This means war!

[Bookworm702]

I was just reading through the Oots archive, and I realized that there are plenty of reasons for the campaign I'm playing to get involved in a major large scale battle like the Battle of Azure City. I realize that there's going to be a lot of fudging on attack and initiative rolls going on, but I was wondering, what are some hard and fast rules for running a large scale combat scenarios? Also, are there any classes or feats that allow even low level characters to kick some decent ass when in large groups?

[Sinfire Titan]

Use DnD minis instead, it makes the combats much less of a headache to run.

[SilverClawShift]

Our DM does it by not giving detailed tactical info. Only what the players could reasonably know and see, and particularily eventful things that stand out.

The rest is him explaining where the masses of people are, wether one side's obviously thinning out the other, general body count type stuff...

If a tower explodes, we know. If Joe the Farmer who brought his own Sickle dies, we have no clue. If one of us jumps onto a catapult and launches ourselves into the enemy army while firign crossbow bolts at certain targets, we'll notice...

[Cyrano]

Also, are there any classes or feats that allow even low level characters to kick some decent ass when in large groups?

I call it: Get a large enough group.

[aivanther]

Haven't used it myself, but Heroes of Battle was supposedly written along the lines you are talking about.

[Jastermereel]

I'd second the suggestion of Heroes of Battle.

However, to see it put to use, I'd highly recommend looking into The Red Hand of Doom adventure which makes use of those concepts.

[AslanCross]

The Red Hand of Doom adventure is pretty much an application of Heroes of Battle's ideas of how large-scale conflicts work in D&D:
1. It's an RPG, not Warhammer. Players deal with particular maneuver elements (Say, "Sniper team" or "Outrider squad") as encounters instead of "The whole damn 50,000 orcs."
2. The PCs undertake vital missions ("Cripple their command structure by assassinating Commander X" or "Take out this new secret weapon") instead of "Kill every last one of them!!!!".
3. These vital missions score victory points, the amount of which contribute to the overall outcome of the battle. Mind you, RHOD pares down the rather bloated amounts you can score by the rules in HoB. Heroes of Battle suggests scoring victory points in the hundreds; RHOD only gives a 8 victory points per objective met at most (with a proportionately lower victory prerequisite).

Of course, this is mostly going to be the DM's prerogative.
I've run some large-scale battles myself (the largest being the PCs storming a castle full of hobgoblins), and the Heroes of Battle framework worked quite well. The PCs undertook specific missions such as "Take the gatehouse so you can let the friendlies enter" or "Burn down their grain silo." They fought a rather powerful defense force on the inner curtain wall, as well as a group of hobgoblin commandos rappelling from the keep roof while ogres on the top bombarded the PCs with rocks.

I'm pretty sure your DM is only going to throw a few enemies at you at a time. It's really, really difficult to manage more than 12 monsters in any single battle, especially if they're all identical. ("Oh sorry, which one did you cast ray of enfeeblement on again?")

[Thoughtbot360]

BEHOLD THE ANSWER TO YOUR PRAYERS! (http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=1566)

...or at least it'd be what I'd use.

[ShadowFighter15]

The Red Hand of Doom adventure is pretty much an application of Heroes of Battle's ideas of how large-scale conflicts work in D&D:
1. It's an RPG, not Warhammer. Players deal with particular maneuver elements (Say, "Sniper team" or "Outrider squad") as encounters instead of "The whole damn 50,000 orcs."
2. The PCs undertake vital missions ("Cripple their command structure by assassinating Commander X" or "Take out this new secret weapon") instead of "Kill every last one of them!!!!".
3. These vital missions score victory points, the amount of which contribute to the overall outcome of the battle. Mind you, RHOD pares down the rather bloated amounts you can score by the rules in HoB. Heroes of Battle suggests scoring victory points in the hundreds; RHOD only gives a 8 victory points per objective met at most (with a proportionately lower victory prerequisite).

Of course, this is mostly going to be the DM's prerogative.
I've run some large-scale battles myself (the largest being the PCs storming a castle full of hobgoblins), and the Heroes of Battle framework worked quite well. The PCs undertook specific missions such as "Take the gatehouse so you can let the friendlies enter" or "Burn down their grain silo." They fought a rather powerful defense force on the inner curtain wall, as well as a group of hobgoblin commandos rappelling from the keep roof while ogres on the top bombarded the PCs with rocks.

I'm pretty sure your DM is only going to throw a few enemies at you at a time. It's really, really difficult to manage more than 12 monsters in any single battle, especially if they're all identical. ("Oh sorry, which one did you cast ray of enfeeblement on again?")

Sounds like how some PC games handle large battles, but with possibly fewer mooks in-between the objectives. There's a Half-Life 2 mod called Age of Chivalry that has objectives like this.

One map has an army assaulting a castle; the first objective is to use a trebuchet to breach one of the walls (this is an optional one though; I've never really seen the point of it beyond being able to fire a bloody trebuchet). After that, the attackers have to push a battering ram up the road to the main gate and use it to break through. From there, the attackers have to find the winch for the drawbridge and lower it before fighting their way down into the castle dungeon and freeing the prisoners.

Any sort of multiplayer game that does objectives like that should give you ideas on what the PCs are supposed to do in your campaign (Age of Chivalry is the only one that comes to mind that would be the most helpful).

