Unearthed Arcana Unearthed Arcana Mass Combat

http://media.wizards.com/2017/dnd/downloads/2017_UAMassCombat_MCUA_v1.pdf

I wasn't expecting an article today...looks like a rehash of the old Mass Combat rules.

I was really hoping for the Mystic....

Pretty radically different from the previous attempt, much more abstract and fast paced; which is good, because it has been gestating for two years!
[MENTION=697]mearls[/MENTION] has been talking up various DM options in the works; looks like those will get the exposure for a little bit, now.

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[BoldItalic]

Suppose you make the leader of a unit a significant NPC, the players decide to go after him and succeed in killing him using normal small-scale rules. What happens to the unit? It no longer has a leader. Is it eliminated? Or does another leader emerge from the ranks? The rules don't appear to say.

 

[Li Shenron]

F the what? I don't want to take away anything from the rest of you, but why would I ever want mass combat rules for an RPG?

For the same reason why I would ever want psionics in my game: we don't!

This is just one of hopefully many optional rules modules we're free to either incorporate into our games or ignore completely.

As I have said before on these forums, personally I think that if someone wants to heavily feature mass combat between armies in their game of D&D, they should probably look for long-established miniatures battle systems outside D&D, something that has been around for decade and is proved to do its job very well. These attempts at a D&D mass combat rules want to create something that is half-way between normal D&D and army battles, and that's why they are a lot simpler (and far less "realistic"/simulationist) than traditional miniature games rules, and absolutely need to let the player characters matter.

D&D as a RPG always remains a small-scale, role-based, teamwork problem-solving and resource-management game, with semi-random combat being one of its main pillars. Still, there are plenty of iconic fantasy stories which also feature large-scale battles (of course you don't have to feature those in your own adventures, but it's something that increases the variety of the narrative). Without a mass combat system, the DM essentially decides the outcome of such battles arbitrarily, or entirely narratively, which you can do also for small-scale combats, but the vast majority of gamers pretty much want their characters to influence the outcome.

I think these draft rules are based on sound principles:

- have a minimum level of simulationism (strength of an army based on its troops number and CR, different possible events covered)
- avoid too much details, in the spirit of 5e overall simplicity
- semi-randomness by using dice rolls just like regular combat
- have each player actually play the battle, as a unit's commander
- have each player character matter, at the very minimum because of its Charisma, but most importantly by mixing up the mass battle with "zoomed in" action
- have important NPCs and monsters matter in the same way as PCs

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Suppose you make the leader of a unit a significant NPC, the players decide to go after him and succeed in killing him using normal small-scale rules. What happens to the unit? It no longer has a leader. Is it eliminated? Or does another leader emerge from the ranks? The rules don't appear to say.

For the sake of fun, I'd say "the unit is eliminated (dissolves into confusion) if the chain of command is eliminated." If they kill the leader, and there is no backup, the unit dissolves for mass combat purposes and becomes combat-ineffective.

ObGettysburg: "Yeah, that happened to me once. Us, that is. Half the regiment charged, the other half retreated. You had your choice."

Without leadership, the unit's members act as individuals and get crushed by the superior coordination (action economy, etc.) of hundreds of other combatants.

 

[Dualazi]

Yeah, this is pretty garbage really. Chaos pretty much took it apart already, and the problem here is that the math is so bad I can't even really test to see if the concept works to any reasonable degree. My campaign could definitely use some good mass combat rules so this a bummer, but just about everything they put forth needs massive revisions.

 

[fuindordm]

I agree with everyone here, the BR scale is too large for opposed d20 rolls, and there is not enough "damage" done to units in combat.

The fighting needs to be simultaneous, and it needs to damage both sides (unless ranged). So each round should have four phases:
1) shooters shoot
2) everyone moves
3) melee happens
4) morale checks

 

[Li Shenron]

So, you are the wizard, you jump into a unit, but decide to hold yourself separate from the guardsmen you are helping. Round X, you spend an entire minute casting a single Fireball spell... which is six seconds of you actually doing something. And the result is.... stop the battle, calculate how many creatures just got hit, have them all roll Dex saves as normal, okay these 15 creatures take 1/2 these 10 take full, that kills these 10, which then I recalculate the BR and reduce it (good thing you killed some or that would have done nothing to change the tide of battle) and... start back up the mass combat rules.

Why give us mass combat rules, and then tell the players that they don't interact with the mass combat rules?

I ran into this and something else while playing a storm sorcerer. Durations. I used Call Lightning (it was still in UA) and I would get... 1 strike every minute? That's 10 strikes over the course of the spell, when it lasts for 10 minutes though and I should be getting 100 strikes. And the wizard is only getting one spell off every minute, which is not realistic to their actual impact of casting 10 spells in that minute.

And how do cantrips play into this? My unit doesn't have cantrips, I do, but I can't roll against the enemies BR, I'm dealing damage to individuals hp... which has no bearing on their BR unless I actually get to kill them.

Moving on to melee characters... the 20th level fighter or Barbarian should be a terror on the battlefield like this. Over that minute the fighter makes 40 attacks, which (against minion style creatures) could actually decimate a unit singlehandedly, let alone if they have back up from soldiers... and how is this represented? It isn't.

