I plan on running a one shot for a group of 4 level seven adventures. This is part of a series of games, and this time the focal character is the Dragonborn fighter with a soldier background. I plan for his clan (led by a Lawful Evil Blue Dragonborn) to be up against an army of gnolls, led by a flind. I am unsure of the numbers I should have for the sides: my idea was thirty Dragonborn, fifteen hobgoblin conscripts, and the party versus a hundred gnolls, the flind, and maybe a luecrotta. Too much? Too little?
The numbers really matter less than the scenes you plan to use with you characters. It could be ten or even a hundred times as many combatants, but only the area around where the players are interacting is important. So, with that in mind, what challenges do you plan to have for your party to overcome to help influence the tides of battle?
Don’t put the party in the middle of a large battle; the rules are not equipped to handle it. In your example, think about the amount of rolling you need to do, then the amount of time the players need to sit there and watch you roll. Better is to give them a side mission. A classic is, go around to the back and kill the enemy leader. To up the tension, give them a clock like, your side will lose the battle if the leader isn’t dead within 30 minutes. Or if they’re really losing already, have them escort some VIPs to safety. Basically, don’t try to play out the battle, make the battle a story element, and let the party have an impact on it.
You don't really have to do all that much rolling on a battlefield if you use abstraction correctly. It can be as simple as just rolling a d4 or d6 and removing that many figures from the area the party is fighting in each round.
And there is nothing bad about having your players in the pitch of the battle. Just make sure that when you zoom in on their area of interest, have an encounter ready for them to accomplish while the battle rages around them. If they need to hold an area from waves of weaker enemies for a few rounds to allow their allies to regroup, that's fine. If they have to destroy a piece of enemy equipment while it is defended by some guardians, that's cool too. If they have to eliminate an enemy commander of some kind or other dangerous threat, go for it. Feel free to narrate the surrounding chaos of battle, but don't get bogged down in the minutia of all the ancillary fighting. Only worry mechanically about the fights the party is having. The rest can be narrative abstraction.
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"The mongoose blew out its candle and was asleep in bed before the room went dark." —Llanowar fable
The primary scene is the flind and a handful of gnolls, versus the party and maybe one of two npc soldiers to showcase the power of the flind's flails. I also planned the idea of "what if the Dragonborn soldiers hid in the sand, blue dragon style, then all used their breath weapons on the horde as an opening gambit, and perhaps the players fight the flind and his leucrotta to distract them and keep them from alerting the horde." In case the players get creative, that is.
Don’t put the party in the middle of a large battle; the rules are not equipped to handle it. In your example, think about the amount of rolling you need to do, then the amount of time the players need to sit there and watch you roll. Better is to give them a side mission. A classic is, go around to the back and kill the enemy leader. To up the tension, give them a clock like, your side will lose the battle if the leader isn’t dead within 30 minutes. Or if they’re really losing already, have them escort some VIPs to safety. Basically, don’t try to play out the battle, make the battle a story element, and let the party have an impact on it.
The problem with going behind enemy lines to kill the leader is that a flind doesn't operate that way. They lead the charge most often.
The primary scene is the flind and a handful of gnolls, versus the party and maybe one of two npc soldiers to showcase the power of the flind's flails. I also planned the idea of "what if the Dragonborn soldiers hid in the sand, blue dragon style, then all used their breath weapons on the horde as an opening gambit, and perhaps the players fight the flind and his leucrotta to distract them and keep them from alerting the horde." In case the players get creative, that is.
Seems good, but a bit simplistic for what you want to have as an epic battlefield fight.
If you want to have a fun opener with the dragonborn mowing down a wave of attacks in surprise, consider the first wave being a mass of Gnoll Witherlings. That way, the first wave is technically weak enough to be mostly mowed down by the surprise attack of underground assailants. The party could be the "bait" force that draws the Witherlings into a more narrow group by using some fun tactics.
After that, the Flind could ride into battle on its Leucrotta mount while new waves of Gnolls and assorted other monsters like Giant Hyenas or packs of Wretched Sorrowsworn or Maw Demons cause havoc. They you can have the party solve various battlefield scenes while they work their way towards the final fight. Basically treat it like a dungeon series of encounters, but all out in the open and with a pitch battle all around.
