Unearthed Arcana Unearthed Arcana Mass Combat

http://media.wizards.com/2017/dnd/downloads/2017_UAMassCombat_MCUA_v1.pdf

I wasn't expecting an article today...looks like a rehash of the old Mass Combat rules.

I was really hoping for the Mystic....

Pretty radically different from the previous attempt, much more abstract and fast paced; which is good, because it has been gestating for two years!
[MENTION=697]mearls[/MENTION] has been talking up various DM options in the works; looks like those will get the exposure for a little bit, now.

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[Eubani]

Why?

Are you seriously asking that? Read the mass combat rules or this thread alone either will answer your question.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

@Slyflourish on Twitter mentioned ignoring BR and just using CR instead. (Assuming, I suppose, homogenous units). Thoughts?

BR tends to magnify the difference between strong and weak units. It takes 40 orcs to equal the CR of an Ancient White Dragon, but it takes 250 orcs to equal the BR of an Ancient White Dragon. I'm not sure but I'm guessing that maybe strength is supposed to be linear in BR whereas strength is the 3/2 power of CR? A quick spot-check of CR 20/10/5 says this is approximately correct, although at the low end (less than CR 1) it gets wonky. That makes summing BR more likely to be mathematically "correct" than summing CR.

 

[Bawylie]

BR tends to magnify the difference between strong and weak units. It takes 40 orcs to equal the CR of an Ancient White Dragon, but it takes 250 orcs to equal the BR of an Ancient White Dragon. I'm not sure but I'm guessing that maybe BR is supposed to be linear in strength whereas CR is the 3/2 power, maybe? A quick spot-check of CR 20/10/5 says this is approximately correct, although at the low end (less than CR 1) it gets wonky. That makes summing BR more likely to be mathematically "correct" than summing CR.

Yeah that actually makes sense. I'm just trying to find a way for the opposed checks to have grounded numbers than a d20 might actually be relevant.


-Brad

 

[Langy]

The obvious solution would be to base the check bonus on the BR ratio between the two armies; a ratio of 1.5:1 (your force has 1.5 times the BR of the enemy force) would give you a bonus of maybe +2 on the check, and so on.

Another, simpler solution could be to limit the check bonus to be between +0 and +10, so if you've got a force of, say, 800 BR versus a 400 BR force, you'd have a check bonus of +8 and they'd have a check bonus of +4. If it were 800 BR versus 90 BR, it'd be +8 versus +0. The only issue with this is once an army is small enough, it doesn't matter if it gets any smaller - but I'm not sure that that's necessarily something that needs complex rules to fix. Maybe add in that the larger force gets an extra +1 or +2 for every x10 larger they are than the smaller force and it should be fine.

You certainly shouldn't use BR directly as a bonus to the check due to how large it can get completely drowning out all other factors.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

BTW, it warms my heart to see people thinking big. I have my issues with the current UA implementation of mass combat, but give the man his due--Mike Mearls has finally got people thinking and talking about stories that involve dozens of dragons, hundreds of githyanki, and thousands of drow with absolutely no regard for "difficulty" ratings, XP budgets or number of short rests per day.

That's a win.

 

[Negflar2099]

BTW, it warms my heart to see people thinking big. I have my issues with the current UA implementation of mass combat, but give the man his due--Mike Mearls has finally got people thinking and talking about stories that involve dozens of dragons, hundreds of githyanki, and thousands of drow with absolutely no regard for "difficulty" ratings, XP budgets or number of short rests per day.

That's a win.

Couldn't agree more. When all is said and done I think these rules are going to be a great tool for some DMs.

 

[Chaosmancer]

^^I'll agree to that, epic clashes are always fun.

Though, maybe this was also a sneaky attempt to have us do the work for them. I haven't seen this many different ideas and types of systems drawn up after a UA... ever. (I'm relatively young) Which is both a good thing and a bad thing [because it clearly shows how bad the system they gave us was]

It's also got me thinking of how easy or hard it would be to have a standing army of 400 highly experienced soldiers in a DnD world... and the place of those soldiers compared to the guardsmen.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

It's also got me thinking of how easy or hard it would be to have a standing army of 400 highly experienced soldiers in a DnD world... and the place of those soldiers compared to the guardsmen.

Logistics and transport will be huge questions. Is it better to concentrate your 400 veterans all in one unit at the capital just in case something big happens like a githyanki invasion, or to parcel them out in units of 50 to deal with local threats like raiding orcs? Etc.

Maybe the king decides to keep his 400 veterans concentrated and to rely on local talent for local threats, and that's why the PCs have jobs.

 

[Li Shenron]

Then why bother having the rules?

I'm serious, if the DM in deciding the make up of the armies can set the outcome to be inevitable then what is the point of the rules?

That's what I said, the DM shouldn't setup the mass combat so that the outcome is inevitable, because in such case the DM should just announce the result without using any rules system. Same thing that happens when the DM decides that something the PC want to do is an automatic success of failure.

The point of the rules is to be used when the DM wants the outcome to be uncertain, and normally also allowing the PCs to have an influence to it. This requires to setup the armies so that their BR doesn't differ too much. But the UA article doesn't explain this, and that's why it appears that the rules as useless, because everyone is assuming that whatever setup should have an uncertain outcome.

This is a system designed to be used to represent battles the PC's might not have a direct hand in. It removes large and traditional strategic elements (walls only give advantage/disadvantage currently, which will never overcome the 20 point swing... meaning that you do not need a 1 to 3 advantage to take the walls) while making the outcome either a mathematical certainty or a slog through massive amounts of "hp".

It's not necessarily a slog because it doesn't have to see one army reach 0 in order to end. It will likely end with failed morale checks. The DM can also end the battle if BRs change enough so that the 20 difference appears.

If all this is by design, then they should at least do a much better job at explaining how this system is supposed to be used. If it's by accident, they will go back to the drawing board.

 

[MarkB]

So, it seems like what's missing from the rules as they stand is some form of conversion of total BR into a smaller attack-modifier value, one that can only go up into the low double-digits so that when you add a d20 roll you can get a significant variance in outcome. I'm thinking something like +1 per 50 BR, but that's probably too simplistic, and it feels like there needs to be a diminishing-returns element to it.

To further simplify the in-play maths, you could give units a Defense bonus equal to that modifier +10, to eliminate opposed rolls.


Aside from the maths issue, I like the general concept of the rules, but I'd like them to take more account of leadership, especially from particularly powerful or cunning commanders. I'd like to see some form of "Commander Actions" concept - not something they can do out-of-turn like Legendary Actions, but ways that they can modify the available actions of their units.

For instance, a horde of orcish barbarians under a ferocious berserker leader might have the Relentless Charge action - when they use the Attack action after moving adjacent to an enemy, they can push the enemy unit back one square.

Or a group of kobolds with a particularly clever warchief could have the Cunning Traps action - when they take a Disengage action, they can pelt the enemy with tanglefoot bombs and scatter caltrops in their wake, leaving the opposing unit pinned in place for one round.