Fighting Armies

[Xain335]

Ok, I'm fairly new at the whole dming scene. I currently have a group consisting of: A Level 3 half orc barbarian, 2 level 4 halfling wizards, a level 4 half elf cleric of wee jas, a level 4 dwarven fighter and a level 2 monk. Basically, there is an epic guy they have been doing some "errands" for, collecting magic items for him ((darens instant fortress)) and the like. Unbenknownst to them, the reason the epic guy wanted these is because an army led by a rakshasa is marching against them. They are going to be participating in the war, and there are things like catapult towers, ballistas, stuff like that. How am i gonna make this work? I cant run an entire army and roll all of them! HELP!

 

[shilsen]

You have two basic options:

1) Get rules for mass combat, which are available through a number of different sourcebooks.

2) Eyeball it and just describe what it happening with people the PCs aren't immediately engaging. That is, let the PCs fight and interact with enemies normally, and let the rest of the battle progress as you think it should. Preferably let the PCs' actions have some effect on the battle.

I'd pick 2.

 

[Stormborn]

Heros of Battle from WotC has lots of advice for this if you really want to get into it, however I think "2)" is the best way to go. Describe the battle, but don't get caught up in mechanics the players never need to know about.

 

[kigmatzomat]

I do a hybrid of 1) and 2). I come up with a template for the grunts for A and B and then determine what the typical damage is going to be for each side. (If A can hit 20% of the time doing 10pts damage on average then A typically does 2hp/round) I use this as my basis for describing A vs B combat.

My one nod to veracity is to spread damage from missle volleys across the entire unit while melee combat is applied to individuals. Neither is 100% accurate but it means archers will fire several volleys before armored troops begin dropping while swords kill off the front rank but leave the rear troops unscathed.

This works well whenever a hero does something stupid, like flying over the battlefield in arrow range. A 20 always hits and when 800 archers with rapid shot start volleying at you, expect to get hit by 80 arrows/round.

Last session the PC monk snuck into a goblin encampment and started a ruckus. At any given point there are only about 200 goblins with line of sight but they had ready supplies of javelins, spears, and bows. 200 attackers means 10 hits/round or about 35hp/round, assuming d6 weapons.
It wasn't long until he went ethereal to escape.

And anyone who thinks it isn't worth it to shoot a caster out of the sky has never had a Sunburst dropped on massed troops. Or just itemed barrels of oil, tar, or worse.

 

[painandgreed]

The way we did something like this before was that the DM used the PCs as a strike force. We ambushed the seige engines on their way to the front, attacked garrisons, fougth other adventurer parties, etc. Since we were on the active side of things, we buffed out and ambushed said groups and could take on much more than we could normally. Otherwise, I'd put the PCs in a critical place in the battle such as either in the middle against some main NPCs or on the flanks against normal troops. From there, it would be easy to say that the entire battle would succeed or fail according to the fate of the PCs.

 

[Baramay]

A few ideas for you. I would have the players man the siege weapons. A heavy catapult (p.100 DMG) can do 6d6 damage. Even with their great damage reduction avg damage is still 6. Alchemist fire will bypass their spell resistance since it is not magical and they have no resistances. Otherwise the character are not high enough in level to battle CR10 opponents. A possible outcome is to have the epic character assist the players in fighting off a frontal assault, with a secret strike force stealing one of his most precious items. The players would then need to adventure to gain information to find the rakshasa secret hideout and hopefully be high enough in level to get in find out their play and return with the epic character's possession.