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Message: <blockquote data-quote="touc" data-source="post: 8524579" data-attributes="member: 19270">The 3E adventure Red Hand of Doom handled a city siege well. The PCs know an army is coming, and they have a ticking timeline to disrupt enemy operations, disrupt an alliance, get some allies, etc. They may not have time to do it all. When the battle occurs, there should be "elite" missions that only the best of the best (aka our party) are sent to handle. In that adventure, they did things like shore up a broken barricade line, stop hill giant siege engines, put out fires caused by a dragon, and eventually face off with the enemy general's elite strike at the heart of the leadership. Each one of those missions would be impacted possibly by prior successes (e.g. the enemy might have ghost lions in one battle if the PCs did not sever that alliance), and each of those missions carried a benefit and consequence.The success of the PCs at each juncture, including leading up to the finale, would give them some form of battle points. Low enough and the city falls, the populace is enslaved. Above that might be city is taken but a large part of the people escape, above that city holds but with heavy casualties (major NPCs or services lost), and the top level is success with minimal losses, enemy in full flight.Thus, even if the PCs accomplish all their siege missions, if they didn't do anything pre-siege, didn't get any allies and so forth, it won't be enough.I say all this AFTER having tried 3x to run some form of mass warfare rules in 5E (Pathfinder rules, Battlesystem AD&D rules, Colville's Stronghold and Followers rules). Mass warfare just hasn't translated well.1. The rules are generally too complex with too many options, and players get overwhelmed with something they won't be using possibly ever again. Eyes glaze over and the DM, who spent days learning the system, is essentially playing a game with his or her self. 2. They often won't involve everyone doing something, especially if #1 isn't good (usually one player is calling the shots, and it's not all that fun to simply be a dice monkey rolling a d20 every once in awhile for them).3. It doesn't involve the players, who should be the focus of the story.</blockquote>

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