D&D 5E Legends & Lore 28.04: Battlesystem! (mass battles rules)

[Dausuul]

It might "make sense" from a certain point of view, but it allows casters to go fully nova like never before. If you can get all the spells of 10 normal-rounds within the space of one battle-round, but you only suffer one "single" attack because you can attach yourself to a stand... that's going to become all kinds of messed up. Even if you could somehow incorporate all spells of shapes, sizes, and effects, the sheer quantity is problematic.

Well, it's what happens when D&D wizards go up against large groups of individually weak foes. Take it out of Battlesystem and use the regular combat rules; a wizard with sufficient spell slots and enough blockers to hold off the enemy for ten rounds (perhaps using defensive terrain) can unleash phenomenal havoc, easily racking up a 100+ body count.

The problem is not that the wizard can wreak destruction; it's that the enemy can't retaliate effectively, bringing us back to the "stands need more attacks" problem.

 

[Unwise]

The two issues I always come across in mass combat are A) The combat is too swingy, there is too much chance for the elite guys to miss and the peasants to hit and B) The all or nothing nature of the hits. So my group tends to roll 3d20 and take the middle result when doing a single roll for what would otherwise be mass dice rolling. The other thing we do is say that stands/swarm/units always hit once at the start of each combat round for half damage. The rolling is just for getting a second strike at normal damage as well.
The net effect of this is a bit of predictability as well as units never getting away utterly unscathed from a fight.

 

[fjw70]

Here is a quote I found in the 2e Battlesyetm book that I think may apply to the 5e Battlesystem rules as well.

These rules treat heroes heroically. From a mathematical perspective, the attributes of heroes in a BATTLESYSTEM'" scenario are inflated beyond those of the creatures in the units sur- rounding them. However, the conver- sion is based on the assumption that there is an intangible quality to heroism that exceeds in importance the hero's worth as a fighting machine.

 

[DEFCON 1]

The other thing to remember is that you really shouldn't try and align fantasy mass combat to actual medieval mass combat. They wouldn't evolve the same way, due precisely to the spellcasters and the "fireball" effect.

If you really wanted to run fantasy mass combat, it would actually turn out and look much more like the combats of World War II than any of the medieval "two sides stand 500 yards apart out in the open and then charge at each other" kind of battle like in Braveheart or whatnot. Fantasy mass combat would be the kind of fighting that had constant bombs going off, people diving into trenches and foxholes to avoid explosions, and much more hit and run or small tactical band combat like you'd find in Saving Private Ryan or Band of Brothers. Spellcasters are basically snipers, grenadiers, machine gunners, and bombadiers. So why would we think how mass combat plays wouldn't take that into account?

But if we really want to run fantasy mass combat like medieval combat with two large sides of knights that charge each other (while wizards in the back line hurl spells)... then we have to just accept the convention that fireballs and other wizardly spells of destruction just have their effectiveness greatly reduced. The "story" of those spells don't work the same in mass combat than they do in dungeon combat.

Because if they did... no one would EVER actually go to war using the medieval model of mass combat. That's effectively suicide.

 

[Dausuul]

The other thing to remember is that you really shouldn't try and align fantasy mass combat to actual medieval mass combat. They wouldn't evolve the same way, due precisely to the spellcasters and the "fireball" effect.

If you really wanted to run fantasy mass combat, it would actually turn out and look much more like the combats of World War II than any of the medieval "two sides stand 500 yards apart out in the open and then charge at each other" kind of battle like in Braveheart or whatnot. Fantasy mass combat would be the kind of fighting that had constant bombs going off, people diving into trenches and foxholes to avoid explosions, and much more hit and run or small tactical band combat like you'd find in Saving Private Ryan or Band of Brothers. Spellcasters are basically snipers, grenadiers, machine gunners, and bombadiers.

Bombs and incendiaries weren't invented in the 20th century. Such weapons have existed since ancient times, and cannons and knights coexisted for quite a while. What makes the difference in modern warfare is mass production. Billions of artillery shells were fired in the World Wars, each one of them the equivalent of a 3rd-level spell slot*. Unless your army can field a corps of 18th-level evokers, wizards don't pack anywhere near enough ammo to recreate WWII. Furthermore, while artillery can hit targets miles away, the range of fireball is a mere 100 feet. Longbows outrange it by a factor of six. You have to be practically on the front lines to cast it, exposed to every archer the enemy's got... and if you order friendly soldiers to clump around you with shields, you invite a fireball from your opposite number.

A low-magic setting with few wizards would look a lot like late medieval/early Renaissance warfare, with wizards more or less substituting for cannon. A setting like Forgotten Realms would look like neither medieval warfare nor modern; it would be completely its own beast. Even in FR, there aren't enough wizards to recreate a modern battlefield, but there are more than enough to transform warfare by acting as scouts, saboteurs, infiltrators, and assassins. It would be like war with medieval weapons but modern information technology.

*Edit: After some more thought, I realized this is the wrong comparison. An artillery shell isn't a fireball--it's a meteor swarm. The fireball is essentially a grenade. So your 18th-level evoker can play a howitzer for 2 shots per day; then she's just a grenadier.

 

[Rhenny]

I just updated my own Battlesystem using Savage World and a dash of Legend of 5 Rings and my own battle action chart.

I haven't playtested it yet, but I think I like it better than the last one I had made.

What I like best about it is that I can replace advantage mechanic instead of using modifiers if I want to do so and it is quicker and easier to run.

 

[hbarsquared]

1) I'm more than okay with "duelist" rules and zooming into solos whule combat rages independently, around them. It's cinematic, it's exciting, it's great story-telling. I could not care less if it doesn't match reality or the normal mechanics.

2) I don't see spellcasters casting ten spells per Battlesystem-round. Ten cantrips per round, sure, and the math evens/cancels out appropriately. But surrounded by opponents, knee-deep in true mass combat: not the s3ame as a dungeon battle. I imagin it would take that full minute for a wizard to pull together the focus for a single true fireball. And the math would work out.