DMing

[Superj3nius]

well i am DMing i finally hit epic level and one of my characters if taking epic leadership and is getting ~400 men of fairly low level but the thing is i dont have that kind of room in my campain, his character is an Uber buff fighter with all his minions as fighters, i dont know what to do to throw it in or how to run a mass battle. what should i do with out being nazi DM, cuz he spent time developing this massive legion army.

Thanks Super J3nius

 

[Clueless]

Why on earth didn't you say "No" when he first asked about the feat? You do have that right to say no, you know...

In order to answer your question I need to know some more about your game and your game style. What sort of game is it that you're running? Are your players more focused on the rolling or on the roleplaying side of things? Are you running through dungeons, building kingdoms or scampering for your lives from angry gods? What sort of personality is your player? Laid back, anal, domineering, or just out to have fun?

Once I have an idea what it is you're trying to fit this army into - then I can give suggestions on how to do it.

 

[EricNoah]

You might also ask him what he has in mind -- maybe he doesn't mind having his little army being use as a plot point (they can go defend XYZ while the PC is adventuring).

 

[Wik]

400 low level characters in an epic game?

Fight a dragon. Fight two.

Fighter takes on one, the other 400 feed the other.

Problem solved.

Seriously, our Paladin just picked up Leadership, and he doesn't even use the low-level followers - he puts them on plot relevant guarding jobs. I really can't see ANY number of low-level followers being useful in an EPIC game.

 

[Merkuri]

It's not worth it to try and roll for every one of the 400 character army. Have the PC let you know when and for what he wants to use army and then use your best judgement, not your dice. What the army does is less important than what the PCs do, so it doesn't necessarily have to come down to dice rolls.

If you feel that you have to use dice, our last DM used mob rules from the DMG2 (I think that's where it was from) to handle large groups of characters. Basically, treat the army like a swarm and have it act as one creature. It's much much easier than making 400 attack rolls every round.

 

[Mark]

Run a batlle for him where each figure represents 10 men. You can handle having a hundred or so figures and tokens on a table for an afternoon or evening or weekend if it means the player gets to realize his dream of having an army slaughter another army. After, teach him the meaning of army upkeep and suppy lines. Once he becomes aware of the minutia involved in that side of having followers, have a benevolent mayor offer him the chance to billet his men near a large city in exchange for their upkeep provided he doesn't call them away too often or on a whim.

 

[SiderisAnon]

Using 400 level 1 fighters is easy.

Round 1 for the Party:
Of the 400 fighters, 20 hit on the natural 20, so do 20d6 damage from the arrows they fire. Of course, if the monster has DR, you can just ignore that.
Round 1 for the Monsters:
Roll 1d6 per monster. That many fighters die. (Or roll damage for breath weapon and kill half the damage total.)

Rounds 2+:
Repeat as necessary, which will be until the monsters kill them all or until the fighters run away because they're being slaughtered.


This is why Leadership is great for putting loyal people into staff positions on your fortress, or for marshaling an army when you're fighting another army, but generally just unsuitable for any kind of adventuring. That's what your one and only mook of decent level is for. Everyone else is basically just background crowd in the movie.

 

[gizmo33]

You could use the "mob" template, and bunch up the mooks into groups of 48. I think the mob is covered in the DMG II.

 

[Aust Diamondew]

In my experience characters rarely use the followers for actualy combat, thats what the cohort is for. 4,000 first level fighters are nothing compared to even a cohort who's level is in the upper teens.

That said unless you expect his 400 followers to be useful outside of combat I'd advise he take another feat.

 

[Kmart Kommando]

In the epic game I played a while back, at some point (pre-epic) a halfling PC gained a keep and followers from the Deck of Many Things. Hilarity ensues.. The party kept going off to adventure, and when they got back, half the followers would be dead from some villain tracking the party back home.

One time, we 'accidentally' brought a lich's phylactery back to the keep, and when it popped up, it killed half the party, most of the keep's residents, and then came back again when we chose the wrong item that we thought was the phylactery. First time, the monk decided he wanted the lich's throne, and kept it in his bedroom. We destroy the throne, find a magic box with a nonmagical ring inside. One of the Gnomes decides to study the rare alloy of the ring in his lab. Lich pops up again and teleports away before anyone can kill it, but there was a scry and fry combat in his future.
Turns out the ring was the item we needed to destroy and was heavily shielded from detection.
Though they were free followers, they were the best comedy relief ever.