Maybe a group of dragonborn are pinned down by a Gnoll Vampire and some Gnoll Witherlings and need assistance. Maybe a Gnoll Pack Lord is stationed in a carrion field and is performing a ritual that converts refuse into more Witherlings or Maw Demons and will keep doing so unless the party intervenes. Maybe the party has to hold a hill from attacks for a few rounds wile the dragonborn set a flag to increase morale and signal something important to a commander farther away.
These are all things that can be used to help keep a sort of success/failure log on the back-end so that even if the party fights the Flind at the end, the final outcome of the battle can change depending on how the party prevailed along the way. Maybe the area they were supposed to protect still got sacked. Sure the Flind and it's forces were killed, but at a terrible cost because the party failed to help out at certain points. Maybe their help allowed for a very decisive victory and the dragon that commands the forces is now more interested in helping them out or sharing some interesting information.....
No offense, but simplistic might be a bit better, since it's a level seven one shot. Also, some of the players are not exactly experts, so I don't want to overwhelm them. I considered some witherlings, perhaps that the necromancer can hijack or create, if he uses his animate dead on gnolls.
Also, it's meant to be a one shot, so I'd err on the side of less content so it doesn't run too long like my last idea.
Your plan makes sense and is about how I'd do it, at least for a oneshot. Now that I think about it, a thought does occur to me for a way you could bring out the "battle"-y feeling without much extra mechanical burden on the players. Suppose the players have a chance to make the battle plan for the dragonborn side, or at least to discuss it with the leader. You know what the gnolls' strategy is going to be, so if the battle plan anticipates the gnolls well, mentally award it a point, and if it's really good, award it two. Give the flind a legendary action to summon reinforcements from elsewhere on the battlefield. It can do this three times... minus the number of points the players earned. If it can't use all three, stress that it's calling for help but the other gnolls are in too much pressure to actually come to its aid to indicate that this is related to the battle plan.
(Completely spur-of-the-moment idea that may have logistical or balance issues I'm not thinking of, but it seems like a clean way of doing this. You could also modify the composition of the reinforcements instead of the number of times they show up, especially if you only want one wave of them, but I'm less certain how you'd telegraph to the players that their decisions affect this.)
Thanks for all the advice so far. I'm unsure when exactly I'm running this adventure, but you've given me a good few things to consider.
One piece of information I haven't mentioned yet is that the hobgoblin conscripts are only a part of a larger force. The Dragonborn leader set aside the conscripts, made the rest of the hobgoblins think they were executed, disarmed the remnants and sent them empty handed to their home. This was mainly to give the gnolls "bait" to chase and make their movements more predictable.
I plan on running a one shot for a group of 4 level seven adventures. This is part of a series of games, and this time the focal character is the Dragonborn fighter with a soldier background. I plan for his clan (led by a Lawful Evil Blue Dragonborn) to be up against an army of gnolls, led by a flind. I am unsure of the numbers I should have for the sides: my idea was thirty Dragonborn, fifteen hobgoblin conscripts, and the party versus a hundred gnolls, the flind, and maybe a luecrotta. Too much? Too little?
The numbers really matter less than the scenes you plan to use with you characters. It could be ten or even a hundred times as many combatants, but only the area around where the players are interacting is important. So, with that in mind, what challenges do you plan to have for your party to overcome to help influence the tides of battle?
Don’t put the party in the middle of a large battle; the rules are not equipped to handle it. In your example, think about the amount of rolling you need to do, then the amount of time the players need to sit there and watch you roll.
Better is to give them a side mission. A classic is, go around to the back and kill the enemy leader. To up the tension, give them a clock like, your side will lose the battle if the leader isn’t dead within 30 minutes. Or if they’re really losing already, have them escort some VIPs to safety.
Basically, don’t try to play out the battle, make the battle a story element, and let the party have an impact on it.
You don't really have to do all that much rolling on a battlefield if you use abstraction correctly. It can be as simple as just rolling a d4 or d6 and removing that many figures from the area the party is fighting in each round.
And there is nothing bad about having your players in the pitch of the battle. Just make sure that when you zoom in on their area of interest, have an encounter ready for them to accomplish while the battle rages around them. If they need to hold an area from waves of weaker enemies for a few rounds to allow their allies to regroup, that's fine. If they have to destroy a piece of enemy equipment while it is defended by some guardians, that's cool too. If they have to eliminate an enemy commander of some kind or other dangerous threat, go for it. Feel free to narrate the surrounding chaos of battle, but don't get bogged down in the minutia of all the ancillary fighting. Only worry mechanically about the fights the party is having. The rest can be narrative abstraction.
