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Decoy Lockbox
2009-10-19, 04:16 PM
I'm running an apocalyptic no-wealth, no- magic item game set during the Winter War (as referenced in Divine Power). Mass combat between small, dark ages sized warbands (large for D&D terms though) of people is a staple part of this setting, as barbarian tribesmen fight orcs fight Khalites for territorial dominance, food, or religious purposes (I'm using the "more worshippers = more power" rule, which heavily encourages conversion or killing the followers of enemy deities).

So basically I've got a setting where I need convenient and efficient rules for battles with 20+ people on each side. Last week I hastily drew up test rules to enable my party of 6 PCs to aid in the Seven Samurai (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_samurai)-esque defense of a monastery of Erathis (and its surrounding village) against an army of Khalites. The fight was about 53 (5 squads of infantry, 3 NPCs) vs 32 (2 squads of peasants, 6 PCs, 6 allied NPCs). According to my players, the fight was enjoyable, but I think the rules didn't really do it for me.

I'd like to present my current rules-set, which I consider insufficient, and then get some suggestions from anyone who cares to read this.

--[4e] mass combat rules--

Combat rules for individual characters (including standard monsters and NPCs) are unchanged.

Units of troops are grouped into squads. Each squad has a total number of hitpoints appropriate for a "monster" of it's level and role (as per the monster building guidelines in the DMG). For example, in the battle I ran, the enemies were level 6 and so the standard melee infantry squads had 80hp, while the archer squads had 60hp.

The hit points of a squad is partitioned into a number of units equal to the total HP divided by the number of men in the squad. I set default squad sizes at 10 men. So the previously mentioned melee squads had 10 partitions of 8hp apiece. This represents the hp of the individual soldiers. Whenever the squad takes an increment of 8 damage, a soldier drops, and his position is filled from the back row (like in Warhammer fantasy). Burst or blast attacks make an attack roll against each man in their area. This means that, if the minimum damage of the blast or burst is >= to the hp partition of the squad, massive death will likely ensue.

The squad's defenses (AC, fortitude, reflex, will), attack roll bonuses and damage rolls are uniform; all members of the squad are treated as identical individuals.

On a squad's turn, it may make one attack against each adjacent enemy for each squad member adjacent to that enemy. For example, lets say that a Paladin is adjacent to a squad of orcs. The P will represent the paladin, and the 'o's will be orcs.

P
ooooo
ooooo

As the Paladin is adjacent to three orcs (imagine them on the grid), he will be subject to three attacks from the squad. These attacks are treated as minion attacks, in that they deal a static amount of damage. The number of attacks that the squad can make per turn is limited to the number of men in the squad. Squad members adjacent to more than one enemy must choose which one to attack. Lets imagine that the Paladin realizes he is insufficiently bad ass to face down 10 soldiers, and so calls for backup, and his Fighter friend comes to his aid:

PF
ooooo (1-5)
ooooo (6-10)

So the paladin is still under threat of attack from three orcs, as is the fighter. The orcs in position 1, 2 and 3 can all attack the paladin, while the orcs in position 3, 4 and 5 can attack the fighter. So the orc in position 3 must decide who he is going to attack (i.e. DM's discretion, or mabye the orc's commander tells him what to do).

The squad moves as a cohesive unit, but it is not a true formation; it does not need to wheel or about face, for example. It is merely a convenient way to keep track of big group of enemies without treating all 10 men as individuals.

Squad members may detach themselves from the squad, in order to gain increased mobility, to surround an enemy solo character, or any number of other reasons. When this happens, the soldier separating from the squad becomes a standard minion with 1 HP. The total hitpoints of the squad is reduced by one of the partitions mentioned earlier. For example, lets say that you had a squad of 10 archers (60hp squad) walking through the woods, and one of the archers sees a squirrel. Wanting to bag that sweet morsel for himself, he detaches from the squad, becoming a 1 HP minion and reducing the squad's total HP to 50. Once he returns with the squirrel surreptitiously stuffed in his pocket, the squad goes back up to 60 HP.

Some types of squads are able to perform special attacks only when in squad formation. For example, the archers above can shoot their bows for 6 damage per man, or they can fire an area burst 2 within 20 volley that does 2d8+5 (with maximum # of targets equal to the total # of archers shooting).

