D&D 5E Mass Combat in 5E

[CleverNickName]

The D&D Companion Rules and the D&D Rules Cyclopedia had game mechanics, rules, and tactics for mass combat: you know, one army against another army. These rules were quite rudimentary--they were not nearly as advanced as other mass combat systems like Warhammer or Chainmail, they didn't need minis or a battle mat, and they didn't account for a very wide variety of soldiers, creatures, or terrain--but they worked, and they were quite fun. Best of all, they were in the DM rulebook and they fit on less than 10 pages...everything I needed was right there, I didn't need to buy a new game or book.

I remember running the "CM-1: Test of the Warlords" module for nearly a year, with the players building a dominion and defending it against invading armies of orcs and frost giants. Twenty years later, my brother and I still talk about how his army of 300 elves routed a force of 200 frost giants.

But the mass combat rules were more useful to us in other situations of the game where large groups of monsters battled other large groups of monsters...not necessarily "armies," per se. Like when pirates boarded the party's ship, or when a platoon of goblins ambushed a crowded market, that sort of thing. Nobody wants to roll initiative 50 times a round. The BECM mass combat rules allowed me to quickly (and fairly) resolve these battles in just a few minutes, to the satisfaction of all involved.

I would like to see something like this in the 5E core set...even if it is just a basic set of rules printed on 10 pages. I don't necessarily need a whole separate game; there are already plenty of them out there to choose from if I decide to go into full-bore wargaming mode. But a rules-lite version of mass combat rules in the 5E core would be a major selling point for me.

 

[Cerebral Paladin]

Mass combat rules are important to me, but I don't particularly care if they're in the core set. That would be nice, but what I care about is that they be available, released relatively quickly (say, first six months or year) after the release of the core, and that they be real mass combat rules, not just rules for including PCs in a battle. To me, the value of mass combat rules is precisely in determining which side wins and whether the PCs army (or whatever) is capable of beating the other side's army.

I also think that mass combat rules are tightly linked to domain rules--sure, each is useful without the other, but not for nothing did the old Companion set include both. So I'd be very happy if they released a domains and mass combat module, and I'd be happy to buy that separately from the core.

 

[the Jester]

I would LOVE a good mass combat and domain management system in 5e. LOVE LOVE LOVE it.

 

[KidSnide]

I would LOVE a good mass combat and domain management system in 5e. LOVE LOVE LOVE it.

I'm in complete agreement. I'm even in ALL CAPS AGREEMENT.

I should note, however, that mass combat is a little tricky, because it's actually three different things. In order of scale (not importance):

1) Adding "units" to standard D&D combat. If 9th level PCs go into combat with 20 allies against 100 foes, you want the ability to track enemies as groups as opposed to as individual monsters. This could be a more robust version of 4e's swarm mechanic.

2) Tactical battle simulation. Some groups want to break out the tactical war game to resolve some big battles, Bloodstone-Pass-style. You want to allow PCs of sufficient level to have a significant impact on the battle, but this differs from standard D&D combat in that the composition and positioning of the troops on each side have a dominant impact on the outcome of the battle (even if the personal effort of the PCs tips the balance in their favor).

(Notably, the 3.5 miniatures handbook fell down on this, as it was difficult to scale significantly beyond what regular D&D could handle. You could do a battle with a few hundred people on each side, but it was unwieldy for a "Helm's Deep" battle.)

3) War simulation. Like the Companion rules, this is a strategic game that focuses more on raising troops and getting them to the right location, than on tactical control of the battles themselves. I would expect this type of mass combat system to be heavily tied to a domain management system.

Obviously, these three scales play well with each other, as anyone doing a war simulation might want to play out the climatic battle with a battle system. Likewise, someone playing a battle might want to play out particular key sub-engagements with standard D&D rules (in the style of Heroes of Battle).

Personally, I'm willing to wait a year or two for these sub-systems to come out, but I'd like to be an important early priority rather than a late product cycle add-on. Individually, this subsystems can be very specific, but together they enable a wide range of campaign styles. As Lord of the Rings aptly demonstrates, epic fantasy battles are a staple part of the genre and should be supported by a game like D&D. Even traditional adventure-focused campaigns can benefit from allowing the PCs to participate role in the great battles.

-KS

 

[CleverNickName]

I also think that mass combat rules are tightly linked to domain rules--sure, each is useful without the other, but not for nothing did the old Companion set include both. So I'd be very happy if they released a domains and mass combat module, and I'd be happy to buy that separately from the core.

