what do you want in a mass combat system?

[Zenon]

What I need is a strategic level resolution of events.

Example: Country X and Country Y have armies on the border.

Country X has 10,000 human war 1, 200 Fighter 3.
Country Y has 5000 Orcs, 300 Orc Shaman 2.

Who will win?

1) I want to be able to generate a Stat Block from the forces that I put in an army. This should include the ability to take any character class, monster, creature, etc and add it into the block.

2) I want to be able to reduce the battle to two stat blocks fighting so I can generate a result fairly quickly.

3) I want to know how long a turn is (a week, a month?) Maybe a variable turn length?

4) I want to know what damage to the stat block does to the army.

5) I want to be able to generate a modifier to the stat block for PC involvement of different types (front line, commanding, support[wiz/sorc]). How much XP does a turn generate for a PC? What are the risks for a PC in an army that takes damage? Can I zoom in and play it out? I hope so!

6) How far can my army move per turn? Morale? Food? Weather effects? How does terrain modify a battle? How does terrian knowledge modify it? Commander's abilities? Great generals? How do Re-inforcements at a later point change things?


In otherwords, I want a system that I as the DM can use in the background to give the following -

"Xaren invaded the dreaded Ythian highlands two monthe ago. Ill timed to the onset of winter, the armies suffered greatly at the hands of the Orcs. Fighting on their home ground, they mercilessly punished the Xariens, inflicting heavy losses, more than half the army destroyed"

But the thing is, I don't want to have to make it up! What if the PC's helped? How might that change things?

Maybe I want to pass some time in the world -

"For the past year (12 turns), the campaign against Ythia has progressed slowly as the remnants of the Orc host have been persued by the victorious Xariens into their mountain home. Led by (insert PC name here), the threat to the Xaren homeland has all but ended for now" [to the PC]: "Age a year, gain 200 XP".

This would allow me to pass some time by quickly at points.

I'm just rambling, but I hope you can get some ideas out of the above!

 

[Golem Joe]

I've no need for a wargame, only something I can break out when the players end up leading villagers against a heavily armed cavalry.

Main requirement: Speed. It needs to play fast! Realism and accuracy can take a back seat to this need. I want the fight over fast so I can get back to the more important stuff. It should also be scaleable, that is it should handle anything from skirmishes to global thermal nuclear war. It should focus on the heroes' abilities and skills with NPCs augmenting those to some degree.

And it shouldn't require a huge investment on my part to use. So please nothing that requires 25mm figures to represent each and every pion.

The best system I can imagine would require only rounds to complete a full scale combat, and only a few minutes prep time. Like I said. FAST!

 

[Jeremy Ackerman-Yost]

A system with minimal direct player involvement outside of "because of your great leadership and knowledge of terrain, your army was able to march an extra 5 miles today at no penalty" would be useful. Long term tactical planning and determining outcome of engagements that the PCs don't have a large presence in would be part of that. Something along the lines of what Zenon suggested, so you can determine things like what happens when an army with no arcane support but vastly superior numbers runs into a smaller army with several squads of battle-mages.

But personally, I'm more interested in what happens when a PC fighter takes his bannerman to the front and very visibly defeats a powerful enemy commander in single combat. You know. The heroic stuff. Morale bonuses to the troops, demoralization penalties to the enemy. But also some versimilitude issues: While the PCs are engaged at the front, what effect are the flanking archers having on their combat? Things like, how you handle a volley of arrows flying right into the thick of the PCs fight.

I guess I'd love to see a heroic system for battles with touches of realism for versimilitude. Just enough realism to make PCs feel like they're in the middle of a war, but not so much that they can't turn the tide of a battle through their actions. I don't ask for much, do I?

But it would also be neat to play an intelligent fighter-type with some tactical knowledge skills as class skills. A knowledge(mounted tactics) check (with a synergy bonus from Sense motive?) allows me to detect a feint from an opposing commander and deploy my forces to protect my archers from his light cavalry (and give them a sound drubbing in the process). That kind of thing could be a lot of fun if you had a gaming group who didn't mind occasional wargaming-lite. Especially if the other character types had ways to actively get involved with the battle.

