So in my current campaign, the king of the country that all the PC's are from has been outed as corrupt and has fused with an ancient death god of disease and proceded to plague the nation (you know, typical DnD problems). My party currently has 2 choices they're mulling over for how to deal with it and I wanna be prepared for which ever they decide to go with.
Option one: follow a NPC through some hidden tunnels to assassinate the king in his castle. I'm pretty sure I know how to handle this one cause its essentially a stealthy double dungeon crawl, with one dungeon being the tunnels and the other being the castle itself with a boss at the end.
Option Two: Gather a resistance of refugees and mutual enemies to form an army to take on the capital. THIS one I'm a bit more stuck on. I can handle the social parts of gathering the army, but the ensuing battle that will take place I'm not sure how to handle. I've considered, since the King's army is based on and uses models from the Warhammer 40k death guard army, using WH40k rules for the large army hordes while the players fight their own encounters (modifying to allow PC's to affect the units via fireballs 'n such). But I'm open to suggestions??
There are two approaches here, depending on how involved the Characters are going to be in the battle. Are they leading the army, or are they only participating in the battle?
If they are leading units in the order of battle, then yes, you'll probably have to bring in some level of unit level combat wargame element into your game.
If the Party is merely participating in the battle, you don't need to do nearly that much work. One possibility is to not handle the battle at all; only handle the parts of the battle in which the Character are immediately involved. You can determine how the battle is progressing at a very high level, with mechanics that are just complex enough to determine what's going on. You can even improvise the flow of the battle completely out of your head, narratively, if you're comfortable flying that much by the seat of your pants.
Where you put your attention and description is the immediate battle going on around the Characters.
This approach gives you a lot of flexibility, as you can have combat elements wander in and out of the combat theater that the Characters are involved in, as would be dramatically interesting. The Characters are making short work of an enemy unit you thought would be a challenge? Their enemy gets re-enforced by a war Ogre running in from a different part of the battlefield. The same holds true if the Characters are getting in over their head; a phalanx of allied heavy cavalry rides over the hill and slams into their enemy's flank. Etc.
It allows you to finely manage the level of challenge for your Players, but does so in a totally plausible manner; the Characters are just too busy to keep track of the larger battle. When there are large dramatic developments in the overall battle that they would notice, definitely describe them to your Players, but this is more dramatic flair than anything else.
You are basically building your combat for the Party like you would build dramatic shots for a movie - although you're mostly doing it seat-of-the-pants.
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perfect! My favorite form of DMing is "seat-of-the-pants" lol
They are going to be participating in the battle, but i want to work something out to where there's a possibility that their army loses (other than just a tpk lol)? My campaign is heavily reliant on having the world respond to their actions, so i'm trying to work out a way of determining if their troops survive or not (regardless if the enemy leader is killed). I like seeing the party squirm over their characters' weight of responsibility and morality of being liable for others lol
Maybe letting them decide where in the capital their troops attack from and having predetermined enemies in zones around the city? so like their deciding blindly which troop unit is taking on which enemy unit? and possibly give them options to find intelligence of where certain encounters will be in the city? This might give them the dilemma of "do we send our selves to the hardest encounter to spare the troops? or do we sacrifice troops to weaken the harder encounters?" Something like that! what do you think?
My approach is to have the battle as part of the scenery, just have them fighting the ones you want, if they do well then make them fight more and more, if they succeed then they win the battle, if they do well have them loose. If you need them to win and they keep loosing add a cavaliers flank the opposing army. Remember you’ll need to keep track of the combat so keep it as simple and easy as you can for yourself. You can always add depth afterwards with casualty numbers shop prices going up as supplies are in demand now etc.
For more ideas about running large battles, I suggest checking out the Web DM video where they talk about Mass Combat (https://youtu.be/XhvUlyV3uGQ). There was also an Unearthed Arcana put out a while ago with some mass combat rules called "WHEN ARMIES CLASH". And Matt Colville has Kingdoms & Warfare coming out that have his own rules for waging war, though that's not out just yet. His first book, Strongholds and Followers, has simplified warfare rules in it.
In my opinion, you really want to keep it as mechanic lite as possible, so you're not running an entire small-scale simulation on one side, and the Party's battle on the other.
I do - however - really like the Party's actions have real world consequences, and I feel that's how it should be ( at least for the kind of game I want to run ).
Perhaps set up the battle experience as something like a 4e skill challenge, where there are a string of pre-scripted possible battle encounters which confront the Party as the events of the battle wash over them, and/or they spot opportunities. E.g. - they are overrun by an enemy unit, or they spot a tactical opportunity ( one of the Enemy's sub-commanders is thrown from their horse, and there is a general push of Infantry to reach them in order to rescue/dispatch/capture them - does the Party intervene, or no? ). I'd keep these encounters/opportunities small and short, however - unless you're devoting an entire 8 hour weekend session to the battle.
