Mass Combat

[Mrbongos]

I've been looking into mass combat, because my group likes to get into armies from time to time.

In 3rd ed, Heroes of Battle was a godsend, but harder to translate to 4th edition (oddly enough) outside of the rank point structure that is available --

I've been looking at Hard Boiled Ideas: Armies from onebadegg.com, which is a pretty derned good way of running it; turning armies into 'pcs' and 'monsters') and operating it on adjusted scales on a normal battle mat (hooray for Dry Erase map boards) and it looks quite functional.

In the past I've utilized a way of having minis represent armies and running things in a form of skill challenge following this sort of procedure:

1. Movement phase: Each military unit was allowed to move 1 or more squares depending on the scale of the battlefields.
2. Skill challenge per normal rules, with DCs set depending on what is being tried.
3. Units that came into conflict with each other, or could attack via ranged attacks, rolled a d20 with a unit bonus, and then any additional bonus or penalty from the skill challenge to represent attack and defense.
4. Units had so many strikes before elimination, and were removed.
5. Rinse, repeat.

It worked, but got a little time consuming - hence why I'm looking for alternate means that could keep up the action without devouring the entire session.

Anyone have any sort of ideas that I'm not spotting while digging through the boards?

P.S. I've noted a use for the D&D essentials sheet! If using the Hard Boiled Ideas: Armies book, or a similar idea of an army as a PC/Monster the essentials sheet works rather nice as a one pager for each army.

 

[Chris Knapp]

Personally, I use OBE's HBI:Armies too, with a bunch of additional rules stolen from the original Battlesystem boxed set (my all-time favorite D&D mass-combat system.)

Some of the things I added:
Climbing assault ladders
Grappling hooks
Siege engines & wall damage
Unique creatures (like dragons) represented as single "armies"
Morale effects (in the form of immediate reactions to taking damage or becoming bloodied)
All attacks do at least some damage on a miss

 

[S'mon]

When I want to resolve a battle by rolls but don't want a tactical wargame, I always use the War Machine d% rules from the BECMI D&D Companion Set.

 

[Will Doyle]

I recently ran P1's Battle of Moonstair using custom mass combat rules. Like you, I used d&d figures to represent units, and a blown-up, gridded version of the module's moonstair map.

The rules were heavily based on the Piquet battle system: basically, each side has a deck of cards that represent units ("Move Cavalry" / "Move Infantry" / etc), and dices against eachother for "Initiative Points". They then spend those points to turn cards and order units.

For the actual combat resolution, I used a dumbed-down version of Warhammer Battle.

The players were assumed to be "everywhere" - moving around sending out messengers, plugging gaps, etc. However, I had a list of triggers that would cause us to "zoom in" and fight a conventional battle - triggers like objectives (enemies pass X point on the map), or abstract time events (the players run out of order cards and have to reshuffle).

Winning zoomed-in battles resulted in bonuses for the mass combat game. Some of the zoom-in battles were also skill challenge dependent - for example, one event had them track down an infiltrator behind their lines. So there was lots of roleplaying - I was particularly pleased when they asked if putting the head of the enemy champion onto their trebuchet would give the enemy a morale penalty when fired

Anyway, it worked great. Took a whole session though. If you're interested, I put a photo up on my blog, along with the rough rules.

 

[Siberys]

Quoting myself from a previous discussion;

Risk.

No, Seriously. Do up a map of the battlefield done up in rough sections. Have each of the PCs start controlling certain areas, and break the enemy into parts controlling others. When certain conditions are met (such as 'a PC takes the gatehouse', or 'an enemy takes four sections in one turn') run a set-piece, standard D&D battle, and have the outcome affect the risk game. Otherwise run as Risk.

The biggest benefit is that the players probably already know how to play Risk, and if they know what they're doing, Risk is a fast game.

I have yet to do this, but oh do I want to.

 

[D'karr]

I have yet to do this, but oh do I want to.

We did something similar using the Conquest of Nerath game. It worked well, but we had to learn the rules for CoN, which we were going to do anyway.

 

[Mrbongos]

OOooOOO

I recently ran P1's Battle of Moonstair using custom mass combat rules. Like you, I used d&d figures to represent units, and a blown-up, gridded version of the module's moonstair map.

