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Titanium Fox
2011-05-25, 12:34 PM
So in my last campaign, I did one of these and it didn't go well. Basically there was a massive army on army battle going on, and the players as soldiers in the army were in the thick of it. Basically what I did to handle it was take the massive battle and section it down into smaller 10 x 10 chunks. At the top of each round I described what was going on around them and how both sides appeared to be doing, and only mechanically handled their battle.

There has to be a better way to handle that though. I had the thought to make all the non player characters move at once and handle a massive amount of characters on my end, but I felt like that would have made the battle last hours OOC.

So, does anyone have any ideas? I'd love to run something similar this year, but significantly improved to mechanically reflect what's going on around them.

Severus
2011-05-25, 12:44 PM
If anybody has a great answer to this, I'd be interested too.

Over the years we've run big battles many times, and I've never found the right balance of epic and interactive. Either it's epic, but the PCs have no effect, or its interactive, and the PCs control the whole battle and so it isn't epic.

Hard problem.

DonEsteban
2011-05-25, 02:55 PM
I haven't done anything like this myself. I think if you really want to focus on playing D&D* (whether role-playing or roll-playing), the best way to do is how you did it last time. Let the battle provide the background noise and the players do meaningful things in between that change the outcome. Heroes of Battles has recommendation on how to do this.

If you really want to play out the battle, let the players control one side (and their characters). You could use a simple system like Battlesystem (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battlesystem). (I'm sure there are "better" war gaming systems, but for a one-shot system doesn't matter all that much.)
Or you could even try to adapt the Miniatures game.

So at least this is what the theory says. I would love to hear of someone who already did this.

*You do play D&D, don't you?

dsmiles
2011-05-25, 03:17 PM
I've only ever run one big battle, and it was all pretty much percentile based. (Except for the things that the player characters could directly affect.) I'd roll percentile dice each round for each side. Subtracted the lower number from the higher number and that's how many percent in casualties the loser of that round took. Down around 35% the losing side started to either surrender or flee. It was short and sweet, except for the fact that the player's side was the losing side.

Totally Guy
2011-05-25, 03:48 PM
We had a massive battle in the last session I ran.

I had a military strategy skill for my NPC and the one of the player characters had a military strategy skill.

We did a scene for each of the players characters and their role in the battle. As things happened or didn't happen I awarded bonus die or increased the difficulty.

The players got a bonus die for doing the following:
Recruiting an additional faction before the war.
Timing their attack just after a decoy attack by another group.
Timing their attack for dawn so that the enemy would not have any night blooded troll on their side.
But I increased the difficulty for not being with the main army during the battle and instead giving instructions for the generals to follow.

The enemy got a bonus die for all these things:
Would have got a bonus die for their moat but the players lowered the drawbridge.
Got 2 bonus dice for having a castle.
The players were unable to stop the enemy sounding the Brazen Horn of Despair.
The players did not count on the enemy having a squad of trolls bred to withstand daylight.
The players failed to take out the spearmen within the castle walls.

In the end it looked fairly even. The two strategists, me and the player, rolled the dice with the outcome of the war at stake.

The player won so his side took over. Had he lost, the players would have been stranded behind enemy lines, their own forces routed. I love to explain what will happen should they fail so they have no illusions about what was at stake. It forces me to follow through with it too. :smallwink:

kyoryu
2011-05-25, 04:40 PM
I've only ever run one big battle, and it was all pretty much percentile based. (Except for the things that the player characters could directly affect.) I'd roll percentile dice each round for each side. Subtracted the lower number from the higher number and that's how many percent in casualties the loser of that round took. Down around 35% the losing side started to either surrender or flee. It was short and sweet, except for the fact that the player's side was the losing side.

I'm basically doing this in a game I'm running (slightly different, but same concept).

What the PCs can do is go on "strike missions", effectively, which will increase change a bonus amount given, as well as impact the encounter mix/strength of future encounters.

Basically, the defenders started at 20 "points", with a -7 modifier. Each "battle turn," I roll a d10, subtract the modifier, and that's the new status of the battle. 0 "battle points" indicates the defenders have lost.

PCs have various ways to influence the modifier either permanently or temporarily. Also, if the modifier hits various thresholds, things will occur (city walls getting breached, etc.)

It's working fairly well so far.

Danin
2011-05-25, 05:24 PM
While perhaps not the massive battle the OP is suggesting, I'm trying something new of my own devising in my next session to facilitate a large section of a big battle. I was actually logging on to ask for help refining the idea. The idea is being implemented in 4e, but should run equally well in 3.5 (if not better).

