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Siberian Soviet
2010-11-04, 07:07 PM
I've always found large scale field battles and castle sieges awesome so I figured I'd try incorporating some into my campaign. If any one could give me some advice as to how to go about doing so would be extremely helpful as well as tips and trick. Until now I've primarily been making up mechanics for massive battles but would rather know how to go about it properly.

Snarfmite
2010-11-04, 07:46 PM
Instead of doing rolls for individuals, break them off into squads and do moves and rolls by squad.

If you happen to have a lot of D6s, you can adopt a warhammer-type system: roll a d6 to hit for each member of the squad, and then for those that do hit, roll to would. Of those that would, the opposing player gets to make an armor save, and those that fail the save are wounded.

The "to hit" roll is made by comparing the attacker's and the defender's "weapon skill." Rolls to wound are made by comparing the attacker's Strength vs the defender's Toughness. Then, those wounded get an armor save based on whatever armor they are wearing.

Following those rules, say there's 2 squads of human militia charging at each other. There's 10 guys in each squad. The attackers will roll 10d6. Since they're on even footing weapon-skill wise, it's a 4+ (meaning you need a 4 or higher, or a 50% chance) of hitting on those d6 rolls. Let's say 6 of those dice are a 4, 5, or 6. Roll those remaining dice to see what wounds. This time, we compare strength to toughness, but since we're on even footing, the roll would be a 4+ to wound. Let's say 3 of those dice wound. Now, the defending player makes his or her armor saves. Since these humans are wearing Studded Leather, let's say it's a 5+ armor save. Those 3 dice are rolled, and only 1 of them is 5 or higher. There were 2 wounds that failed to be stopped by the armor, so you can say 2 of the defending player's recruits are wounded, and out of the fight (unconscious, dead, whatever).

Let's say we have a 5th level paladin in full plate vs a squad of 10 of these human militia. The militia attack, rolling 10d6. Since the paladin is more skilled at fighting than these militia, the militiamen only hit on a 6+. Let's say 3 get lucky and hit the paladin. Those 3 will then roll to wound, maybe a 5+ since the Paladin may be slightly tougher than the militia's Strength value. Let's say 2 of those get lucky and wound. The Paladin then gets to make a armor saves, let's say it's a 2+ since he's in full plate, so he rolls those dice and fails one of those saves. He'd then take a wound, which in D&D terms might be something like 5-10 hp. When he strikes back, he hits on a 2+, wounds on a 3+, and then the militia get to make their 5+ saves.

One reason why this is a pretty good system for large battles is that people tend to have a lot of d6, so instead of rolling a d20 or two at a time, you can just do entire squad's attacks at once. Plus, you use the same dice for each roll, so you don't have to switch off difference dice.

Callista
2010-11-04, 07:55 PM
Well... I'd kind of stay away from it, and keep it in the RP domain. Roll d% to see whether they're being hit with arrows or stray spells, and just zoom in on one area of a big battle. If they stick their heads up, there's a much bigger chance that they'll be hit. Let them do something that'll turn the tide--sabotage a siege tower, take down a group of war golems, assassinate the enemy leader--and keep track of the morale of the armies. Tell them, from their perspective, who seems to be winning and what is happening around them. If they're below level 10, then it's big, chaotic, and most of it is beyond their control. If they're above level 10, it won't be a battle so much as a slaughter of the opposing army unless the other army also has high-levels with them, in which case they should pit themselves against the opposing champions.

Amphetryon
2010-11-04, 08:31 PM
See if you can find a copy of Cry Havoc!, a 3rd party book about mass combat in 3.5

Barring that, the above advice from Snarfmite is certainly cogent.

Echoes
2010-11-04, 08:59 PM
I recommend whole-heartedly the first four chapters of Heroes of Battle, as they deal explicitly with just such campaigns, and will speak much more eloquently on this topic than me.

Beyond that, I echo the sentiments of Callista; Players love their characters, and so it's important not to dissociate them from their characters by doing something like telling them their character is somewhere leading the left flank, but cannot use any of their unique class skills for the encounter. It's much more engaging, and much more evocative of the wartime 'atmosphere', if your characters are engaged in some dangerous mission that involves a clear singular objective, where they might see a scattered band of opponents or two, but where most of their information about the war on a broad scale comes from second-hand updates.

That being said, if you do want to incorporate an epic battle scene into your campaign, I would say a good way to do it is somewhat similar to the OotS comics dealing with the Battle for Azure City (in fact, reading that entire plotline can give you some great inspiration for "resistance movements" and the like in your campaign, should the war be lost) - give the players each their own mini-encounter occuring simultaneously, somehow relevant to their skills, and a squad of 4-8 generic soldiers who act like cohorts. However, even then it's good if at some point the PCs break off to fight the big bad general or casting mastermind whose working for the enemy, because honestly plowing through a sea of lvl 1 NPCs only stays interesting for so long.

If you don't want to pre-determine the outcome of the war beforehand, you can make daily d% rolls, to see how the casualties fall between the two groups (assume x number of casualties per day, using fractions derived from the d% ):

1-20: Protagonist forces were slaughtered
20-40: Protagonists fought well, but sustained heavier casualties
40-60: Fairly even losses
60-80: Protagonists pressed forward and made some progress
80-100: Protagonists made a major breakthrough and captured a minor opposing leader

Siberian Soviet
2010-11-04, 09:45 PM
Thanks for your help, I appreciate it. I will probably end up incorporating most of the suggestions into my battles as well as checking out the Cry Havoc! mentioned by Amphetryon. Thank you all so much.

