Big Battles. How do you do them?

[Tawmis]

So my current campaign has the party trying to find a cure to a very lethal poison that the Drow are using...

And it's going to build up to the party gaining allies for the Dwarves - in an all out war against a Drow and their Priestess.

So how do you do big battles? Where an army of Dwarves is standing with your party about to face off against an army of Drow?

The big battle is several sessions away - but it's building up - so I figured I'd reach out and see how folks handle that stuff.

[Man_Over_Game]

So my current campaign has the party trying to find a cure to a very lethal poison that the Drow are using...

And it's going to build up to the party gaining allies for the Dwarves - in an all out war against a Drow and their Priestess.

So how do you do big battles? Where an army of Dwarves is standing with your party about to face off against an army of Drow?

The big battle is several sessions away - but it's building up - so I figured I'd reach out and see how folks handle that stuff.

Simplify problems down to what the players need to know, and only provide details on what is directly in front of them. Provide multiple problems that are escalating all at once, but also have fairly sensible counterplays. Have the winning strategy be to split up to tackle multiple problems at the cost of greater risk. Make it so that each problem aren't overly problematic individually, but the success of one element on behalf of the badguys makes the rest of the encounter harder. If the party does split up, try to make each scene quick with few relevant moving pieces, rather than descriptive and drawn out boss fights (so use fewer NPCs and less tactics if you need to).

Basically, you want the idea that:

In order to win, every hero must be heroic.
Playing it safe will result in failure.
Tension is maintained between perspectives, so a player that's not directly involved is still mentally engaged. This may require some scenes to be simpler than originally intended.
Seen as a whole, the problems look disastrous.
Seen individually, the problems are plausibly dealt with.


Like a scene from LotR or Wheel of Time. A lot of crazy stuff is going on, everyone's got their own jobs to deal with, and despite being separated they have to trust everyone else to do their job. And as long as everyone does their job, they succeed. But they don't know that. With everyone being separated, they won't have any idea what situation their allies are in, or if their individual actions even matter.

Having things dialed to 11, and then having a one-time-use backup plan, is also very good. Having the players feel like failure is coming, just to be saved from the brink, is pretty damn epic (like with Gandalf). Just don't do it more than once if you can help it. You never want your players to expect a handout.


For a rough idea of what I mean, you got your catapults flinging exploding shot at your castle while an army sits in front of them biding their time, there's a dragon flying around somewhere around here that's been taking cover behind some local mountains between skirmishes, some damn cultists tricked a bunch of townsfolk that they would be "saved" by sacrificing them into hordes of monsters, and the friggin' general and king disappeared leaving nobody to command the military.

What do you do?!

Druid uses Call Lightning to blow up the catapult ammunition while dealing with being shot at, Barbarian jumps on the dragon in an attempt to wrestle it away from the castle, Paladin rallies the townsfolk against the cultists while the Rogue hunts down their leader, and the Bard uses Disguise Self to fulfill his goal in life of being a King. All a bunch of REALLY tense stuff to do by yourself, but all contributing towards the success of everything.

Backup plans include the dragon destroying the army/catapults after the party focuses on it, the general slaying the corrupted king and gaining control of his army after the party stalls long enough, the cult leader gets killed by his own monster that starts eating the townsfolk/cultists once the players interfere enough with his rituals. Or some random ally the players made prior to this point jumps in.

[Kalashak]

Lots of minis and even more dice

[Mordaedil]

Numbers matters, not individual abilities. Treat each side of the army as minions that go down in one hit and if one side is a particular race that has a particular advantage, just double the numbers by the size of the advantage. Plan ahead where the numbers are going independent of the PC's. Allow the player characters to maybe influence where their side of the numbers come into play, but the enemy has their own battle plans and should follow them, with adhoc respect for the player choice.

Once engagement starts, the numbers have clash points and all you really need to do is making opposing rolls and subtract numbers based on the roll. Inform the players if they are winning or losing any flank they can observe. Once they decide to engage a flank, that's when they need to have some stats. Otherwise, players throwing fireballs or other spells to reinforce a flank simple destroys as many numbers as tokens they could technically hit in their radius. Once a flank is below 75%, 50% and 25% their starting numbers they should flee depending on how brave or intelligent the units are. And then the remaining numbers are added to another flanks numbers or retreat entirely, depending on if their sergeant unit is alive.