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

All in all, its basically a way of splitting a single standard monster up into smaller, quasi-independant parts.

I encountered a number of problems with this approach. For one, the standard charging rules make it difficult for the detached soldiers to surround a single foe as intended. Additionally, most of you who have played 4e before know that certain classes (mainly those with burst or blast capability) are capable of annihilating large groups of minions with little difficulty, dramatically reducing the threat of detached soldiers. Also, I was unhappy with the way that bursts and blasts interacted with the squads, but was unable to come up with a satisfactory result prior to the battle.

So basically I'm looking for suggestions, especially from people who have already done this before. Thanks in advance to anyone who takes the time to read this whole thing.

Yakk
2009-10-19, 04:32 PM
I'd start with the presumption that you want to model a situation where each PC is significant in impact.

So each unit on the battlefield ... is a monster. A swarm monster.

Starting with a normal monster of level M, we get:
M-9: Solo
M-4: Elite
M: Normal
M+4: Minion
M+10: Squad of ~16, 2x2 area + aura 1.
M+14: Company of ~50, 3x3 area + aura 2.
M+18: Army of ~150, 5x5 area + aura 3.

So if Peasants are individually L 2 human rabble, a squad of 16 Peasants is a level 8 swarm monster, a Company a level 12 swarm monster, and an Army a level 16 swarm monster.

Trained solders go 4/8/14/18/22 for Normal, Minion, Squad, Company and Army sizes.

You then build a level-appropriate monster of the role in question. As they are swarms, they take half damage from ranged/melee attacks, and are vunerable to blast/burst/area.

Decoy Lockbox
2009-10-19, 09:08 PM
I'd start with the presumption that you want to model a situation where each PC is significant in impact.

So each unit on the battlefield ... is a monster. A swarm monster.

Starting with a normal monster of level M, we get:
M-9: Solo
M-4: Elite
M: Normal
M+4: Minion
M+10: Squad of ~16, 2x2 area + aura 1.
M+14: Company of ~50, 3x3 area + aura 2.
M+18: Army of ~150, 5x5 area + aura 3.

So if Peasants are individually L 2 human rabble, a squad of 16 Peasants is a level 8 swarm monster, a Company a level 12 swarm monster, and an Army a level 16 swarm monster.

Trained solders go 4/8/14/18/22 for Normal, Minion, Squad, Company and Army sizes.

You then build a level-appropriate monster of the role in question. As they are swarms, they take half damage from ranged/melee attacks, and are vunerable to blast/burst/area.

I had initially planned on using swarms, but I decided not to because they are not conducive to the whole idea of a single heroic warrior fighting an enemy army (since most melee guys make melee attacks, that would do half damage).

One problem I had was that the Pcs made a bit too much of an impact. I'm fine with a battle system that is basically "whoever has the most heroes wins", since that seems to be what D&D is all about, but I really wanted my legion of dudes to be more of a challenge than they were.

Thanks for the feedback though.

Yakk
2009-10-20, 09:56 AM
Most single blows will do more than 1/5 the HP of an even-level monster; so melee blows will end up being more than half wasted with your system anyhow. In fact, when a player uses a daily or encounter, because of the implicit blow-through, half damage will end up causing more pain under the system I sketched.

Note also there is precedence; there are zombie swarms in open grave, if I remember rightly.

Managing each individual monster ends up being complicated. And archer armies end up being much stronger than melee armies, as they can all engage, for the same level of monster (unless you scale the 'minion damage unit' significantly).

I do sort of like the idea of breaking into individual minions; what I might do is have it break up at either bloodied, or at the healing surge value of the force. Or maybe after an intimidate check against will (unmodified) after bloodied? Some kind of moral thing.

Theodoric
2009-10-20, 10:24 AM
how about working with minions, except that for every X amount of damage you hit Z adjacent minions?

Decoy Lockbox
2009-10-20, 06:44 PM
Most single blows will do more than 1/5 the HP of an even-level monster; so melee blows will end up being more than half wasted with your system anyhow. In fact, when a player uses a daily or encounter, because of the implicit blow-through, half damage will end up causing more pain under the system I sketched.

Note also there is precedence; there are zombie swarms in open grave, if I remember rightly.

