Mass Combat?

[res]

The campaign im going to be running (starts monday, will go up a few levels before we get to large battles, so i have a bit of time to get stuff) will have a lot of mass combat. Specifically, a horde invades faerun. (I posted about this a while back). Horde is split into Centuries(about 80 men or so) which are grouped into Cohorts(about 5 to 6 centuries) which are grouped in to a legion(10 cohorts), which are then put into a field army (10 legions). This makes a single army of about 50000 men. And there are 14 of these armies invading faerun at once from just north of the Silver Marches (starting with King Obould Many-Arrows). Thats approximately 700000 combatants. That does not include the 300000 other members (mostly experts and commoners) who support the armies.
...
All im really needing is ways to have the mass combat, with the PCs as skirmishers/scouts on the side.

There was a Dragon article about an invasion published in one of the issues last summer. It may work for what you are trying to do. It suggested having the outcome of battles depend on what PCs do, either in their little side quest or their direct involvement in the battle.

From the sounds of it, you'll have huge combats. I would recomend that you go into each battle and figure out a few possible results. Then figure out the result that best fits with what your PCs achieve. If they do exceptionally well in the battle, then their side wins the day. If your PCs are forced to flee then the same fate occurs to the rest of their army.

It seems to me that the outcome of every individual fight and spell isn't that important in your game, if the battles are just supposed to be background noise for the encounters. Worry about whats immediatly around the PCs and come up with a result yourself.

 

[FreeTheSlaves]

I like the Farland combat system because I don't want to know which side will win.

Sure I would allow the pc's to influence the roll, but I would want the result to have a random element.

 

[Farland]

That's the way I look at it :d