I've seen a lot of mass combat which tries to create a large group of soldiers as a special statblock with pooled hitpoints. One thing has always bothered me in that I think area effects are handwaved a bit too much. They often do "double damage" and the like. But if you consider just how many people a fireball can hit, the damage is usually woefully low compared to what the same spell can do if you actually tracked the units individually. I wanted to try and bridge the gap, offer some mechanics that were a bit more "realistic", at the expense of some additional complexity. No model is perfect, its easy to get too complex or too simple, but I tried to find a good middle ground. See what you all think.
Infantry Platoon
Gargantuan Humanoid (Unit)
Armor Class 16 (Ring Mail + Shield)
Hit Points 500
Speed 20 ft
Savings Throws Str +3, Con +2
Condition Immunities see Multi-bodied
Senses Passive Perception 10
Languages Common
Challenge 13
Unit: The unit can occupy another creature's space and vice versa, and can move through any opening large enough for a medium humanoid. The unit can't regain Hitpoints or gain Temporary Hitpoints.
Unit Resistance: A single attack cannot deal more than 10 damage to this creature. Conditions applied to the Unit instead deal 5 damage for every target affected.
Multi-bodied: The unit is immune from conditions. Conditions applied to the unit instead deal 5 damage for every target affected. For every 10 damage the unit receives (after resistances), treat it as if one creature went down to 0 hp, for the purpose of any effects.
Area Attack Weakness: Effects that deal damage and/or conditions in an area ignore the Unit Resistance trait and do not generate saving throws. Area effects deal special damage depending on the area, see notes below. Area effects that only inflict conditions instead deal half of the damage listed below.
Unit Destroyer: Attacks ignore the Unit Resistance trait. When using Multiattack, it can choose the same unit multiple times as a target for its attacks.
Bloodied: When an Infantry Platoon has 250 hp or less, its attacks deal half damage, and it has resistance against damage from Area Attacks. At the start of its turn, if engaged in combat, it must make a Wisdom Saving Throw DC 10 or lose 50 hp.
Formation: The unit has the benefit of a formation action, which also changes its size. This benefit lasts until another formation action is taken. If the unit is in reach of any creature, either before or after the formation action, that creature receives an Opportunity Attack.
ACTIONS
Multiattack. The infantry platoon chooses 4 different creatures within 5ft or within its area. Each creature takes 3 sword attacks.
Sword. Melee Weapon Attack: +3 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 16 (3d8+3) slashing damage.
Standard Formation: Infantry platoon has a space of 35 ft by 35 ft.
Shield Wall Formation: Infantry platoon has a space of 20 ft by 20 ft. It gains a +5 to AC, but gains vulnerability against area attack damage.
Scattered Formation: Infantry platoon has a space of 50 ft by 50 ft. It has resistance against area attack damage, but has disadvantage on attack rolls.
So the highlight is the Area Attack Weakness. Ultimately for the vast majority of area effects, they do enough damage to straight up kill basic soldiers, so its less about the spell's damage and more how many targets we can hit.
What I did was look at the actual areas of various damage spells in the game (everything from Thunderwave to a big dragon breath weapon), and tried to look at how many targets they would actually get, if we assume 1 target per 5 ft. Now in reality, targets would probably be even more packed, but at the same time we assume that militaries in magical world would have experience minimizing damage from big area effects, so a bit of a wash there. I then tried to give some reasonable damage numbers that approximate the true damage of these area effects. Ultimately, these numbers still assume that the area attacks are not hitting a maximum amount of targets, but a high number each time. Because areas do not scale linearly, no simple linear math will work for all of the scenarios, so I used maximization as a compensation. While there is a little bit of math, I tried to keep it simple, and once you have figured out the damage for a spell, you just use that number from then on until the end of time....with no saves to slow down the combat. Its literally fire and forget!
Line areas were the trickiest, as they are super dependent on how the unit is organized. If the unit is spread out in a line, a sideways line attack could be the most damaging area you could do. Conversely in a strong block formation, lines do much less than other types. So I put in a random component to account for that, lines either fizzle out or deal some big damage. In general this makes lines better than they probably should be "on average", but I think lines get shafted compared to other areas most of the time so we give them a little nudge here.
So quick examples to show how it works:
Infantry Platoon
Gargantuan Humanoid (Unit)
Armor Class 16 (Ring Mail + Shield)
Hit Points 500
Speed 20 ft
| STR | DEX | CON | INT | WIS | CHA |
| 12 (+1) | 10 (+0) | 10 (+0) | 10 (+0) | 10 (+0) | 10 (+0) |
Savings Throws Str +3, Con +2
Condition Immunities see Multi-bodied
Senses Passive Perception 10
Languages Common
Challenge 13
Unit: The unit can occupy another creature's space and vice versa, and can move through any opening large enough for a medium humanoid. The unit can't regain Hitpoints or gain Temporary Hitpoints.