It doesn't necessarily have to be an either-or situation. It would be amazing if they had 10 pages or so of a rules-lite mass combat rules system, ala the BECM rules, and then release a mass combat module that expands upon them a few months later. Sort of like how the 3.5 DMG included a few basic stats and rules for watercraft and naval combat, and then expanded on them later in books like "Stormwrack."

 

[Black Knight Irios]

It doesn't necessarily have to be an either-or situation. It would be amazing if they had 10 pages or so of a rules-lite mass combat rules system, ala the BECM rules, and then release a mass combat module that expands upon them a few months later. Sort of like how the 3.5 DMG included a few basic stats and rules for watercraft and naval combat, and then expanded on them later in books like "Stormwrack."

Yes, they can expand a simplistic rules module later on. I'd prefer a simple solution for mass battles in the core rules, those 10 pages sound about right.

Even so I can't remember when we actually did mass battles. But I think it would be neat to have a simple version in the core rules, just because I don't want to buy a new book just for mass combat.

 

[Jeff Carlsen]

It would be wise to include some basic mass combat rules in the DMG.

Eventually, though, I'd want to see a book like Heroes of Battle. It was one of my favorite 3.5 books, presenting a complex challenge model I use for many things throughout many different game systems.

But, Heroes of Battle is lacking if you want support for tactical and strategic rules for war. I'd love to see it expanded to include that, and perhaps essays on actual combat strategies in a D&D setting. You know, really go all out in providing support for a particular game style.

 

[Minigiant]

I would not mind 2-10 pages on mass combat in the core books. They expand it more later.

That way my army of armored bears didn't get restless.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I've yet to see a mass-combat system for a game primarily played at the individual unit level that I really liked...except maybe Federation & Empire.

I think It would be best to simply design a wargame along the line of the old computer game, Warlords, in which special units- dragons, wizards, heroes, undead, griffins, pegasai, etc.- had special abilities that affected combat. For ALL the MM critters. And as the game aged, each subsequent "creature catalog" would include wargame stats for the new creatures.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yeah, I could care less. I've had little to no traction with mass combat in most D&D campaigns. I have some wargamers in some of my campaigns, but mass combat apparently is pretty much utterly uninteresting in its details to anyone else. Honestly I haven't found any of the mass combat systems that came as part of or as adjuncts to D&D or other RPGs to be very good games anyway. Chainmail was pretty decent, not much since then has really been worth bothering with.

I'd as soon that 5e left mass combat as a topic for how to use large battles as backdrop or otherwise work them into adventures. If I want to fight out a big battle with some of my wargamer friends we'll use a decent set of rules and if we want to work that into our game, well, we'll manage that. I don't see much value in half-baked subsystems.

 

[ComradeGnull]

I'd be interested to eventually see something, but I don't see it being part of the 'core' game. You are talking about combat on a fundamentally different scale than what the basic rules have to cover, which pushes things pretty solidly in the 'module' direction. Mass combat seems like one of those things that- given that you are going to need a different set of stats, mechanics, etc.- can easily be bolted on later, or even ported over from something that was designed from the ground up as a larger-scale wargame.

If they do include mass combat at some point, I hope that they will take a slightly different route than they did with Heroes of Battle. I don't see myself as a player or DM making use of feats and class options that really only help in mass combat situations. I don't want to have to pick between orienting a (N)PC as a mass combat performer or an individual- if Bonko the Bard is the greatest bard in the land, he shouldn't need an extra feat to have his performance trigger a moral check- mass combat utility should be baked into the core character.

Honestly, I would want a domain management ruleset before mass combat. Unless the troops actually belong to the PCs, I don't see myself using mass combat as anything other than a scripted background. If a battle is going to turn on the actions of the PC's, it will be because they hunted down and killed the enemy commander in single combat or executed some other smart small-group tactic, not because the 132nd Illithid Cavalry company rolled poorly on its attack.

 

[Li Shenron]

I've never tried to run a mass battle, but it would certainly be an interesting (occasional) addition to a campaign.

