Looking for a mass combat system...

[johnsemlak]

My campaign may take a turn that would lead the PCs becoming involved in a small battle. I'm investigating quick resolution systems as well as miniature-wargame type systems I could use to resolve it in-game.

The battle would involve armies of about 50-100 combatants each.

I read through the the rules in the Miniatures Handbook the other day and they seem designed well for a battle about that size (they certainly seem unworkable for somethign much larger).

Are any other systems worth looking at?

The MH lacks a quick resolution system, and I want to have one on had in case the players have no interest in playing out the battle.

How thes the 'quick army combat system' work in Cry Havoc? Are there any other such systems?

 

[steev42]

'Cry Havoc' has a couple of options for mass combat. None of them really suited what I was looking for when I purchased it, but they could easily work for others. What they did was take one system, which was pretty well detailed, including rules for commanding and such, and then present two? optional systems which were basically quicker and dirtier forms of the first. From what I remember of reading it, the last would basically allow you to do everything but the PC's actions in about three or four rolls.

There is also AEG's War, which in my opinion was a slightly inferior product to Cry Havoc, but has rules for mass combat which may be of your liking. I can't really give any details on it, because not liking it I pretty much put it out of my mind. But it's a book with a system that might be what you are looking for.

 

[Lu Wei Fong]

The Complete Warrior has a few rules for bigger combats, but I it wasn't really a system from what I could tell. The only other one I've seen myself is the system presented in the Quintessential Fighter. I liked that one a lot, but it's been my experience that most people don't like Mongoose books for some reason or another. So I don't know if you'll like it or not, but it's worth looking at in my opinion.
Best of luck!

 

[Cor Azer]

I'd go with Cry Havoc - using that system I was easily able to do battles with 50-100 on each side, 300-400 on each side, and 50,000-100,000 on each side, all with very similar systems, so when players got involved in makign decisions for the good guys, they didn't have to relearn from scratch.

 

[Janx]

In the past, we just winged it by merging soldiers into "units" which acted as single characters. get it down to about 10 units per side and your ready to rock. Split a unit up if the PCs interact directly with it.

So say you got 20 archers, 10 grunts with pikes, and 20 guys with long swords.

Make 5 units:
10 archers
10 archers
10 pikement
10 swordsmen
10 swordsmen

make sure all the guys in the same unit have the same stats.

When they hit, multiply their damage by how many guys are in the unit
The units HP is their average times unit size (8HP per man x 10 men = 80 HP)

If you need to break a unit up (for individual fighting when the PCs charge in) you'll need to break down the unit's HP into individual effects. Take the unit's current HP divided by the total the unit had. This is the percentage of men that are still alive, rounded up. Now, half the survivors have no damage, the other half do, so subtract that much HP from the remaining pool., then divide the rest of the remaining HP evenly amongst the wounded. or just wing it. (it could be that men only the men that died were injured, or all were injured). There is no need to do this unless you need to split the unit up.

Units are abstracted, so you don't need to normally count losses until the end of the battle. Thus do not recount surviving men each round using the above system. Thus, with our 10 man unit with 80 HP. They ALWAYS get a x8 multiplier when attack, even when they're down to 40HP. It's the cost of abstracting combat so it goes faster.

This should allow you to have units of varying sizes running around. doing combat and the like.

If one side has a smaller unit than the other, only twice the smaller unit's man count can be used on the attacker's side. Thus for 5 men versus 15, the larger side only gets to multiply by 10, to represent the limited space for units to attack (some guys get stuffed in the back).

These rules then assume your moving men around at 20' or 30' rates (based on their natural movement rates). I'd use 1/4" grid paper for the battle, and make bigger marker pieces (ie. 2x5 square playing piece to represent 10 men). And move it around using normal D&D rules.

As a GM, you can handle morale rolls just like normal encounters. For the most part, when a unit takes 50% damage, they may run. When the army takes 50% losses, they may run. Those are good simple rules of thumb. Your players may point out other situations (I just lopped off the Orc Captain's freakin head! Whose they're DADDY!).

You should not have individiuals fighting "Units" Break those units into individuals. This should allow PCs/NPCs to interact with units. Or use the multiple men rule (which means when the Orc King fights one of your swordsmen units of 10 men, the Orc is a unit of 1, so only 2 men effectively fight the Orc King). This keeps you from having to break up units for boring NPCs. Because the Units have big HP values (representing total HP of the unit) your PC wizards can fling fireballs and get satisfactory results.

This system is actually pretty simple and doesn't model everything, but its worked for us for 10 years. You can use it at large scale or smaller scale.

Janx

 

[Amaroq]

We've used that system (Janx', above) in our campaign. Found it worked well if the overall party size is small, and the number of "named characters" is low, but we were trying to 'break apart' units each time a PC or named NPC interacts with them. We had a lot of named characters, which meant it degenerated into a ton of individual-on-individual interactions, and bogged down horribly.

I'd recommend taking his advice from that second-to-last paragraph: "You should not have individiuals fighting "Units" Break those units into individuals. "

The system works well for abstracting the 'the orc King attacks a band of ten first level fighters (8 hp x 10 = 80). He gets three attacks, and hits twice for 24 points of damage. The first-level fighters are down to 56 hit points. Move on. There's no need to break them up.

If you break a unit up for the PC's benefit, creating individual-on-individual interactions, try to keep the number of areas where that is happening limited, or 'break them up' only for determining how many attack rolls there are, rather than going as far as giving them individual counters, initiative, etc.

If you have a fumble/critical system, you might drop the fumbles and crits for "units" - it doesn't make sense for a unit of ten to all drop their swords at the same time, or to all score critical hits at the same time; save your fumbles and crits for individual rolls when the PC's are involved.

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There's another option I've used for 'sketching' a battle scene. It doesn't have to be a wargame if the PC's aren't in command.

Instead of feeling like you have to map out the entirety of the battle, you might map out only what the PC's are actively aware of. A large-scale engagement kicks up a lot of dust, and if you go wander around Gettysburg or other historical battle sites, it becomes clear that it is impossible to see everything which was going on from any vantage point.

If the PC's aren't in command or likely to ascend to command during the battle, you can use any system you like to resolve the "off camera" aspects of the battle, and map out only the parts which individual PC's can see.

I've used "scripted outcome", "Opposed d20 rolls (one for each 'front' or 'flank'), with modifiers for morale, numbers, and ground," and "Based on extrapolating how the PC's encounter is going" to resolve off-camera aspects of a larger battle, each with good effect. I very much recommend those approaches as much more convenient for the DM if it makes sense for your campaign world.

 

[MerricB]

I dislike the unit (miniature) combat system in Cry Havoc greatly; avoid it if you can.

Cheers!

 

[Iron_Chef]

Free Mass Combat pdf for Conan d20 up at MongoosePublishing.com!
http://www.mongoosepublishing.com/conan/downloads.php

 

[diaglo]

Chainmail by Perrin & Gygax

or the Companion Rules Boxed set ...war machine

or Battlesystem



use anything but the Miniatures Handbook. it is that bad.

Cry Havoc is nice...but limited.
so is Quintessential Fighter

 

[Cor Azer]

I dislike the unit (miniature) combat system in Cry Havoc greatly; avoid it if you can.

Cheers!

Can I ask why? Is it a dislike of miniatures in general, or something specific to this implementation (I ask, because I've found it quite useful)?