Mass Combat

[FallenWarriorIV]

What's the best system for mass combats? I'm looking for full scale war style.

Here's the idea: instead of a typical D&D game where the PCs go out and find adventure, they're told to defend the nation by building a defensive keep. They spend money and whatnot building defensive fortifications and everything else a city needs to run, then hiring and training an army.

One of the many problems with this is that D&D does not seem to work for large scale combat. Any ideas, let me know please.

[Land Outcast]

I guess this isn't remotely what you were expecting, but in the terrain of abstraction, I've done this (with half of each specialized in ranged combat):

Platoon (50 men) - Two Warriors level 1
Company (200 men) - Four Ftr1
Batallion (1500 men) - Fourteen Ftr1/War1
Regiment (6000 men) - Thirty Ftr2/War1

All of them have 75% hp, equipment according to their level, and were created with the nonelite array (13, 12, 11, 10, 9, 8). And we made a a grid to scale (reducing speeds from (4 squares) to two squares as a move action.

We had fun, particularly given the low hp, and the opportunity for tactics as the units are not a single creature. In the grid we added structures to be taken and held, as well as differences in terrain heights, paths, difficult terrain, cover, etc. (dry-erase markes, of course)

Disclaimer:The figures are great levels of abstraction, different units are not even interchangeable between themselves, but given the relative power of the soldiers they can be used on the same combat:

Platoon: a warrior every 25 men
Company: a fighter every 50 men
Batallion: a fighter 1 warrior 1 every 100 men
Regiment: a fighter 2 warrior 1 every 200 men

[Fox Box Socks]

Isn't there a skeleton ruleset of sorts for this in Heroes of Battle?

[FallenWarriorIV]

Heroes of Battle does have rules for it. It's just. . . Meh.

[Elvenoutrider]

I believe star wars saga edition clone wars has rules for it which involves adding a squad template onto your soldiers. That said I dont own the book, but it came out much later than heroes of battle

[FallenWarriorIV]

Just pulled up the book. Havn't read through it, but didn't see that in glossary or the index.

[FallenWarriorIV]

Found the Mob template in the DMGII. It could work, with some tweaking. What do you think?