Ultimate Campaign mass battle rules

[Mendicant]

How do people who've used the UC army and mass battle rules like them? It seems mainly focused on quickly resolving fights the PCs aren't directly involved in. Is it meaningfully more fun than just handwaving those pieces or abstracting them via an objectives system like 3.5' Heroes of Battle?

[legomaster00156]

Yes, I have used them, and yes, they are for quickly resolving large-scale battles. Overall, I think they serve the purpose well, except for one thing: ignore the damage bonuses/penalties on the Strategy track. The modifications to OM and DV already cover damage, as well.

[inuyasha]

I've never used them, but I've always found mass-combat to be kinda clunky, as players will want to get involved. It's been a while since I looked, but are there rules for a party contributing to a mass combat?

[Florian]

It´s a very solid system and easy to use. The main strength, naturally, lies with using it alongside the kingdom rules or large-scale scenarios with multiple armies clashing.
And no, it´s good to remind the players that on that scale, they´re meaningless when they´re not army commanders or strategists.

[Mendicant]

I've never used them, but I've always found mass-combat to be kinda clunky, as players will want to get involved. It's been a while since I looked, but are there rules for a party contributing to a mass combat?

The only ones I'm familiar with are the system from 3.5's Heroes of Battle and a hack of a hack of the swarm rules from 3.5.

In HoB, the PCs change the outcome of a battle by completing objectives and accumulating victory points as a result. Enough VPs and you get the better of several outcomes predetermined by the DM or module. The larger battle is mostly set dressing and exposition. It's more narrative and gets around the stickiness of simulating a lot of creatures in D&D by just not doing it.

The homebrew I currently use, based on someone else's homebrew hack of the swarm rules, turns large numbers of weaker creatures into mobs and units that behave as a single monster with special rules. Its primary benefit is that it mostly sticks to 3.P's tactical zoom level, and it lets high-level characters duke it out with whole squads at a time, or sort of pilot their own group of soldiers almost like a vehicle or mount. It's still kind of kludgy though, and it becomes more trouble than it's worth if you're not sticking to pretty basic NPCs and monsters.


It´s a very solid system and easy to use. The main strength, naturally, lies with using it alongside the kingdom rules or large-scale scenarios with multiple armies clashing.
And no, it´s good to remind the players that on that scale, they´re meaningless when they´re not army commanders or strategists.

Which is fine below, say, level 8 maybe. At higher levels I feel like that'd cause an immersion disconnect.

[zlefin]

It´s a very solid system and easy to use. The main strength, naturally, lies with using it alongside the kingdom rules or large-scale scenarios with multiple armies clashing.
And no, it´s good to remind the players that on that scale, they´re meaningless when they´re not army commanders or strategists.

unless they're of very high level; in which case they can take on armies directly, even soem of the larger ones.

[Milo v3]

High level characters who are fighting are taken into account in the form of fine sized armies.

[legomaster00156]

Spells and such are also taken into account.

In addition to the option of your PCs being commanders in your armies, the GM may have you fight smaller groups of enemies before or even during a battle in which your armies clash with the enemy. For example, your PCs might attack an evil necromancer and fight your way through his tower to confront him directly and defeat him while your army battles the undead horde outside the tower. Alternatively, your PCs could use potent spells (such as cloudkill, control water, or earthquake ) to alter battlefield conditions in your favor. These possibilities let you use your characters to directly affect the outcome of a battle without forcing you to sit out on an adventure opportunity by personally commanding an army.

If your PCs win the small-scale combat or dramatically affect the battlefield with magic, the GM could opt to increase your army’s DV and OM by +4 for that battle, or penalize your armies by –4 if you lose. At the GM’s discretion, your PCs’ failure or victory might have other effects on your armies as well, such as temporarily granting an additional tactic, altering the hit points of one or more armies, or granting or negating a special ability.

