Mass Battle Recources

[Shadowbane2]

Does anyone know of any d20 sources for running major battles? Not all that side-junk like from Heroes of Battle, but how to run a full-fledged massive battles?

 

[Storyteller01]

*Here goes again!! *

MGP's Quintessential Fighter has an open content mass combat system. Converts units to statistics similar to characters. Damage is based on the units most common weapon. HP is the units total Hit Die (a unit of 1 HD fighters takes 6 points of damage from another unit. The first unit just lost 6 fighters).

The big catch is that PC's are treated as separate units. They get their own actions, own movement, etc. They can be part of a units, but they get lost in the stats. They become just another soldier (although I'm sure the unit would love the HD boost).

 

[the Jester]

Fields of Blood has some good mass combat rules too.

I haven't checked out any of the other d20 mass battle rules out there- there are, iirc, about 4-6 different rulesets that I've heard of- so I can't speak to which is best. But FoB is pretty cool.

 

[irdeggman]

The other top 3 (if I recall the results of the old poll correctly):

Cry Havoc

BRCS at birthright.net

Castles and Crusades (I think that was the name, since that is the one I don't have ) was another one mentioned frequently.

 

[Fighter1]

The only one that I actually own that can assist with this is Heroes of Battle (HOB). I have looked at the others people noted above but never used them so I won't comment on those.

At the very least HOB gives you ideas on how to fit the party into the war or battle; and systems to reward them and even turn the tide of battles - as an example: using a point system and you could have predetermined outcomes; if the party (unbeknownst to them) gets enough points in a period of time the war is won...if not...

But for having large units engage...

 

[diaglo]

Chainmail (1971) by Gygax & Perren

 

[Shadowbane2]

How well do you think the Miniatures Handbook might work?

 

[diaglo]

How well do you think the Miniatures Handbook might work?

very poorly.

a lot of wasted pages on new classes and features of the Minis game which are only just now getting more information in the PnP side.

 

[Particle_Man]

DMG II. Just turn every 50 soldiers into a mob.

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

Does anyone know of any d20 sources for running major battles? Not all that side-junk like from Heroes of Battle, but how to run a full-fledged massive battles?

In all honesty - DON'T play D&D. It simply is NOT built to handle mass battles. It is specifically built to accomodate the paradigm of 4 PC's against the world - not 1/2 the world against the other half. As soon as you start scaling up D&D combat rules to apply to an entire army versus another army it starts to fall apart.

Really, truly, people need to find another game to run large-scale fantasy military campaigns. D&D doesn't hack it. My own advice for years now has been at http://home.earthlink.net/~duanevp/dnd/masscmbt.htm Summed up it comes down to: if the PC's are involved, handle it strictly from their perspective - roleplay it. If the PC's are not involved and for all aspects of the battle in which they are not involved, then the DM pretty much decides the outcome by fiat based on what he wants to happen in the campaign world. It is easier, faster, and more reliable to just make up the results than go through the lengthy, tedious, nay painful process of adapting D&D to massed-combat in some fashion, making up the exact forces on both sides (which will largely determine the outcome in any event), and then playing it through and trying to decide if you're willing to accept the results.

YMMV