[3.5/PF] Your favourite way to run mass battles?

[Wonton]

Just wondering what your favourite way to run large battles is, in any 3.X system (including Pathfinder). When I say "large battle", I mean anything involving 100+ combatants on each side, where trying to roll individual dice or anything of the sort becomes completely impractical.

I have read many rulesets for this sort of thing over the years, but most of them tend to be very complicated and I'm not sure any of them are actually better than just "winging it".

For example, if 200 zombies were bearing down on a tribe of 100 humans the PCs had allied with, how would you play this scenario out?

[Vercingex]

I'd give the PCs a fight appropriately scaled to their party size, and let their success in that battle be the decisive element of the battle- a commando mission, if you will.

If the PCs are in the thick of it, let the wizard toss a few fireballs and the fighter full attack a few times to let them mow their way through the opposition, while throwing some manageable number of attacks their way. Whatever part of they battle they're participating in will probably go well for the good guys.

Alternatively, let battles be big plot devices. Even four adventurer-tough characters aren't going to necessarily sway events in a very large battle.

For the example given- a relatively small battle- I'd let the PCs fight it out with a part of the orc force at the decisive point in the battle, with the battle turning on their success.

[Wonton]

For sure, in any battle I always assume the PCs will have an important "commando mission" to play. Whether it's taking on a captain, going behind enemy lines to assassinate the general, or destroying siege equipment, I'm always going to make the PCs the "special forces" of the battle.

But just saying "let their success in that battle be the decisive element of the battle" - does that mean that as long as the PCs don't TPK, your side can't lose the battle? That's kind of boring. What if it's 100v300 or 100v500 or 100v5000? After all, the comic for the website we're posting on had a very famous storyline where the heroic PCs did as much as they could in the course of an epic battle, but ended up losing anyway and having to retreat (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0484.html).

Okay, you could say "let the story dictate the outcome" - obviously 100v5000 would definitely be a resounding defeat while (100+PCs)vs100 would almost certainly be a victory. But what if it legitimately could go either way? A good DM leaves several possible outcomes - meaning there's got to be more to it than that, some sort of mechanism for actually determining the outcome of a battle. There's a reason we roll dice, after all. It's the interaction of story, actions, and randomness that makes the game interesting.

[Vercingex]

But just saying "let their success in that battle be the decisive element of the battle" - does that mean that as long as the PCs don't TPK, your side can't lose the battle? That's kind of boring. What if it's 100v300 or 100v500 or 100v5000? After all, the comic for the website we're posting on had a very famous storyline where the heroic PCs did as much as they could in the course of an epic battle, but ended up losing anyway and having to retreat (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0484.html).

"Victory" can mean a lot of different things- if you're fighting an army 50 times the size of your own, just escaping is a huge victory. The intervention of the Oots gang might not have changed the course of the battle, but did help the leadership and a large portion of the population to escape, form a core of resistance against the occupiers, etc.

In addition, the course of the PC's fight can influence the effect on the larger battle. For instance, if they barely scrape through, then at best they held the line, while a lopsided victory in their favor might prove decisive in the larger battle.


Okay, you could say "let the story dictate the outcome" - obviously 100v5000 would definitely be a resounding defeat while (100+PCs)vs100 would almost certainly be a victory. But what if it legitimately could go either way? A good DM leaves several possible outcomes - meaning there's got to be more to it than that, some sort of mechanism for actually determining the outcome of a battle. There's a reason we roll dice, after all. It's the interaction of story, actions, and randomness that makes the game interesting.

I guess what I'm getting at is that if you're trying to make a real game out of the battle, then D&D is not the system to do it. Pathfinder's mass battle system is a reasonable model for how I'd go about throwing in dice rolls (even if I'm not a fan of its exact implementation)- have armies or individual units within armies roll against each other with circumstance modifiers. Maybe have the PC's success in their battle affect the modifiers and set a ceiling/floor for the army's success. If the PCs win but the army loses, the army is able to get away. If the PCs don't win decisively but the army does, then the enemy lives to fight another day, etc.

[Gullintanni]

The way I always treated large scale battles was as objective based endeavours.