DM Prep-work
Firstly, the sides are broken down into squads of about 5 troops of the same type. The PCs and notable NPCs (Mostly bad guys) are not, and are free agents on the battlefield.

Secondly, the damage of the squads are averaged (ex: (5 Archers)*(1d8+4)*(%chance to hit against the average enemy AC (65% or 0.65 in this case) = 27.625, or 28 Damage). This means each archer on average does 5 or 6 damage a round. I would also calculate the average damage including some common modifiers (Enemy has cover or concealment, enemy has total cover or concealment) and against specific AC's they will be encountering on the battlefield (The Necrotic Golem has an AC 2 higher than the average AC, so they will do about 10% less damage).

While all this makes for a little more work for the DM than one might appreciate, the math is actually quite easy, and creating a swanky little table for each unit in excel really takes no time at all. I also tended to use mobs with the same bonus to hit and similar damage expressions to make the math easier (in many cases just copy and paste).

Thirdly, the HP of the squad is totaled. As HP is taken from the squad, NPCs die, removing their damage from the average damage of the group. Its a little unrealistic for the NPCs to die every 1/5th of the HP gone (tha'd be some wicked focus firing) so I arbitrarily chose round numbers around 70%, 45%, 25%, 10%, and finally the squad is killed to the man at 0%.

Fourth, every so often when it feels appropriate due to a side clearly loosing, a squad taking massive damage or in the face of something truly scary I will roll a D20 for morale. The squad will take a -2 penalty for every member dead, -4 for being surrounded or cut off in some way, and whatever penalty I deem appropriate at the time given the situation. If the modified result is ever below 1, they break and retreat. They will rally or not as plot demands.

In Combat Rules
Squads targeting other squads inflict their average damage. No rolls, just for simplicity. Squads targeting PCs roll as normal. PCs target individual members of a squad, not the entire squad. Works just like normal D&D.

Targeting a bad guy in a squad that has already been injured will actually be very simple, simply take the damage away from the squad's health in addition to recording how much damage an individual has taken. If the damage the PCs do exceed the individual's health he is killed, removed as normal, and you skip the next loss due to squad HP dropping. Similarly, if the damage the PCs do drop the squad's health below a threshold where they would loose a member, the guy dies, with it being explained that he was previously wounded. If both happen at the same time, only 1 model is removed.

Squads move on the same initiative count and always stick together as best they can. If most the members of a squad have cover from another squad, then they have cover, regardless if one or two guys don't. They act more or less rationally, but have a preference to engage other squads rather than individual NPCs or monsters. That's the PC's job.

The way the PC's influence the battle in a meaningful way is by giving orders. In my campaign they all have a rank with the military, so barring suicidal or stupid orders, the NPCs are expected to obey. Giving a squad an order is a move action and they carry it out on their next turn. A squad can only be ordered to do one thing at a time (Ex: Take cover behind the barrels; engage the zombie ogres; change target to the flying guys; etc.). In this way I hope to have the PCs engaged in a big battle and actually be able to influence the events around them. I'll let you know how it goes though, as I suspect the system will need some refining.


For clarification purposes, here is an example:


A squad of human archers (40hp per archer = 200hp) that deal 1d8+4 damage per hit (avg 8.5 * 5 archers = 42.5 damage) has +11 to hit and 18ac. They are attacking a squad of skeletal crossbowmen (30hp per bowman = 150hp) that deal 1d10+8 damage per hit (avg 13.5 * 5 bowmen = 67.5) and have +6 to hit and 19ac.

The human archers with +11 to hit strike home 65% of the time. Average 42.5 damage * 0.65 = 27.625 (28) damage a round against the skeletons.

The skeletons only hit home 45% of the time, and so deal the average 67.5 damage * .045 = 30.375 (30) damage a round against the humans.

These numbers will remain more or less the same as most the bad guys in the evil army in this example have 19ac and most the good guys have 18ac.

The two squads engage each other on their initiative counts. The humans go first and deal 28 damage to the skeletons, bringing them to 122/150hp (81% squad hp), not enough to kill a skeleton. The skeletons return fire for 30 damage, bringing the humans to 170/200hp (85% squad hp), also not enough to make a kill. When the humans return fire, however, the next 28 damage drops the skeletons to 94/150hp (62% squad hp), enough to make a kill. The skeleton damage goes down by 1/5th, or 6 in this example. When the skeletons return fire they only inflict 24 damage this time, bringing the humans to 146/200hp (73% squad HP), just shy of winning a kill.