Oh and yeah, stat the sergeant and the general. Sergeants lead flanks, generals lead the army. If a sergeant falls, that flank lacks leadership. If a general falls, that means the entire army lacks leadership and will withdraw.

[Catullus64]

In general, I second Man_Over_Game's advice on the condition that you want a battle as a big setpiece in the middle of an otherwise adventure-centric campaign. If you do intend for battles to be a regular occurence in a war campaign, and want to have relatively simple war-game rules for the players to engage in, consider using or adapting mine. Rather than focus on being an in-depth wargame ruleset in itself, I've done my best to translate the D&D combat rules to unit scale.

Battle Rules

These rules are designed to represent units of soldiers as actors in a combat, such that mass combat can be performed on normal D&D initiative, without significant alteration of the rules.

Each unit in a combat has the following statistics and abilities to represent its overall fighting ability. All other statistics of a unit, such as ability scores, saving throws, and special abilities, are identical to an individual creature of that unit. If the unit is composed of creatures without a formal stat block, ability scores will be provided. There are rules to reflect that the unit is still composed of individuals.

Inspiration (All units have this feature): Units draw strength and inspiration from the best among their number. If an individual in the unit would receive temporary advantage on attack rolls, saving throws, or ability checks, a bonus to one of those roll types, or a bonus to Armor Class, that benefit is instead applied to the unit. The same holds true for penalties and disadvantage to the same. If a non-hero member of the unit receives temporary hit points, those Hit Points are transferred to the unit instead.

Hit Points, Speed, and Armor Class: These function like the equivalent statistics on a creature.

Individual Threshold: The individual hit points of combatants. An attack or offensive ability that would ordinarily target a single creature cannot deal damage to the unit in excess of this number. Likewise, spells and abilities that restore hit points to single creatures cannot restore hit points above this threshold. Unit attacks, as well as spells and abilities that target creatures in an area, ignore this threshold.

Breaking Threshold: When a unit takes a certain number of casualties, it may cause the unit to waver and break. When the unit is reduced below a certain number of hit points, it must make a DC 13 Wisdom saving throw. On a failure, the unit Breaks. The DC of this saving throw is increased by 2 for every previous time the unit has Broken in this engagement. Units with advantage on saving throws against being Frightened, such as Halfling Skirmishers, have advantage on this saving throw. While Broken, a unit must spend its turn attempting to flee the enemy by the safest means available. At the end of each of its turns, the unit may attempt another saving throw: on a success, the unit rallies and can act normally on its next turn. While below its Breaking Threshold, however, it must make another saving throw to avoid Breaking each time it takes damage above its Individual Threshold. Effects that would restore Hit Points to a unit cannot restore it above its Breaking Threshold, as at that point a significant number of its soldiers have been killed.

Attack and Damage: These represent the unit’s ability to offend against other units.

Mounted Units: The effects of being mounted are largely factored into a unit’s speed, Armor Class, Hit Points, Breaking Threshold, and Individual Threshold. A mounted unit can, like any mounted character, take the Dash, Disengage, or Dodge actions on its turn for free. As a rule, most mounted units have a much higher Breaking Threshold than similar units on foot, since horses and mounts tend to panic much more easily. If the mounted unit moves at least its maximum speed in a straight line before attacking, the attack deals the damage listed under Charge, which is always significantly higher.

Reach: Infantry units equipped with reach weapons have two damage values; one for when they are 10 feet from the enemy, and one for when they are 5 feet. This value represents the ability of the second rank to attack while the unit is in close combat with the enemy. It is usually less than double, however, since the first rank is somewhat impeded by the reach of their own weapons.

Ranged Weapons: Since massed projectile fire is imprecise, a unit cannot target an enemy unit with ranged weapons if that unit is engaged in close combat with a friendly unit.

Shield Wall: Units with this trait are condsidered to benefit from half cover against ranged attacks from the front. Heroes embedded in a unit with this trait also gain this benefit. The unit does not gain this benefit while Broken.

