How to have the PCs interact with a battle between armies?

[Keltest]

In the next session that im running, There are going to be several armies meeting and fighting. Despite its wargame roots, modern D&D isnt really well equipped to handle combat on that kind of scale, and i dont really have a system off hand to switch over to for the purposes of running the battle. Short of just going out and buying or finding a large scale combat system, what are some ideas yall have to allow the PCs to participate without having them be either totally irrelevant or having them be the only creatures that matter? Additionally, at least one player has expressed a desire to actually command part of the battle, so bonus points if he can be in a command position and be more than just a token leader.

[Mutazoia]

In the next session that I'm running, There are going to be several armies meeting and fighting. Despite its wargame roots, modern D&D isn't really well equipped to handle combat on that kind of scale, and I don't really have a system off-hand to switch over to for the purposes of running the battle. Short of just going out and buying or finding a large scale combat system, what are some ideas yall have to allow the PCs to participate without having them be either totally irrelevant or having them be the only creatures that matter? Additionally, at least one player has expressed a desire to actually command part of the battle, so bonus points if he can be in a command position and be more than just a token leader.

The old "Battle System" rules should do what you need. You will have to do a little updating on some parts but 90% of the work will be done for you. In that vein, I would see if you can find a copy of the old module "Bloodstone Pass" and give that a read through.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Battle as backdrop. They have a specific role to perform (taking a hill, removing an obstacle, etc). Their performance changes how the battle evolves, but the background battle doesn't roll dice. It has particular paths that branch based on what they do.

As for command, give them too many objectives to do alone and a squad of soldiers. They have to decide who does what and how. But their action happens "off screen".

[Sigreid]

When I do this I focus entirely on the party. The challenge of their opposition is higher or lower based on the relative strength of the two armies. The better or worse the party does, the better or worse I describe their side doing. So, if the party has a ring of resounding successes, their army is doing better and their opposition becomes weaker. If they start taking the hard side of the fights, then their army is being overwhelmed.

[Amnestic]

Just in case you weren't aware, Wizards did two UAs for large scale combat, When Armies Clash (2015) (https://media.wizards.com/2015/downloads/dnd/UA_Battlesystem.pdf) and Mass Combat (2017) (https://media.wizards.com/2017/dnd/downloads/2017_UAMassCombat_MCUA_v1.pdf)

While I've not used either, the second one seems more approachable to me. You may want to use or adapt parts of them. Depending on how many units there are in the battle, I'd probably split control of them between the players.

Hell, if you trust your players to play properly, you could even give some of them control of the opposing forces, save you doing any actual rolling yourself :D

[Unoriginal]

In the next session that im running, There are going to be several armies meeting and fighting. Despite its wargame roots, modern D&D isnt really well equipped to handle combat on that kind of scale, and i dont really have a system off hand to switch over to for the purposes of running the battle. Short of just going out and buying or finding a large scale combat system, what are some ideas yall have to allow the PCs to participate without having them be either totally irrelevant or having them be the only creatures that matter? Additionally, at least one player has expressed a desire to actually command part of the battle, so bonus points if he can be in a command position and be more than just a token leader.

The DMG has rules for mass combat, if it's not enough for your purpose there is an old UA you could use (or use as basis for your homebrew).

What I would do:

Write down the "this is how the battle would go without the PCs' interventions" timeline, including rolling out the results of each fight with the mass combat rules. Have the various NPCs and factions act as you're imagiging them to act in such events, with as much competency or lack thereof you've defined them to have.

Once it's done, use it to describe the events of the battle the PCs can see/can be informed of, and let them react to them as they want/can. Then modify how the battle goes in reaction to what the PCs do/order others to do, while leaving what is not affected by that unchanged.

Regarding the PC who wants to be in a command position: are they in a position to be given such a position, and would the soldiers obey them?