Managing each individual monster ends up being complicated. And archer armies end up being much stronger than melee armies, as they can all engage, for the same level of monster (unless you scale the 'minion damage unit' significantly).

I do sort of like the idea of breaking into individual minions; what I might do is have it break up at either bloodied, or at the healing surge value of the force. Or maybe after an intimidate check against will (unmodified) after bloodied? Some kind of moral thing.

The more I think about it, the more I'm starting to like the idea of using swarms. Its just that, as a player, I really hate doing some kickass attack only to have it deal half damage -- this is the same reason that I'm trying to come up with better incorporealty rules. I guess as long as the player gets the feeling that they are cleaving through hoards of enemies, its all good.

I think the splitting off = decrement HP and make a minion thing will work the best for unit splitting.

CarpeGuitarrem
2009-10-21, 08:09 AM
The more I think about it, the more I'm starting to like the idea of using swarms. Its just that, as a player, I really hate doing some kickass attack only to have it deal half damage -- this is the same reason that I'm trying to come up with better incorporealty rules. I guess as long as the player gets the feeling that they are cleaving through hoards of enemies, its all good.
Simple fluff. HP isn't the HP of an individual enemy, but a measure of how many enemies you have to face, more or less. For instance, let's say that for every 5 HP, there's an enemy soldier. Not for simulation purposes, but for practical purposes.

So an attack that whips out 12 damage would take out two of those pesky soldiers. The only value you need to keep track of is the total HP of the swarm. When it reaches 0, all remaining soldiers are wiped out. Basically, it's like facing a swarm, but you describe individual swarm member deaths.

Along with the swarms, scatter some officers (single minions) and leaders (regular monsters), and you've got yourself an army.

ninja_penguin
2009-10-21, 10:20 AM
Also, for added effect to possibly make the character feel like they're doing more, start the swarms off at large or huge size, and when they are bloodied, drop them down a step in size, to represent the loss of numbers.

CarpeGuitarrem
2009-10-21, 03:29 PM
Also, for added effect to possibly make the character feel like they're doing more, start the swarms off at large or huge size, and when they are bloodied, drop them down a step in size, to represent the loss of numbers.
Yes. Totally yes.

Decoy Lockbox
2009-10-21, 04:03 PM
Also, for added effect to possibly make the character feel like they're doing more, start the swarms off at large or huge size, and when they are bloodied, drop them down a step in size, to represent the loss of numbers.

Thats a fantastic idea! How should I deal with the splitting off of guys though?

Yakk
2009-10-21, 04:22 PM
I like the size decrease. Another idea would be to break the force into two chunks at bloodied.

L + 4: Minion
L + 10: Squad (2x2 aura 1) ~16 troops
L + 10 Elite: Company (3x3 aura 2) ~50 troops
L + 10 Solo: Army (5x5 aura 3) ~ 150 troops

Armies at bloodied turn into two bloodied Companies and a Squad.
Companies at bloodied turn into two bloodied Squads.

AxA is the size; aura reflects the fact that the troops cover more than just the core of the force.

ninja_penguin
2009-10-21, 06:38 PM
Thats a fantastic idea! How should I deal with the splitting off of guys though?

Depends. You could try stuff like legomen, or make some pipecleaner guys. Or get a plastic tray/square that you swap out when it's time to change it. It really depends on what you've got available to work with, and what the level of quality that you're trying to show is.

Decoy Lockbox
2009-10-22, 05:41 PM
Depends. You could try stuff like legomen, or make some pipecleaner guys. Or get a plastic tray/square that you swap out when it's time to change it. It really depends on what you've got available to work with, and what the level of quality that you're trying to show is.

Nah, I have of plenty of warhammer minis to use, I was talking more about ruless for splitting off than physically representing it.

urkthegurk
2009-10-22, 11:38 PM
the whole swarm conceit is ridiculous. It is already absurd that 4th ecition has so little mechanics to track how damage in combat affects performance, so that a wounded character is less effective than a healthy one? Isn't it hard to inspire fear without killing someone, and combat looses its intensity.
That's a problem that is magnified when you see that a troop of soldiers using the swarm definition aren't affected performance-wise when individual members hit the ground. which this BASICALLY IS.
So there's two things you can do. You can treat most standard troopers as minions, which I doubt every soldier on the battlefield is, or do you apply penalties to the swarm as you wear it down in hp? And in how many ways are those similar?