From my point of view, I would expect a mass battle ruleset to provide me the ability to cover the following scenarios:

A- the PCs participate into large-scale battle: they are soldiers or perhaps elite soldiers depending on their character level and their social status in the campaign; the players are playing their characters more or less in a similar way as in a regular adventure but are now immersed into a long and chaotic battle, they can directly affect the battle around them but not the battle as a whole (although they can provide some indirect effects to that)

B- the PCs lead the large-scale battle: they are the commanders of the battle so they can affect the entire battle both by preparing/organizing the troops before it starts and by directing the tactics during the fight; presumably the characters are not only high in social ranks (to be in charge) but also are high level enough so that you can presume they won't easily be killed in action and therefore the players actually do not "run" their characters individually (even if they are present on the battlefield) but instead play a different game of controlling army units and choosing/changing battle-scale tactics during the battle; it might still happen an occasional duel in the middle of the large battle, against a similar elite member of the enemy army, in which case the player(s) resume playing her PC as normal and such mini-battle is handled with normal combat rules

I think new rules are definitely needed for scenario B, but scenario A might just be handled with modified combat rules.

What I don't want is rules that reduce a mass battle into one (or a few) dice roll done by the DM. If I ever run a mass battle in D&D, I want the players to be engaged into actually doing something, and it cannot not be just rolling, it has to be making tactical decisions that will affect the outcome... just like a regular combat with rounds, but between units (and obviously longer rounds, or turns, although it should probably better work simultaneously, not with an initiative-like sequence). I want the players to have to decide things such as "let our archers shoot a first volley while the pikers in the front ready against charge" or "move the cavalry to the flank side of the battle" or "twenty knights with my Paladin will now focus on the enemy leader Ogre riding that dire elephant". This is essentially the scenario B.

For scenario A, the best would be if how well the players play their "local" combat within the mass battle can have an effect on the whole battle's results, but this is not easy at all to design! First of all, it should be almost certain that the PCs won't all die in the battle (PCs death should probably have the same frequency of occurrence as in a regular adventure after all). This means you cannot just state that if the PCs survive then the war is won, if they get TPK then the was is lost. Other outcomes are possible, maybe one side retreats, maybe the PCs survive but their side is losing and so on. You might just as well let the DM predetermine the outcome and use no rules at all when the PCs are too low level. This is IMHO tricky and requires very good guidelines rather than hard-written rules.

[bottom line] Overall, those rules should still be simple, at least in line with the average 5e complexity... roughly and fairly realistic but not simulationists. Since the rules for scenario B would be mostly detatched to the regular combat rules for single characters, a gaming group that wants a simulationist approach to mass battles can just find such rules in other games which already do a great job at that and use them in a D&D campaign with little problems.

 

[Li Shenron]

If I want to fight out a big battle with some of my wargamer friends we'll use a decent set of rules and if we want to work that into our game, well, we'll manage that. I don't see much value in half-baked subsystems.

Totally understandable, but doesn't match what I prefer...

I am not enough interested in a wargame, but if I was, I would probably just play a wargame, like you say.

OTOH I would never use a wargame inside a D&D campaign, unless all my players wanted such change of pace. What I prefer instead, is to have an occasional mass-battle in the campaign, and being able to run the battle (instead of totally predetermining the outcome for story reasons) but doing so with the input of the players. In fact what I want is that the player are responsible for their side of the battle, while I run the monsters' side as usual.

But in order for this to work, I need exactly a half-baked subsystem because anything too complicated would lead the game too far away from what the players expect (and handle) from a game of D&D.

I certainly need a mass-battle to take up at most one session of gaming, not more because I would hate having to "save" and resume on another day, but this is still too much generally. If an average regular PC combat is going to take up e.g. 30 minutes, I would say that a mass-battle should take up either the same amount or maybe twice as much if it includes a combat scene at local level with the PCs. Some length is good because it also delivers the feel that this was a large scale battle that takes a lot of real-time, but not too much.

I've had the BECMI books for a while but I still haven't read the mass combat rules, and since I don't have them here right now anyway, I just checked the retroclone Dark Dungeons from the web, although I'm not sure they are exactly the same... and I think these are fairly simple rules, so I think it can be done!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Totally understandable, but doesn't match what I prefer...

I am not enough interested in a wargame, but if I was, I would probably just play a wargame, like you say.

OTOH I would never use a wargame inside a D&D campaign, unless all my players wanted such change of pace. What I prefer instead, is to have an occasional mass-battle in the campaign, and being able to run the battle (instead of totally predetermining the outcome for story reasons) but doing so with the input of the players. In fact what I want is that the player are responsible for their side of the battle, while I run the monsters' side as usual.