Brace: Units with this trait are resilient to cavalry charges. Charge attacks against this unit are made with disadvantage. The unit does not gain this benefit while Broken or after Dashing.

Spells and Spell-Like Abilities: Units made up of races or creatures with spellcasting abilities have these abilities listed in terms of spells castable by unit per day.

Heroes

Heroes can play a vital role on the battlefield, either as solo operatives, or as leaders of combat units. When a hero moves into or starts its turn in the space of an allied unit, the hero can choose to embed into that unit. A unit cannot have more than one hero embedded in it at a time. While a hero is embedded with a unit, the unit acts on the hero’s initiative. If the hero is controlled by a player, that player now controls the unit as well. A unit cannot take more than one turn per round as a result of hero embedding. A hero who is Charmed or Frightened cannot be embedded into a unit; a hero already embedded into a unit who suffers one of these conditions is immediately dis-embedded. The hero may break from that unit at any time by moving out of the formation. If the hero and the unit have different speeds, the unit’s speed is now the speed of its slowest member.

While it has a hero embedded in it, a unit can use the hero’s saving throw bonus instead of its own for saving throws to avoid Breaking or being Charmed or Frightened.

Additionally, heroes draw fire and protect their followers: whenever the unit takes damage from another unit's attack, it takes half damage. If the attack would also hit the hero’s AC, the hero takes the other half of the damage. Spells or abilities that damage creatures in an area split their damage evenly between the hero and the unit. Embedded heroes cannot be directly targeted by attacks, except by non-embedded heroes, or by single-target effects that do not involve an attack roll, such as spells with Saving Throws.

While embedded in a unit, a hero still takes his or her own actions, reactions, and bonus actions. A hero cannot embed into a Broken unit, and a hero is automatically dis-embedded from a unit that Breaks; however, if a hero is within a unit’s space when that unit makes a saving throw to rally, the unit may still use the hero’s Wisdom saving throw bonus.

If a hero falls while embedded in a unit, it has a profound effect on that unit’s morale. If an embedded hero is reduced to 0 HP, that hero’s unit must immediately make a saving throw against Breaking.

While not embedded in a unit, a hero may target enemy heroes with attacks even if that hero is embedded in a unit. Additionally, non-embedded heroes are resilient to attack: Units have disadvantage on attack rolls against non-embedded heroes, and deal half damage to them.


Quick Reference for Attack and Damage Rolls:

Unit Attacking Unit: Normal Attack and Damage

Unit Attacking Non-Embedded Hero: Disadvantage, Halve number of Damage Dice

Hero Attacking Unit: Damage cannot exceed unit’s Individual Threshold

Non-Embedded Hero Attacking Hero: Normal Attack and Damage.

Unit Attacking Unit with Embedded Hero: If the attack would hit Unit AC, the target Unit takes half damage. If the attack would hit Hero AC, Hero takes the other half of the damage.

Unit or Embedded Hero Attacking Embedded Hero: Impossible

Dark Elf Crossbow Raiders

AC: 15

HP: 260

Speed: 30

Individual Threshold: 13

Breaking Threshold: 180

Wisdom Saving Throw: +0

Attack: +4

Damage: 5d8 Piercing, 3d6 Poison (Ranged, 80/320) or 4d6 Piercing (Melee)

Special: Faerie Fire 5/Day (DC 12), Darkness 3/Day, Fey Ancestry, Superior Darkvision



Goblin Mob

AC: 15

HP: 350

Speed: 30

Individual Threshold: 7

Breaking Threshold: 300

Wisdom Saving Throw: -1

Attack +4

Damage: 8d4 Piercing (Melee) or 5d6 Piercing (Ranged 30/120)

Special: Nimble Escape, Shield Wall, Darkvision



Dwarven Elite Infantry

AC: 18

HP: 960

Speed: 25

Individual Threshold: 20

Breaking Threshold: 600

STR 13 DEX 10 CON 14 INT 10 WIS 12 CHA 8

Wisdom Saving Throw: +1

Attack: +3

Damage: 4d10 Piercing/6d10 Piercing (Reach)

Special: Brace, Dwarven Resilience, Darkvision



Men-at-arms (Mounted Unit)