Unit Resistance: A single attack cannot deal more than 10 damage to this creature. Conditions applied to the Unit instead deal 5 damage for every target affected.
Multi-bodied: The unit is immune from conditions. Conditions applied to the unit instead deal 5 damage for every target affected. For every 10 damage the unit receives (after resistances), treat it as if one creature went down to 0 hp, for the purpose of any effects.
Area Attack Weakness: Effects that deal damage and/or conditions in an area ignore the Unit Resistance trait and do not generate saving throws. Area effects deal special damage depending on the area, see notes below. Area effects that only inflict conditions instead deal half of the damage listed below.
- Sphere / Cylinder: 2d6 per 1 ft Radius. If Radius >= 15 ft, maximize the result.
- Line: 4d6 per 1 ft width. Roll a d20, +1 for every 10 feet of length. Less than 20, halve the damage. Otherwise, double the damage.
- Cone: 1d6 per 1 ft cone. If Cone >= 35, maximize the result.
- Cube: 2d6 per 1 ft. If Cube >= 35, maximize the result.
Unit Destroyer: Attacks ignore the Unit Resistance trait. When using Multiattack, it can choose the same unit multiple times as a target for its attacks.
Bloodied: When an Infantry Platoon has 250 hp or less, its attacks deal half damage, and it has resistance against damage from Area Attacks. At the start of its turn, if engaged in combat, it must make a Wisdom Saving Throw DC 10 or lose 50 hp.
Formation: The unit has the benefit of a formation action, which also changes its size. This benefit lasts until another formation action is taken. If the unit is in reach of any creature, either before or after the formation action, that creature receives an Opportunity Attack.
ACTIONS
Multiattack. The infantry platoon chooses 4 different creatures within 5ft or within its area. Each creature takes 3 sword attacks.
Sword. Melee Weapon Attack: +3 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 16 (3d8+3) slashing damage.
Standard Formation: Infantry platoon has a space of 35 ft by 35 ft.
Shield Wall Formation: Infantry platoon has a space of 20 ft by 20 ft. It gains a +5 to AC, but gains vulnerability against area attack damage.
Scattered Formation: Infantry platoon has a space of 50 ft by 50 ft. It has resistance against area attack damage, but has disadvantage on attack rolls.
So the highlight is the Area Attack Weakness. Ultimately for the vast majority of area effects, they do enough damage to straight up kill basic soldiers, so its less about the spell's damage and more how many targets we can hit.
What I did was look at the actual areas of various damage spells in the game (everything from Thunderwave to a big dragon breath weapon), and tried to look at how many targets they would actually get, if we assume 1 target per 5 ft. Now in reality, targets would probably be even more packed, but at the same time we assume that militaries in magical world would have experience minimizing damage from big area effects, so a bit of a wash there. I then tried to give some reasonable damage numbers that approximate the true damage of these area effects. Ultimately, these numbers still assume that the area attacks are not hitting a maximum amount of targets, but a high number each time. Because areas do not scale linearly, no simple linear math will work for all of the scenarios, so I used maximization as a compensation. While there is a little bit of math, I tried to keep it simple, and once you have figured out the damage for a spell, you just use that number from then on until the end of time....with no saves to slow down the combat. Its literally fire and forget!
Line areas were the trickiest, as they are super dependent on how the unit is organized. If the unit is spread out in a line, a sideways line attack could be the most damaging area you could do. Conversely in a strong block formation, lines do much less than other types. So I put in a random component to account for that, lines either fizzle out or deal some big damage. In general this makes lines better than they probably should be "on average", but I think lines get shafted compared to other areas most of the time so we give them a little nudge here.
So quick examples to show how it works:
- Fireball: That's 20 ft radius = 2d6 x 20 = 40d6, maximized (because its 15 or greater), for 240 damage, about half the unit.
- Thunderwave: 15 foot cube = 30d6 damage, average 105 damage.
- Hypnotic Pattern: 30 foot cube = 60d6 damage, average 210 damage. Since its condition only, we half that to 105.
- Lightning Bolt: 5 ft width line, so 4d6x5 = 20d6, average 70. We roll a d20 + 10 (for 100 ft of length). So get a 21, so damage is doubled to 140.
- Aganazzar's Scorcher: 5 ft width line, so 4d6x5 = 20d6, average 70. We roll a d20 +3 (30 ft of length). We get a 15, damage is halved to 35.
- Adult Red Dragon Breath Weapon!: 60 foot cone = 60d6, maximized (because its 35 or greater), for 360 damage.
