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Mass Combat for E.N. Publishing's War of the Burning Sky
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<blockquote data-quote="RangerWickett" data-source="post: 3166221" data-attributes="member: 63"><p>I've been shopping around for what ruleset I would like to borrow to handle potential mass combat encounters in E.N. Publishing's <em>War of the Burning Sky</em> 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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>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. [hq](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.)[/hq] 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.</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p>I'm <em>slightly</em> 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. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink ;)" data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /></p><p></p><p>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 <a href="http://www.enworld.org/showpost.php?p=2235761&postcount=13" target="_blank">this thread</a>, 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.</p><p></p><p>What are your thoughts?</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="RangerWickett, post: 3166221, member: 63"] I've been shopping around for what ruleset I would like to borrow to handle potential mass combat encounters in E.N. Publishing's [i]War of the Burning Sky[/i] 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. [hq](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.)[/hq] 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 [i]slightly[/i] 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 [url=http://www.enworld.org/showpost.php?p=2235761&postcount=13]this thread[/url], 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? [/QUOTE]
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