AC: 17

HP: 400

Speed: 50

Individual Threshold: 17

Breaking Threshold: 330

STR 16 DEX 11 CON 14 INT 8 WIS 10 CHA 12

Wisdom Saving Throw: +0

Attack: +5

Damage: 5d8 Slashing

Charge: 8d12 Piercing

[LordNibbler]

We use Warhammer Fantasy Age of Sigmar tabletop rules for all our large battles and tweak some of the hero abilities to match the class features, spells, magic items, etc. of our 5e characters. It works well and there’s no need to experiment with potentially unbalanced homebrewed rule systems.

[JNAProductions]

We use Warhammer Fantasy Age of Sigmar tabletop rules for all our large battles and tweak some of the hero abilities to match the class features, spells, magic items, etc. of our 5e characters. It works well and there’s no need to experiment with potentially unbalanced homebrewed rule systems.

Instead you use a system that you KNOW is unbalanced! :P

[LordNibbler]

Instead you use a system that you KNOW is unbalanced! :P

Not when our GM’s army happens to be 500-1000 points stronger than ours!

[Christew]

I tend to defer to homebrew mechanics based on warband games. Heroes and enemies interacting with the heroes take turns as usual, then at the bottom of initiative mobs get resolved using opposed d6 pools.

Example: Pitched battle between 20 orcs and 15 elves + the PCs. Fifteen orcs and the elves engage in battle while the PCs attempt to sneak up on the five orc archers. PCs and archers use initiative, meanwhile at the end of the round roll 15d6 for the orcs and 15d6 for the elves.
Round 1: 45 orcs vs 41 elves - 4 elves die
Round 2: 15d6 for orcs 11d6 for elves, etc.
You could similarly use d10+5 opposed if you prefer fewer dice. It allows for the numerically superior side to have advantage while not precluding a heroic rout from the smaller force.

[MoiMagnus]

So my current campaign has the party trying to find a cure to a very lethal poison that the Drow are using...
And it's going to build up to the party gaining allies for the Dwarves - in an all out war against a Drow and their Priestess.
So how do you do big battles? Where an army of Dwarves is standing with your party about to face off against an army of Drow?
The big battle is several sessions away - but it's building up - so I figured I'd reach out and see how folks handle that stuff.

There is a very important question to answer: do you want the battle to be a central point of the game or not?

Because you can take time to design / take from somewhere a complex system where armies have multiple abilities, and PCs have access to various tactics, and there is an actual strategical challenges. In the most extreme cases of this approach, you're essentially setting up a boardgame to be played at the middle of a RPGs session, alternating between this boardgame and some true RPGs mechanics.

Or you can have an approach some would consider more "illusionist", where the war only exist to give a scale to the PCs actions. It doesn't matter if the technical module you use for the war is balanced or has any tactical depth if the victor is only determined to the success of the PC's individual actions (like a heist of some magical weapons, some assassination of opposing leaders, ...). In this view, the large scale battles are just background for the PC successes and failures.

"Where do you want to be on this scale?" is a very important question, as not everybody want the same things out of their RPGs sessions.

[Sigreid]

I use the West End Games D6 Star Wars philosophy. I let the party decide on what objectives in the battle they are going to go for, and run them going for those objectives like more or less a normal adventure. Based on what those objectives are, and how things go, that's how the larger battle goes; described in kind of a cut scene fashion and their next objective gets harder or easier based on how it's gone in the over all picture.

So basically, how and what the party does is the total focus and determines how it plays out. They are the stars, the heroes, the keys.

[LordCdrMilitant]

So my current campaign has the party trying to find a cure to a very lethal poison that the Drow are using...

And it's going to build up to the party gaining allies for the Dwarves - in an all out war against a Drow and their Priestess.

So how do you do big battles? Where an army of Dwarves is standing with your party about to face off against an army of Drow?

The big battle is several sessions away - but it's building up - so I figured I'd reach out and see how folks handle that stuff.

