How do you deal with armies?

[DM-Rocco]

Training young recruits, apprentices, or even family members makes the war up close and personal for the PCs - the price becomes tangible. When Mohammed went into battle, rather than send anyone else, he sent those from his family to face rivals in a challenge match before the battle began.

A thought about high-level battlefields. In D&D a wizard can totally demolish a traditional army, and a priest can raise a dead hero. You've got to come to terms with these in some way, either embracing them or minimizing their role.

I found my players didn't mind that war was mostly a story in the background. I played a total of 3 actual battles:
(1) A town martials itself against an invasion ostensibly by a group of justicars to capture a notorious criminal, but really because their leader is in league with a demon after an artifact. Great losses occur, peasants become heroes, one PC makes traps out of farm equipment, and the hidden criminal (a PC) is eternally grateful.
(2) The now mid-level PCs marshal forces and issue a challenge to the justicars, defeating them soundly in a swamp with the aid of magic. It is a massacre.
(3) The high-level PCs (14th) track down the demon to its lair and launch a bold siege on its fortress. Their armies overcome the demons with great losses, but the PCs tell them to hold back as they ascend the fortress stairs. They face the demon alone at the tower's peak, suffering great losses, but they ultimately defeat the demon.

As the party consists of four players and they are all casters, they will use magic on the troops, but I have a few things that go against them. I am going to use mob rules for how magic effects large groups of people, and they have already experienced some war spells and teleportation devertion spells and divination blocking spells and illusions that mask armies, so magic is on both sides of the coin

 

[DM-Rocco]

I own Fields of Blood, and I wrote the Grim Tales product.

I would say that Fields of Blood is good if you want to run a mass-combat themed campaign. Its army- and kingdom-governance rules are nice, but I don't think the actual combat resolution is all that great.

Grim Tales is good if you want quick, common-sense resolution of big battles. (And, it's only 2 bucks...)

However, it seems like the original poster wanted to be able to pit his heroes against units of enemies. Neither Fields of Blood nor Grim Tales is really going to satisfy this need particularly well.

I haven't seen the Mob rules but I suspect that's going to be closest to what you need.


Wulf

Er, okay, I don't like buying things on-line, in fact, I hate it. I really want to buy this PDF since it really sounds like it is what I want, and to tell you the truth, it is the first PDF I wanted enough to buy, in spite of my hatred of buying stuff on-line. However, now I don't want it.

What kind of crap is this. I go to check out and you guys try to screw me by attaching fees or making me buy more products. You guys want to sell stuff, then sell it, but don't pull that crap on me. Now I have contempt for you and will not only not by, but will tell others that you guys suck. It doesn't matter what the fee is, sell your product or don't, but your price should be your price, period.

 

[NimrodvanHall]

Folowing the internal logic of DnD why should one field an army? It gets obliterated by the fist summoned demon or adventuring party...

 

[S'mon]

For seeing who wins army vs army I use Companion/Rules Cyclopedia War Machine, which can handle battles with 100s to 100,000s in a few die rolls and works very well to support a high level D&D game without dominating play.

I have Fields of Blood - great art & presentation, great atmosphere, but the unit generation rules suck IMO - far too fiddly and complicated. Like was said above, might be ok for a totally war-focussed campaign, but far too involved for a regular D&D game.

For PC vs unit combat I usually use the regular D&D rules, or abstract it - eg a high level Fighter will kill every mook on 1 hit, the mooks will get roughly 1 attack each on him before dying, so to kill 100 mooks he'll take 100 attacks & be hit 5 times. If the mooks are War-3s power attacking with halberds & STR 14 they'll do 1d10+9 on a hit, with crits x3 that averages 16 damage per hit, so the Fighter will take 16x5 = 80 damage on average - can get some randomness by rolling 1d20+70.

 

[S'mon]

Folowing the internal logic of DnD why should one field an army? It gets obliterated by the fist summoned demon or adventuring party...

Not necessarily - IMC an army of 100,000 or so won't be slowed down by any demon in the book or any sub-Epic adventurer party. The army will have its own spellcasters and high-level heroes, of course. The kind of armies that do get wiped out like this tend to number 100s to a few thousand with little or no spellcaster support, the typical "small orc horde".