[BRC]

I experimented with a bunch of different Mass Battle systems in my previous campaign. What I found best was the following

1) Write up a quick list of tricks to represent the PC's Allies in the battle. At the end of reach round (Initiative 0) the players get to pick one of these abilities to use. these should be fairly straightforwards

For example, a swarm of allied Infantry might deal 1d6 damage do all enemies, and all PCs may move half their move speed without provoking AoOs, as the allied soldiers on the battlefield provide cover for the Heroes to relocate. A volley of Arrows might say "All enemies take 1d8+2 damage", an allied Knight charging in might deal 3d8 to a specific foe the PC's designate.

If you want to get more complex with these, give the PC's a shared 'Strategic Advantage' resource they can earn over the course of the battle, and spend to use these abilities, representing contributions they've made that free up enough troops to lend a hand.
Establish that the battle is raging all around them, but that by defeating the foes in this Encounter, they're causing a breakthrough in this particular area.


Commanding the Army, don't try to make a tactics game out of it. Instead, come up with some strategic decisions, with consequences (Potentially rolls) for each choice. "Should we take up position on the hill or in the woods" "Should we try to make a stand here, or retreat to better ground". Keep the PC's in the thick of the fighting, occasionally giving them a chance to make decisions and give orders.

Unless your player really wants to play a tactics game.

[Unoriginal]

Even if the PC is given a command position, it doesn't mean it turns into a tactical game.

Personally I would put the emphasis on the fact that you can give orders, it doesn't give you actual control of the units like pieces on a tabletop.

[BRC]

Even if the PC is given a command position, it doesn't mean it turns into a tactical game.



Personally I would put the emphasis on the fact: you can give orders, it doesn't give you actual control of the unite like pieces on a field.

Right, that's what I'm saying. Give them a chance to give high-level strategic orders at various points during the battle, then go into smaller encounters as the PCs intervene at critical moments or pursue vital objectives.


But, if the player who is excited about Commanding the Battle is expecting to sit down and play a tactics game, then they're going to be disappointed if you don't give them a tactics game.

Although, even if you do steal/homebrew a tactics game, everybody ELSE at the table is going to be bored stiff while the one wargamer moves infantry formations around and rolls for catapults, so I'd recommend against going that route anyway.

[Keltest]

Regarding the PC who wants to be in a command position: are they in a position to be given such a position, and would the soldiers obey them?

Yes. They actually have a formal military rank and everything, and if they dont have anything else occupying them would actually be the officer in charge. They dont expect to play a tactics game here, they just want to actually show off that their title isnt just honorary.

[Unoriginal]

But, if the player who is excited about Commanding the Battle is expecting to sit down and play a tactics game, then they're going to be disappointed if you don't give them a tactics game.

True. OP should talk to the player and tell them it's not going to be the case. Unless everyone wants to do it like that and OP also wants it, in which case, well...


Yes. They actually have a formal military rank and everything, and if they dont have anything else occupying them would actually be the officer in charge. They dont expect to play a tactics game here, they just want to actually show off that their title isnt just honorary.

In that case, I reiterate my advice: write the "battle timeline" in advance, and modify things in reaction to the PCs' actions. It's just that the PCs' actions include "military leader PC is informed of the situation as well as their side can update them on it and gives order regarding it".

Sounds like it'll be a good moment to shine for the PC.

[returnToThePast]

If you want the PCs to have more involvement than merely having the battle be a backdrop without having to run mass combat rules, I might treat it as an opposed skill challenge. The PCs and any notable NPCs on their side will act as commanders or special operations forces, while the enemies have some appropriate NPCs serving that role on their side. Use initiative order as usual, but instead of taking a combat turn, the player has to come up with a clever way to use one of their proficiencies to give their side the advantage. The enemy commanders do likewise on their turns. Whoever hits a predetermined number of successful checks first, say five or ten depending on the scale of the battle, manages to win with the magnitude of victory being determined by the difference between sides at that time.

[BRC]

True. OP should talk to the player and tell them it's not going to be the case. Unless everyone wants to do it like that and OP also wants it, in which case, well...

I mean, one advantage is that RTS/Warhammer style tactics games are not a great representation of what commanding a historical battlefield was like.

A general could come up with a plan and give orders before the battle, but information during the battle would mostly be "What can I see from wherever I'm standing" / "What do messengers tell me", and orders would be limited to runners, flags, and drums/horns.

