Big Battle Rules

[Mr. Zolrane]

I'm sure something like this exists somewhere in 3.5 and/or PF, but I'm simply unaware of where I might find it:

What sort of rules might one use when the PCs are fighting massive quantities of mooks instead of a few enemies of appropriate CR? Also, what are the rules for determining victory in battles between two (or more) large forces? I'm open to homebrew solutions if RAW is silent or inadequate on this topic, so if you have those, feel free to share as well.

[Kalaska'Agathas]

I believe Heroes of Battle is the sourcebook you're looking for.

[opticalshadow]

i could have sworn the DMG had rules for fighting mobs.

teh written rules basically made all the creatures into one large creature and hitting and missing were forgone for dmg delt per round, until all the hd of the mob were killed.

if i remember right.,

[Girshtop]

You may want to take a look at the Miniatures Handbook if you can get your hands on one. It's all about large scale battles, including army warfare and the rules for PC's fighting in a war in your campaign. It should have all the info you're looking for.

[AslanCross]

If I'm not mistaken, enemies of too low a CR will eventually not register XP at all. Using the Legion of Geeks Encounter Calculator (http://legionofgeeks.com/encounter_calc.php):

100 CR 1/4 enemies give a party of four Lv 6 PCs 1875 XP each. A 7th level party gains absolutely nothing.

Heroes of Battle suggests against engagements with too many enemies, as they become very impractical to run, and makes the very good point that we're playing an RPG, not a wargame. Remember that killing a bunch of enemies that might not even be worth any XP can get very boring very fast. There's also the minutiae of logistics and combat movement that might cause players' eyes to glaze over.

Instead it recommends a victory point system, wherein small but very important missions the PCs undertake might help the overall course of the battle. If the players reach a certain threshold of victory points, they might have an overwhelming victory. A lower threshold might result in a victory with great losses. No points at all might mean total defeat.

The point here is to keep PC actions very important to the war effort without boring everyone to death.

I think the most manageable number of mooks one can run is 15 at most. I ran a castle siege once, using Heroes of Battle rules. The PCs were storming the wall on their own. There was a squad of about 8 archers on the wall, using the volley rules to launch arrow showers at the PCs, as well as an ogre, two elite hobgoblin warblades, and a hobgoblin caster. Pretty fun battle, though the PCs were easily able to neutralize the mooks with a single casting of glitterdust, then black tentacles. The PC attack was dramatically slowed down by the caster dropping solid fog on the PCs, though. It took a while for them to get to the top of the wall and kill the caster.

[Aharon]

Oslecamo improved on the Mob template in his thread here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=129179), adding rules for more ordered groups. I like these rules and used them in a city siege.

IMO, it works better than the Heroes of Battle rules, which basically treat the Battlefield as an odd dungeon, where objectives you have to fulfill influence the course of the battle. It's ok if you're permanently part of an army, but if you have a high level group that leads their own army, it isn't that good.

[Mr. Zolrane]

Oslecamo improved on the Mob template in his thread here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=129179), adding rules for more ordered groups. I like these rules and used them in a city siege.

This looks pretty good, the abominable spelling notwithstanding. Do you think it would work well for a "Escape the City" sort of scenario?

[Aharon]

I guess so. The only problem might be representing it on the table. In the city siege, the unit moved in an ordered fashion, so I just represented it by four dice showing the edges of the unit. If the mob/unit has to move through tight spaces, which is likely to happen in the scenario you wish to play, you might want to represent each member individually. If you have enough miniatures, great, if not, you may have to rely on description, potentially leading to rules adudication problems.