Also, what would you want to field in your army? A bunch of expensive troops with hp, or minions galore? I'd go with the expensive and leave the minions, because they get hosed by area-attack damage. Would 4e armies do the same?

What I do for my world is focus all the warfare on the magical artefacts, the heroes, and the warmachines such as mechas and airships. Then infanry units become scurry little things that bite at your armies flanks, and abraid the stronger units with attrition. The heroes operate on the field between warmachine and minion, and typically fill some role as a commando team. this requires them to do a lot of skirmish warfare, as the larger battle plays out over top. You could just focus on the larger-scale combat, or give the PCs a lot of influence over it, but you should play the conflict out around the PCs as they engage in these skirmishes, and have their actions affect those parts of it.

For the layer of the larger battle, I make the units of horsemen and soldier and the individual warmachines re-skinned stats out of the monster manual, exactly like the swarms suggested above. Every few rounds the war-round would go, and the results would affect the context of the skirmish the PCs were facing. The actions of the PCs typically limit one side or enhance the other, depending on their success. The least of these affects would be an aid another action, such as if the character was merely with the unit helping out, and not actually engaged in skirmish combat or commanding. The middle ground of effectiveness would be a wizard kicking some really impressive spells, or warlords taking the reigns of the unit, or the anybody engaging real serious skirmish combat. The Most effect would be destroying a bridge underneath a unit, or cutting of a supply train. Those things have serious implictations on the outcome of the combat.

When the units decide to come after them, the PCS had better be ready. If not escorted by a friendly unit, ready to retreat, or in a defensible position, the will literally be engaged by dozens or hundreds of opponents, each and all using aid another actions, flanking, and just throwing them selves as a wall of steel and spears, on the heroes. I apply circumstance penalties when the target is completely surrounded too. Its like being flanked from all sides! In this case, I usually advocate in a wise and friendly voice, that the PCs flee. If they do not, then they made a short-lived character. No PC is invincible. Play it out as long as you have to, but when it becomes obvious that the end is inevitable, simply describe the character being dragged down under the weight of the zombies or brought low by a cowardly blow to the back. And let their deaths have an appropriate affect on the battlefield.

Again, if the PCs engage as part of a unit, then this is more reasonable. They can have a profound affect on the battlefield. Play it out, and as they characters and their immediate allies succeed or fail on the battlegrid, have that affect the large-scale combat.

If a PC is trying to get out of combat, they'll have to slug it out one shift at a time. kill, and shift into their square. This could take a lot of rounds. I think that provoking attacks of opportunity is so important in heavy melee combat where you can't even get your dex to AC. Now that is a way to impress your players that its tight! Reflect on their scores.

How'd you like them mechanics?



What I would do for large-scale combat

Yakk
2009-10-23, 09:48 AM
the whole swarm conceit is ridiculous. It is already absurd that 4th ecition has so little mechanics to track how damage in combat affects performance, so that a wounded character is less effective than a healthy one? Isn't it hard to inspire fear without killing someone, and combat looses its intensity.
We have the bloodied state. Make these swarms less effective when bloodied (which the 'split up into parts' might pull off).

Note that 0 HP is 'force made useless', as opposed to 'force killed'.


So there's two things you can do. You can treat most standard troopers as minions, which I doubt every soldier on the battlefield is, or do you apply penalties to the swarm as you wear it down in hp? And in how many ways are those similar?
Minions are a narrative mechanic, not a simulation mechanic. Saying a soldier 'is' a minion means that they aren't a significant threat, individually, in this particular fight.

Also, what would you want to field in your army? A bunch of expensive troops with hp, or minions galore? I'd go with the expensive and leave the minions, because they get hosed by area-attack damage. Would 4e armies do the same?
Again, you are seemingly treating 'minion' as something something is, and not how it interacts in this particular context.

This, at least, is the presumed context of 4e. You are free to decide differently, but I don't think it works that well.

For the layer of the larger battle, I make the units of horsemen and soldier and the individual warmachines re-skinned stats out of the monster manual, exactly like the swarms suggested above. Every few rounds the war-round would go, and the results would affect the context of the skirmish the PCs were facing.
I'd find this to be a large amount of dice-bation. Ie, the DM rolling dice against herself.

