DM Help- Large battles

[Orick]

I'm currently working on organizing a pre-made campaign for my group. its pretty high level and the first encounter is a rather large scale battle. I'd like to include everything presented but it seems like its going to be a challenge.

The battle grid provided displays everything going on in the battle, including hidden things I don't want my party to know about at first. (for example, the locations of traps and enemies).

My only thought is to buy large graph paper and attempt to draw recreate it myself but that seems tedious.

Any suggestions?

[Samalpetey]

I'm currently working on organizing a pre-made campaign for my group. its pretty high level and the first encounter is a rather large scale battle. I'd like to include everything presented but it seems like its going to be a challenge.

The battle grid provided displays everything going on in the battle, including hidden things I don't want my party to know about at first. (for example, the locations of traps and enemies).

My only thought is to buy large graph paper and attempt to draw recreate it myself but that seems tedious.

Any suggestions?
How many people are there a side here?

[druidicforest]

Roll20 or some other Online tabletop programs and Projector with computer... Nice set for grid :)

[Orick]

There are 26 enemies and maybe 50 hidden traps around the battle field along wit a lot of terrain hazards.

Including the party there should be around 14 on their side but that may change.

This isn't astronomically huge, but still one of the larger battle's I've run,


Roll20 or some other Online tabletop programs and Projector with computer... Nice set for grid :)

If I had a projector I'd do this in heartbeat.

[Orick]

I spent some time in GIMP and made a version that hides all the traps.

Although, more advice is still welcome.

[Studoku]

Focus on the PCs. Don't get caught up in positioning every ally and enemy, especially the ones which aren't directly aiding or attacking them. You definitely don't want to end up wasting time having NPCs roll dice against each other while the players watch.

[theIrkin]

I agree with Stu42. I had some success with a battle that was 60 on 40 mooks, but just worried about the ten to a side that invovled the pc's. lots of set up and atmosphere, but all that really mattered was the pc's. you can keep the fact that there's a larger battle going on in your players' minds by occasionally having status effects or combatants spill into the players' battlespace.

[Jormengand]

Yeah, I'd just set up the table and have a really rules-lite system for battles without players if any at all.

[AttilaTheGeek]

I agree with Stu42. I had some success with a battle that was 60 on 40 mooks, but just worried about the ten to a side that invovled the pc's. lots of set up and atmosphere, but all that really mattered was the pc's. you can keep the fact that there's a larger battle going on in your players' minds by occasionally having status effects or combatants spill into the players' battlespace.

This is what I'd do. Collapse each army down to units whose size depends on the scale of the battle. Here the battle would be ten units of five against four units of five (plus the PCs). But in a larger battle there could be units of a hundred instead of five, so this "system" can run combats that are arbitrarily large.

Then, handwave all the numbers for the non-PC combatants. All of them. You should have an idea of how the battle would go if there were no PCs, and then have the parts of the battle where they're not follow that plan. Nothing is more boring for the players than sitting around watching the DM roll dice for combat between nameless NPCs.

Another method I've heard (threads like this come up every month or two) is to have a large-scale battle take place without the PCs and have side missions for them. In a battle of ten thousand, one epic fighter on the front lines won't make that much of a difference. Instead, devise five to seven side missions for the PCs that will have far-reaching effects on the rest of the battle, like assassinating an enemy commander or repairing and enhancing broken artillery. The important part is to make sure it's not possible for them to do everything. They need to decide what's important. In this "system", they never have to deal with the front line, and their actions can have more far-reaching repercussions. It's better suited to huge battles with high-level parties, but I thought I'd post it anyway. Depending on the level of your party, it might be exactly what you're looking for.