Mass Combat Rules ... which ones?

[Breakdaddy]

Ive only used em for one battle (skirmish level) but the Cry Havoc rules worked rather nicely for me. They could be a little bit more concise but I like em a lot.

 

[Gundark]

huh?

...in fact, just dump d20 and go with Savage Worlds for your whole game: RPG, Skirmish & Mass Battle. That's what I did and I'm a heckuva lot happier for it.

Ok dump d20...you don't like d20...why do you even come to these boards?

 

[Grand_Director]

Companion Rules boxed set

Yes! I agree 100%. This system takes mass combat out of the war gaming arena an moves it to the role playing one. It rewards players for dedicating training and gold on troops while fairly reducing a multitude of random fantasy factors into a simple ratio.

It is also flexible enough to allow you to do many things with it. For example, you can run your players on a hit and run type of battle where they target the leader of the war party. If they are successful, that can add a bonus to the battle rating of the army. When they finish that, you can roll to see how the two armies do. That way PC's can feel like an important part of the fight rather then a positive modifier to a die roll. Either way the army fight is over in a relative short amount of time and you can get on with the game.

 

[MarauderX]

Yes! I agree 100%. This system takes mass combat out of the war gaming arena an moves it to the role playing one. It rewards players for dedicating training and gold on troops while fairly reducing a multitude of random fantasy factors into a simple ratio.

It is also flexible enough to allow you to do many things with it. For example, you can run your players on a hit and run type of battle where they target the leader of the war party. If they are successful, that can add a bonus to the battle rating of the army. When they finish that, you can roll to see how the two armies do. That way PC's can feel like an important part of the fight rather then a positive modifier to a die roll. Either way the army fight is over in a relative short amount of time and you can get on with the game.

Not so sure about how good it is, especially with the limited amount of results. And if you had the Gazeteers, some of them would make kinda unbalanced substitutions to a column, which were rather subjective anyway. Not only that, but it doesn't take into account fireball wizards too much, as even the PC mage could strike down more troops with Meteor Swarm and Fireballs than the kill results between the two armies. And if you treated the party(~20th level...in OD&D) as an army, they usually had a better score than a typical army. Didn't make too much sense at the time, less later since I don't use it.

Anyway, just wanted to say that Fields of Blood is available at Barnes & Noble online already. Does anyone have it yet?

 

[Grand_Director]

Not so sure about how good it is, especially with the limited amount of results. And if you had the Gazeteers, some of them would make kinda unbalanced substitutions to a column, which were rather subjective anyway. Not only that, but it doesn't take into account fireball wizards too much, as even the PC mage could strike down more troops with Meteor Swarm and Fireballs than the kill results between the two armies. And if you treated the party(~20th level...in OD&D) as an army, they usually had a better score than a typical army. Didn't make too much sense at the time, less later since I don't use it. QUOTE]

I’m just saying that I prefer a quick and easy resolution to mass combat when playing D&D. As a war gamer I appreciate a well drawn out fantasy battle with tactics. As a DM I need a quick way to resolve armies fighting so I can get back to the story. The war machine rules in OD&D do not take everything into account, but I can get a fair approximation of the relative strengths of two opposing armies. As a DM I can resolve mass combat as a story backdrop to achieve the results I want (as the story dictates) or as I believe they should happen.

Of course we want some hard and fast rules to adjudicate mass combat because players want to see the numbers. It gives them a feeling of control even if the system contains an amount of randomness to it. I have been in campaigns as a player when the DM didn’t have rules for mass combat and it was frustrating when our small war band was destroyed by our enemy in one fell swoop rather then a round by round combat. As a DM I ran “Red Arrow, Black Shield” for OD&D. From a war gaming stand point the system left much to be desired but in terms of a role playing game it was just right. The rules were consistent and covered almost all eventualities. The occasional mass combat was a nice change of place for my players especially because it did not dominate the game. In fact, the combat system was so good that we disregarded the adventures recommendation to use Battle System rules for mass combat that involved the PC’s personal army.

Different groups are going to desire a different level of mechanics in individual games. I am only saying that for my money, I prefer to adjudicate mass combat using rules that encompass 10 pages of text and can be explained in a half hour over learning an entire book in order to run a combat that might very well take two nights of gaming to resolve. Now if there are modern rules that can achieve that level of simplicity while addressing the mature gamer’s desire for meticulousness I would be interested to check it out. I do not knock any current attempts to bring mass combat to fantasy role playing. I only attempt to represent the DM’s who do not want to turn their weekly heroic, character study, role playing game into warhammer.

 

[Castellan]

I'm with Grand_Director on this one. I've just used the War Machine rules in the OD&D system to stat up some armies for a Forgotten Realms campaign my group has been running for the last couple years.

It's going to incorporate just the right amount of deviation from the role-playing standard that it should keep the party on edge, but not bog them down in the icky details of war that my players don't care about.

Farland's system looks reminiscent of the War Machine rules, and I'll probably check it out for future games, too.

Now, if I could just interest my players in mass combat on a wargaming level......

 

[S'mon]

I think War Machine is great, I'm thinking of using it for my current campaign, but I have two concerns.

1. For most units well over half the entire Basic Force Rating is determined by whether the troops stay together all year (1-12 months), how long the 'leader' spends with the force/year (up to 20 weeks), and how many weeks/year spent training (up to 20) - up to 52 points on the BFR. By contrast the troops' hit dice are worth only 2 points/die; so well-trained goblins (52+2 = 54 points) are much better than untrained fire giants (0+30 = 30 points), although other factors will mitigate this. Should the award for training be reduced, or is this realistic?

2. The d100% roll per side seems to introduce a very high level of randomness, with a potential random variation of 99 points. Outnumbering 2:1 is worth +30, 3:1 +45, 4:1, +60, 5:1 +70, 6:1 +80, 7:1 +90, 8:1 +100. To be sure of winnning against an equivalent force, then, you need to outnumber 8:1. Should the random roll be reduced?

There is no consideration for outnumbering enemy by more than 8:1. How do you handle this? Do you assume only 8 times the enemy force is involved in the battle, treating the remainder as a separate, uninvolved army? I guess that could work.

I used War Machine a lot in my 1e/2e AD&D campaigns, it seemed to work very well, but things were a lot 'looser' then, with a more linear power gradient. It was relatively easy to imagine 1e fire giants being defeated by highly trained goblins. 3e's geometric power increase means that CR 10 giants seem unstoppable compared to CR 1/4 goblins. Do we need to rejig War Machine to take account of troop CR?