There's two ways I approach it:
Center of Gravity:
If the players are just there\ as participants, structure potential several moderately large encounters for them with special objectives that could be decisive for the battle to complete [such as "kill enemy leader" or "escort this person safely"]. Feel free to have enemies enter the encounter midway through, and often, to give the impression that there are a lot of troops all over this battlefield, and describe the battlefield liberally as they move between encounters. They may be able to evade some encounters, like stealthing around front-line units and the likes too.

Mass Combat:
If the players are leading the army [or a segment of it], their characters are at the command post and/or at the head of their personal units. I run this as a wargame, where the board represents the whole battlefield as the players understand it and the units are the combat elements under the players' command. Existing mass-battle systems can work for this, though I like to work on my own to make it a little more realistic and flexible since I am a GM and can make calls on the spot [it also lets me play with the "fog of war"]. Often times, I give them the option to leave their command post and take direct command of a single unit or small number of units under their command, which can give that character both a better idea of what's going on in that area of the battlefield and reduce the chance that the orders aren't followed effectively. It also lets them roll for that unit in particular and grant their own set of bonuses to it.

You can make your units as numerical detailed or general "the GM says this" as you want. Generally the players need to at least know the size, equipment, level of training, and morale of each unit. I usually give it a statline like:
25th Kelzarad Dwarfish Rifles: Commander: Urist MacUristurist. Strength: 1000 personnel. Equipment: Rifles, Bayonets, Light Infantry. Veterancy: Green. Morale: High.

During the battle, the players shouldn't have perfect knowledge or perfect control unless they're with the unit. Tell them what's happening as they can see or be informed of, but not things that might not be passed to their level in the command chain.


We use Warhammer Fantasy Age of Sigmar tabletop rules for all our large battles and tweak some of the hero abilities to match the class features, spells, magic items, etc. of our 5e characters. It works well and there’s no need to experiment with potentially unbalanced homebrewed rule systems.

I do with with Warhammer 40k for my Warhammer 40k RPG's, so yeah, this can be a fun way to do it if everybody is A: up for it and B: has miniatures [like us]

[Sigreid]

Another idea you could use if your player's side is divided into something resembling squads, and you want to take a lot of time and have a varied experience, would be to generate those squads, each with some unique features and let them send squads into tasks and play the squads. Basically playing out each portion of the battle with them controlling different characters.

[Evaar]

For a rough idea of what I mean, you got your catapults flinging exploding shot at your castle while an army sits in front of them biding their time, there's a dragon flying around somewhere around here that's been taking cover behind some local mountains between skirmishes, some damn cultists tricked a bunch of townsfolk that they would be "saved" by sacrificing them into hordes of monsters, and the friggin' general and king disappeared leaving nobody to command the military.

What do you do?!

Druid uses Call Lightning to blow up the catapult ammunition while dealing with being shot at, Barbarian jumps on the dragon in an attempt to wrestle it away from the castle, Paladin rallies the townsfolk against the cultists while the Rogue hunts down their leader, and the Bard uses Disguise Self to fulfill his goal in life of being a King. All a bunch of REALLY tense stuff to do by yourself, but all contributing towards the success of everything.

Backup plans include the dragon destroying the army/catapults after the party focuses on it, the general slaying the corrupted king and gaining control of his army after the party stalls long enough, the cult leader gets killed by his own monster that starts eating the townsfolk/cultists once the players interfere enough with his rituals. Or some random ally the players made prior to this point jumps in.

This is all great and got me thinking: I would've expected the Paladin to take the place of the general and king, while the bard stops the townsfolk. But really, it would depend on their backgrounds. If that bard is a Noble or the like and the Paladin is a Folk Hero, absolutely they would fill the roles MOG laid out. But if it's the reverse, then they should swap jobs. So I would say to also consider your characters' backgrounds on top of their classes when you're figuring out what functions make the most sense for them to fill in this scenario.

[Man_Over_Game]

This is all great and got me thinking: I would've expected the Paladin to take the place of the general and king, while the bard stops the townsfolk. But really, it would depend on their backgrounds. If that bard is a Noble or the like and the Paladin is a Folk Hero, absolutely they would fill the roles MOG laid out. But if it's the reverse, then they should swap jobs. So I would say to also consider your characters' backgrounds on top of their classes when you're figuring out what functions make the most sense for them to fill in this scenario.

