WAR, a Simulation[3.5]

[Nightmarenny]

So in the "Any] Fantasy Military Tactics/Strategy" thread we are discussing how a DnD war would go and I was struck by the fact that everything we talked about is purely Theoretical. So I have an idea. Why not play through a large battle, "test you might" style and see how it goes? Sure it will take some time but it would be very fun.

So, if we do this we need to..
1)Commission a large map
2)Decide on the troops(perhapes based on HD?)
3)Diside on how Init, Hp, attack, and so-on should go.

Any takers?

[Saph]

Why not use D&D Miniatures? It's a system designed for basically exactly what you're describing; D&D warfare between two small armies / skirmish forces. Each unit has a point value, you build an army Games-Workshop style. No need to do all the work when there's a system already designed for it.

- Saph

[Nightmarenny]

Why not use D&D Miniatures? It's a system designed for basically exactly what you're describing; D&D warfare between two small armies / skirmish forces. Each unit has a point value, you build an army Games-Workshop style. No need to do all the work when there's a system already designed for it.

- Saph

I don't have anything for D&Dmin. How similer is it to 3.5? Could it gage the importance of various classes?

[elliott20]

the logistics of running such a game would basically make this go from needing one thread to an entire forum, I think.

[Nightmarenny]

the logistics of running such a game would basically make this go from needing one thread to an entire forum, I think.

I think it could be done.

[elliott20]

well, yes, but it won't be easy.

first, we need to agree on what rules can be used, and what books.

then we have to actually create rules for large scale combat. does each player get to move unit at a time or do they move ALL units that turn? do we add morale into the mix? how do we handle things like money? what are the conditions of the battle?

then we have to figure out HOW to resolve over thousands and thousands of dice rolls at each move.

then we have to assign point values to actual armies. how much is a wizard worth vs. a fighter?

THEN we can go ahead and start creating armies to go at it.

[Saph]

Seriously, just use D&D Miniatures. They've worked out point values, they've worked out rules. It's right on the WotC main website. Head over and take a look.

- Saph

[Nightmarenny]

I took a look at mini's and it seems that certain things have been changed(such as the choice to activate a number of units each turn) These changes are there to make things easy which is good but would disable the secondary reasons for doing this(Primary being being for fun) which is to observe how the high fantasy world of dungeons and Dragons(and its rule set0 would be affected.

Am I wrong?

Now how about this, to determine units and power we assume two cities of equal size(such as Small city) both with average roll for all classes(perhaps with two PC classes maxed out for variety) and a number of HD allocated for unconventional units. Money I'm not sure about but it seems like all units should be less equipped then even your average NPC. What do you think?

[Olo Demonsbane]

Someone on these forums created a thing called the "Book of Armies" for creating equal-power armies...I have it on a word document on my hard drive and have used it to create a couple of armies.

The way I have my armies fight is have both sides agree on a number. Lets say the army was:
1,000 infantry
500 archers
200 calvary
100 mages
50 knights
1 leader
and the number was 100. Each unit is divided by that number, so the squad is:
10 infantry
5 archers
2 calvary
1 mage
50% chance of getting a knight
1/100 chance of getting the leader

The other side does the same. The two squads fight, with the outcome of the battle determined ad-hocly by how badly one side is beaten.


I know that sounded strange, but it is actually pretty easy in practice.

[Oslecamo]

Ironically speacking, I always tought 4e would be great for a wargame, with all the monsters having point exp costs, the whole must worck on team mentality and the rather limited powers.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

Seriously, just use D&D Miniatures. They've worked out point values, they've worked out rules. It's right on the WotC main website. Head over and take a look.

- Saph

The problem is that D&DM characters are drastically reduced in resources and complexity from normal rules for simplicity's sake; even a level 1 warmage with his 3-5 spells is outside of the range it covers. Point values to use actual D&D characters and monsters wouldn't work at all.

[SirKazum]

I'm actually all for this; I agree that there's no better way to tell how a large-scale battle in D&D would go than actually play out one. But in this case, IMHO, the first order of business should be to decide on a suitable mass-combat system. When someone asked for that in another thread, I pointed out a a system I'd been working on, (http://www.dragonavenue.com/forums/viewthread/1508/) but someone else linked to the Conan Mass Combat System and I absolutely fell in love with it. Seems much better than my own system, IMO. So, I'd put my vote for the Conan rules. Everything else, it's not so different from the concerns faced by typical PBPs or "challenge" games - we just decide on a referee, which board or thread (as Elliott, I'd recommend a board) to use, how to handle mapping, actions, and so on.

For handling actions, I'd personally vote for the traditional Chainmail approach: both involved players write actions for their entire armies simultaneously, send those actions to the referee by email, and everything is resolved at once (by initiative order or whatever). That way, nobody "cheats" by deciding what to do after seeing the opponent's actions.

ETA: Oh yeah, about D&DM, I understand it's made for smaller "skirmish" style battles. That might be okay if that's the sort of battle you're intending to do, but that's not the impression I'm getting here; I'm under the impression we're talking about really massive battles with hundreds of people on each side, in which case D&DM would be almost as prohibitive as "regular" D&D. No, we'd need something that abstracts the actions, attacks, etc. of tens or even hundreds of people in a simple system; again, my vote goes for the Conan mass combat rules.

[Darcand]

Why not use multiple players activating multiple units. This way every unit gets an equal turn in the rotation.

I would suggest an EL based sytem with each unit having an EL of 6, and each player controlling 2 units, which activate on alternating turns.

I say 6 because that is around the point where a single 6th level character, a group of second level characters, and a swarm of kobolds are all still a viable threat to each other, before class level really makes using massed troops impractical.

[GreyMantle]

Races of War (http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=681572) (you'll need to scroll down a bit) has an excellent system for running large-scale battles that isn't way too booky. It's perfect for a war-campaign that mixes battles with more traditional D&D action.

There's also stuff like Warhammer, but I hear that's a bit of a hefty monetary investment.