The Party would have an opportunity to engage, or flee, or avoid, each of these encounters. Plan it so that their success or failure has some effect on some other encounter as well: they decided to not assist with the capture/dispatch of that fallen enemy sub-commander; then they will lead a counter-charge in a later encounter which will make the Characters' life more difficult.
I'd also give each encounter "significance points" which the Party earns if they succeed in an encounter, although they might be penalized if they fail it miserably. Their total score at the end of the battle has effects on the larger outcomes. If the Party bypasses a few minor encounters, and fails a medium one, but manages to beeline in and capture the enemy General ( major significance ), they might gain a decent score. I wouldn't make this too complex: rate encounters 1,2, or 3.
I would have the outcome of the battle hinge on the Party's score. If they bypass, or fail, all their encounters, their side might lose. They roughly break even, and their side might win, but at significant loses ( and these loses should be significant to the Characters - so, favorite NPCs, Party reputation, and such ). If the Party kicks ass, takes names, and gets a great score, their side might win a heroic battle, with much honor and credit falling to the heroic feats of battle performed by the Party.
It allows you to pre-design and polish some encounters, allows the Party choice as to what they will engage or bypass, and allows the Party actions to have an effect on the larger battle.
What encounters you want to present to the Party, how you want to score the significance of those encounters, what the possible side of those encounters might be, and what are the total points needed for failure, Pyrrhic victory, success, or heroic accomplishment - that's up to you, and how you tune that will change with the kind of experience you want to create for the battle.
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One way to do this could be to simulate large potions of the combat based on the PCs input (if any). I would say sit down and decide on a dc scale for each army/skirmish (modified by prep time, ambushes, party planning, etc). For each battleground that the PCs don't participate in (it's a large battleground, i assume), simply roll for each side. Beat the dc, roll a die worth of units that are defeated (die value can be up to you).
Keep PC battles to small skirmishes, but let them go where they want (front line, supply attacks, etc) and let those give modifiers to the main battle scenario. These are obviously not abstracted (unless the PCs really want it to be, haha).
Enemy commanders should be treated as boss encounters and more difficult than a regular skirmish (abstracted or not).
No matter how strong the PC army is, no battle is easy and goes according to plan, so that is why it's down to a die roll.
For more ideas about running large battles, I suggest checking out the Web DM video where they talk about Mass Combat (https://youtu.be/XhvUlyV3uGQ). There was also an Unearthed Arcana put out a while ago with some mass combat rules called "WHEN ARMIES CLASH". And Matt Colville has Kingdoms & Warfare coming out that have his own rules for waging war, though that's not out just yet. His first book, Strongholds and Followers, has simplified warfare rules in it.
Moreover, his warfare rules are open license. So, if you can find a copy of them they are free to use.
For more ideas about running large battles, I suggest checking out the Web DM video where they talk about Mass Combat (https://youtu.be/XhvUlyV3uGQ). There was also an Unearthed Arcana put out a while ago with some mass combat rules called "WHEN ARMIES CLASH". And Matt Colville has Kingdoms & Warfare coming out that have his own rules for waging war, though that's not out just yet. His first book, Strongholds and Followers, has simplified warfare rules in it.
Moreover, his warfare rules are open license. So, if you can find a copy of them they are free to use.
I did a print to pdf of the open content pages: Warfare
* Mods: if I'm not allowed to share the above open content pdf, edit the link out this post.
I just let my group know that we'll be utilizing them in an upcoming session.
I had this pop up in my campaign a few months ago and I wrote a thread about how I handled it. I felt like it played very well and the players all had a good time.
If you want really simple, for big battles I like opposed charisma checks using the commander of each side. I reason that in the thick of a fight, the strength of personality that reflects is the best way to show who is better able to get the troops to execute their orders. Maybe add together charisma and wisdom if you like, that can work too. Do the opposed check and the difference is how many soldiers the losing side loses (you can decide how you like what fraction are killed vs. injured) if one side starts taking heavy losses, to the point where they are severely outnumbered, they start to flee (what exactly “severe” is will depend, where trained soldiers might stay longer, while farmers with pitchforks will leave sooner). Maybe give them one last check to see if it’s an organized retreat or a rout.
It’s not very nuanced, but it’s simple and it’s not you rolling behind a screen for a half hour while your players sit there. Also, if the PC’s decide to wade in, they can tip the balance usually.
D&D's response to war is "It's too big to handle, make them stay out of war! Let's do sidequests instead." Sure, you could do that.
But my homebrew found a solution, and now I'm giving it to you.
