how to do mass/army battle quick?

[greywulf]

We tried something like this long ago. The problem with this system is that if both sides are low HD with similar ACs (say 1 HD vs 1 HD) the first monster class to hit could easily wipe out the otherside with one good damage role. This seems highly improbable with those numbers (100vs100). Thats why we broke it into units (so instead of 1 role per side we'd use 5 (representing groups of 20). This is still quick and results in heavy casualties on both sides usually.

I agree; it works better if you break it down into discrete units to make up a full army; sorry if that's not clearly explained. That's what we did too for the largest battle. In our case we were depicting 30,000 troops against 50,000 goblinoids across a massive battlefield, so we just set a single "unit" to mean a force of 1,000-ish critters. The might well be wiped out in a single round (which we ruled to be roughly 10 minutes long, just to put a number on it) and that was fine at that scale - it would mean a lot of the troops were routed, soaked into other nearby units in the confusion or scattered into ineffectually small groups. "Dead" had a very loose definition

That was one heck of a game session too!

 

[Philotomy Jurament]

There's also the Battlesystem(TM)...

Or the War Machine and Siege Machine rules from the BECMI sets. (Also found in the Rules Cyclopedia.)

 

[Kularian]

Play out the battle concerning her location and any foes and allies in the immediate area.

I second this approach, works much better (IMO) and makes the player feel more important to the battle. I ran my first few sessions of my war campaign like this, and the players jump right into the action, as the battle is right around them. You can have the entire battle hinge on her character, too.

If, say, she and her 4 NPC's in the party defeat 20 goblins by round 5, then the battle turns in her favor. If she defeats less than 20 but more than 10, it's about equal, and less than 10 means it's in the goblins' favor, or something like that. Or just have the battle run the way you want, regardless of how it goes for her, That's your perogative as the DM. Good luck!

 

[JiffyPopTart]

I like this approach a lot!

I don't think it's worth running mass battles unless the PC have a chance to affect them. But in that case I'd like to keep rolls at a very minimum, so your idea seems good enough for me. Players can participate by either killing many small opponents as fast as possible (thus reducing the number of the enemy army quickly) or by focusing on the elite units, in which case it could become simply a regular PC vs NPC combat, just in the middle of a battlefield instead of a dungeon.

Thats the idea. In this particular battle the PCs were leading the armed peasants against a mob of goblin raiders holed up in a cave nearby.

One PC spend time making Diplomacy rolls to rally troops and direct the attacks so I let him "Aid Another" to give the peasants +2. Another group of PCs rolled a smoking cart full of hay into the cave to smoke out the goblins, denying them their defences, so I gave the mob another +4 once the goblins were in the sunlight. While the battle raged the PCs snuck inside the smoky cave and dispatched the goblin leaders gathering up their most prescious loot ready to make the escape (giving the goblins a -4). After that it was a rout and the goblins headed for the hills.

DS

 

[Janx]

I didn't bother reading all the others, seems like it'll be long. My easy-bake mass-combat system (used since 2e, just as compatible now) is as follows:

You're going to be dividing the armies into "squads". Figure out how big a squad is (or how many squads you really want to control). You said you got an army of 200, squads of 20 will break it down to 10 squads.

Squads should have the same number of men of the same stats (on both sides). The squad has the same stats as a single man.

In this way, you fight the battle as if you had 10 men, but when each man dies, that's 20 men that are dead, instead.

You can get funkier with math and a calculator if you want more realism, but that's harder, and may not be worth the effort.

 

[Silver Moon]

We used the Battle Systems Rules for the last major army battle segment that we did. I worked pretty well.

At some point in the next year we will be doing a major ship battle with fleets of ships. I haven't settled upon what rule system we will go with for the combat but fully intend to use ships from the Wizkids "Pirates of the....." collectible card games for the miniatures.

 

[rossik]

just saw the RC rules....sabathius rules r better to me

 

[jedavis]

Nobody's mentioned the Farland Mass Combat System yet. Google it, I don't have the link with me. It worked pretty well with calculating casualties, but it didn't integrate PCs well.

Another thing you might look at on that scale is Fields of Blood. It does both realm building and mass combat fairly well, as far as I've seen.

 

[The Lost Muse]

I just read over the Farland MAss Combat System yesterday, and then I pulled out my copy of Testament and looked at the mass combat system in there. The things the Farland system has in favour of it are:

1) Simplicity (single opposed roll modified by various circumstances)
2) Granularity (each roll represents a 6-8 hour battle)

The things I liked about the system presented in Testament are:
1) The PC's matter
2) Takes into account things like attacks of opportunity
3) allows the use of "battlefield feats" to "train" your army
4) Considers the experience level of your troops
5) Morale is more important than casulties - if you blow too many morale checks, your troops begin to flee.

Just my two cents,
Tim

 

[Anime Kidd]

Oops. never mind about this post.