[Florian]

Which is fine below, say, level 8 maybe. At higher levels I feel like that'd cause an immersion disconnect.

Actually, it has quite the opposite effect. Once you have used either the mass battle or fleet battle system and seen how it can integrate and treat high-level single threats (dragons, casters, etc.), then a setting like Golarion will make sense again, especially when looking how the Mendevian Crusade can hold out against a demon invasion, how the Knights of Ozem could hold against an undead army with some very powerful caster support, or how the chelish navy can drive off dragons with their flotilla.

Keep in mind that we´re talking about different time and space scales here, especially on the mass battle size where one turn can either be one week or one month, so lots of things that can´t work on that scale lose their impact, compared to the regular combat rounds done on the personal level.

The relative power of a single Paladin 5 (CR 4) vs a single Necromancer 16 (CR 15) is obvious. An gargantuan army of said Paladins (ACR 10) will splatter the tiny army of one Necromancer (ACR 7).

When using some sort of "Heroic Opportunity" system, that difference should be kept in mind or you break the balance of power that using this kind of system brings with it again.

[Korahir]

Actually, it has quite the opposite effect. Once you have used either the mass battle or fleet battle system and seen how it can integrate and treat high-level single threats (dragons, casters, etc.), then a setting like Golarion will make sense again, especially when looking how the Mendevian Crusade can hold out against a demon invasion, how the Knights of Ozem could hold against an undead army with some very powerful caster support, or how the chelish navy can drive off dragons with their flotilla.

Keep in mind that we´re talking about different time and space scales here, especially on the mass battle size where one turn can either be one week or one month, so lots of things that can´t work on that scale lose their impact, compared to the regular combat rounds done on the personal level.

The relative power of a single Paladin 5 (CR 4) vs a single Necromancer 16 (CR 15) is obvious. An gargantuan army of said Paladins (ACR 10) will splatter the tiny army of one Necromancer (ACR 7).

When using some sort of "Heroic Opportunity" system, that difference should be kept in mind or you break the balance of power that using this kind of system brings with it again.

Agreed on all points and something that helps people evaluate masses against single monsters (at least it helped me): If you roll attacks with 500 level 1 commoners with light crossbows, 25 of them hit because of a natural 20 on average and 1,25 of those 25 will crit. Given a light crossbow that is 21d8 (19 hit normally, one crits for 2d8) damage averaging 94,5. AC doesn't matter, miss chance of any sort does. Compare that average damage to your HP on your level 8 character sheet. You better not let them shoot once I'd say.

[Florian]

Funny, because with that we´re back at the roots of D&D, Chainmail, and the question of "what happens when I send some of my men on a specops mission to assassinate the enemy commander and open the gates of the castle" while we´re running a regular siege scenario....

[Yahzi]

The homebrew I currently use, based on someone else's homebrew hack of the swarm rules, turns large numbers of weaker creatures into mobs and units that behave as a single monster with special rules.
That sounds a lot like my Generals of Prime (http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/218006/Generals-of-Prime). I wonder how they compare?

The weakness to my system is it only works for armies of a few thousand at most.

[Mendicant]

That sounds a lot like my Generals of Prime (http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/218006/Generals-of-Prime). I wonder how they compare?

The weakness to my system is it only works for armies of a few thousand at most.

They're sort of similar, though my houserules are more abstract and much less comprehensive. There's nothing at all about upkeep or formations, for instance.) I'd have to look at yours more closely to get a real feel for the differences. At a scale of thousands, the benefits of my system disappear too--at that scale I think something more like the PF mass battle rules would be better, especially since I don't actually run games where people are powerful enough to solo armies anyway.

[Yahzi]

They're sort of similar, though my houserules are more abstract and much less comprehensive.
I tried to make mine as simple as possible; just the one page on how to make a large unit is necessary. The rest is advice on how to manage armies and sieges.

Still not sure how to do legion-scale combats and yet still preserve the nature of D&D battles.