You have a troop type, squad size, hp, favored weapon (that they use unless otherwise noted), and special abilities.
For example, goblin troops.
Troop type: Goblin Squad size: 1d20 (goblins tend toward hordes) HP: Minion (you want goblins to be squishy as hell, as they're gonna be beginner material, your people if they are human, will have a hp of 1d8, enough to put some fight against goblins, though their numbers are still a problem) Favored Weapon: Dagger. So like 80% or so will just be using a dagger against you, with the occasional group with scythe, sling, or some other weapon (but de-complicating is best) Special: (You know, goblin stuff. My homebrew is different from D&D source material, so yea)
In a war, unit groupings are divided into small groups called squads, then platoons, then companies, battalions, brigades, and divisions. Represent a squad as dice, and use it as a moving troop counter. A platoon is a line of dice, company is a box or rectangle of dice, a battalion uses a drawing of connected dots on a 3x5 index card, brigade uses multiple connected groupings on a 5x8 card, and if you want to go freaking crazy and have a multiple session war you can make stacked 5x8 cards. When troops are sleep spelled, badly injured, or killed, they are removed from the card or the dice are adjusted. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VKMEDa9Ldg 1. At the beginning of battle, write down the troop types (and any information you think is relevant). Then roll for initiative by group. If you have a monster army with goblins, wargs, trolls, and a medusa squadron, you divide those out. Now roll initiative based on grouping (initiative roll for goblin group, warg group, troll group, medusa group, and initiative for each party member). You're gonna want your characters to attack as individuals and each group of troops to attack as one. 2. The heroes don't just sit and watch. Based on their level, they might be foot soldiers in a squad (under level 5), command a single platoon (5 to 10), command a company (10 to 15), or command a batallion (above that). Each character in the party can be general of a batallion. You typically have one batallion per character, as beyond that, managing is beyond most people not in the actual military. A company is probably manageable in a single session, though you'd need people with an attention span. 3. During the attack phase, machines, cavalry, characters, and special creatures make unmodified attack rolls (attack proficiency is not added). To hit a creature, you must roll higher than a 10; for heavily armored creatures, you must roll higher than a 15. The same is true of you, as you lose special bonuses for AC (this is to simulate the risk of military combat). If you have shields, you can attempt to block attacks, if you are unarmored like a monk, you can try to dodge (but don't do that until everyone is good at this, it will frustrate them). A roll of under that is a miss, and on a critical attack, you defeat a entire squad (this is what you want). Troops are considered a swarm, and attack in unison based on squad targeting (see below). 4. Rules of targeting. As I mentioned, characters and special troops still deal a (mostly) typical attack roll. But what about basic infantry? Well, they do a squad targeting roll. It's like this: ditch the 1d20 attack roll. Use instead the squad size as your dice roll, with the number of troops you have in a squad as the maximum. So, if your goblins have a front line that has one squad of 18, another 5, another 7, another 16, this is the maximum number of troops that can attack. Since goblin squad size is 1d20, we do roll 1d20 here (but the humans opposing them roll 1d8, because they have less overall troops per squad). We get a 12, so 12 of the 18 attack someone (assuming there are troops in front of them, otherwise moot), 5 of the 5, 7 of 7, and 12 of 16. The others miss, as do attacks that have no target. 5. Rules of damage. You do attacking for most stuff based on front row and melee adjacency. That is, you've got lines and lines of troops, but only the frontline and occasionally the sides and rear) attack, not the middle. Having multiple nearby attackers allows you to potentially gang attack a target, adding total damage from all of them. Guns are at a disadvantage for the middle of the troops since they fire in a straight line. Arrows fire potentially over troops, but they can fire blind after the first row (you can do a straight up Agincourt thing with hit/miss %). As for charging (spear/battering ram), add total damage of your squad plus those behind you. So if the company is a 5x6 rectangle, and a piercing weapon deals like 1d8 damage, add the 5 groups behind you to deal 6d8 damage. Sorta battering ram mechanics. We're trying to impress on the players that even though these are small fries, there is a horde of them, so they can't just shrug off damage by being overlevel. Though to be fair, a player character is gonna be alot more rugged than other troops, making them more like a general. 6. Account for any casualties, taking a round break from battle to clear any injured or dead from combat(or it you want to be kinda ghoulish, use them as barricades). Reroll initiative (if desired, otherwise reuse current initiative) 7. The injured might be healed, the dead might be revived, and you can get reinforcements.
Basically, the mechanics I came up with, it's not that hard. The main thing to learn is to get the whole line doing one attack roll, and then just kinda streamlining damage based on clusters. You're trying to avoid the "I have 1000 dice to roll" thing. Oh, you might use 1000 dice, but you're using them as counters. The battle part is gonna be as simple as a one on one, and the other problem (too many pieces) is not that terrible if you use shortcuts like index cards.
