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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Li Shenron" data-source="post: 7709341" data-attributes="member: 1465">For the same reason why I would ever want psionics in my game: we don't! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />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</blockquote>

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