Large Scale Battles

[afrorooster]

Hello all. I need some input in a campaign i'd like to DM (3.5 Edition). The very breif idea I had was that the player's would be part of a large army, sent off to fight in a large war. I've never personally handled any combat larger than the party vs. 10 or so monsters. I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions as far as rolling combat between opposing armies.
I'd like to set the regular soldiers in the big armies as level 1 warriors, minus the starting feats that the players get, except for weapon masteries for level 1. I would like the characters to be able to dispatch enemies easily if it were a 1 on 1 fight, however with larger numbers is how i plan to make it challenging.
My real concern is how I can roll opposing checks for entire armies as opposed to rolling a few hundred diffrent attack rolls. I'm not sure the best way to handle this, as I would like the actual size of the army to have an impact on the outcome. Say, the army the party is with is half the size of the opposing army. I would like the other army to have twice the chance of winning the battle.
All your ideas are welcome!

 

[Steel_Wind]

There are two schools of thought:

1 - Do it, but in a RPG kinda way. Narrate and roleplay the involvement of the PCs in the war, but give them missions that are capable of being fought and resolved in normal rules D&D which have a decidedly martial feel. You'd be surprised how a mission assignment which does not involve treasure or even monsters and other staples of D&D can dramatically change the feel of the game and give your campaign a Black Company feel.

For this purpose, the 3.5e WotC sourcebook Heroes of Battle is right up your alley and designed specifically for that. It has rules for victory conditions and ways in which your PCs can feel they affected the outcome of battles and the war without losing a grim n gritty feel squad level feel in the game. 3rd to 7th level is really really cool in this sort of setting.

Honestly - I think this is your best bet. Go get it.

Heroes of Battle was one of the most original books to come out of WotC in 2006 - and I thought it was tremendous stuff and very under-rated.

2 - Mass Combat (and welcome to it). You can resolve battles with 500 or less using the 3E rules for mass combat in the Miniatures Handbook. Despite a lot of slagging this chapter takes online, I've tried it with a combat of 600 combatants and it does work and is not nearly as bad as people suggest.

Which is not to say it does not take a lot of time - because it does.

There are others sourcebooks out there for mass combat. Skip Williams' Cry Havoc is ok - but a little persnickety in areas. Fields of Blood I found to bog down far too much in details.

 

[afrorooster]

Thanks for the ideas! I'll check out that book if i can get my hands on it.

 

[MerricB]

Ditto for using Heroes of Battle. A modified version of the system was used in Red Hand of Doom, if you want more inspiration.

Cheers!

 

[S'mon]

Re Fields of Blood - yes it looks beautiful, worth getting just to page through the art, really - but way too crunch-heavy.

 

[Bagpuss]

Heroes of Battle method is also used in the Savage Tide adventure path.

 

[robberbaron]

Two other things you could try:
1. Work it through as a wargame. Divide the armies into units (PCs could be a single unit or be assigned as leaders to units) and have a simplified damage method - opposing units roll their attacks, lowest takes a number of 'injuries', highest takes a smaller number. Actual figures up to you, but I'd use the difference in the rolls for the loser and half that for the winner, perhaps with some sort of save for the winner to take even less damage.
Pros - fewer rolls, fewer pieces to move around (use 1 figure as a unit marker), no need to stat out hundreds of NPCs, gives a battle a completely different feel.
Cons - non-wargamers might not like it, PCs might feel left out if they are in a single unit.
I've used this in my previous 1e campaign to conduct a city siege and it worked very well. Then again, our group wargame as well as roleplay so I didn't have to work too hard to sell it to them.

2. Try the battle rules from Bushido.
For those not familiar with this: the battle is almost entirely abstracted into a roll per side per battle turn with modifiers for the general's skill but, every battle turn there is a chance for the PCs to have encounters.
Pros - PCs can feel like heroes roaming the battlefield, fast battle resolution.
Cons - Completely unfamiliar method, might not feel like a battle.

Played a lot of Bushido in the past and battles always seemed exciting.

 

[Bagpuss]

Bushido type method is also used in Flashing Blades and more recently Legend of the Five rings.

 

[Pbartender]

Here's a thought...

If you have access to DMG II, you could try using the Mob template (or something similar) to emulate large units of soldiers.

 

[Darklone]

If you don't make the enemies too complicated... I had battles with up to 1200 participants with the normal combat rules.

D&D rocks.