D&D's response to war is "It's too big to handle, make them stay out of war! Let's do sidequests instead." Sure, you could do that.
But my homebrew found a solution, and now I'm giving it to you.
You have a troop type, squad size, hp, favored weapon (that they use unless otherwise noted), and special abilities.
For example, goblin troops.
Troop type: Goblin Squad size: 1d20 (goblins tend toward hordes) HP: Minion (you want goblins to be squishy as hell, as they're gonna be beginner material, your people if they are human, will have a hp of 1d8, enough to put some fight against goblins, though their numbers are still a problem) Favored Weapon: Dagger. So like 80% or so will just be using a dagger against you, with the occasional group with scythe, sling, or some other weapon (but de-complicating is best) Special: (You know, goblin stuff. My homebrew is different from D&D source material, so yea)
In a war, unit groupings are divided into small groups called squads, then platoons, then companies, battalions, brigades, and divisions. Represent a squad as dice, and use it as a moving troop counter. A platoon is a line of dice, company is a box or rectangle of dice, a battalion uses a drawing of connected dots on a 3x5 index card, brigade uses multiple connected groupings on a 5x8 card, and if you want to go freaking crazy and have a multiple session war you can make stacked 5x8 cards. When troops are sleep spelled, badly injured, or killed, they are removed from the card or the dice are adjusted. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VKMEDa9Ldg 1. At the beginning of battle, write down the troop types (and any information you think is relevant). Then roll for initiative by group. If you have a monster army with goblins, wargs, trolls, and a medusa squadron, you divide those out. Now roll initiative based on grouping (initiative roll for goblin group, warg group, troll group, medusa group, and initiative for each party member). You're gonna want your characters to attack as individuals and each group of troops to attack as one. 2. The heroes don't just sit and watch. Based on their level, they might be foot soldiers in a squad (under level 5), command a single platoon (5 to 10), command a company (10 to 15), or command a batallion (above that). Each character in the party can be general of a batallion. You typically have one batallion per character, as beyond that, managing is beyond most people not in the actual military. A company is probably manageable in a single session, though you'd need people with an attention span. 3. During the attack phase, machines, cavalry, archers, characters, and special creatures make unmodified attack rolls (attack proficiency is not added). To hit a creature, you must roll higher than a 10; for heavily armored creatures, you must roll higher than a 15. The same is true of you, as you lose special bonuses for AC (this is to simulate the risk of military combat). If you have shields, you can attempt to block attacks, if you are unarmored like a monk, you can try to dodge (but don't do that until everyone is good at this, it will frustrate them). A roll of under that is a miss, and on a critical attack, you defeat a entire squad (this is what you want). Troops are considered a swarm, and attack in unison based on squad targeting (see below). 4. Rules of targeting. As I mentioned, special troops still deal a (mostly) typical attack roll. But what about basic infantry? Well, they do a squad targeting roll. It's like this: ditch the 1d20 attack roll. Use instead the squad size as your dice roll, with the number of troops you have in a squad as the maximum. So, if your goblins have a front line that has one squad of 18, another 5, another 7, another 16, this is the maximum number of troops that can attack. Since goblin squad size is 1d20, we do roll 1d20 here (but the humans opposing them roll 1d8, because they have less overall troops per squad). We get a 12, so 12 of the 18 attack someone (assuming there are troops in front of them, otherwise moot), 5 of the 5, 7 of 7, and 12 of 16. The others miss, as do attacks that have no target. 5. Rules of damage. You do attacking for most stuff based on front row and melee adjacency. That is, you've got lines and lines of troops, but only the frontline and occasionally the sides and rear) attack, not the middle. Having multiple nearby attackers allows you to potentially gang attack a target, adding total damage from all of them. Guns are at a disadvantage for the middle of the troops since they fire in a straight line. Arrows fire potentially over troops, but they can fire blind after the first row (you can do a straight up Agincourt thing with hit/miss %). As for charging (spear/battering ram), add total damage of your squad plus those behind you. So if the company is a 5x6 rectangle, and a piercing weapon deals like 1d8 damage, add the 5 groups behind you to deal 6d8 damage. Sorta battering ram mechanics. We're trying to impress on the players that even though these are small fries, there is a horde of them, so they can't just shrug off damage by being overlevel. Though to be fair, a player character is gonna be alot more rugged than other troops, making them more like a general. 6. Account for any casualties, taking a round break from battle to clear any injured or dead from combat(or it you want to be kinda ghoulish, use them as barricades). Reroll initiative (if desired, otherwise reuse current initiative) 7. The injured might be healed, the dead might be revived, and you can get reinforcements.
