Large Scale Battles?

[Mafilux]

In my campaign I've been wracking my brain a little bit on how to handle a large scale battle. Eventually it will come to the point where this needs to be done, and I've already done a few scenarios with 15+ combatants and it was kind of a nightmare keeping track of everything. Any particular rules on this, or ways that more experienced DM's have handled it? Thanks in advance.

[ksbsnowowl]

Heroes of Battle and the adventure Red Hand of Doom are the best 3.5 resources for how to construct massive battles... without you having to actually run so many foes against your PC's.

[Florian]

In my campaign I've been wracking my brain a little bit on how to handle a large scale battle. Eventually it will come to the point where this needs to be done, and I've already done a few scenarios with 15+ combatants and it was kind of a nightmare keeping track of everything. Any particular rules on this, or ways that more experienced DM's have handled it? Thanks in advance.

PF gives you two interesting tools: The Troop Subtype and Mass battle rules in Ultimate Campaign.

[martixy]

And also, potentially relevant, the Mob template from DMG2.

[Mafilux]

And also, potentially relevant, the Mob template from DMG2.

It will be up against 9 hells demons, this should help, thanks!

Also it's in 5e, if that helps any one else with more suggestions. Thanks for the resources so far every one!

[ksbsnowowl]

Also it's in 5e...

Wait, your game is 5e? Then why ask in the 3.X forum?

[Gildedragon]

Wait, your game is 5e? Then why ask in the 3.X forum?
Probably because 3.X has a lot more goodies to crib from

[Knaight]

Wait, your game is 5e? Then why ask in the 3.X forum?

If you're going to steal mechanics it's usually easier to steal them from games which are at least fairly similar - the shared core mechanic counts for a lot here, where trying to steal the system from, say L5R is likely to be needlessly difficult. REIGN would probably work pretty well in this particular situation, but that's a bit of an edge case.

[Bronk]

My suggestion would be to narrow the focus of your encounter to just the PCs and a few of the most important bad guys, but have a lot of setup first, where the good guys gain allies. The more allies they get, the better the rest of the battle goes in the background.

[Crake]

In a large battle most enemies will already be engaged, so you can generally move about without too much issue, assuming the battlefield isn't totally crowded. Unless the players are footsoldiers, those enemies that do inadvertantly engage the players should be easy enough to deal with anyway. Have the players, via some kind of magical means, keep in touch with the strategic planners, and be directed to key lynchpins in the enemy's army that they need to deal with to dismantle their leadership. On the way to each encounter, roll randomly to see if they come across a particularly powerful foe, but make sure to check that foe off the list, because once they're dead, they're dead.