Looking for a mass combat system...

[MerricB]

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)?

No, it's not a dislike of miniatures in general - it's the implementation.

To begin with, there's some shoddy mathematics. A unit of 10 men takes up a 50ft x 50ft square - fair enough. However, a unit of 50 men takes up a 250 x 250 ft square. That is, quite frankly, unbelievable.

The movement rules look all right to begin with, until you realise that Attacks of Opportunity have been lessened terribly, basically eliminated for manuevering purposes - but flanking still exists. It's very easy to move a unit behind another one... and the other unit can't react at all!

Initiative is terrible: I move all my units, then you move all your units. For mass combat - and not just 100 people a side - I will likely be dealing with 30-40 units a side. At that point, not being able to react hurts terribly.

Once you move into that sort of numbers (30+ units per side), the Melee Contact system becomes terribly annoying to keep track of. Have this units attacked each other in melee?

When I look at Cry Havoc, I see a system that wanted to keep things simple by keeping it as close to D&D RPG combat as possible. Whilst doing this, it made things more complicated by adding more things to keep track of, and also made manuevering totally unrealistic. A unit of 10 men is not more manueverable than 1 man... but under Cry Havoc's system, it is.

Cheers!

 

[Janx]

ah, now we're getting somewhere. For a moment I was wondering if MerrickB got his 1400+ posts by replying with one-liners...

On unit sizes, perhaps they used a dumb formula, which could be corrected. In theory, my formula would be:

5'x5' square per man = 25' sq. feet. A 10 man unit would need 250 sq. feet
A 50 man unit would need 1250 sq. feet. Take those numbers and square root them to get a box shape, then round up to the nearest increment of 5'
10 men = 15.81 = 20'x20' box
50 men = 35.35 = 40'x40' box

That's probably a bit more to proper size.

I would propably try to make sure unit groups are limited to about 10 units per side as a maximum. Having 30-40 units running around seems a bit too much.

To keep track of units, I'd suggest borrowing from MageKnight and putting action tokens on each piece that has already been used. At the end of the round, remove them all. You might in fact limit a player to only moving half their army at a time (or some other favorite algorithm). Copy BattleTech, and only allow each side to move few units, alternating between sides. Or just roll init for all the units.

How much different is these other systems from what I outlined?

Janx

 

[John Q. Mayhem]

Testament also has a mass combat sytem, but it's from before tactics were invented, so there aren't any Basically armies are broken into three "sides," each with one or more commanders, and they all go at it. It's pretty simple.

 

[MerricB]

ah, now we're getting somewhere. For a moment I was wondering if MerricB got his 1400+ posts by replying with one-liners...

Nope. Occasionally I use two.

On unit sizes, perhaps they used a dumb formula, which could be corrected. In theory, my formula would be:

5'x5' square per man = 25' sq. feet. A 10 man unit would need 250 sq. feet
A 50 man unit would need 1250 sq. feet. Take those numbers and square root them to get a box shape, then round up to the nearest increment of 5'
10 men = 15.81 = 20'x20' box
50 men = 35.35 = 40'x40' box

That's probably a bit more to proper size.

The problem with resizing the units is that it throws off the rest of the game. The system is set up for play on a grid of 50'x50' squares; a round is 1 minute, and basically there's a scale factor of 10 accounted for in the rules.

I had this problem when thinking about scaling up the D&D Miniatures mass combat system to 10:1 scale: there are issues with area effect spells and individually targetted spells that must be dealt with.

Personally, I think any man-sized unit should fit in one square, if it's between 10 and 50 men.

I would propably try to make sure unit groups are limited to about 10 units per side as a maximum. Having 30-40 units running around seems a bit too much.

Note that each unit is represented by a single figure or token. The Battle of Neraka has 2,000 troops on each side and was done in 10:1 scale; it can be handled effectively by the 1st edition Battlesystem rules. 200 miniatures a side might sound a lot, but when those miniatures are grouped into formations it's nowhere near so bad.

There are no formations in Cry Havoc that I could find, and it's a problem. Formations are useful because they model units that stick together for better protection and offense, but trade off their manueverability.

To keep track of units, I'd suggest borrowing from MageKnight and putting action tokens on each piece that has already been used. At the end of the round, remove them all. You might in fact limit a player to only moving half their army at a time (or some other favorite algorithm). Copy BattleTech, and only allow each side to move few units, alternating between sides. Or just roll init for all the units.

Keeping track of which units have been used isn't a problem. What's a problem is the Melee Contact system.