The rules were heavily based on the Piquet battle system: basically, each side has a deck of cards that represent units ("Move Cavalry" / "Move Infantry" / etc), and dices against eachother for "Initiative Points". They then spend those points to turn cards and order units.

For the actual combat resolution, I used a dumbed-down version of Warhammer Battle.

The players were assumed to be "everywhere" - moving around sending out messengers, plugging gaps, etc. However, I had a list of triggers that would cause us to "zoom in" and fight a conventional battle - triggers like objectives (enemies pass X point on the map), or abstract time events (the players run out of order cards and have to reshuffle).

Winning zoomed-in battles resulted in bonuses for the mass combat game. Some of the zoom-in battles were also skill challenge dependent - for example, one event had them track down an infiltrator behind their lines. So there was lots of roleplaying - I was particularly pleased when they asked if putting the head of the enemy champion onto their trebuchet would give the enemy a morale penalty when fired

Anyway, it worked great. Took a whole session though. If you're interested, I put a photo up on my blog, along with the rough rules.

Personally, I use OBE's HBI:Armies too, with a bunch of additional rules stolen from the original Battlesystem boxed set (my all-time favorite D&D mass-combat system.)

Some of the things I added:
Climbing assault ladders
Grappling hooks
Siege engines & wall damage
Unique creatures (like dragons) represented as single "armies"
Morale effects (in the form of immediate reactions to taking damage or becoming bloodied)
All attacks do at least some damage on a miss

All some good ideas here, though some of the ones I've been looking at in particular have come here - like Mr. Doyle's rules for morale and such at his blog.

I've also considered digging out my Battletech rules, and simplify them as well - has some good potential therin for mass combat (such as for initiative, and expansion on the morale ideas)

Another one that I suddenly thought of for Mass combat (and I dunno how I didn't think of it before) would be to dig out the rules from Werewolf: The Wild West from White Wolf (specifically from either Wild West Companion or Frontier Secrets, I forget which one exactly and I don't feel like paging through) Or the War In Concordia supplement for Changeling 2nd edition. Those actually had some pretty simple, but detailed, mass combat rules... Thank goodness for posting stuff on line, otherwise I doubt I would've thought of it.

 

[Rhenny]

I just have each player announce what he or she is doing to aid the battle and I make them roll for a skill challenge. Each failure will damage PCs (different amounts based on the level of the conflict - perhaps 2d6 or 3d6 for lower level conflicts...2d10 or 3d10 for paragon, etc.) If they succeed in the skill challenge, I narrate the battle in positive terms. If they fail, they get pushed back and have to regroup.

Players come up with ideas like scout the enemy lines, heal others in combat, fight, try to inspire others to fight more valiantly, use knowledge of natural terrain to set up defensive position, try to intimidate foes with a brilliant martial display, etc. Healers can also heal PCs if they get too hurt, or revive dying PCs, etc.

I set DCs based on the difficulty of the battle itself. If the PC's side is basically even in numbers and strength with the foe's side, DC is moderate. If they are outnumbered or out-gunned, it is hard or hard +. If the PCs have the advantage it would be easy.

I used this once...and plan to use it in a few weeks when my players get to a small battle. It works for us. I like it because it makes time go by so much faster than actually playing out combat.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

I don't know if you want to zoom "out" or not.

If you want to focus on the PCs, I would recommend making them their own unit, taking them out of leading the troops altogether. (They can do that kind of thing in non-combat encounter though.)

The PCs would be higher level than their allies, possibly even higher level than the commander of their side. Their job would be to target important "set pieces" of the enemy side, eg their supply camp (guarded by a constantly-hungry brute and troops designated to defend that area), the artillery redoubt (naturally, this gives you the ability to create a nasty "monster" or "trap" to reflect the artillery), clashing with the enemy equivalent (probably led by a warlord-type), and the enemy HQ (probably the final battle). Winning each battle could have a "vignette" or flavor text explaining what effect this has had on the major battle.

Between set pieces, the PCs easily wade through lower level minions, and that would bog the game down, so there's no need to actually game that. If necessary, you could say each PC loses a healing surge between battles due to the constant assault by minions, which would probably be shooting at them.

In this case, the PCs effectively determine if they win or lose. The entire flowchart could resemble a skill challenge; if the PCs win a certain number of battles, and don't lose more than three, they win. Otherwise, their side loses, the amount won or lost determined by how many battles the PCs won or lost.