If you examine Reign, you'll see mechanics that attempt to pull this off -- where forces far larger than the PCs (nations, crime syndicates, large insects the size of cities, demons that infuse entire continents, etc) interact with the PCs; the large-scale stuff is abstracted, and the PCs actions influence the resolution mechanics. But the level of detail of round-by-round 4e combat isn't wanted or needed, because the round-by-round combat detail level in 4e exists in order for PCs to make decisions that matter on each round...

When the units decide to come after them, the PCS had better be ready. If not escorted by a friendly unit, ready to retreat, or in a defensible position, the will literally be engaged by dozens or hundreds of opponents, each and all using aid another actions, flanking, and just throwing them selves as a wall of steel and spears, on the heroes. I apply circumstance penalties when the target is completely surrounded too. Its like being flanked from all sides! In this case, I usually advocate in a wise and friendly voice, that the PCs flee. If they do not, then they made a short-lived character. No PC is invincible. Play it out as long as you have to, but when it becomes obvious that the end is inevitable, simply describe the character being dragged down under the weight of the zombies or brought low by a cowardly blow to the back. And let their deaths have an appropriate affect on the battlefield.
See, a level 20 PC should be taking on entire armies of Level 3 soldiers all by himself. It really doesn't stretch credibility that far; the power ratio between an end-paragon PC, and a level 3 human soldier, is ridiculous.

The goal of the mass combat rules as described is to allow you to take relatively weak opponents, and scale huge numbers of them up to a threat to PCs, without bogging things down in huge numbers of die rolls.

The first step is to figure out what kind of threat an army of level X monsters should have on the PCs. I used the 4e XP curve as a guideline for this, with the note that huge armies have problems bringing their power to bear on individuals that made me fudge the curve slightly in favour of PCs.

Once we have this, we can then make some mechanics to make it work -- if a group of level X PC can face down 2000 orcs in a battle, let's make sure that the battle doesn't take hours to evaluate. And lets make sure we it works where 3000 orcs vs 5 level 23 PCs and 1000 humans is also a viable thing to play through (because that would be fun).

At the heroic level, I agree; an force of even relatively weak individuals would and should overwealm a high-heroic PC. By mid-high paragon, the PCs should be able to facing down large forces of Goblins, Kobolds and Orcs -- by Epic, it should take a large army of 1000s to generate a threat for the PCs.

And by late epic, even huge armies of orcs are not a serious threat to PCs.

A neat effect of this is you can create fights where the PCs face down 1000s of orcs, and a handful of high-level demons, where the demons are the only thing that really challenges the PCs.

If a PC is trying to get out of combat, they'll have to slug it out one shift at a time. kill, and shift into their square. This could take a lot of rounds.
This doesn't seem interesting to me. Discouraging PCs from fighting armies by making it boring doesn't sound like a good plan to me.

I think that provoking attacks of opportunity is so important in heavy melee combat where you can't even get your dex to AC.
Are you talking about 4E or 3E D&D?

ninja_penguin
2009-10-25, 01:09 AM
Yakk pretty much said most things that I'd have said regarding that. The idea here is to actually fight an army and have it be equal. If you're trying to kill 100 guys all the same level as you, well, yeah, you'll be curb stomped. The idea here is that you're a lot stronger then just a couple of these guys.


Anyway, for the swarm shrinking mechanic? Personally, I'd just designate one corner square as containing the 'leader' figure. Then, when they shrink, you just pull away the outermost layer on the opposite side from the leader, and that should either give you a 2x2 remaining squad (if it was huge) or just the leader (if it started large), and I think you should be ready to go from there.

Mulletmanalive
2009-10-25, 10:05 AM
Got to agree with the minions assessment: they're not a comment about the fragility of the individuals but the drama of the scene.

I'd suggest reading some Conan because this was the first of modern writings to use this perticular troupe of hyperbole...

At times, Conan fights with three guards and has trouble with them.