How I think I'll do this is take the Warhammer idea presented by Snarfmite, seeing as how I'm quite familiar with the system, and apply it to the various platoons, regiments, and squads that are not under direct player control. I've tried having the Players engage the critical targets such as a big bad mage or the opposing sides general but I felt like I was hinging the battle far to much on that one little tussle. So it seems that having the players hit critical targets as sort of a task force which would thusly affect the general morale of the enemy army and effect the opposing armies d6 rolls would be the best course of action. Then have the war at large be dictated, as Echoes has suggested, by a d%. Of course I won't have the whole war be decided by a d% I'll most likely have the d% represent skirmishes and the affect of raiding parties and battles that don't have a player present.

Thanks again and any suggestions on anything else massive battle related would be swell as well.

Crow
2010-11-04, 10:48 PM
I use the warfare rules from Birthright. Works quite well.

gdiddy
2010-11-05, 03:36 AM
Use sparingly. Battles take a long time to resolve with standard d20. Make sure the players have something to do. Give them a special mission or goal, that will definitely affect the outcome. A baggage train raid ended the Battle of Tours, the most important event of the early middle ages. Put your players in the trojan horse, raiding the enemy for the secret weapon, or guarding the tunnel into the keep from the river outside the city. Dont have them standing in formations, rolling attacks, having no effect on anything, and being bored for 4 hours. If they wanted to do that, they'd watch the Director's Cut of The Two towers.

This can be a fun game. Dont make it into a multi-hour cut scene in which you show off how smart you are and how much you love militaary history.

FelixG
2010-11-05, 05:38 AM
I like the D100 rolls to see how well the battle is going, you could break it up as well into small encounters with squads of troops, as the PCs do well so does their army, if they are forced to pull back so does their army

Baring that the special missions idea are good ones. Maybe give them a small map of the battlefield, they have their objectives circled and assign points to the missions, when their total points reach your arbitrarily chosen number the enemies moral breaks and they retreat or are defeated

Tytalus
2010-11-05, 07:24 AM
If you like to keep the focus on the PCs and have everything else happen based on their actions, you might want to consider the ideas used in Red Hand of Doom, in particularly Victory Points and...

the examples given for PC activities during the Siege of Brindol.

Echoes
2010-11-05, 07:53 AM
The system used in Heroes of Battle (WotC's own battlefield book) revoles around the concept of "Victory Points", as well. Basically, you assign all the different objectives your PCs could take a certain number of points based on how much effect it would likely have on the battle overall (for instance: Standing on the front lines chopping away might only give 1 or 2, while destroying the bridge they're using to cross over might give 10-12, and stealing all of the enemy's logistics from the leader's camp might give 20). Then, you write outcomes for the major battles, starting at 0 (or "nominal") outcome, which is basically what would happen if your players did nothing. At each increasing VP benchmark above nominal something better happens, through a combination of your players own effort and the morale boost to the troops that occurs from seeing something amazing like the enemy's bridge blowing up.

On a completely separate note, but for space not a separate post, also remember that if you're theming your battles after those which actually took place in the medieval period, the scale of war was MUCH smaller than it is depicted in most fantasy novels. A "massive force" in the 1500s was something like 500 troops, since you had to outfit and feed each of these men, often relying on nothing but the wilderness or sporadic shipments while they were gone for months at a time. While undead/constructs and food-creating magic solve some of these issues if you want something larger, if you do opt for the truly large scale battles, make sure you are mindful of where and how they are camping, and how they are able to subsist in a foreign land.

Also, while it would be stupid to individually outfit every enemy in the opposing camp, it never hurts to give a few enemies special items that they take into battle, especially if they are commanding knights or sorcerers. Know that in pre-modern war it was almost a ritual that the evening after a big battle, the scavengers and the mercenaries of the winning side would go out to loot the battlefield, taking the things left behind by those who had fallen. Depending on the moral standing of your PCs, this is a good way to replace the traditional source of income during a campaign, because honestly there just aren't that many dragon hoardes sitting in the middle of a war.

bokodasu
2010-11-05, 08:36 AM
+1 to Heroes of Battle; you can use it to run big fights or figure out how to make your little fights matter in the context of the big fight. Plus it has a lot of fun goodies for running big battle campaigns. (As it should, I guess, given the title, but considering how often I have to figure out whether I should look in "Complete Arcane" or "Complete Mage" for *druid* goodies...)

Chrono22
2010-11-05, 08:49 AM
Well, if you want to run it without having things grind to a halt, you'll need to do a bit of abstraction.
Instead of tracking individual soldiers, track units.
Assign a unit "ability scores" such as Defense, Mobility, Morale, and Offense.
Every time a unit has an engagement (aka an encounter) with another, they are able to target one of these four scores when they attack. The attacking force rolls against the defending force, and the difference (if positive) between the attack and the defense is the amount of damage that is dealt to the score.
Sometimes engagements allow one side to gain strategic advantage. Based on the terrain and other conditions, assign modifiers to the ability scores of either side. There are also other considerations you may need to make in regards to spellcasting or whatever corner cases come your way.
Full scale combat isn't really necessary to provide players with a tactically engaging battle, so try to keep things loose and fun enough that the players don't have to engross themselves in every little detail to win.

Tharck
2010-11-05, 10:14 AM
I do zoomed in areas of a battle at low level. At mid levels I usually do the same thing but the PCs jobs are to take out notable NPCs. Such as clear the tower with wizards casting from it. At epic levels I would face the PCs as a group against the entire army, mostly because they're invulnerable to most of the things an army can do to them. So it comes down to dealing with major NPCs and a handful of mid level NPCs.