[Ridureyu]

This is one scenario where the 4e Minion schematic can help. You can throw upwards of 12 or more enemies at the PCs if they die fast, and keep pouring them in. Belkar will get his mound of dead hobbos, but the hobbos don't have to be fifteen levels beneath him.

Just don't overestimate the PCs' killing skills.


(EDIT) For those not in the know, a "Minion" is essentially an enemy with stats comparable to the CR/Level of the adventuring party, but with only 1 HP. A Minion takes no damage on a miss, though, even from autodamage attacks, so you have to roll high enough to take one down. The idea is for there to be larger-scale combats where the PCs have a chance to take down 10+ enemies, but without those enemies providing zero challenge. A bunch of goblin sniper minions might die fast, but their arrows still hurt and y ou still have to hit their AC.

[AslanCross]

Sounds like how some PC games handle large battles, but with possibly fewer mooks in-between the objectives.
*snip*

Pretty much; though references to war movies were mentioned in Heroes of Battle as well, notably Saving Private Ryan and The Guns of Navarrone. As such, the war simply becomes part of the setting and backdrop, but the story is still about the PCs' individual achievements helping win the war.

[aboyd]

One of the most elegant systems I ever found for running massive battles was in the D&D 3.5 edition book, Slavelords of Cydonia (http://www.badaxegames.com/?page_id=57). Now, I'm not suggesting you buy a $35 book just for a combat system. They actually had a PDF of the 10 important pages at one point, but the PDF isn't on RPGNow anymore. No matter. The system was so obvious & simple, I can describe it here. First, I'll quote the book's elegant explanation:


Because EL is based upon CR, and CR encapsulates all of a creature's combat capabilities, there is no need to further break down the mass combat system into BAB, armor class, or the other particulars of a creature's stat block, including special abilities and qualities.

And what is EL? The number representing the power of a group of monsters. So it boils down combat between armies to a simple d20 + EL opposed roll. If you know what that means, you now know the whole concept, go fight wars. For more details and examples, we'll continue.

Walkthru
Open your Dungeon Master's Guide to page 49. See table 3-1? It shows you how to figure out the EL (Encounter Level) of lots of enemies. So 10 1st-level fighters working as a team would be an EL of 8. OK? Now, that chart doesn't go beyond 12. So the Slavelords book suggests, "doubling the number of creatures in a group increases the EL by 2."

Want a troop of 20 1st-level fighters? OK, the EL table on page 49 of the DMG doesn't have that. But it does show that the EL for ten of them would be 8. So if we follow the "doubling adds 2" rule, then 20 of them would have an EL of 10. So we now have our first fighting unit. Let's say we pit them against a unit of 10 3rd-level fighters. Well, using table 3-1 again, we see that 10 3rd-level fighters would have an EL of 10. They both have the same EL, so that means these two fighting units are essentially tied -- odds are 50-50 for either side.

If the 3rd-level troop rolls a 5, they end up with a 15 (because they get to add their EL of 10). If the 1st-level troop rolls an 8, they end up with a 18 (because they get to add their EL of 10). That means the 1st-level troop beat the 3rd-level unit (barely). That doesn't end combat, but it does impose a consequence.

Consequences
What happens when one troop wins? Well, the assumption is that some men in the losing unit are now wounded, dead, have lost spells, have taken ability damage, or whatever else might happen in combat. So, you reduce their EL by 2. Then, they keep fighting. So now it's an EL 8 troop versus an EL 10 troop. They fight again. The 3rd-level guys roll an 18 + their new EL of 8 = 26. The 1st-level guys roll a 10 + their EL of 10 = 20. They lose. So the 3rd-level guys have turned the battle back in their favor. Now the 1st level guys lose 2 points from their EL. This keeps going until a troop retreats or until a troop has an EL of 0.

According to the rules, an EL of 0 doesn't have to mean that everyone died. It may mean that members of the troop deserted. But whatever happened, that troop can no longer participate.

In this way, you can have hundreds of men swarm into battle against thousands of orcs, and reduce it all down to d20 vs. d20.

Of course, I just described their 10 page system in a few paragraphs. They go on for 10 pages because they describe how other typical D&D rules can apply. For example, they detail how a bard might take command of a unit and increase the EL of a unit due to his leadership & inspiration. They talk about terrain, strategic objectives, sieges, adding a "hero" (a PC) into each unit, etc. But generally, just d20 vs. d20 should do it. Good luck. Have fun.

[kjones]

BEHOLD THE ANSWER TO YOUR PRAYERS! (http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=1566)

...or at least it'd be what I'd use.

This system seems pretty cool, but its one shortcoming seems to be that the PCs themselves aren't really that well represented. You attach yourself to a unit and that's that. There's not much of a difference between that unit and any other unit.

Still, it makes a hell of a lot more sense than most attempts I've seen to come up with mass combat rules for D&D.

[ShadowFighter15]

Pretty much; though references to war movies were mentioned in Heroes of Battle as well, notably Saving Private Ryan and The Guns of Navarrone. As such, the war simply becomes part of the setting and backdrop, but the story is still about the PCs' individual achievements helping win the war.

Probably the same way game designers got the idea. Wouldn't be surprised.