 

[Umbran]

Well, if I am going just for a story arc, then I would too, but the players are 14th-16th level and they are cocky and I want them to know that they can still die to an army, amoungst other things.

The PCs can only interact with so many individuals at a time, even with area of effect spells. So, you don't really need rules for the army to simulate this. You just have an encounter where there are hundreds or thousands of new enemies that keep walking into the fight.

I also thought it may be a nice change of pace to have a tactical chance for them to call the shots and take control of their own destiny.

Hr? I don't understand how mass combat rules allow them to take control of their own destiny any more than my usual approach.

The problem with just having it as a story in the background is that it seems to the players as if you are just railroading them into a course of action and that they don't matter in the long term.

That's not what I meant at all. This isn't about "story in the background" that the PCsmust follow. This is about where the focus of the story lies - on the army and masses of troops, or on the individula PCs.

I want to give them a chance to play it out if they want too. It will make the story richer and they will develope a bond to the keep and the henchmen they control.

Again, I fear you misunderstand me. In my version, the players are masters of their own destinies, just like they are in every other adventure. They can choose where they go and what to do, just like they were in a wilderness adventure, or wandering around town. And, just like those other scenarios, I make encounters to suit. In essence, instead of introduce a whole new set of rules for mass combat, I do normal adventure design in a different terrain type.

 

[Infernal Teddy]

I'd run with "Cry Havoc".

But then, I just love Malhavoc Press, so waht do I know...

 

[DM-Rocco]

The PCs can only interact with so many individuals at a time, even with area of effect spells. So, you don't really need rules for the army to simulate this. You just have an encounter where there are hundreds or thousands of new enemies that keep walking into the fight.



Hr? I don't understand how mass combat rules allow them to take control of their own destiny any more than my usual approach.



That's not what I meant at all. This isn't about "story in the background" that the PCsmust follow. This is about where the focus of the story lies - on the army and masses of troops, or on the individula PCs.



Again, I fear you misunderstand me. In my version, the players are masters of their own destinies, just like they are in every other adventure. They can choose where they go and what to do, just like they were in a wilderness adventure, or wandering around town. And, just like those other scenarios, I make encounters to suit. In essence, instead of introduce a whole new set of rules for mass combat, I do normal adventure design in a different terrain type.

We both are misunderstanding each other a bit. When I say I want them to take control of their destiny, I want them to have control of everything they want too have control of. If they as a party want to do hit and run tactic or just face a few others while the main combat plays out, fine, but I know them fairly well, so I know they would want the soldiers to attack in certain ways and I want them to be able to control the units if they want too.

 

[Ellie_the_Elf]

I have 2 mass combat books- Malhavoc's Cry Havoc and Heroes of Battle, but have only ever used either for ideas within mass combat situations- nothing against either book, but I haven't found that level of detail is really necessary.

IMHO, representative combats is the way to go- just stat out a few units, and a few encounters with commanders and the like, and wing the rest. Worked fine for me, and has the added bonus of being much less work!!

Ellie.

 

[Umbran]

... so I know they would want the soldiers to attack in certain ways and I want them to be able to control the units if they want too.

Ah. You see, to me, that's controlling someone else's destiny, not their own.

I, personally, would still avoid the nitty gritty of playing out the battle. Even today, generals don't normally deal with the detailed movement of troops in real-time. That's the "fog of war".

I'd decide what sorts of troops each side has. I'd work out the enemy's tactics on my own. If the PCs have role-played themselves into the position of commanders, then I'd let them plan out battles on the map. The information they get to plan with is limitedbywhat information gatherign they do before the battle. If they don't have skills appropriate to battle planning, they get no hints. Then, without resorting to all the die-rolling and rules-mongering that wargaming engenders, take a decent stab at deciding how well each side will do with no further PC action. Then, proceed as I mentioned before.

NOte- I don't mind wargames. I happen to like them, actually. But when I want a wargame, I play a wargame. I don't want to bog down a role-playing game with that much wargaming. What I suggest requires less mechanical preparation, and would resolve more quickly and smoothly than dealing with wargame rules.