Seeing the fight going poorly for his army, Dorakas the Necromancer (And free roaming evil NPC) decides to intervene. Dorakas launches a black orb of entropy at one of the archers and hits for 26 damage! This drops that individual down to 14/40hp, but the squad's HP also drops to 120/200hp (just 60% of the squad's total HP). Since 60% is below the 70% squad HP threshold, the poor archer that Dorakas targeted is in fact dead (having clearly taken 14 or so damage before from a crossbow bolt he had taken in the shoulder from the archers).

The goal is to have a very easy system for the DM to deal with (Though with a little bit more prep work than some DMs usually go through, admittedly) that the PCs can influence. Any criticisms or suggestions would be welcome as well.

Heliomance
2011-05-25, 05:44 PM
Legend of the Five Rings has a very good massive battle system. I'd suggest looking it up. One of my friends has successfully converted it to D&D, but I don' want to post it here without his permission.

J.Gellert
2011-05-25, 06:19 PM
So in my last campaign, I did one of these and it didn't go well. Basically there was a massive army on army battle going on, and the players as soldiers in the army were in the thick of it. Basically what I did to handle it was take the massive battle and section it down into smaller 10 x 10 chunks. At the top of each round I described what was going on around them and how both sides appeared to be doing, and only mechanically handled their battle.

There has to be a better way to handle that though. I had the thought to make all the non player characters move at once and handle a massive amount of characters on my end, but I felt like that would have made the battle last hours OOC.

So, does anyone have any ideas? I'd love to run something similar this year, but significantly improved to mechanically reflect what's going on around them.

I really want to run a campaign that has a lot of this (and byzantine politics), but so far haven't had a chance (read: players).

Since we're basically playing a fantasy version of Mutants & Masterminds, I'd naturally use its massive battle system - it seems great and it comes with good recommendations (http://arsludi.lamemage.com/index.php/42/mm-field-battle-rules/).

Conan D20 (http://www.mongoosepublishing.com/detail.php?qsID=279&qsSeries=Conan) has more "D&D-ish" mass combat rules as well. It's a free download.

Cry Havoc by Monte Cook (http://www.montecook.com/mpress_Havoc.html) is all about this in actual D&D, though too detailed, too slow (but again, I am a fan of the faster M&M - so this may be perfect for you).

You can also just handle it as an entirely different system/ruleset and treat mass battles as a separate mini-game, if they are not too common in your campaign.

Whatever you try, good luck! :smallbiggrin:

Vrythas
2011-05-27, 05:49 AM
this problem reminds me of the Lord of the Rings: Return of the King game, for the computer as well as other consoles. one of the levels is the battle on the fields of Pelennor. you still have your characters, and you still have objectives, but the enemies around you will run past to engage others, and occasionally stop to fight you, otherwise they run past. there are, however, times when the enemies just fight you, such as when you go to launch some catapults that are guarded. but yeah, otherwise, the enemies will usually run past. that might make things interesting. have enemies that will ignore the PC's, unless the PC's attack them, and you could have fights between NPC soldiers around the characters. as for the large scale part of it, suggestions that i have read here seem great.

Tyndmyr
2011-05-27, 08:26 AM
Legend of the Five Rings has a very good massive battle system. I'd suggest looking it up. One of my friends has successfully converted it to D&D, but I don' want to post it here without his permission.

I was going to suggest the 7th Sea mass combat system...I bet they're probably similar.

Yeah, D&D doesn't handle mass combat terribly well by default. You need an abstraction layer for everything the PCs aren't directly dealing with.

Yukitsu
2011-05-27, 09:50 AM
I generally recommend people run a tabletop wargame, my preference being warhammer. You can custom stat things if you need to, but having each model represent a block of 100 dudes, PCs as special characters can basically streamline an otherwise clunky process.

For less heroic games, running a vs. of a total war game can also be effective, but it has to be a fairly mundane one, since those games don't support heros.

Sycor
2011-06-04, 08:34 AM
I have done the Battlesystem before.. with a ROUGH cut and paste from 3.5 stats into the Battlesystem stats for all the normal units.

The PCs and the elite units of the enemy plus enemy leaders we usually followed the guide and did 3 rounds of individual combat for 1 round of army combat. It worked, not terribly effecient but did seem "accurate".

Alot of prep work is required to make it work. This was the Bloodstone pass series btw, I have been thinking of ressurecting it.. since no party has successfully finished it.

