Large Scale War between Airships, help needed

[Jhaosmire]

I'm working on a large scale fight between two warring armies, and want the players to determine the outcome. I've notice Pathfinder doesn't have many rules in regards as to how to handle this (they even say so in the Ultimate Combat), so I had a thought: Are there any good alternative games I could run to simulate this war?

The premise is in a steampunk Forgotten Realms, where the Kingdom of Many-Arrows and Cormyr are going to duke it out over the ruins of Tilverton. Player's are in the ruins, and as they enter a main Keep, this battle ensues. The outcome will determine whom the player's will deal with once the Keep is out of the way.

I'm open as to what manner of ariships are on either side, I can differentiate with flavor later on. So, what other games would work well for this? Anyone else try something like this and had it go well? Thanks in advance!

-Jhaosmire

[PacMan2247]

I'm sure there are people on these boards with experience in this, and probably able to offer better advice, but since none of them has chimed in yet, you get my bad ideas:

Stormwrack and Arms & Equipment Guide both include information on vessels and combat, though I don't know how much use it would actually be to you. If you can find it anywhere, you might also get some use out of the old Spelljammer material, but there are probably much easier adaptations.

You could also just figure out what sort of weapons might be mounted on each class of airship (Heroes of Battle has some siege engine information, and Arms & Equipment Guide calls out weapon emplacements on different seafaring vehicles), and figure relative maneuverability, and wing it (no pun intended) from there.

Of course, depending on deployments on each side, character classes on the ships, they might be much more important to the outcome of the battle than weapons emplacements; a single high-level caster can do a lot more damage to an enemy fleet at comparable or greater range and with greater targeting flexibility than the best siege engines.

[Talverin]

Well, if the battle is oriented around the players in the keep as opposed to on the ships, it sounds like the airship battle is very secondary.

First, determine how large of a role the mechanics of the airship battle are going to play. If it's going to be a brief 'cinematic' part, make 'em up. Let the players 'own' some rolls and roll some huge dice, then have them dive into the keep.

If it's going to be the 'background', just do simplified rolls. Roll 2d20, with one being one side, and the other die being the other. The difference between the two determines how dire and drastic. A minor scale up from here is giving a +1/-1 for each roll won/lost, or the severity of the damages. Even more fun, let the players 'destroy the enemy AA', or 'disrupt their battlecasters' and give your allies in the sky bonuses.

Now, if it's going to be actual point-for-point ships battling in the sky, I wish you luck. I don't know of any systems that simulate that specifically well, but the stats are there in Pathfinder if you want to run it that way. (Mithral or Adamantine reinforcings, hardness/hp of wood or steel, etc) and siege engine stats are listed in Pathfinder's Ultimate Combat.

Whatever you choose, good luck!

[MesiDoomstalker]

First and foremost; where are the PC's during this? You make it sound like they are not allied with either side and will tackle whichever side is victorious. In that case, there need not be any rolls as the PC's actions won't dictate the outcome of the battle. Choose which one wins, write up a paragraph or two of appropriately scaled description of the battle for the PC's too 'ooh' and 'awww' at and return focus to whatever microcosm the PC's are actually involved in. Likely, the PC's won't ever be in a position to know the scope of the battle and whose winning or losing till the battle is already decided and on side is routing.

[NomGarret]

Yeah, it’s not really clear how the PCs are interacting with the sky battle. Sure, the ships are present, so you’ll want to work out some elements they could interact with. What are typical NPCs on board (sailor, marine, specialist caster, officers)? What are stats for some of the ships themselves? How far away is this taking place/how much falling damage are we talking about? But the grand mass combat results aren’t likely to be related to the PCs’ actions unless they singehandedly blow multiple dreadnoughts out of the sky.