Basically, the mechanics I came up with, it's not that hard. The main thing to learn is to get the whole line doing one attack roll, and then just kinda streamlining damage based on clusters. You're trying to avoid the "I have 1000 dice to roll" thing. Oh, you might use 1000 dice, but you're using them as counters. The battle part is gonna be as simple as a one on one, and the other problem (too many pieces) is not that terrible if you use shortcuts like index cards.
This seems to ignore character powers. What happens when the Druid wants to cast storm of vengeance? Or the wizard throws out a meteor swarm? Or the fighter action surges?
I'm using a homebrew, so they aren't called character powers (more like 3.5 rules, plus a lot of JRPG inspiration). But yes, you will be able to use Storm of Vengeance, both for its offensive powers and stuff like reducing visibility, deafening creatures, and maybe getting the ground wet. Characters are like generals. For simplicity, any non-special units are like faceless mooks).
That is, Biggs and Wedge are two pilots that are NPCs. They had distinct stat blocks from say, a platoon of storm troopers. They have abilities. An army of wookies have racial abilities, a cost to employ them (assuming you didn't earn their eternal loyalty), a hp range, a squad size. They all fire their laser pistols, and it's more like a chess minigame, where you help move people stategically, and only the player characters or major guests use anything beyond just simple racial abilities.
But basically, the design is that each troop type is sort of a generic fighter of a rank (Infantry, Archers, Cavalry, Gunner, Mages, and Spies).
Infantry come in two ranks: unarmored peons who can move faster (Light Infantry) and those with shields and spears and the like. Light infantry gets bulldozed by cavalry, whereas heavy infantry tends to stop it. Cavalry outflanks archers (and light infantry), but loses to palisades & spear formations, heavy infantry, and gunners. Gunners have a faster rate of fire, but the ammunition has less penetration and fire straight (though I designed guns like in FFXII to ignore damage resistance) making them weak against obstacles and heavy armor. Mages are basically spellcasters, and you can dump a small list of common spells in them. They are militarily the best, as they have attacks that area damage, and they sometimes have defensive spells... but they're squishy and don't wear armor. Spies are based less on the rogue class and more like the Stratego spy, where they only get to be effective if they have the element of surprise. Spies are effective against mages, if they get lucky.
But as I say, characters and special units are not troops. They have distinct powers and abilities from troops, and they can singlehandedly wipe out a squad of troops (effectively a critical attack counts as a mini-encounter done). Troops largely (there are some exceptions such as cavalry and spies) use squad attacking, which meaning that instead of a squad of seven people making seven attack rolls, one roll to see how many are targeted is made, then you do damage. So yes, you can use spells or character powers or whatever.
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So in my current campaign, the king of the country that all the PC's are from has been outed as corrupt and has fused with an ancient death god of disease and proceded to plague the nation (you know, typical DnD problems). My party currently has 2 choices they're mulling over for how to deal with it and I wanna be prepared for which ever they decide to go with.
Option one: follow a NPC through some hidden tunnels to assassinate the king in his castle. I'm pretty sure I know how to handle this one cause its essentially a stealthy double dungeon crawl, with one dungeon being the tunnels and the other being the castle itself with a boss at the end.
Option Two: Gather a resistance of refugees and mutual enemies to form an army to take on the capital. THIS one I'm a bit more stuck on. I can handle the social parts of gathering the army, but the ensuing battle that will take place I'm not sure how to handle. I've considered, since the King's army is based on and uses models from the Warhammer 40k death guard army, using WH40k rules for the large army hordes while the players fight their own encounters (modifying to allow PC's to affect the units via fireballs 'n such). But I'm open to suggestions??
There are two approaches here, depending on how involved the Characters are going to be in the battle. Are they leading the army, or are they only participating in the battle?
If they are leading units in the order of battle, then yes, you'll probably have to bring in some level of unit level combat wargame element into your game.
If the Party is merely participating in the battle, you don't need to do nearly that much work. One possibility is to not handle the battle at all; only handle the parts of the battle in which the Character are immediately involved. You can determine how the battle is progressing at a very high level, with mechanics that are just complex enough to determine what's going on. You can even improvise the flow of the battle completely out of your head, narratively, if you're comfortable flying that much by the seat of your pants.
Where you put your attention and description is the immediate battle going on around the Characters.
This approach gives you a lot of flexibility, as you can have combat elements wander in and out of the combat theater that the Characters are involved in, as would be dramatically interesting. The Characters are making short work of an enemy unit you thought would be a challenge? Their enemy gets re-enforced by a war Ogre running in from a different part of the battlefield. The same holds true if the Characters are getting in over their head; a phalanx of allied heavy cavalry rides over the hill and slams into their enemy's flank. Etc.