That's the glory of it. There's no "right" answer. Send the Druid to cleanse the black magic in the town while the Paladin waits to sunder the Dragon, and the Rogue sneaks through the enemy army to sabotage their siege weapons.

The point is, as long as the players see a potential solution to a problem, there isn't really a wrong answer as to how they can solve it. You don't want to railroad their decision-making into very specific solutions, as that kinda ruins the tension:

"I have no idea what I'm doing. We made up this stupid plan in 5 seconds and now I'm almost definitely going to die alone" - Everyone, All the Time.

You can't really get that when the World-Saving McGuffin that's destined to slay the badguy is in your players' hands.

Given, that's an extreme example, but it doesn't matter if the McGuffin is an artifact, a weapon, a plan, a person, or just a single course of action. If the DM gives it to them, the players will trust in that decision rather than their own.

It's easy to have faith in what other people tell you to do, since it means you don't have to constantly evaluate the situation. It's sad, but it happens a lot with military, as they find it harder to adjust to civilian life due to having to think for themselves. If there's nobody telling you what the right answer is, you gotta find it yourself.

I guess a good way to put it is, for every problem, provide the means for a solution. Knowing trolls stop regenerating when you hit them with fire is just a means for a solution. A fireball is a solution to a troll problem.

Provide the means, so they make a solution.

[Alucard89]

Depends:

1. If PCs do not participate in battle I go for pure narrative and just tell them what is going on.

2. If PCs do participate I generally use "group" mechanics, so for example if they fight 30 orcs I do not roll 30x d20 for attack but I divide them into 3x groups of 10 and attack as a group, using my own feeling. So for example if one orc would attack for 1d8 + 5 with hit chance of +5, then group of 10 orcs would attack for 4d6 with +9 to hit. This is just example, not actual numbers. Those numbers change depending on party level etc. Then they get the feeling that they fight horde of enemies without spending 3 hours of session on encounter.

[heavyfuel]

Narratively.

It's impossible to roll hundreds of dice for every turn in combat. I just narrate the overall flow of the battle, depending of how well prepared each side is and saying the the PCs slaughter any enemies on their way without effort.

If/When they meet capable characters on the enemy side, have them roll initiative and have a regular combat against these enemies alone.

[Tawmis]

For a rough idea of what I mean, you got your catapults flinging exploding shot at your castle while an army sits in front of them biding their time, there's a dragon flying around somewhere around here that's been taking cover behind some local mountains between skirmishes, some damn cultists tricked a bunch of townsfolk that they would be "saved" by sacrificing them into hordes of monsters, and the friggin' general and king disappeared leaving nobody to command the military.
What do you do?!


I indeed had things like this planned - where things will go wrong and our heroes may need to break away from combat, to help repair something (doing skill checks) or push a catapult up a hill. I was also going to - or want to - implement some form of Exhaustion because it's non stop combat. Arms are going to get tired from swinging swords, shields taking hits, voices casting spells.


Lots of minis and even more dice

Ideal, but we play through Discord (I have a Roll20 and Fantasy Grounds account, but not for my own game).



Oh and yeah, stat the sergeant and the general. Sergeants lead flanks, generals lead the army. If a sergeant falls, that flank lacks leadership. If a general falls, that means the entire army lacks leadership and will withdraw.

I like this. I want something like that where there's a sense of a danger - and characters may need to use their own skills to keep things in line.



In general, I second Man_Over_Game's advice on the condition that you want a battle as a big setpiece in the middle of an otherwise adventure-centric campaign. If you do intend for battles to be a regular occurence in a war campaign, and want to have relatively simple war-game rules for the players to engage in, consider using or adapting mine. Rather than focus on being an in-depth wargame ruleset in itself, I've done my best to translate the D&D combat rules to unit scale.


So. much. good. info. Need to digest and process!


We use Warhammer Fantasy Age of Sigmar tabletop rules for all our large battles and tweak some of the hero abilities to match the class features, spells, magic items, etc. of our 5e characters. It works well and thereÂ’s no need to experiment with potentially unbalanced homebrewed rule systems.

Never played Warhammer.