In normal D&D combat, two characters in adjacent squares threaten each other; if you try and move past an opposing character, you'll provoke an attack of opportunity. It's not that hard to have a movement speeds of 8 (so 16 with a double move), so fast characters can move effectively into flanking positions, although at the risk of an AoO.

In Cry Havoc, because of the scale, two units in adjacent squares are not considered to be in "melee contact" unless one has attacked the other. Thus, in the initial rounds of combat, a fast unit can move behind another unit very easily, then you can bring up another unit to flank that unit. The full flanking rules still apply (no facing), so if that second unit has rogues with Sneak Attack...

When you look at the actual numbers, you see that a unit can move 800 feet, manuevering behind an enemy unit... with no reaction from that unit. I find this unbelievable.

There should be a difference between personal combat and mass combat, and the primary one is one of manueverability. When the mass combat is more manueverable than the personal combat, then there's a problem.

Cheers!

 

[cimbrog]

I've had a lot of mass combat in my campaigns over the years. Before, we used the War Machine from the Companion boxed set coupled with Battlesystem for smaller fights. It was detailed wargaming and that was what we were looking for. If that's what you're looking for, others on this thread will serve you better.

However, my players for d20 don't like wargaming. In order to keep the players involved in the action while making the battle little more than a narrative device, I completely winged it. Unless there are notable units to keep track of (like an airship battle), don't count how many are dead or who is doing what damage. Focus on a series of fast moving simple rolls for the players that stresses the feel of what's happening (a Ride check for a cavalry charge, an attack roll for general melee, a Strength check for crashing shield walls). If they're in the thick of it, have random attacks made on them, also. Describe the tide of battle turning in tune with the player's successes and failures - for example, if the players pull off an awesome Ride check in a charge, the enemy like breaks. When things seem to go far enough in one way or the other, a rout occurs and the victors take the field.

The best thing to do when trying to be cinimatic over tactical is to keep it moving fast, much faster than the normal d20 combat system would normally allow. Just my $0.02 in favor of anarchy.

 

[Cor Azer]

No, it's not a dislike of miniatures in general - it's the implementation.

To begin with, there's some shoddy mathematics. A unit of 10 men takes up a 50ft x 50ft square - fair enough. However, a unit of 50 men takes up a 250 x 250 ft square. That is, quite frankly, unbelievable.

Yeah, that's certainly true. I had noticed some of that as well, but since I was mainly using units of 10-20 men, hadn't noticed the problems in the extreme.

The movement rules look all right to begin with, until you realise that Attacks of Opportunity have been lessened terribly, basically eliminated for manuevering purposes - but flanking still exists. It's very easy to move a unit behind another one... and the other unit can't react at all!

Initiative is terrible: I move all my units, then you move all your units. For mass combat - and not just 100 people a side - I will likely be dealing with 30-40 units a side. At that point, not being able to react hurts terribly.

Huh? Mayhaps I should read the rules again. I took it as whomevever wins initiative gets to use 1 command, then the next person in initiative gets to use 1 command, alternating until every unit has been activated. If that's not the way it's supposed to work, it's probably a good House Rule for the system, and seemed to work very well for my group (But again, we were playing more units to a side with smaller sized units).

Once you move into that sort of numbers (30+ units per side), the Melee Contact system becomes terribly annoying to keep track of. Have this units attacked each other in melee?

When I look at Cry Havoc, I see a system that wanted to keep things simple by keeping it as close to D&D RPG combat as possible. Whilst doing this, it made things more complicated by adding more things to keep track of, and also made manuevering totally unrealistic. A unit of 10 men is not more manueverable than 1 man... but under Cry Havoc's system, it is.

Cheers!

I certainly didn't find my units of 10+ Men more maneuverable - but that was due to skilled placement of other units by the opposition (blocking off passages), and clever use of terrain. The lack of attacks of opportunity really didn't allow more much in the way of good flanking opportunities.

What really helped, was the Battle Leader feat which let the high level cavaier share his Trample feat with his heavy cavalry - that caused some mighty problems to the kobold swarms arrayed against the party.

 

[Cor Azer]

Nope. Occasionally I use two.

The problem with resizing the units is that it throws off the rest of the game. The system is set up for play on a grid of 50'x50' squares; a round is 1 minute, and basically there's a scale factor of 10 accounted for in the rules.

I had this problem when thinking about scaling up the D&D Miniatures mass combat system to 10:1 scale: there are issues with area effect spells and individually targetted spells that must be dealt with.