It allows you to finely manage the level of challenge for your Players, but does so in a totally plausible manner; the Characters are just too busy to keep track of the larger battle. When there are large dramatic developments in the overall battle that they would notice, definitely describe them to your Players, but this is more dramatic flair than anything else.
You are basically building your combat for the Party like you would build dramatic shots for a movie - although you're mostly doing it seat-of-the-pants.
Best of luck! :)
My DM Philosophy, as summed up by other people: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rN5w4-azTq3Kbn0Yvk9nfqQhwQ1R5by1/view
Disclaimer: This signature is a badge of membership in the Forum Loudmouth Club. We are all friends. We are not attacking each other. We are engaging in spirited, friendly debate with one another. We may get snarky, but these are not attacks. Thank you for not reporting us.
perfect! My favorite form of DMing is "seat-of-the-pants" lol
They are going to be participating in the battle, but i want to work something out to where there's a possibility that their army loses (other than just a tpk lol)? My campaign is heavily reliant on having the world respond to their actions, so i'm trying to work out a way of determining if their troops survive or not (regardless if the enemy leader is killed). I like seeing the party squirm over their characters' weight of responsibility and morality of being liable for others lol
Maybe letting them decide where in the capital their troops attack from and having predetermined enemies in zones around the city? so like their deciding blindly which troop unit is taking on which enemy unit? and possibly give them options to find intelligence of where certain encounters will be in the city? This might give them the dilemma of "do we send our selves to the hardest encounter to spare the troops? or do we sacrifice troops to weaken the harder encounters?" Something like that! what do you think?
My approach is to have the battle as part of the scenery, just have them fighting the ones you want, if they do well then make them fight more and more, if they succeed then they win the battle, if they do well have them loose. If you need them to win and they keep loosing add a cavaliers flank the opposing army. Remember you’ll need to keep track of the combat so keep it as simple and easy as you can for yourself. You can always add depth afterwards with casualty numbers shop prices going up as supplies are in demand now etc.
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InsiderFor more ideas about running large battles, I suggest checking out the Web DM video where they talk about Mass Combat (https://youtu.be/XhvUlyV3uGQ). There was also an Unearthed Arcana put out a while ago with some mass combat rules called "WHEN ARMIES CLASH". And Matt Colville has Kingdoms & Warfare coming out that have his own rules for waging war, though that's not out just yet. His first book, Strongholds and Followers, has simplified warfare rules in it.
Find me on Twitter: @OboeLauren
In my opinion, you really want to keep it as mechanic lite as possible, so you're not running an entire small-scale simulation on one side, and the Party's battle on the other.
I do - however - really like the Party's actions have real world consequences, and I feel that's how it should be ( at least for the kind of game I want to run ).
Perhaps set up the battle experience as something like a 4e skill challenge, where there are a string of pre-scripted possible battle encounters which confront the Party as the events of the battle wash over them, and/or they spot opportunities. E.g. - they are overrun by an enemy unit, or they spot a tactical opportunity ( one of the Enemy's sub-commanders is thrown from their horse, and there is a general push of Infantry to reach them in order to rescue/dispatch/capture them - does the Party intervene, or no? ). I'd keep these encounters/opportunities small and short, however - unless you're devoting an entire 8 hour weekend session to the battle.
The Party would have an opportunity to engage, or flee, or avoid, each of these encounters. Plan it so that their success or failure has some effect on some other encounter as well: they decided to not assist with the capture/dispatch of that fallen enemy sub-commander; then they will lead a counter-charge in a later encounter which will make the Characters' life more difficult.
I'd also give each encounter "significance points" which the Party earns if they succeed in an encounter, although they might be penalized if they fail it miserably. Their total score at the end of the battle has effects on the larger outcomes. If the Party bypasses a few minor encounters, and fails a medium one, but manages to beeline in and capture the enemy General ( major significance ), they might gain a decent score. I wouldn't make this too complex: rate encounters 1,2, or 3.
I would have the outcome of the battle hinge on the Party's score. If they bypass, or fail, all their encounters, their side might lose. They roughly break even, and their side might win, but at significant loses ( and these loses should be significant to the Characters - so, favorite NPCs, Party reputation, and such ). If the Party kicks ass, takes names, and gets a great score, their side might win a heroic battle, with much honor and credit falling to the heroic feats of battle performed by the Party.
It allows you to pre-design and polish some encounters, allows the Party choice as to what they will engage or bypass, and allows the Party actions to have an effect on the larger battle.
What encounters you want to present to the Party, how you want to score the significance of those encounters, what the possible side of those encounters might be, and what are the total points needed for failure, Pyrrhic victory, success, or heroic accomplishment - that's up to you, and how you tune that will change with the kind of experience you want to create for the battle.