I tend to defer to homebrew mechanics based on warband games. Heroes and enemies interacting with the heroes take turns as usual, then at the bottom of initiative mobs get resolved using opposed d6 pools.

Example: Pitched battle between 20 orcs and 15 elves + the PCs. Fifteen orcs and the elves engage in battle while the PCs attempt to sneak up on the five orc archers. PCs and archers use initiative, meanwhile at the end of the round roll 15d6 for the orcs and 15d6 for the elves.
Round 1: 45 orcs vs 41 elves - 4 elves die
Round 2: 15d6 for orcs 11d6 for elves, etc.
You could similarly use d10+5 opposed if you prefer fewer dice. It allows for the numerically superior side to have advantage while not precluding a heroic rout from the smaller force.

I like it. I have some ideas for either side losing numbers, but this is good. My main thing I am shooting for is making the characters feel like they're in a large scale battle.

Because fighting 5 orcs, yeah, you might be surrounded - is still different than being in the middle of 500 drow, fighting (with others). Because there's things happening all around you.



There is a very important question to answer: do you want the battle to be a central point of the game or not?


The battle will be the main focus of this part - a war with Drow (Driders, etc) vs Dwarves (and any allies, I have that the characters can meet to assist and convince to side with them) - which will lead to a Drow priestess trying to ascend as an "Avatar of Lloth" - and if it happens - things go south.


I use the West End Games D6 Star Wars philosophy. I let the party decide on what objectives in the battle they are going to go for, and run them going for those objectives like more or less a normal adventure. Based on what those objectives are, and how things go, that's how the larger battle goes; described in kind of a cut scene fashion and their next objective gets harder or easier based on how it's gone in the over all picture. So basically, how and what the party does is the total focus and determines how it plays out. They are the stars, the heroes, the keys.

Another idea you could use if your player's side is divided into something resembling squads, and you want to take a lot of time and have a varied experience, would be to generate those squads, each with some unique features and let them send squads into tasks and play the squads. Basically playing out each portion of the battle with them controlling different characters.

This is all great and got me thinking: I would've expected the Paladin to take the place of the general and king, while the bard stops the townsfolk. But really, it would depend on their backgrounds. If that bard is a Noble or the like and the Paladin is a Folk Hero, absolutely they would fill the roles MOG laid out. But if it's the reverse, then they should swap jobs. So I would say to also consider your characters' backgrounds on top of their classes when you're figuring out what functions make the most sense for them to fill in this scenario.



I was having the same idea - I don't want it to just be about rolling dice to attack. I want catapults that break, that need to be fixed, fires that need to be put out, etc.


Depends:
1. If PCs do not participate in battle I go for pure narrative and just tell them what is going on.
2. If PCs do participate I generally use "group" mechanics, so for example if they fight 30 orcs I do not roll 30x d20 for attack but I divide them into 3x groups of 10 and attack as a group, using my own feeling. So for example if one orc would attack for 1d8 + 5 with hit chance of +5, then group of 10 orcs would attack for 4d6 with +9 to hit. This is just example, not actual numbers. Those numbers change depending on party level etc. Then they get the feeling that they fight horde of enemies without spending 3 hours of session on encounter.


Mass Combat:
If the players are leading the army [or a segment of it], their characters are at the command post and/or at the head of their personal units.

They're definitely pariticpating - they've come to hate the Drow themselves (the Drow are relatively a super secret race - people know of them, but know nothing about them, their culture, etc - even the Mountain Dwarves who have been warring with them for a thousand years!). The Drow in my world are all equipped with poison tablets in their mouth that they bite down on, if they're captured, which quickly destroys their organs, rather than be captured.

So the party will be involved - they won't be leading - depends on what they do. The current King sitting on the Dwarven throne has entered an alliance with the Drow (believing that the Drow have come in peace to team up with the Dwarves to rage a war against the greater threat - the Illithid). He's since then, had an enslaved Meenlock (by the Drow) feeding that fear (carefully placed and hidden by magic). So there's even civil unrest in the dwarven community that they need to fix first - do they dethrone the king (thinking he's insane like many of the dwarves think who oppose their own king?) or do they uncover the truth that the Emissary Drow was lying all along? So depending on what happens there (if they liberate the king) or dethrone him and another Dwarf (from a prominent family that they've met) takes the throne since the current king has no heirs.

