Organizing warbands/players creating or gathering minions

[The Jack]

So the player handbook has some vague rules on hirelings, silver for novices and gold for skilled servants. But what does this come down to with soldiers, at what point does someone get to claim gold rather than silver? 1/8,1/4,1/2,1,2,3,5? all soldiers are dirt unless they've got a skilled roll useful for the warband as a whole, such as a beast master, seige engineer or mage? Would an unskilled half ogre make less than a trained'n disciplined hobgoblin. For A slave; would that be 2 copper pieces for the food?

Imagine the game mount'n blade, how would you transfer the core concepts of that game (Recruiting and improving a warband) into the fantasy roll playing that is dnd?

(also what skill do you use for leadership/tactical ability. History? Wis+proficiency, pure unadulterated rollplay?)

The next thing to consider is how to throw magic into it, or a wizard into it. It feels like a cheat when a GM lets NPC wizards do things that'd be impossible for pc wizards to do. If you were to make them possible, How would one run that? There's no permanency spell for animate dead or animate object, no listed way to create a helmed horror or gorgon, Even the manual of Golems feels like a cop out when it's single use and then bursts into flames. What kind of level and what barriers would go to manuals of rituals (or technological construction) that don't "burn up with eldritch flames" when you've used them.

[Quoz]

This is something that I think is better handled in a rules light setup. When the GM and players agree on the general direction and let the role playing provide the benefits, this can be a lot of fun.

For mechanics? There's not a lot in D&D for mass combat or large numbers of players. They just bog down the game. To borrow a concept from another game, I like Exalted's idea that your army is an extension of you. Effectively, you treat the group as extra temp HP and a multiplier for your damage, and two armies clash until the leaders meet in the middle.

For rough mechanics (This is on the fly, so adjust as you see fit) use AC, HP, stats and damage as the worst unit in the group. Use the proficiency and feats/skills/abilities of the commander. Gain +1 AC, attack, and -1 initiative per multiple of group size you have over the smaller group. On a successful attack, multiply your damage by your margin of success. For every full HP of an enemy you deal, reduce the enemy unit count by 1.

So 100 zombies against a dozen knights would get +8 to AC and attack and -8 to initiative. The knights get to go first and roll well, getting 5 over AC and 10 damage, and eliminating 50 HP worth of zombies, reducing their numbers and their mass combat bonus. But for each knight that falls the numbers get worse until the tide overtakes them.

Terrain (think Spartans at in 300) can effect how large a force you can effectively use and cut the modifiers significantly, so use that to your benefit. Nothing is hard and fast so use what works at your table.

For magic and minion creation (or just fireballs) use what works at your table. Major creations like golems and greater undead should be stand alone or commanders, but an army of zombies or clockwork soldiers or animated trees should be handled through role playing as a major project or downtime activity. This should have it's own side quest or major ritual to accomplish.

[MaxWilson]

The next thing to consider is how to throw magic into it, or a wizard into it. It feels like a cheat when a GM lets NPC wizards do things that'd be impossible for pc wizards to do. If you were to make them possible, How would one run that? There's no permanency spell for animate dead or animate object, no listed way to create a helmed horror or gorgon, Even the manual of Golems feels like a cop out when it's single use and then bursts into flames. What kind of level and what barriers would go to manuals of rituals (or technological construction) that don't "burn up with eldritch flames" when you've used them.

Animate Dead is already permanent. Your control over the undead created is temporary, 24 hours unless you renew it, but note that most low-level undead in 5E are not immune to charm and therefore not immune to perma-Geas IX and year-long Mass Suggestion IX. (Mummies, ghouls and ghasts are immune to charm, but skeletons, zombies, and wights are not, so a Necromancer can create super-wights using his Undead Thralls on Create Undead and then just immediately Geas and Mass Suggestion them into joining his army of murder. The Geas is primarily there to ensure that the wights are Charmed by you and therefore are both more suggestible and cannot backstab you, at least in the literal sense.)

There's some DM judgment involved there in just what is eligible as a Mass Suggestion command and how these enchanted-but-freewilled undead conduct themselves while in your army of murder, and how much control you have over them if they do something you don't like. (If a wight murders and eats a child, what are you going to do? Demote him? An evil NPC wizard might just shrug it off but only the worst of PCs is likely to do that, so you'll have to make an example of him.)

Edit: P.S. For other stuff like Helmed Horror creation and golems and whatnot, I have some alchemy rules that I use for similar situations. They're loosely inspired by the Dresden Files and basically work like: you gather up ingredients and the DM assigned modifiers to your alchemy check according to how good he thinks the ingredients are, and then at the end you roll the dice and find out if your potion/creation works the way you're hoping it will. Also, due to the nature of alchemy, no recipe can ever be used twice unless it is independently invented, which means that alchemists hoard recipes out of necessity lest some other alchemist create the potion first and render the first alchemist's recipe secretly useless. The rule exists for metagame reasons (because it's more fun for me as a DM when players can't repeat a trick, and lets me not worry too much about breaking the game if I'm too lenient on an ingredient modifier) but it has nice effects on the game world too.

[JackPhoenix]

at what point does someone get to claim gold rather than silver?

When they get proficiency with the weapon they use, i.e. pretty much immediately. Even if it's just a commoner with a club, he expects proper pay for risking his life.

[Cespenar]

So the player handbook has some vague rules on hirelings, silver for novices and gold for skilled servants. But what does this come down to with soldiers, at what point does someone get to claim gold rather than silver? 1/8,1/4,1/2,1,2,3,5? all soldiers are dirt unless they've got a skilled roll useful for the warband as a whole, such as a beast master, seige engineer or mage? Would an unskilled half ogre make less than a trained'n disciplined hobgoblin. For A slave; would that be 2 copper pieces for the food?

Imagine the game mount'n blade, how would you transfer the core concepts of that game (Recruiting and improving a warband) into the fantasy roll playing that is dnd?

(also what skill do you use for leadership/tactical ability. History? Wis+proficiency, pure unadulterated rollplay?)

The next thing to consider is how to throw magic into it, or a wizard into it. It feels like a cheat when a GM lets NPC wizards do things that'd be impossible for pc wizards to do. If you were to make them possible, How would one run that? There's no permanency spell for animate dead or animate object, no listed way to create a helmed horror or gorgon, Even the manual of Golems feels like a cop out when it's single use and then bursts into flames. What kind of level and what barriers would go to manuals of rituals (or technological construction) that don't "burn up with eldritch flames" when you've used them.

Use your gut and don't be afraid to generalize things a bit. Run of the mill soldier: silver. Specialists, mages, etc.: gold. Anything monstrous or can make a difference in battle: gold. Slave: silver as well. Untrained after all. If there's a really badass monster or a hero-level NPC in there, you might go up to platinum, maybe.

For leadership and tactical ability, ask your players what stat/skill combination do they use in a certain situation, and decide if it makes sense. If they want to rally the troops with a Cha check, that makes sense. Finding a gap in the opposing army's formation could be Perception, or Intelligence, maybe?

I think Golem/Helmed Horror/whatnot creation is a bit of a tricky area, so I'd say to ignore it for now.

Animate Dead is easy to come up with an gp cost per undead per caster function, though, so you could streamline that more easily.