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And here I was expecting some new Wayne Reynolds art, based on the thread title. 
This Means WAR!!!! (My players stay OUT!)
- Thread starter palleomortis
- Start date
Voadam
Legend
palleomortis said:
Narratively. Mostly.
I've had the PCs in an inn when the city wall fell and invaders poured in. The PCs had a full done out fight with many invaders, but were aware that there were thousands more running around and fighting oustide of the 30 or so they were fighting themselves. After defeating the immediate BBEG squad leader and buying themselves some breathing room they teleported into a different more secure portion of the city behind the second set of walls (outer walls had been breached, not the inner walls).
I own a bunch of different mass combat things (Cry Havok, Oathbound Arena, Testament, GURPS, Companion set D&D) but prefer to not deal with things mechanically on that scale.
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I think how you handle your war has a lot to do with your intended outcome.
Do you want the PC's to be the deciding factor in who wins/loses?
Or is victory for one side preordained?
Do you want them to try and assassinate the enemy leader or do you want to herd them out of town with huge numbers of mooks?
Do you want the PC's to be the deciding factor in who wins/loses?
Or is victory for one side preordained?
Do you want them to try and assassinate the enemy leader or do you want to herd them out of town with huge numbers of mooks?
In our campaign (Shilsen's) we recently took on a pair of armies and here are some of my thoughts on the matter. Mind you we are a moderately high level group (13th) and caster heavy.
Fighting an army is actually a lot tougher than it seems. Most spells have area effects that are "big" for a dungeon consisting of 10' wide hallways. However, when you're talking about an army spread over a mile or more, 20' radius doesn't really cut it and there aren't a lot of spells that cover more than that. Those few that do (almost all from the Spell Compendium) are what become your real killers, such as Blistering Radience (50' radius) or Firestorm (two 10' cubes/lvl). I think Wall of Fire is the only PHB spell with a really large area of effect (20'/level length). You don't actually need that much damage as much as you need area for fighting an army.
Also there's the simple problem of numbers. If 1% of an army of a thousand is casters then you've got 10 guys casting at you a round, with potentially 10 saves you've got to make. Characters probably only fail on a 1, but if you're rolling 10 of them a round... If 20% is missile troops and 1 in 20 rolls a natural 20 then you have 10 people a round scoring a hit and a 50% chance of taking a crit as well. Spells like Protection From Arrows or Reverse Arrows (SC) definitely are your friends here.
If you're DMing an encounter like this, the numbers issue is where you really need to think things through. A horde of low level casters tossing debilitating spells at PCs can be far more devastating than you might think, IF there are enough of them. Likewise with the archers and such. Never underestimate the ability of 300 attack rolls to inflict damage.
An important role that you need in an encounter like this, is to give the melee (non-caster) characters something to do and a chance to shine. Since the ability to kill even a handful of grunts each round, doesn't make much of a difference and the fighter types simply can't wipe out large swaths of enemies the way the casters can. In our battle the DM made the main opponents not the army, but the leader types and once they were dead the army was "shattered" by the casters off screen.
Fighting an army is actually a lot tougher than it seems. Most spells have area effects that are "big" for a dungeon consisting of 10' wide hallways. However, when you're talking about an army spread over a mile or more, 20' radius doesn't really cut it and there aren't a lot of spells that cover more than that. Those few that do (almost all from the Spell Compendium) are what become your real killers, such as Blistering Radience (50' radius) or Firestorm (two 10' cubes/lvl). I think Wall of Fire is the only PHB spell with a really large area of effect (20'/level length). You don't actually need that much damage as much as you need area for fighting an army.
Also there's the simple problem of numbers. If 1% of an army of a thousand is casters then you've got 10 guys casting at you a round, with potentially 10 saves you've got to make. Characters probably only fail on a 1, but if you're rolling 10 of them a round... If 20% is missile troops and 1 in 20 rolls a natural 20 then you have 10 people a round scoring a hit and a 50% chance of taking a crit as well. Spells like Protection From Arrows or Reverse Arrows (SC) definitely are your friends here.
If you're DMing an encounter like this, the numbers issue is where you really need to think things through. A horde of low level casters tossing debilitating spells at PCs can be far more devastating than you might think, IF there are enough of them. Likewise with the archers and such. Never underestimate the ability of 300 attack rolls to inflict damage.
An important role that you need in an encounter like this, is to give the melee (non-caster) characters something to do and a chance to shine. Since the ability to kill even a handful of grunts each round, doesn't make much of a difference and the fighter types simply can't wipe out large swaths of enemies the way the casters can. In our battle the DM made the main opponents not the army, but the leader types and once they were dead the army was "shattered" by the casters off screen.
For the battles I've done, it's been around castles. Defending a castle against approximately Company-sized (150 characters) attackers can work well for a party plus perhaps an understrength platoon (20 or so) grunts.
I did that once with 2nd level PC's in the Keep on the Borderlands against an army of undead, bandits, and some low level PC types. The PC's fought this mano-a-mano. I gave them lots of potions to keep healing up. It was the best and longest fight (153 rds of 1st Edition play) we ever did.
I also did it with 4th-5th level PC's in a small tower complex against an army of mostly human 1st level warrior types, with some orc sappers (combat engineers), giants as artillery, and spell casters. This involved more PC's taking out the leaders. The critical hits from archer formations did become a daunting issue, so the PC's had to take total cover from that.
And I did a PC-party only (4th-5th) level assault on a small motte-and-bailey castle (with bad guards and damaged walls) with a humanoid reinforced platoon-sized force (60 or so) with a tank (war rhino), air support (tauric hobgoblin griffon), and some humanoids with levels. This fight was a bring-it-on grudge match. Very fun. I based it on the Dzeebagd module, but heavily modified it.
Using a castle makes things simpler -- more contained map, more contained fighting where the PC's can excel, and just fun!
I did that once with 2nd level PC's in the Keep on the Borderlands against an army of undead, bandits, and some low level PC types. The PC's fought this mano-a-mano. I gave them lots of potions to keep healing up. It was the best and longest fight (153 rds of 1st Edition play) we ever did.
I also did it with 4th-5th level PC's in a small tower complex against an army of mostly human 1st level warrior types, with some orc sappers (combat engineers), giants as artillery, and spell casters. This involved more PC's taking out the leaders. The critical hits from archer formations did become a daunting issue, so the PC's had to take total cover from that.
And I did a PC-party only (4th-5th) level assault on a small motte-and-bailey castle (with bad guards and damaged walls) with a humanoid reinforced platoon-sized force (60 or so) with a tank (war rhino), air support (tauric hobgoblin griffon), and some humanoids with levels. This fight was a bring-it-on grudge match. Very fun. I based it on the Dzeebagd module, but heavily modified it.
Using a castle makes things simpler -- more contained map, more contained fighting where the PC's can excel, and just fun!
I've done the full blown battles using hte Open Mass Combat system with a few edits from Tome of Battle. I enjoyed it, but it took a lot of time (3 whole sessions) to get through a mass combat.
I'm thinking next time I'll craft some scenes within the overall battle for the PCs and have the major action running as a backdrop and decided by the Open Mass Combat system but on a larger scale, by army rather than individual unit combat.
I'm thinking next time I'll craft some scenes within the overall battle for the PCs and have the major action running as a backdrop and decided by the Open Mass Combat system but on a larger scale, by army rather than individual unit combat.
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