Ursus the Grim
2011-06-04, 09:08 AM
I haven't done anything like this myself. I think if you really want to focus on playing D&D* (whether role-playing or roll-playing), the best way to do is how you did it last time. Let the battle provide the background noise and the players do meaningful things in between that change the outcome. Heroes of Battles has recommendation on how to do this.

I'm going to echo this. Heroes of battle has a few really great ideas for a wargame type adventure. The most useful advice it game me is to *not* put the party in the thick of things. They are a tight-knit team of elite operatives. They should be dispatched like a spec ops unit, cutting supply lines, assassinating enemy VIPs, and scouting the enemy forces. Assume that the friendly forces have a slightly less than 50% of victory if the party fails its objectives. Create win conditions based on what the party does. For instance, if they only complete one of three tasks, the army fights hard but the tide turns against them. If they complete two of three, the army suffers major causalties but eventually triumphs. If they complete all three, the strategic victories give their allies the upper hand, and the victory is nearly certain.

If you're determined to put them in the thick of things, as is your right, I would determine about how long the battle will last and predetermine enough enemies to throw at them for about that length of time. Only allow status updates when they ask or something particularly important happens (ie, a red dragon enters the field). Its very difficult not to get lost in the chaos of close-quarters battle, and they should be assuming that they are surrounded by a maelstrom of steel, death, and blood.

GreyMantle
2011-06-04, 09:44 AM
Races of War (http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=33294) has its own mass combat minigame (found under the section titled "Mass Combat Minigame"). I've never personally used it (both campaigns in which it would have been used got TPK'd before masscombat would have entered the story), but I have read positive accounts of others using it.

It's fairly simple, but it still allows for a fair amount of differentiation between different types of units.

LibraryOgre
2011-06-04, 11:14 AM
My rules for big battles tends to go to the "cinematic" version. Each battle has specific points at which the actions of certain individuals can drastically change the flow. Rather than play out every instant of battle, play out those moments, with the players as heroes.


Here's an article I wrote years ago about it:
http://www.editors-wastebasket.org/nexx/palladium/battles.html

prufock
2011-06-04, 01:02 PM
Like some others have said, I don't roll or stat out massive battles at all (when I have them, which is rare). I storyboard them pre-game, with some "choose your own adventure"-type branches. Nobody cares how Rohan Soldier A is doing against Orc A - they want to know what Gimli and Legolas are doing.

The battle has points of interest - hold the wall, stop the rampaging elephants, kill the wraith, take the wharf, etc. Each action on the part of the PCs has a consequence, which turns the tide of battle one way or t'other.

Toofey
2011-06-04, 03:09 PM
I would give the party specific aims when they are going into action. A good start to a satisfying battle is to be told they're too important to be in the thick of it, then be deployed to either handle a specific threat the enemy brings, or get used to take out the enemies command to clinch the win for the "good guys"

manyslayer
2011-06-06, 09:54 AM
Well, as others have pointed out, Heroes of Battle has info on this.

In our own group, to give players a feeling they could have some impact on the events even though the PCs were not in the thick of the main battle, we ran a D&D minis scenario. Now, while not truly reflective, it allowed a larger battle with similar rules. Basically, each model represented a squad. Spellcasters were indicative of a higher level caster (to balance out number issues) or lower level level caster with support troops. Lists were made up and each PC was given a commander and a number of models.

I don't remember the specifics, but our battle force was basically split into 3 forces (there being 3 PCs). One of the militia (lower power warriors and archers with a cleric leading), one of the forces of the church (slightly more powerful, but fewer troops with a paladin leading a cleric support), and the allied dwarves.

SleepyShadow
2011-06-06, 10:14 AM
I once ran a short mini-campaign where the PCs were feudal lords trying to unite/conquer the nation. For smaller battles that pitted the PCs against a group of lower level warriors, I would have some of the soldiers use Aid Another to help hit the PCs more often, then fluffed it as them all attacking en mass. For larger groups, I treated them as a swarm for the simple fact that if dozens/hundreds/thousands of people are all trying to attack a PC, something is bound to hit them.

Then, if there was a more powerful NPC, he would of course be a stand alone individual, since he represented an actual threat to the PCs.

Overall, the players had a lot of fun. One thing I must point out, though, is doing it like this definitely left it with a rather strong Dynasty Warriors feeling, with the PCs chewing through handfuls of mooks like tissue paper.

Tvtyrant
2011-06-06, 01:17 PM
Why not just use the mob template and make both armies into a series of level appropriate encounters? If the units are small enough your party can effectively carve a swathe without the boring mook combat.