Birthright Campaign Setting that included some mass combat and Commander/Stronghold interactions. Strongholds and Followers loosely follows the same path.
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
Well, ther is always Battlesystem, lol
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities
.-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-.
An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more.
Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
A while ago, I had a siege take place in my homebrew campaign. The way I did it, is provide three different sections/walls of the castle, the party could protect. I then gave each player a token representing a team of one type of soldiers (swordsmen, archers, shielded polearms). As a free action, the player could command their soldier token to either move up to 30ft, or attack.
The party would focus on a particular objective taking place during the siege. For example, near the beginning of the siege, the party were defending the eastern wall from giant spiders that were scaling the defenses, holding the objective for 1d8 rounds. Then on the northern wall, enemy boats were attempting to use the river to breach water gate and take the wall, sink the 4 shielded rowboats while dodging arrows and cutting the ropes off the wall. The climax was at the western wall, where a hill giant with an explosive backpack was lumbering towards the wall. The party had to kill/restrain it/delay it, before it reached the wall and created an enormous opening for the invading army.
Honestly... I'd go with, "a bard narrates the events after they occur." Unless the point is to roll it out?
And i’m guessing the number in that unit is 1 monster per every 5 feet in that 25 or 50 size grid?
I suggest using an actual wargame for the army bit.
I'm working on a campaign in which I want my party to gather allies and assemble an army for an epic showdown. Currently I'm toying with the idea of maybe 3 separate "flanks" of the battle and the party has to choose where to put what forces they gather in addition to themselves, and if they'll split up to command different flanks xnxx. I really want this to feel like an epic scale battle, but don't want to get bogged down with a million dice rolls. Have any of you run battles like this? Do you have any suggestions for how to orchestrate this so it isn't a slog? Any advice is greatly appreciated.
sorry to quote myself, but the system i talked about above is one roll, or actually 2 opposing roles per battle.
It's up to you how many battles it takes, so if it's one battle and over it can be one DM, one player roll and done for your total battle.
Or in your case it could be 3 sets of rolls for your battle if you like kreansanm.
If I had to make something on my own I would take the above system and fix some of what i don't like.
Game over man... Game over! -- Pvt. Hudson