Personally, I think any man-sized unit should fit in one square, if it's between 10 and 50 men.

Yeah, I would have liked something like that as well. I like the 10:1 scale of most of the stuff going on, but it was somewhat bothersome that my units of 20 kobolds took up a 100ft by 100ft area each.

Note that each unit is represented by a single figure or token. The Battle of Neraka has 2,000 troops on each side and was done in 10:1 scale; it can be handled effectively by the 1st edition Battlesystem rules. 200 miniatures a side might sound a lot, but when those miniatures are grouped into formations it's nowhere near so bad.

There are no formations in Cry Havoc that I could find, and it's a problem. Formations are useful because they model units that stick together for better protection and offense, but trade off their manueverability.

I'm not sure what you're refering to by formations, but Cry Havoc allows for groups of units to ge gathered into formations during combat, allowing a commander to issue a single command to the entire group of units, instead of needing to issue commands to each one.

Keeping track of which units have been used isn't a problem. What's a problem is the Melee Contact system.

In normal D&D combat, two characters in adjacent squares threaten each other; if you try and move past an opposing character, you'll provoke an attack of opportunity. It's not that hard to have a movement speeds of 8 (so 16 with a double move), so fast characters can move effectively into flanking positions, although at the risk of an AoO.

In Cry Havoc, because of the scale, two units in adjacent squares are not considered to be in "melee contact" unless one has attacked the other. Thus, in the initial rounds of combat, a fast unit can move behind another unit very easily, then you can bring up another unit to flank that unit. The full flanking rules still apply (no facing), so if that second unit has rogues with Sneak Attack...

When you look at the actual numbers, you see that a unit can move 800 feet, manuevering behind an enemy unit... with no reaction from that unit. I find this unbelievable.

There should be a difference between personal combat and mass combat, and the primary one is one of manueverability. When the mass combat is more manueverable than the personal combat, then there's a problem.

Cheers!

Again, I may not have noticed this, because I thought that each side alternated activating 1 unit (or formation) at a time and we were playing with large enough sides that there wasn't room to maneuver into such excellent positions.

Still, the system worked quite well for my group, but as the saying goes, "To each his own."

 

[Plane Sailing]

The best mass combat system I've ever come across was in FGUs Bushido.

Basically you totted up the "army points" for each side, and the generals would roll their skill each turn, to see how many casualties each side took.

PCs who were involved in the battle could choose their level of bravery (I think it was either brave, normal or cowardly). Each turn of the battle, each of the PC's had to roll on a chart to see what happened to them - collect heads, take a few wounds, have an encounter. When the battle is resolved by the generals every PC has to make a final roll on either the victorious column or the defeated column. Some encounters would be weaker than you, some would be more powerful. Everyone gets split up in a battle and has to take on foes independently.

My description doesn't sound like much, but it worked really well in terms of handling army sized combats while PCs are fully involved in the fighting. There are lulls of calm and moments of noisy desperation. In fact I think I'll dig out my old Bushido books and do a d20 implementation of these rules!

Cheers

 

[Psion]

Cry Havoc would not be my first choice for Unit combat (but the army combat is great.) As with Merric, the linear growth of unit area killed my geek suspenders. Sure it's fantasy, but I just know better. Also, using a chart like it uses also turns me off.

I like Mongoose's OMCS. It's a nice, slick, system; the only thing missing is that they assume you will understand how to implement shrinking unit size and it's not spelled out explicitly (at least in the Quint Fighter version; they may have addressed this in the reprint on new version in Strongholds & Dynasties.)

I haven't read fields of blood all the way through yet, but it is also looking very slick. AEG's Mercenaries is nice too for the scale you are talking (10 man units resolved as individuals, which would work nicely for 50-100 troops on a side.)

 

[MerricB]

Huh? Mayhaps I should read the rules again. I took it as whomevever wins initiative gets to use 1 command, then the next person in initiative gets to use 1 command, alternating until every unit has been activated. If that's not the way it's supposed to work, it's probably a good House Rule for the system, and seemed to work very well for my group (But again, we were playing more units to a side with smaller sized units).

I double-checked: yes, you activate every unit you control on your turn.

I certainly didn't find my units of 10+ Men more maneuverable - but that was due to skilled placement of other units by the opposition (blocking off passages), and clever use of terrain. The lack of attacks of opportunity really didn't allow more much in the way of good flanking opportunities.

Were you running an indoors battle? I think of these things as outdoors for the most part.

Cheers!