Unearthed Arcana Unearthed Arcana - The 5E "Battlesystem" Mass Combat Rules Are Here!

The mass combat rules have been posted in the latest Unearthed Arcana. "The D&D combat rules in the Player’s Handbook are designed to model conflict between small groups—an adventuring party of perhaps three to six characters against monster groups that rarely exceed a dozen creatures. Combat on this scale keeps the focus squarely on the adventurers. In some D&D campaigns, though, the story might hinge on battles involving dozens or hundreds of monsters and warriors. In this second installment of Unearthed Arcana, we build on the standard combat rules to model conflict on a much larger scale, allowing players and DMs to control whole armies. At the same time, these rules for mass combat allow individual adventurers to lead an army’s charge against an enemy regiment, rally dispirited soldiers to rejoin the fray, or defeat powerful enemy monsters or leaders."

Find it here! It's a 9-page PDF by Mike Mearls.

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[GMforPowergamers]

Hmm, looks good, and is about what I expected in terms of complexity.

Next stop: a streamed battle between Mearls and one of his designer minions? It seems to me that mass combat rules lend themselves to a demonstration more than other playtest material.

I totally agree a vid of these in play would rock

 

[wedgeski]

I totally agree a vid of these in play would rock

I threw Mearls a Tweet about it.

 

[Kobold Avenger]

So if we assume that some units are composed of 10 stands, then we typically are going to get 2 to 4 stands on a unit attacking another.

I know that flanking is optional, but this is probably a good place to use rules on flanking.

Calvary is pretty much going to be a skirmisher unit, but the casualty rule does make it harder for the tactic of charging a unit so that some stands become isolated.

 

[TerraDave]

The rules treat major solo figures as more heroic than they'd otherwise be. I'm fine with this; it's often hard to otherwise make them significant enough on the battlefield (especially in the cases of high-level fighters).

I guess I said this before, but it seems like the solo rules are a little underdeveloped.

We know that solos can be effective as commanders and spellcasters. The obvious role for (other) solos is to take out those solos. How does that work exactly? What if the solo target has joined a unit?

As for 1 is as good as 10, its not quite right. Sure, the fighter should be able to wail on the massed troops, but there should be some level differences or something. A 5th level fighter might be able to wade into low level NPCs, not clear to me that a 1st level one should be able to, unless the opponent is a kobolds or something like that.

 

[ashockney]

Fantastic!

What a great start. Very similiar playtest approach to what they did the last two years. Just the basics, but plenty to work with and chew through to test and provide feedback.

Things I LOVE:
*Skirmisher vs Regiment battle unit - brilliant!
*Tying highest "DEX" in Skirmishers to init and lowest DEX in Regiment to Init - gaming mana from heaven!
*Join and commander actions - wow, could I have used this when I ran my 5e HoTDQ campaign! Man. Three amazing battles, this feels like exactly what I wanted.
*Movement - adjacent to other stands - simple, feels right and NO AOO! Same with can't move through regiment space. Perfect!
*Objecives - holy cow this is HUGE and important! Can we have this for all D&D combats effective immediately?

Things I want to playtest, but I think look interesting:
*Working in "size" to the units
*Attack, Aid, Defend, March, Dash, Hide, Retreat - a great start for actions

Skeptical, but will playtest before concerns raised:
*Cast A Spell - I'm most concerned here, this one will need the most playtest no matter what
*Victory Points - this system is SO important (see above) it must have clear guidance for establishing and rewarding
*Consequences and Rewards - this is huge, we need a subsystem
*Minis vs Theater of the mind - I have a tendency towards the latter, and hope this won't pin me down, but I like the very, very simple premise to build upon

 

[DEFCON 1]

These are very interesting, and I actually have a mass combat lined up in my campaign in the coming weeks, so I'll get a chance to try these out.

There's only one thing in the rules that I think I might add in, which is the idea of units coming in from the side or behind to flank a unit currently locked in battle with an ally. I'm not sure exactly what that would garner the flanking unit (and the primary unit if anything), but I think there should be something gained for creating this kind of pincher movement. Maybe it could be as simple as that the flanking unit *does* get an Opportunity Attack on any enemy that is taking the Retreat action. Per the rules, the primary unit doesn't get one when their opponent flees the battlefield... but perhaps that is what the flanking unit gets for coming in from behind? An Opportunity Attack on the retreating foe.

(By the same token, I wonder if a special action could be made for when two or more units completely surround an enemy so that there's no place it could retreat to should it be forced to take the Retreat action? A unit's morale breaks due to losing more than half its stands, but there's no where for it to move because all eight squares around it are occupied-- the next round the offensive units maybe get an Overrun action and completely destroy the unit automatically unless the unit's commander makes his Rally check-- in which case combat continues as normal?)

 

[Iosue]

It's become a continual thing with 5e: I hear about something and am not really interested, but then I read the rules and think, "Wow, that sounds like fun!"

It looks like the basic scale is company size, with PCs acting as lieutenants or captains. Which makes sense. If you forego the solo rules, it looks very easy to scale a stand up to 100 men rather than 10.

Conceivably, one thing you could do is scale hit points when dealing with mixed scale battles. So if you have a 100-man stand vs a 10-man stand attached to a PC, you give the 100-man stand 10 times the hp: 40 instead of 4. Or, if you have a solo PC in a fight with 100 man stands, you keep up the hp the same but reduce PC damage to 10% of normal damage.

Again, I like the implementation and yet it suggests all sorts of ways to play around with it. 5e is like tinker DM crack.

 

[TerraDave]

More on Solos:

If I were to houserule it, it would probably be something like:

-Solos can take the actions they would normally take in a standard round in the 1 minute battle round. They have the speed and move as per the rules for stands. (In general various things compensate for the time differential).

-All weapon attacks on solos do double damage. This reflects either the group attack of the stand or another solo (effectively) making multiple attacks. Only solo cast spells (or special abilities, like a breath weapon) do standard damage. Isolated solos still attacked with advantage.

-A stand attacked by a solo can make an attack as a reaction against the solo (this includes ranged attacks, if they have a way to fire back).

-A solo can target another solo in a stand. But see previous.

-Stands cannot attack solos that are part of a stand. Stands attack solos more then 1 square away at disadvantage, unless the solo attacked them in the round.

-Possibly crazy optional rule: casters with the warcaster feat can cast two spells with one action in a battle round. Or maybe with a concentration check.

These rules still allow a martial type solo to wade into the fight, or rain arrows, but they need to have the AC and HP to withstand the counterattack. They also allow solo hunting, with the option of joining a stand acting as something of a deterrent.

 

[Patrick McGill]

I think this is a really good start. I do find solos a little wonky, but I think that can be fixed with some playtesting. Will definitely be trying these out as soon as I can.

I would love to see them demonstrate these rules as well.

I'm actually surprised with the depth of these rules, considering how light the Ebberon stuff was last time.

 

[DEFCON 1]

I'm actually surprised with the depth of these rules, considering how light the Ebberon stuff was last time.

Well, for the longest time it had sounded like Mass Combat rules had intended to be in the Dungeon Master's Guide, so they've probably had many more months of design and development. Then as they got closer to release, Mike I think mentioned there was just not enough testing done on it to warrant it's inclusion in the book, so it got pulled.

The nice thing though is that where ordinarily this stuff would probably get held until a second DMG got released... now they just release it as an article and give it away for free.