My DM Philosophy, as summed up by other people: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rN5w4-azTq3Kbn0Yvk9nfqQhwQ1R5by1/view
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One way to do this could be to simulate large potions of the combat based on the PCs input (if any). I would say sit down and decide on a dc scale for each army/skirmish (modified by prep time, ambushes, party planning, etc). For each battleground that the PCs don't participate in (it's a large battleground, i assume), simply roll for each side. Beat the dc, roll a die worth of units that are defeated (die value can be up to you).
Keep PC battles to small skirmishes, but let them go where they want (front line, supply attacks, etc) and let those give modifiers to the main battle scenario. These are obviously not abstracted (unless the PCs really want it to be, haha).
Enemy commanders should be treated as boss encounters and more difficult than a regular skirmish (abstracted or not).
No matter how strong the PC army is, no battle is easy and goes according to plan, so that is why it's down to a die roll.
Moreover, his warfare rules are open license. So, if you can find a copy of them they are free to use.
Here is a good watch. https://youtu.be/6Tx3L40jiOk
I did a print to pdf of the open content pages: Warfare
* Mods: if I'm not allowed to share the above open content pdf, edit the link out this post.
I just let my group know that we'll be utilizing them in an upcoming session.
I had this pop up in my campaign a few months ago and I wrote a thread about how I handled it. I felt like it played very well and the players all had a good time.
"Not all those who wander are lost"
If you want really simple, for big battles I like opposed charisma checks using the commander of each side. I reason that in the thick of a fight, the strength of personality that reflects is the best way to show who is better able to get the troops to execute their orders. Maybe add together charisma and wisdom if you like, that can work too. Do the opposed check and the difference is how many soldiers the losing side loses (you can decide how you like what fraction are killed vs. injured) if one side starts taking heavy losses, to the point where they are severely outnumbered, they start to flee (what exactly “severe” is will depend, where trained soldiers might stay longer, while farmers with pitchforks will leave sooner). Maybe give them one last check to see if it’s an organized retreat or a rout.
It’s not very nuanced, but it’s simple and it’s not you rolling behind a screen for a half hour while your players sit there. Also, if the PC’s decide to wade in, they can tip the balance usually.
D&D's response to war is "It's too big to handle, make them stay out of war! Let's do sidequests instead." Sure, you could do that.
But my homebrew found a solution, and now I'm giving it to you.
You have a troop type, squad size, hp, favored weapon (that they use unless otherwise noted), and special abilities.
For example, goblin troops.
Troop type: Goblin
Squad size: 1d20 (goblins tend toward hordes)
HP: Minion (you want goblins to be squishy as hell, as they're gonna be beginner material, your people if they are human, will have a hp of 1d8, enough to put some fight against goblins, though their numbers are still a problem)
Favored Weapon: Dagger. So like 80% or so will just be using a dagger against you, with the occasional group with scythe, sling, or some other weapon (but de-complicating is best)
Special: (You know, goblin stuff. My homebrew is different from D&D source material, so yea)
In a war, unit groupings are divided into small groups called squads, then platoons, then companies, battalions, brigades, and divisions. Represent a squad as dice, and use it as a moving troop counter. A platoon is a line of dice, company is a box or rectangle of dice, a battalion uses a drawing of connected dots on a 3x5 index card, brigade uses multiple connected groupings on a 5x8 card, and if you want to go freaking crazy and have a multiple session war you can make stacked 5x8 cards. When troops are sleep spelled, badly injured, or killed, they are removed from the card or the dice are adjusted.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VKMEDa9Ldg
1. At the beginning of battle, write down the troop types (and any information you think is relevant). Then roll for initiative by group. If you have a monster army with goblins, wargs, trolls, and a medusa squadron, you divide those out. Now roll initiative based on grouping (initiative roll for goblin group, warg group, troll group, medusa group, and initiative for each party member). You're gonna want your characters to attack as individuals and each group of troops to attack as one.
2. The heroes don't just sit and watch. Based on their level, they might be foot soldiers in a squad (under level 5), command a single platoon (5 to 10), command a company (10 to 15), or command a batallion (above that). Each character in the party can be general of a batallion. You typically have one batallion per character, as beyond that, managing is beyond most people not in the actual military. A company is probably manageable in a single session, though you'd need people with an attention span.
3. During the attack phase, machines, cavalry, characters, and special creatures make unmodified attack rolls (attack proficiency is not added). To hit a creature, you must roll higher than a 10; for heavily armored creatures, you must roll higher than a 15. The same is true of you, as you lose special bonuses for AC (this is to simulate the risk of military combat). If you have shields, you can attempt to block attacks, if you are unarmored like a monk, you can try to dodge (but don't do that until everyone is good at this, it will frustrate them). A roll of under that is a miss, and on a critical attack, you defeat a entire squad (this is what you want). Troops are considered a swarm, and attack in unison based on squad targeting (see below).