Later, in a rage, he storms the fortress again and 'did swing his mighty blade, scattering limbs to the four winds'

That's all that's happened, the enemies have been hit with the old "You're not important, you die now" which has gone on with story tellers since the dawn of time.

mechanically, i'd be tempted to kind of go the other way. The battle is mostly composed of heroes and meat. move the figures and assume that there's similar 'Meat' casualties on each side, then when the heroes start fighting, people start standing and watching. The AngloSaxon Chronicle mentions this kind of thing happening so more than likely it did...

Winning side of the hero battle gains the morale advantage and the fight tips in their favour until the next hero clash...

Obviously, you'll want to adjust this if one side's meat is better than the other's: Spartans vs anyone, beef vs pork etc.

Shadow_Elf
2009-10-25, 03:58 PM
the reason the individuals are minions is not because each one is more fragile than a goblin grunt, but because of the Law of Conservation of Ninjutsu (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ConservationOfNinjutsu?from=Main.ConservationOfNin jitsu). This lets your characters feel as if they're making a big difference in the outcome of the battle. I also like the idea of treating them a swarms that when bloodied produce X number of minions breaking out of formation. It also makes sense - just as with minions, a fireball should do more damage than a swing of the sword, and swarm resistance/vulnerability mimics that just as well.

ninja_penguin
2009-10-25, 07:35 PM
I also like the idea of treating them a swarms that when bloodied produce X number of minions breaking out of formation.

Oh man, I'm totally writing this one down too. I was originally liking my size change idea, but I like this. I'll also add in a bit where if X*2 minions are on the field, they can reform into a swarm unit that produces X minions when bloodied again. I think this will be worthwhile to experiment with to see if you can get the ebb and flow feeling that I'm hoping you might be able to get.

Gralamin
2009-10-25, 08:08 PM
There are a few good mechanics already out there to steal. For example:

Stragglers (when the riot takes forced movement, and when it is reduced to 0 hit points)
Each square the Wellspringer riot formerly occupied now contains one Wellspring rioter, who acts just after the riot.

urkthegurk
2009-11-10, 10:22 PM
Dear Yakkkkk

What I mean is, I doubt every soldier on the battlefield could reasonably be considered a minion. I know that its a narrative mechanic. If you're fielding elite units, then they won't be minions unless they're fighting very high-level PCs. I just can't see the use of giving a whole bunch of peasants or orcs basic weapons and pushing them onto the battlefield AT ALL, since as soon as a PC with a high enough level starts to interact with them.... it simply doesn't sound like an efficent use of manpower, but if the armies in your campaign world don't agree, then fine. Let their entire realm be depopulated by the epic-tier magic of the wizard.

In fact, I don't think any armies would be fielding units in tight formation at all, since the benefits are far outweighed by thr fact that an area attack could take out them all.

As for the 'greater battle rolls' I suggested, they only take place every five or ten or even twenty rounds, or between skirmishes, and are literally just a roll or two. Its basically only to give an idea of a flexible battle around the PCs, and to have the forces they face vary based on their failure or success. Call it dice-bation if you want, but I do occasionally make skill checks between two opposing NPCs if the situation is relevant to the player position. This is true! Of course, it works best when the PCs care about the results, and are not in the position to simply wipe out both sides.

If the PCs are literally taking on a whole army of 3rd level monsters by themselves, not engaged in a battle between two armies, then, like I said, the swarms are appropriate. I don't like them, because it doesn't feel like a combat with a swarm of opponents, it feels like a slog-fest against a big blobby monster with very few special abilities.

I don't see why the army would engage the PCs in this way, which inevitably results in futile and massive loss of life. The morale of soldiers attacking heroes such as the PCs, if the soldiers are 3rd level minions, would be atrocious. Wise warriors will see that the heroes are out of their league, and fight something else. But IF THEY DO attack, and THEY MIGHT, then the swarm is your only option. I would still want to make the swarms fairly weak, and have more interesting boss monsters emerge from the army to join the fight. Seems fair, and that's how I would handle it.

I really like the stragglers rule, but I'd make it less of them, and make a few of them the non-minion parts of the unit. Or at leat higher level minions. For spice.

Do you see what I'm doing? I'm outlining ways to go around a problem that I dislike. I know what you're all working at, the stat blocks for armies, is important, and I'm not trying to detract. I just want to share my methods as well. They work fine, and they might be useful to people with similar tastes.

So There.