How do you run mass combat?

[Cryptic]

I'd like to allow my PCs greater freedom with their followers, but at the same time I want things to come out fairly accurately in large scale battles. For example, what if you have a battle between 200 1st level infantry against 20 4th level mounted cavalry? Now that cavalry is out numbered 10 to 1 but since they're mounted and have 3 levels shouldn't they come out the victor of this?

I'm mainly concerned when you have different numbers of troops, different troop types, and different levels engaging each other. Just haven't found a smooth way to run this.

 

[Pinotage]

There are several published sourcebooks that deal with this kind of thing. Those that immediatly spring to mind are Grim Tales: Mass Combat, Cry Havoc, Fields of Blood, Empires from AEG, and the Miniatures Handbook. Any of those should help you come up with a half-decent system.

Myself, I do it the computer way, but based on averages. I average troop statistics across each group, and then use that to calculate a probability chart detailing the probability of a given number of hits per group. I roll a 1d100 on that chart, get the number of hits, and then roll damage normally. Do the same for both groups and you're done in no time. You might want to divide them into smaller groups of 20 or 30, though. I think the important thing is to average the statistics of the entire group and treat it as an individual entity. That's the way most systems look at it. I'd recommend Grim Tales, though.

Pinotage

 

[S'mon]

Hm, that size of battle is a bit difficult. For huge battles I use the old War Machine rules from (eg) the Rules Cyclopedia. In 1e/2e for a battle between 40 & 200 you could use the regular combat rules, I might still do that in 3e but forget about square-counting, just describe it cinematically & decide how many infantry can attack each cavalryman per round, and then have 1 side flee when they're obviously losing. You could also run it as 4 squads vs 20 squads, which each squad treated as an individual, use individual's stats. Reasonably accurate & much faster.

 

[Arnwyn]

I use 2 different mass combat systems depending on the number of combatants and scale involved:

- Mongoose's OMCS v.2 (Open Mass Combat System, version 2) for large skirmishes, between about 30-300 combatants.

- Eden's Fields of Blood for anything larger (armies, really).

So in your example above, I'd use the OMCS 2 rules. You should get some results you'll accept out of this (as it does take into account levels, etc, and is easy to quickly modify to give you game mechanic bonuses and results that you want/expect).

 

[diaglo]

Chainmail by Gygax & Perrin

 

[azmodean]

I have homebrewed rules that treat a large group of low-level creatures as a single entity, somewhat similar to the swarm rules.

In your example I'd group the infantry into 6 squads, though I'd probably leave the calvary as individuals since they emphasize mobility.

 

[the Jester]

Reluctantly.

Seriously, I love mass combat but haven't read a system for d20 that gives me what I need. Then again, in all fairness, I've only read a couple of mass combat systems.

 

[nothing to see here]

I love the Fields of Blood version for it's detail, but find it not overly flexiable.

I love the Grim Tales version for it's flexibilty but an bothered by it's lack of detail.

...and the two versions are completely and utterly non-compatible with each other...

...arrgh

 

[Garnfellow]

I've looked at most of the d20 mass combat systems out there, and up until very recently none of them really worked for me. I wanted something with just the right balance of detail and simplicity. I absolutely, positively did not want to have me or my players learn a whole separate tactical game system in order to resolve a couple of mass battle. I also didn't want my campaign to center on realm management or warfare, so I also wanted to avoid a system that used a lot of mass-combat specific skills and feats that would not be useful in a dungeon.

(There is a fantastic thread somewhere on the General discussion page that does a side-by-side comparison of the various mass combat systems. I can't search here or otherwise I'd give you a link.)

But in the last few months I've found two systems that have been working great:

• The Grim Tales Mass Combat System, available as a cheap standalone pdf download. This is far and away the best abstract system I've ever seen. It ingeniously uses EL to model troop strength and requires only a couple of numbers. The resolution is fairly grainy, but it scales up and down with marvelous ease. It could easily handle both the smaller battle you've described AND something as huge as Helm's Deep. Because of its abstract nature, it's not great for handling a battle in which the PCs are to play a major part. But for the price, this pdf cannot be beat.
• The Representative Battles system from Green Ronin's Advanced Game Master's Guide. This is similar to a mechanism from the old Bushido game. Basically, in order to resolve your mass combat you run a much smaller battle-within-the-larger-battle that features the PCs front and center. If they win their representative battle, then this influences the larger battle around them. So you could run something like Helms Deep using this system by focusing on the struggles of Gimli and Legolas to hold the gate against a whole company of elite orcs. As with the Grim Tales system, this is a very simple and elegant mechanism.

Together these two systems cover just about every mass combat I'd ever want to run.

If I were to run a long-term, realm management style of game then Eden's Fields of Blood is clearly the best of the lot, though I also liked the brief look I got at the Black Company Campaign Setting, which has a couple of different mass combat systems.

 

[Liquidsabre]

I have homebrewed rules that treat a large group of low-level creatures as a single entity, somewhat similar to the swarm rules.

Ooo care to share please? I've been trying to work some up based on the swarm and mob templates. I've been trying to develop a Unit Template with this exact purpose in mind - using larger groups as single entities.

I just couldn't make use of the complex system of detail that Fields of Blood provided and the Grim Tales system left me wantign and I didn't care for some of the meshing of character and units worked when we tried to use the system on one of our game sessions. I've used a similar technique as AGMG has (representative battles) but am still looking for something more concrete.

I've always thought a mix between a Unit Template/single-entity build and the representative battles concept would yield the most satisfying handling of mass combat for my games but haven't been able to make it work just yet.