Mass Combat for E.N. Publishing's War of the Burning Sky

[RangerWickett]

I've been shopping around for what ruleset I would like to borrow to handle potential mass combat encounters in E.N. Publishing's War of the Burning Sky campaign saga, coming out next year. Right now I think I'm going to use Bad-Axe's mass combat system that was adapted from Grim Tales, but I wanted to get people's comments and suggestions.

At its basest level, the GT mass combat system abstracts every unit with a battle rating (BR) equal to its Encounter Level, and when units fight they make rolls (d20+BR), with good rolls representing good combat, chipping away at the strength of the foe.

The benefits of the system, in my mind, are that it is abstract, fairly easy to adapt to different units that the party might enlist in the war, and fairly easy to learn. (Note, if I do use it, I plan to ease people into it over the course of the campaign saga, so they're comfortable with it by the time comes for the epic battles at the campaign's climax.) Also, it is short and cheap. I could simply copy the pertinent materials into the adventures that will use it, and include it with the campaign saga, or I could point people in the direction of Bad-Axe's products, which I'd be a fan of because I dig any chance to pimp the works of Ben Durbin.

The flaw I see are that it might be a bit too abstract. If the party manages to enlist the aid of a dragon, a swarm of telepathic aberrations, and a company of drow warriors, I think that if the players are excited about leading the army, they would like their forces to feel distinct and cool, instead of just having a high battle rating. There's also the flaw that some groups just won't want to deal with mass combat, but that's easy to handle, since we can just write the adventures so they work without mass combat scenarios.

I'm slightly open to other suggestions for mass combat systems, but for me to change the system would need to be even simpler than GT's. And diaglo, please don't suggest Chainmail or BattleSystem or whatever other old-school thing you love this week.

No, I'm more interested in hearing thoughts from the community on how they would like mass combat implemented in the course of a campaign. In this thread, Wulf points out that the goal of the system is not to make individual battles cool, but to handle simply the movements of battle. Likewise, I would want the campaign saga to keep the main focus on the events the PCs perform, and have the broader military battles not be a huge component unless the players in a given group want to play up that aspect.

What are your thoughts?

 

[Gundark]

Well dare I say it...but heroes of battle perhaps? I kinda like the idea of the battlefield as the dungeon. However I wouldn't want to see this with every battle (not sure how many you're throwing in there). It would work good for a key battle in the campaign.

However like you said the GT system works decent....

 

[Alzrius]

Well dare I say it...but heroes of battle perhaps?

Well, even if that was Open Game Content, which it isn't, I think that'd still be too long.

 

[David E]

Well, I'm really not sure how to make the battles more unique, as you said - reflecting the varied abilities of a drow regiment, a dragon, and a horde of aberrations - without choosing a more complicated ruleset than GT. If you ask me, Cry Havoc by Malhavoc Press does a pretty good job simplifying mass combat rules; that is, because it tries to adapt mass combat to the d20 rules for combat, Cry Havoc makes it as uncomplicated (or complicated, take your pick) as a standard combat situation in 3.5 D&D. A unit of ogres, for example, would have different abilities than a unit of half-dragons. It also covers how individuals work on the battlefield, how spells interact with units, etc. It covers all the bases, really.

Plus, you can get the book for $10 at RPGnow.com. Not a bad deal at all!

My two cents.

- D

 

[00Machado]

Does Heroes of Battle need to be open content? I seem to recall that it's more of a methodology than rule mechanics.

I'd like to see this approach for in the thick of it type battles that involve the PCs directly. I don't have enough experience with other systems to know what would be good for handling troop movements/battles that are directed by PCs, but which take place off screen.

I imagine that outcomes can be impacted by PCs skill at strategy, as well as their battlefield successes or defeats in the previous battles that are relevant to the one at hand.

 

[MerricB]

Go and get Heroes of Battle and use that. As 00Machado notes, it's the methodology used, not actual rules. Oh, and get Red Hand of Doom for one take on how the methodology can work in an actual adventure.

Cry Havoc requires the DM & players to learn a new system (and one that has problems in any case). HoB doesn't cover unit vs unit battles, but I'll be blunt: such is dull. Have the PCs' actions have an effect on the battlefield, where their choices impact the battle, and things will be good.

Cheers!

 

[Drawmack]

I seem to remember some very long threads on this topic in the House Rules forum a couple of years ago.

In games where we've used mass battle we tended to keep it very simple and handle it like so.

A group would all have the same abilities so we just did a single character sheet to represent a group of people then then multiplied HP and Damage by the number of people in the group. Then when we ran the battle each group played like a single character. We then "zoomed in" on the area where the PCs were (if they were not the generals) and played that like a ragular battle. So you kind of had two battles at once. The over all battle involving hundreds or thousands of people represented by 10 - 20 characters and the battle within a battle where the PCs were.

Don't know if that works for what you're looking for or not, but it is what we did.

 

[RangerWickett]

Oh, I totally intend the main focus of the adventures to be on pivotal actions the PCs take, but I'm sure that, by billing the campaign as a grandiose fantasy war, people will be disappointed if they don't at least have the option of leading armies in vast strategic movements. But I want it to be a mini-game, kind of like something out of Tournaments, Fairs, & Taverns, rather than a hugely detailed system.

Actually, that's how I intend to let GMs see whether their players are keen to the idea. In one of the first few adventures, the party will be introduced to a group of military students who play a simplified wargame to practice their skills, which conveniently enough uses the same rules that the players would use to command actual units later on. If the players don't dig the military practice, the GM can safely ignore the strategic options of the later adventures.

 

[catsclaw227]

Check out what Adrian Bott did for Mongoose in the Drow War Book 1 for Mass Combat. It abstracted out the battles, yet allowes the PCs to actually play out some of the key encounters. At first glance it seems a bit clunky, but in play it was VERY easy and flowed very nicely. And the players didn't need to learn a thing (but the DM should be real familiar with it)

 

[Land Outcast]

Haven't explored the link provided here to the One Page Fantasy Skirmish Rules, but (if it turns out to be good) could be of use.