Miniatures Handbook for Large Battles?

[dreaded_beast]

I was wondering if anyone knows if the rules in the Minatures Handbook have rules for dealing with large scale battles / war.

I'm thinking of having a few scenarios in my campaign where the PCs lead their followers against some of the local orc tribes and bandit raiders that infest the area.

However I don't want to deal with 30+ NPCs on each side.

We use the Battlegrid for all our combat and we pretty much enjoy tactical combat. As the DM however, I don't really like running too many monsters and NPCs.

 

[Psion]

I was wondering if anyone knows if the rules in the Minatures Handbook have rules for dealing with large scale battles / war.

For all practical purposes, no. It's mass battle system is about like warhammer. It does not attempt to resolve multiple individuals with a single roll, like more competantly written mass combat systems out there do. Try Mongoose's OMCS (in Quint Fighter or their stronghold book), AEG's Mercenaries, or Eden's Fields of Blood.

 

[dreaded_beast]

For all practical purposes, no. It's mass battle system is about like warhammer. It does not attempt to resolve multiple individuals with a single roll, like more competantly written mass combat systems out there do. Try Mongoose's OMCS (in Quint Fighter or their stronghold book), AEG's Mercenaries, or Eden's Fields of Blood.

Cool. Thanks for the answer.

In your opinion, or anyone else, in what instance would the Miniatures Handbook be good for a "typical" DND roleplaying game?

 

[MerricB]

I think the Miniatures Handbook would work fine for battles of about 100 or slightly more per side. I'm disappointed in it because, like Cry Havoc, the miniatures rules don't scale well for really big battles. However, I've seen posts by various people who have used the rules and greatly enjoyed them.

It's a fairly simple system, still allowing for tactical play - which is good! It uses miniatures on a 1:1 scale, but I'd just use any sort of orc miniatures to make up a unit and it'd be fine.

One good aspect of the 1:1 scale is that the heroes in it (your PCs) can have an effect without being overwhelmed.

Units in the Miniatures Handbook are generally about 25 minis on a 5"x5" tray (36 minis for small, 16 for large), but smaller units are allowed.

Cheers!

 

[TheAuldGrump]

Cool. Thanks for the answer.

In your opinion, or anyone else, in what instance would the Miniatures Handbook be good for a "typical" DND roleplaying game?

Skirmishes and raids. Things like !00 orcs attacking a village defended by a small garrison and the PCs. Or 100 villagers attacking a wizards castle, waving torches and screaming 'KIll the monster!' as ligtning crackles down the ligtning rod to the golem below...

I'll admit I didn't much like the rules, but that is about the kind of things you could do with them. And I cast a second voice in favor of the Open Mass Combat System in Quintessential Fighter, or the improved version in Strongholds & Dynasties. Much better for mass battles. I have used them to good effect several times, most recently for a siege game.

The Auld Grump, Welcome to Frell, Home of the Kingdom's Biggest Ball of String.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Cool. Thanks for the answer.

In your opinion, or anyone else, in what instance would the Miniatures Handbook be good for a "typical" DND roleplaying game?

The first 70 or so pages are filled with D&D goodness. In fact, many of the things from there are being steadily plundered by current and forthcoming releases, like the Warmage and a bunch of spells for Complete Arcane. (I'm hoping Mordekainen's Buzzing Bee makes it -- fun spell!)

The monsters, prestige classes, core classes and even the feats (amazingly) are a lot of fun. I think it was a noble experiment to try and bolster spells by stuffing it with D&D stuff, but I'm happy to see WotC is going ahead and moving the good stuff into more mainstream books as well.

 

[diaglo]

you need to pickup:

Chainmail by Gygax and Perren

 

[Prism]

One good aspect of the 1:1 scale is that the heroes in it (your PCs) can have an effect without being overwhelmed.

I totally agree with this point. I recently ran a medium scale battle from the Dark Sun Blackspine adventure - roughly 150 vs 250 with characters on either side. The mass battle rules were very easy to adopt and it took very little time for the players to equip their army, decide on unit formation and convert the D&D stats to the simplified battle stats. A quick overview of command points and we were ready to go.

The PC's characters could get involved in the battle both with spells and combat, in addition to commanding their respective troops, without taking too much focus away from the characters or reducing it to a PC vs NPC battle

It took half a session to prepare, convert and run two turns, and another session to run 3 more turns and wrap things up. (Having a camera phone was an advantage at this point so we didn't need to keep the figures set up). All in all it worked out very well

I would certainly consider other alternatives if I wanted something a bit more realistic/complex/tactical but as a ruleset to quickly drop into a standard D&D campaign this was perfect. I recall that we tried to do a similar thing in a campaign years ago with Battlesystem and it didn't seem to work out as well

I also bought Cry Havoc to evaluate it for this and future battles but it seems to be designed for a 10:1 scale and bigger combats. I don't think I would go much about 400 figures on the board and 200 would probably be ideal with the Miniatures Handbook rules.

 

[Horishijin]

Call me a dinosaur, but I like second edition Battlesystem. I haven't tried using it in a game since I switched to 3.x, and would probably need to develop a conversion system for it, but it was actually a very playable game. I think it is superior to the mass combat system in the Miniature Handbook in many ways.