You have to completely wipe your mind from the idea that what is written in the PHB combat rules represents reality. It doesn't. It only represents what your PC can do in small-scale combat, but it is not any more general than that.

You already know that once you're not in a combat, initiative doesn't make sense, combat actions don't make sense, readying an action doesn't make sense, rounds and turns don't make sense... Normally if you cast a spell out of combat, you can imagine that if it says "1 action" then it means 6 seconds, and that's a convenient equivalency but not an absolute truth. The point is, out of combat you just don't normally care about seconds, unless the DM says so (and makes something up).

Now try to think that also when you are in a mass combat, you still are NOT in a PHB combat. So a "1 action spell" does not mean it takes 6 seconds. Instead, it takes whatever makes sense. And you can find some sense in saying it takes 1 minute now, because the "1 action" rule is meant for small-scale combats where each PC can focus its attention easily enough to be able to cast the spell during a 6-seconds turn, but in a mass combat everything is different: you may have literally hundreds of enemies in your vicinity (the abstraction of the rules don't say so, but you can imagine that 2 units attacking each other aren't really standing side-by-side but their occupied spaces merge, as combatants on both sides get close to attack each other), weapons dangerously flying around you all the time, you have to constantly move around and dodge, the ground gets full of corpses and stuff, the noise around is loud, you have friendly fire and need to interact with a lot more than 3-4 allies... in other words, you have a lot less chances to focus your attention than when fighting a small bunch of enemies. One spell every 6 seconds just isn't an applicable model anymore.

 

[Yunru]

In all seriousness though, there's a major flaw in that mounts count for everything bar movement. Which means an archer on a mount has the attack range of the mount.

 

[Li Shenron]

Using the BR calculator the CR 3 Veterans are worth a total of 798 (399*2) and their commander is worth an additional 18 (CR 12)

For a grand total of 816 BR.

This means when they attack they roll 1d20+816... which realistically means that any group with a BR less than 810 stands almost no chance of winning, because the swing is only 20 points. Even a group with 800 BR is going to have a tough time of it, because if they lose a roll by 10 points they lose 5 points permanently. At 796 an army might as well surrender, because they will never win.

To win with a group of giants, calling back to the discussion up above, they would need to be...

Wow, they can't. Even if we take Storm Giant Quintessants from Volo's Guide, at only 44 creatures in a unit they rank in at 704 BR.

So 400 veterans always win against the 44 storm giants.

Then the DM decides that the 400 veterans should rather be modelled as two separate units of half their size (200). DM tosses in an extra commander for the second unit.

The result is that those 2 separate units now have half BR (or 416 with one commander each) and will now always lose.

Currently, there has to be some DM's key decision on how to model the armies (how many units and what size and composition), if you want both sides to have a chance at winning. Otherwise, you don't run the battle but simply announce the outcome. This fact is not explained by these rules.

The BR is so swingy because it currently represents the equivalent of BOTH a unit's attack/defense bonus and hit points!!

So either we accept that the DM does some work on the initial units representation, or we have to increase the system complexity a bit, by using two different battle ratings instead of just one.

 

[Krachek]

I think the actual attack method dont work.
Instead make opposed morale check.
The winner inflict damage to the BR of the loosing unit.
If you win by +10 you inflict 3/4 or your BR.
If you win by +5 you inflict 1/2 of your BR.
If you win by 4 or less you inflict 1/4 of your BR.

Presently 400 guards BR 20 have 0 chance against 400 orcs BR 80.
With this kind of system, the guards unit, can have a chance to defeat the orcs unit.
It will take a good morale and a good leader, many rounds but they have a chance.

 

[SilentWolf]

The abstraction is needed to simplify the Mass Combat System and make it easy to handle. But as others have said, the BR makes the System unbalanced. Li Shennon has well explained why:

The BR is so swingy because it currently represents the equivalent of BOTH a unit's attack/defense bonus and hit points!!

So either we accept that the DM does some work on the initial units representation, or we have to increase the system complexity a bit, by using two different battle ratings instead of just one.

BR has an high score because it need to rappresent hit points other than attack. But it is precisely this high score that makes BR more unbalanced. On the other hand, BR as Attack AND Hit Points has the value of allowing a more credible game situation: with the increasing of casualties, the Unit attack power decreases.

I think the latter feature needs to be kept.
In order to obtain this, I suggest that BR could be used as a Score that gives a aseparate modifier to Attack...like an Ability Score, that gives an highter modifier the higher is the Score. Simply, in this case Battle Rating will be an Health Score that gives a separate modifier to Attack.

And so we would have:

• BR continue to be calculated as described in the Playtest document, in base of the creatures CR.
• Every few BR points (10? 20? 50?) the Unit receives +1 in Attack. The Attack check will no longer be 1d20 + BR, but 1d20 + Attack.
  
• BR, instead, will count only as an Health score. A succesfull Attack will procude a loss of BR points. The more BR points the Unit lose, the less will be the Attack score.
• When the Unit BR falls below half of its original score, the Unit is destroyed.

What do you think?