battle timescale question

[Moto Jojo]

I'm planning for a large battle taking place in my campaign shortly, and I'm wondering how long an army-vs-army flat out battle might last. Take roughly 1000 orcs vs a similar number of humans. Ignoring any magical intervention or unusual terrain, how long might a pitched battle between these forces last?

Thanks very much.

 

[bloodymage]

How many days you got? I'd say no less than one full day.

 

[Moto Jojo]

There's no time limit in the story, so I'd be happy to make it last upwards of a full day. The overall winner is going to be predetermined, but I want to give the players the opportunity and time to do some really neat things as the battle unfolds.

A full day battle would be incredibly cool. Does anyone have any ideas on how to describe the shift and flow of the battle such that it makes sense to the players that it's lasting as long as it does? Can anyone point me to any good online descriptions of real life battles? Having gotten my images of medieval battles from movies like Braveheart, where things are so neatly and dramatically condensed, my imagination has a hard time picturing a full day battle.

 

[RangerWickett]

Bear in mind that historical battles sometimes involved forces of over 100,000 on each side, and so a paltry 1000 isn't going to be that big of a deal.

Heh, I'm going to use rules from Tournaments, Fairs, & Taverns. This isn't a tournament, but the rules might work. Let's say that each competitor has a Combat Rating of 2, with a few higher-ranked guys having ratings as high as 10. If each army counts as one team, then each team would have a total rating of about 1000. 1200 max. So with a base DC of 10, going up by 2 each round or so, that's 496 rounds before one side or the other wins. Which would be about an hour and a half.

Now, take a baseball bat and try swacking at trees for an hour and a half, and tell me if you think that's not a long time for a fight to last. You'll be quite exhausted, and you're not even worrying about getting killed.

 

[bloodymage]

Some of the battles in merry old England didn't involve many more forces than you're talking about and those were day-long (or more) affairs. A warrior would not stay on the front line all day, of course. He would drop back as another took his place. The battle would wax and wane. Sometimes, there were even breaks for meals! Flailing at trees, or anything else, will make anyone's arms fall off! Few battles were fought that way.

 

[Maldur]

Maybe a scirmish in the approach on day one.

Small night raids on the camp during the night.

Day two:
preparation and moving to position in the morning (including taunting and challenges). then the battle in a few hours round midday.
The rout/pursuit during the afternoon, with the occasional mopping up of "final stands".

cleaning up, looting, and calling for strecher-bearers thru the night. with executions in the morning. (after a short showy trail).

So I would say about three days, with the battle proper lasting about 2-3 hours.