[LordCdrMilitant]

They're definitely pariticpating - they've come to hate the Drow themselves (the Drow are relatively a super secret race - people know of them, but know nothing about them, their culture, etc - even the Mountain Dwarves who have been warring with them for a thousand years!). The Drow in my world are all equipped with poison tablets in their mouth that they bite down on, if they're captured, which quickly destroys their organs, rather than be captured.

So the party will be involved - they won't be leading - depends on what they do. The current King sitting on the Dwarven throne has entered an alliance with the Drow (believing that the Drow have come in peace to team up with the Dwarves to rage a war against the greater threat - the Illithid). He's since then, had an enslaved Meenlock (by the Drow) feeding that fear (carefully placed and hidden by magic). So there's even civil unrest in the dwarven community that they need to fix first - do they dethrone the king (thinking he's insane like many of the dwarves think who oppose their own king?) or do they uncover the truth that the Emissary Drow was lying all along? So depending on what happens there (if they liberate the king) or dethrone him and another Dwarf (from a prominent family that they've met) takes the throne since the current king has no heirs.

In that case, since somebody else is leading the army, they don't actually have any say in the direction of their side in the battle. But they can govern the outcome by being in critical places at the right time.

Give them one or more special missions that are decisive to the battle but don't actually involve fighting the whole army. Examples might be:
Killing a commander to place the enemy force into disarray
Holding a critical position or chokepoint
Destroying or capturing the enemy wagons
Saving a friendly commander from an enemy assassination attempt
Delivering a message to a unit in a precarious position
Breaking enemy communication lines
Destroying or routing an artillery position
etc.

You give the impression of there being a big battle by having troops enter into encounters mid-encounter, and lots of mid-challenge troops fighting as units.

[Tawmis]

In that case, since somebody else is leading the army, they don't actually have any say in the direction of their side in the battle. But they can govern the outcome by being in critical places at the right time.

Give them one or more special missions that are decisive to the battle but don't actually involve fighting the whole army. Examples might be:
Killing a commander to place the enemy force into disarray
Holding a critical position or chokepoint
Destroying or capturing the enemy wagons
Saving a friendly commander from an enemy assassination attempt
Delivering a message to a unit in a precarious position
Breaking enemy communication lines
Destroying or routing an artillery position
etc.

You give the impression of there being a big battle by having troops enter into encounters mid-encounter, and lots of mid-challenge troops fighting as units.

I love all of these ideas! Thank you!!

[LordCdrMilitant]

I love all of these ideas! Thank you!!

You're welcome. My suggestion list is in no way comprehensive.

Also keep in mind if you want to play up their importance to the war and make the players invested in their contribution to the battle, consider having lead-up quests related to what they undertake during the battle. For example, if they spend the lead-up working on a cure to the poison, in the battle they might need to fight their way to a unit or officer in a key position about to be on the receiving end to deliver the antidote before the unit is overrun and the line collapses.

In general, think about what small things could be done by a small unit that could make a decisive difference in the battle, and have them do that.

[Tawmis]

You're welcome. My suggestion list is in no way comprehensive.
Also keep in mind if you want to play up their importance to the war and make the players invested in their contribution to the battle, consider having lead-up quests related to what they undertake during the battle. For example, if they spend the lead-up working on a cure to the poison, in the battle they might need to fight their way to a unit or officer in a key position about to be on the receiving end to deliver the antidote before the unit is overrun and the line collapses.
In general, think about what small things could be done by a small unit that could make a decisive difference in the battle, and have them do that.

There has been an ongoing lead up to this war that's brewing and about to come to a head.
I also came up with a "Morale" table.

So if the Dwarves lose, for example, X amount of people, their morale score drops, so does their ability to hit things.
So the heroes will be running around - aside from fighting - doing things like rescuing people, fixing catapults, destroying enemy wagons, (list goes on for stuff suggested here and what I'd planned) - and each of those things will impact morale. Raising it causes the Dwarves to hit better (like having Bardic inspiration on them, and such). So the players should hopefully be invested. :)