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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Janx" data-source="post: 1407131" data-attributes="member: 8835">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 archers10 archers10 pikement10 swordsmen10 swordsmenmake 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 unitThe 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</blockquote>

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