So, my PCs would have a series of objectives they could complete in order to swing the tide of battle. In a defensive siege, that might mean destroying siege engines, eliminating key officers, protecting defensive strong points, etc.

Each time an objective was completed (or failed) I'd add a modifier to the dice rolls I would use to dictate the outcome of the battle. Against even numbered forces with no tactical or strategic advantages over each other, 1-10 on a d20 would be enough for the PCs faction to achieve victory, with modifiers following from that.

It was all ad hoc modifiers; and I used to have a document that I used as a guide with long lists of modifiers. It wasn't the most elegant solution behind the scenes, but it allowed the PCs to contribute and have fun without getting bogged down in resolving 100+ crossbow bolts per round.

[Lazymancer]

There are rules for battles (GURPS has rules for mass combat without maps, for example) that could be adapted to military campaign (a-la Black Company), but if this is one-off and PCs aren't in command, I'll just wing it.

Battle will consist out of several contested rolls with the bonuses I eyeballed: whichever side get 3 victories first (or 5, if large battle) - wins. If PCs provide assistance (either no battles, or short ones - 4-5 rounds long), the side they are fighting for gets bonus to the roll (or penalty).

[Bronk]

The way I always treated large scale battles was as objective based endeavours.

So, my PCs would have a series of objectives they could complete in order to swing the tide of battle. In a defensive siege, that might mean destroying siege engines, eliminating key officers, protecting defensive strong points, etc.

Each time an objective was completed (or failed) I'd add a modifier to the dice rolls I would use to dictate the outcome of the battle. Against even numbered forces with no tactical or strategic advantages over each other, 1-10 on a d20 would be enough for the PCs faction to achieve victory, with modifiers following from that.

It was all ad hoc modifiers; and I used to have a document that I used as a guide with long lists of modifiers. It wasn't the most elegant solution behind the scenes, but it allowed the PCs to contribute and have fun without getting bogged down in resolving 100+ crossbow bolts per round.

That's pretty much what I do, except that I don't make rolls for the mass combat part.

Instead, I set the group's objectives up, and the battle swings either way depending on how many are successful. That's not just what the PCs do during the battle though, but also if they've completed objectives ahead of time to prepare. Gaining allies, contributing goods or weapons or armor for the masses, gathering intel ahead of time, that sort of thing.

Then, during the battle, they do their part, and if they finish in time, can look around and see what particular groups need help, for a third attempt to influence results.

[Gullintanni]

That's pretty much what I do, except that I don't make rolls for the mass combat part.

Instead, I set the group's objectives up, and the battle swings either way depending on how many are successful. That's not just what the PCs do during the battle though, but also if they've completed objectives ahead of time to prepare. Gaining allies, contributing goods or weapons or armor for the masses, gathering intel ahead of time, that sort of thing.

Then, during the battle, they do their part, and if they finish in time, can look around and see what particular groups need help, for a third attempt to influence results.

I like keeping the random element. Sometimes it means that despite the party's abundant successes, the opposing army simply outfought the PC faction.

Some element of the outcome is beyond the PCs control. Losing a large battle isn't a TPK the same way that a loss in small scale combat is. It's a plot point rather than dead pcs. So I don't mind leaving an element of it to random chance.

[Mendicant]

It depends really heavily on if the PC's are in command. If they're not, I use some combination of handwaving and the rules from Heroes of Battle. I'll work out what the best and worst case outcomes will be, and then throw a series of encounters at them appropriate to that particular battle. If they do well, they get the best case outcome (which may or may not actually be "victory,") and if they really screw up or just don't bother their team gets the worst-case outcome. If I know there's a big set-piece battle coming, am on top of things and they don't just ditch the area and go become pirates somewhere, I'll have their adventures tie together and provide VPs.

If the battle is big enough relative to their levels and abilities it'll basically just be set dressing whose results get handwaved.

For smaller battles with the PCs in charge, I use a hack of the rules found here (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=143.0), with the PCs leading various units or mobs that they essentially pilot like vehicles. So far, it works...ok. The scale zooms out but it's still running in the same way that normal tactical combat plays out. It's not particularly tactically interesting though--unit v. unit is just two piles of numbers wailing on eachother. It also only works at lower levels.