But in order for this to work, I need exactly a half-baked subsystem because anything too complicated would lead the game too far away from what the players expect (and handle) from a game of D&D.

I certainly need a mass-battle to take up at most one session of gaming, not more because I would hate having to "save" and resume on another day, but this is still too much generally. If an average regular PC combat is going to take up e.g. 30 minutes, I would say that a mass-battle should take up either the same amount or maybe twice as much if it includes a combat scene at local level with the PCs. Some length is good because it also delivers the feel that this was a large scale battle that takes a lot of real-time, but not too much.

I've had the BECMI books for a while but I still haven't read the mass combat rules, and since I don't have them here right now anyway, I just checked the retroclone Dark Dungeons from the web, although I'm not sure they are exactly the same... and I think these are fairly simple rules, so I think it can be done!

Right. I've had various battle scenes in different campaigns. My best experience is using the 4e Skill Challenge system as a framework. Mike Mearls wrote a pretty good article in his SC series a couple years back where he designed an SC with the PCs defending a fort against an army. It was pretty well done. I know other people have done similar things. Basically figure out the overall scenario and allow for the PCs to do various things or assume various roles in the battle. They can pick different tactics or strategies to attempt, or do other things. It provides a pretty good framework that is abstract enough that you don't have to get bogged down in the minutia of an actual mass combat system, but you can still roll some dice and make interesting choices. Some standard combat can also be embedded in the scenario, say if the party decides to go try to assassinate the enemy commander, that sort of thing. You can extend this concept to a whole campaign.

I think this sort of stuff is really ideally suited to something like DDI. A lot of page count can be spent on elaborating different ideas and scenarios, but it is stuff that MOST DMs will only use very rarely. It is nice to have but hard to really justify page count in a printed book for. I think DDI really is underdeveloped so far, because sadly WotC hasn't figured out that CURATING the collection of stuff they have is really more important than generating reams of new articles. It is hard to find specific things you want.

 

[Agamon]

I went searching for something to add to my new sandbox game, and figured that since Adventurer Conqueror King is OSR, it's system would fit on nicely.

And it looks as though it would. However, I was so impressed by the system, I'm just going to use it.

If you want you D&D to play as adventurer -> ruler, ACKS is built for it, and very well, I might add. And if you're put off by the B/X version of D&D it's built on, filing off the numbers and using it as a DDN "module" looks very easy to do.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

I think a mass combat module is needed, though I'm not hard over about it being in the core books. The BECMI rules were OK, but to date none of the D&D mass combat rules have done a great job. Most important is that the rules work.

I'd like to see rules that are similar to the base D&D combat system (no completely different mechanics), and ones that can have PC skills and abilities influence the outcome of battles as "leaders".

 

[Lord Zardoz]

I would LOVE a good mass combat and domain management system in 5e. LOVE LOVE LOVE it.

As far as domain management, I think an optimal starting point for this would be the Birthright Ruleset. Start from that and modify the mechanics to better fit the d20 mechanics of 3rd / 4th / 5th edition. The only difficult part would be coming up with balanced target DC's.

As for the mass combat, working with something reasonably scalable that would also work well on a typical combat grid with the miniatures used for D&D combat is probably going to be an exercise in frustration. Given the attempt at a flatter AC vs To Hit scale for 5th edition, you could probably just scale it out as a collective HP pool and damage output. Have the formations suffer penalties or outright dispersal if the hp pool is dropped by half and things should work in a plausible manner.

END COMMUNICATION

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

yeah, the trick is more making it interesting and tactical. It is easy enough to come up with basic attack and damage mechanics. Picking the right scales for time, unit size, distance, etc is one key. Having interesting and engaging mechanics for initiative, morale, fog of war, command and control, etc is another.

 

[Bluenose]

I wouldn't mind seeing a "domain management" system which gave me some rules for conflict, but I'd not be interested in a set of mass battle rules. Partly because I think they'd be badly done compared to the wargames rules that are written by wargame designers rather than RPG designers.

 

[herrozerro]

My favorite rules for mass combat has been hard boiled armies for 4e http://www.rpgnow.com/product/60728/OBE:-Hard-Boiled-Armies-for-D&D-4E

4e is great for mass combat. All you need is a larger sense of scale. I hope any 5e rules take from these ideas.