The idea of getting real-time feedback, and giving real-time specific orders is pretty unrealistic.

Which, combined with the fact that D&D combats take minutes at most, is a pretty good setup for a cycle of

"General, here is the situation, what do we do?"
*PC's do an encounter*

While they're catching their breath, another messenger arrives with an update and requests for new orders.

[MoiMagnus]

Approaches I've used (both as a player and DM), from the easiest to implement to the hardest.

(1) War as a background. The battles of regular soldier is secondary, and while it might have some influences on the battle "PC vs team evil" (treated as terrain effects, secondary objectives, etc), they don't really matter.

(2) Leading commanders. Each PC has the command of one (or multiple) units, that they command through skill checks as if they were the squad. So they use their own stealth skill when trying to sneak up with the whole unit, etc. Actual confrontation are resolved through skill checks too, heavily modified by the kind of units on both side.

(3) Mini-boardgame. Create a small boardgame tailored to the battle, with material from the available boardgame you have (we use some material from the Stronghold boardgame once)

[Chaos Jackal]

I've been on the player side of three large-scale battles in a campaign of mine, and used at least two systems (one of the UA ones, and one made by the DM based on some homebrew system for 5e).

My advice? Make the battle as much of a backdrop feature as possible. The one time our DM did it like that, it was a rather fun, if pretty slow session. The other times, when he tried mass combat systems, it turned out to be a disaster. A literal snoozefest. We're talking 45-minute long turns, ridiculous situations created by unlikely modifiers and annoyed players who were waiting to utilize their recently-gained abilities from levelling and instead ended up acting like a bonus to a large, faceless clump of nameless soldiers.

There's nothing inherently wrong about large-scale combat, but D&D is built around individuals. Players build characters based on specific ideas and goals, so whether the armies move on their own or are under their control often doesn't matter. They don't really get to do something. They're rolling dice irrelevant to what they made their character for, for things they have little control over, or are dozing off while masses of NPCs make rolls and battles they can't really affect and thus find hard to care about.

If your players are eager for tactical, large-scale combat, by all means, grab a system you like and run with it. But otherwise, make the battle the background, the stage. Have the players act in it as individuals. They've got to take down an enemy officer. They have to aid a unit in peril. Maybe they need to capture or hold an important strategic point. But it has to be in a small scale. It has to be personal, it has to be actual character participation. The battle around them might be affected by that, but it shouldn't be the primary focus, and neither should it take much time. Resolve fights between army units with d100s and the chance increasing or decreasing depending on how the players do. Maybe turn the grand battle completely abstract, having it as just part of the description, with the outcome of its phases hinging on how well the PCs do on a given task. But don't bring it to the forefront. Don't spend too much time making rolls on the battle, changing and adding modifiers, diverting attention from the PCs. You risk losing their interest.

If that one player wants to play commander, either try to explain that it's not gonna be very feasible, or include him into the fold but keep it as part of the rotating PC turns. Maybe split tasks between the players. So one or more PCs are fighting a key enemy commander, another couple are fighting a large number of enemy infantry trying to take over a hill, and your commander player is giving orders while holding off a small part of the enemy force that is attempting to strike at the command center.

But keep it PC-centric. Keep the PCs engaged. Don't wander off into long descriptions of clashing units or complex rolls and contests between troops.

Admittedly, I don't know your players. Maybe they're quite patient, or they're interested in a grand narrative even if it doesn't include them, and can stay focused and not grow bored if they stay out of action too long. But in my experience, in a game centered around the few individuals that the PCs represent, players often don't take too kindly to being relegated into observers or cogs in the machine.

So keep it about them. The battle is a grand event, and there are things happening in it that they cannot control or change. But they are the main focus of the game, so stick to what involves them.

[GooeyChewie]

Battle as backdrop. They have a specific role to perform (taking a hill, removing an obstacle, etc). Their performance changes how the battle evolves, but the background battle doesn't roll dice. It has particular paths that branch based on what they do.