4. Rules of targeting. As I mentioned, characters and special troops still deal a (mostly) typical attack roll. But what about basic infantry? Well, they do a squad targeting roll. It's like this: ditch the 1d20 attack roll. Use instead the squad size as your dice roll, with the number of troops you have in a squad as the maximum. So, if your goblins have a front line that has one squad of 18, another 5, another 7, another 16, this is the maximum number of troops that can attack. Since goblin squad size is 1d20, we do roll 1d20 here (but the humans opposing them roll 1d8, because they have less overall troops per squad). We get a 12, so 12 of the 18 attack someone (assuming there are troops in front of them, otherwise moot), 5 of the 5, 7 of 7, and 12 of 16. The others miss, as do attacks that have no target.
5. Rules of damage. You do attacking for most stuff based on front row and melee adjacency. That is, you've got lines and lines of troops, but only the frontline and occasionally the sides and rear) attack, not the middle. Having multiple nearby attackers allows you to potentially gang attack a target, adding total damage from all of them. Guns are at a disadvantage for the middle of the troops since they fire in a straight line. Arrows fire potentially over troops, but they can fire blind after the first row (you can do a straight up Agincourt thing with hit/miss %). As for charging (spear/battering ram), add total damage of your squad plus those behind you. So if the company is a 5x6 rectangle, and a piercing weapon deals like 1d8 damage, add the 5 groups behind you to deal 6d8 damage. Sorta battering ram mechanics. We're trying to impress on the players that even though these are small fries, there is a horde of them, so they can't just shrug off damage by being overlevel. Though to be fair, a player character is gonna be alot more rugged than other troops, making them more like a general.
6. Account for any casualties, taking a round break from battle to clear any injured or dead from combat(or it you want to be kinda ghoulish, use them as barricades). Reroll initiative (if desired, otherwise reuse current initiative)
7. The injured might be healed, the dead might be revived, and you can get reinforcements.
Basically, the mechanics I came up with, it's not that hard. The main thing to learn is to get the whole line doing one attack roll, and then just kinda streamlining damage based on clusters. You're trying to avoid the "I have 1000 dice to roll" thing. Oh, you might use 1000 dice, but you're using them as counters. The battle part is gonna be as simple as a one on one, and the other problem (too many pieces) is not that terrible if you use shortcuts like index cards.
This seems to ignore character powers. What happens when the Druid wants to cast storm of vengeance? Or the wizard throws out a meteor swarm? Or the fighter action surges?
I'm using a homebrew, so they aren't called character powers (more like 3.5 rules, plus a lot of JRPG inspiration). But yes, you will be able to use Storm of Vengeance, both for its offensive powers and stuff like reducing visibility, deafening creatures, and maybe getting the ground wet. Characters are like generals. For simplicity, any non-special units are like faceless mooks).
That is, Biggs and Wedge are two pilots that are NPCs. They had distinct stat blocks from say, a platoon of storm troopers. They have abilities. An army of wookies have racial abilities, a cost to employ them (assuming you didn't earn their eternal loyalty), a hp range, a squad size. They all fire their laser pistols, and it's more like a chess minigame, where you help move people stategically, and only the player characters or major guests use anything beyond just simple racial abilities.
But basically, the design is that each troop type is sort of a generic fighter of a rank (Infantry, Archers, Cavalry, Gunner, Mages, and Spies).
Infantry come in two ranks: unarmored peons who can move faster (Light Infantry) and those with shields and spears and the like. Light infantry gets bulldozed by cavalry, whereas heavy infantry tends to stop it. Cavalry outflanks archers (and light infantry), but loses to palisades & spear formations, heavy infantry, and gunners. Gunners have a faster rate of fire, but the ammunition has less penetration and fire straight (though I designed guns like in FFXII to ignore damage resistance) making them weak against obstacles and heavy armor. Mages are basically spellcasters, and you can dump a small list of common spells in them. They are militarily the best, as they have attacks that area damage, and they sometimes have defensive spells... but they're squishy and don't wear armor. Spies are based less on the rogue class and more like the Stratego spy, where they only get to be effective if they have the element of surprise. Spies are effective against mages, if they get lucky.
But as I say, characters and special units are not troops. They have distinct powers and abilities from troops, and they can singlehandedly wipe out a squad of troops (effectively a critical attack counts as a mini-encounter done). Troops largely (there are some exceptions such as cavalry and spies) use squad attacking, which meaning that instead of a squad of seven people making seven attack rolls, one roll to see how many are targeted is made, then you do damage. So yes, you can use spells or character powers or whatever.