The primary scene is the flind and a handful of gnolls, versus the party and maybe one of two npc soldiers to showcase the power of the flind's flails. I also planned the idea of "what if the Dragonborn soldiers hid in the sand, blue dragon style, then all used their breath weapons on the horde as an opening gambit, and perhaps the players fight the flind and his leucrotta to distract them and keep them from alerting the horde." In case the players get creative, that is.
The problem with going behind enemy lines to kill the leader is that a flind doesn't operate that way. They lead the charge most often.
Seems good, but a bit simplistic for what you want to have as an epic battlefield fight.
If you want to have a fun opener with the dragonborn mowing down a wave of attacks in surprise, consider the first wave being a mass of Gnoll Witherlings. That way, the first wave is technically weak enough to be mostly mowed down by the surprise attack of underground assailants. The party could be the "bait" force that draws the Witherlings into a more narrow group by using some fun tactics.
After that, the Flind could ride into battle on its Leucrotta mount while new waves of Gnolls and assorted other monsters like Giant Hyenas or packs of Wretched Sorrowsworn or Maw Demons cause havoc. They you can have the party solve various battlefield scenes while they work their way towards the final fight. Basically treat it like a dungeon series of encounters, but all out in the open and with a pitch battle all around.
Maybe a group of dragonborn are pinned down by a Gnoll Vampire and some Gnoll Witherlings and need assistance. Maybe a Gnoll Pack Lord is stationed in a carrion field and is performing a ritual that converts refuse into more Witherlings or Maw Demons and will keep doing so unless the party intervenes. Maybe the party has to hold a hill from attacks for a few rounds wile the dragonborn set a flag to increase morale and signal something important to a commander farther away.
These are all things that can be used to help keep a sort of success/failure log on the back-end so that even if the party fights the Flind at the end, the final outcome of the battle can change depending on how the party prevailed along the way. Maybe the area they were supposed to protect still got sacked. Sure the Flind and it's forces were killed, but at a terrible cost because the party failed to help out at certain points. Maybe their help allowed for a very decisive victory and the dragon that commands the forces is now more interested in helping them out or sharing some interesting information.....
No offense, but simplistic might be a bit better, since it's a level seven one shot. Also, some of the players are not exactly experts, so I don't want to overwhelm them. I considered some witherlings, perhaps that the necromancer can hijack or create, if he uses his animate dead on gnolls.
Also, it's meant to be a one shot, so I'd err on the side of less content so it doesn't run too long like my last idea.
Your plan makes sense and is about how I'd do it, at least for a oneshot. Now that I think about it, a thought does occur to me for a way you could bring out the "battle"-y feeling without much extra mechanical burden on the players. Suppose the players have a chance to make the battle plan for the dragonborn side, or at least to discuss it with the leader. You know what the gnolls' strategy is going to be, so if the battle plan anticipates the gnolls well, mentally award it a point, and if it's really good, award it two. Give the flind a legendary action to summon reinforcements from elsewhere on the battlefield. It can do this three times... minus the number of points the players earned. If it can't use all three, stress that it's calling for help but the other gnolls are in too much pressure to actually come to its aid to indicate that this is related to the battle plan.
(Completely spur-of-the-moment idea that may have logistical or balance issues I'm not thinking of, but it seems like a clean way of doing this. You could also modify the composition of the reinforcements instead of the number of times they show up, especially if you only want one wave of them, but I'm less certain how you'd telegraph to the players that their decisions affect this.)
Medium humanoid (human), lawful neutral
Thanks for all the advice so far. I'm unsure when exactly I'm running this adventure, but you've given me a good few things to consider.
One piece of information I haven't mentioned yet is that the hobgoblin conscripts are only a part of a larger force. The Dragonborn leader set aside the conscripts, made the rest of the hobgoblins think they were executed, disarmed the remnants and sent them empty handed to their home. This was mainly to give the gnolls "bait" to chase and make their movements more predictable.
Another thing you could look at is an UA from a while back. It’s pretty complicated, and there definitely are a few flaws, but with a few variations, I thought it was fun to play through with my players.
here’s the link: https://media.wizards.com/2017/dnd/downloads/2017_UAMassCombat_MCUA_v1.pdf
Once again, it might or might not be your thing, but if you’re interested…