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Message: <blockquote data-quote="rounser" data-source="post: 253643" data-attributes="member: 1106">With a big enough battlemap, enough miniatures, and enough time, you could resolve armies vs armies battles with D&D 3E rules - with some caveats:1) No rules for morale.2) No rules for leading units.3) Unrealistic maneuvering of unit formations....Etcetera.  And it would take a loooooong time - that's why we need a wargame ruleset for 3E mass combat - to take care of these unit simulation factors that the D&D ruleset doesn't cover, and make the mass combat much quicker and easier to run.I don't really think your analogy stands.  The difference between the Psionics Handbook for 3E and a mass combat ruleset for 3E is that there are already combat rules in 3E D&D, and there were no psi rules before the Psi Handbook was made.What does this mean?  Well, IMO, a mass combat system for the game should be simulating an extrapolation of those existing combat rules along with their quirks of a 20th level fighter being able to destroy armies if the opposing army is stupid enough to line up and attempt to beat him down - not redefining the mores of D&D combat with regard to PCs just because it happens to take place on the battlefield.As the DMG says, PCs of a certain level could conceivably take on a limitless number of creatures of a low enough CR.  If a mass combat ruleset doesn't reflect this, then it's not reflecting D&D - and arguably isn't a valid mass combat ruleset for the system.  There is, as you point out, no guarantee whatsoever that they'll line up for his blade, and they probably won't....but if they did....Indeed.  But it's possible for me to make a D&D compatible mass combat ruleset that doesn't reflect D&D's "realities" (if you will), but rather base it on tastes that are more in line with another system's "realities", such as, say, Rolemaster.If that's what my epic level character would be able to do under the normal ruleset if he faced said armies (their objective: his death) on a huge battlemap using standard D&D rules, I doubt that the fact that the goblins are in units rather than acting as skirmishers or individual combatants (which the D&D rules are arguably set up to handle) should affect the outcome to the degree that you state.  That's a stylistic choice that may not represent the D&D universe, if you will.  The D&D universe isn't a simulation of reality, after all...I think you're setting up something of a straw man here, because they could swarm past you on a huge battlemap using D&D 3E rules.  They could try and grapple you, or trip you - there are existing rules for that.  My question is, to what degree do your rules replace or re-interpret the existing ones with regard to PCs?</blockquote>

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