OK. I guess I'd like a medium helping of everything. Now I know why some people tell me I'm hard to please.

 

[mattcolville]

I've mentioned this before, but I enjoy this story so I'll do it again.

As some of you know, I'm developing a set of Realm Management and Mass Combat rules for D&D, to be published by Eden Studios. We've put out. . .three D&D book if you include the new Liber Beasarius and we're pretty serious about this.

So I get emails. I get them all the time. The funniest one I've gotten was from a potential customer who felt that no mass combat system would satisfy him unless it *truly* reflected the impact of magic on the battlefield.

Well, I'm of two minds about that. Normal PHB magic, when you think about it, wasn't designed to seriously hamper entire armies, it was designed to seriously hamper individuals and small groups of individuals. So to my way of thinking, at a certain scale (i.e. really, really, big) PHB magic, while effective, isn't world-beating.

However, the only reason D&D doesn't have Battle Magic, meaning dozens of spells designed to affect many units at a time, is precisely because it was designed with dungeon crawls in mind. But once you *have* a new scale of battle, you can presume there's a new scale of magic, and *these* spells like Rain of Fireballs and Mass Sleep really would be world-beaters.

So I ask the guy what he means. This was back in the day when the volume of emails was low enough that I could engage people in dialog about what they wanted.

He says he means a system that *accurately* reflects the effects of magic. The fact that his 7th level fighter should be able to drink a potion of flying and be immune to all damage because no-one can hit him now.

Now, there are many problems with what this guy is saying, but to my mind the biggest one was; he's insane.

I get comments like this all the time. All I can say is, I think many people will be very happy with the Book of War. If however, you seriously believe your 7th level fighter can take on an army of thousands and stand a chance of winning, the book isn't for you.

Even as I type this, I know some people will read this and say "He's just being silly, who would ever really think that?" while at the same time others are thinking ", why doesn't anyone *get* it? My 7th level fighter *would* be able to take out an army of thousands!"

For my part, I like the diversity of opinion. Wouldn't it be a boring world if we were all the same?

 

[dagger]

Also maybe you can throw in some other goodies:


Easy Rules on managing a kingdom from really small size all the way up to millions of subjects. Resources, income, expenses, taxes, trade, events, ect..ect..ect...

And everything related to that, as well as the war stuff.


In the meantime, I want Fields of Blood!

 

[bolen]

well matt,

my seventh level character with his magic +10 AK-47 does very well against that orcish hoard.

 

[CRG]

He says he means a system that *accurately* reflects the effects of magic. The fact that his 7th level fighter should be able to drink a potion of flying and be immune to all damage because no-one can hit him now.

One response: "Pull"

(shotgun sounds)

I'm interested in whatever is out on the subject. Are you looking at more of a Wargame or more of a "battle resolution system" or more of a "heroes on the battlefield" kind of thing?

Is there anything or any blurb you can share with us on the subject?

 

[Joker]

well matt,

my seventh level character with his magic +10 AK-47 does very well against that orcish hoard.

I didn't know the Russians had 20+ level engineers with Craft Epic magic Arms and Armor. Oh my .

Now where's my kevlar?

 

[mmadsen]

The fact that his 7th level fighter should be able to drink a potion of flying and be immune to all damage because no-one can hit him now.

I don't want to hijack things too badly here, but if you fly out of reach of upward-shooting bows, aren't you immune to mundane attacks? And can't you shoot or throw missiles downward with impunity?

I'm not sure how much offense you can mount while flying out of (vertical) bowshot, and you'd have to fly away and fly back to reload regularly, but it certainly seems like a good defensive position, like being on top of a very, very high tower that can't be toppled.

 

[Joker]

This is Dnd, the normal laws of Physics or logic don't apply to this game.

-High level characters can swim in lava for a while
-People fall 10000ft instantly
-Range increments stay the same no matter the vector
-Pc's aren't affected by stress
-Pc's don't have to eat, go to the bathroom and only sleep because they need spells
-Etc etc.