As for command, give them too many objectives to do alone and a squad of soldiers. They have to decide who does what and how. But their action happens "off screen".


I've been on the player side of three large-scale battles in a campaign of mine, and used at least two systems (one of the UA ones, and one made by the DM based on some homebrew system for 5e).

My advice? Make the battle as much of a backdrop feature as possible. The one time our DM did it like that, it was a rather fun, if pretty slow session. The other times, when he tried mass combat systems, it turned out to be a disaster. A literal snoozefest. We're talking 45-minute long turns, ridiculous situations created by unlikely modifiers and annoyed players who were waiting to utilize their recently-gained abilities from levelling and instead ended up acting like a bonus to a large, faceless clump of nameless soldiers.

Quoting these to agree with them. Ultimately the players' characters are the ones which matter. If you want to make sure other creatures matter, make the players' actions affect those other creatures. Maybe one of the objectives is to take out a siege weapon, and the faster the party takes care of it the fewer troops it kills and the better the battle goes for their side. Or maybe the party needs to clear a path for their side to flank the other. Whatever the objective, you can describe the results as "Due to the (success/failure) of the party, the (friendly/enemy) troops were able to (accomplish something directly related to the party's actions)." That way the party determines success or failure, but the rest of the army doesn't seem inconsequential.

[Waterdeep Merch]

Even wargames are a bit silly when it comes to how battles generally go down. Everyone assumes Tolkien's battles to oblivion, where some or all of the combatants are supernatural and either side faces annihilation if they lose. If your story includes a fight like this, ignore this next recommendation, but-

*Actual combat usually ends after a relatively small number of casualties (casualties meaning both wounded and dead, not just slain, a common misconception). 10% casualties, the literal definition of being decimated, generally only happens if that side was unusually brave or disciplined enough to fight that long, the other side spent time hunting them down, an allied general was incompetent, an enemy general was a genius, or some combination of these things. The idea of nearly 100% of an army being annihilated is the thing of fiction, and to my knowledge has never happened in anything outside of small skirmishes.

Due to this, a squad of highly talented player characters can indeed make a huge splash on a battlefield. They only need to demonstrate their capacity for violence enough to cause significant damage to a unit or two. Once that unit sees enough people get hurt, they're going to panic, break, and possibly rout. Other enemies units will see this and waver, and it'll be up to their generals to either relieve those forces or pull out of that part of the battlefield to prevent the main force from being surrounded. The players do this only a handful of times, they'll cause the entire enemy army to retreat. Only the most suicidally brave of soldiers would keep going in spite of this.

* Since this is D&D and the idea of fantastically powerful adventures is *usually* a known thing, a wily general might try to band together mercenaries like your players into a unit of skirmishers/irregulars, units that don't have a uniformed method of fighting. You want them on your front lines for a few reasons; they aren't effective in organized combat, their deaths will have the least impact on the army behind them since they were mercenaries/conscripts anyway, and should they suddenly have a change of heart and defect or flee, you have them surrounded by your army to immediately put them to the sword. Check out Alexander the Great's Macedonian army formation for ideas here.

*Speaking of, magic and monsters can and should be a thing. If either side has access to supernatural countermeasures, they will use them. If they have monsters but don't have enough to be used as a complete fighting force, they'll either be found with the irregulars or as living siege weapons to burst through unit formations once the battle is joined. If an army has enough mages, they may attach a caster to every unit. Barring this, anyone capable of healing (that they can't convince to abandon their allies in irregular units, in the case of player clerics) will be put into a medical squad to help get injured warriors back into the fight. In a large battle especially, magical healing is practically just as good as getting reinforcements. If available in high enough quantities, the movement of healing potions throughout the mid and back lines will also be vital to success for similar reasons. A smart commander will thus relieve any unit that starts suffering light casualties and send them to the midlines for healing. This is similar to what armies have always done in actual warfare, except with casualties getting fully reversed. Aside from irregulars, I don't expect either side will lose any significant forces for a fairly long time thanks to this, so long as their command structure is competent. Utility and combat mages like wizards and sorcerers, meanwhile, are going to be most useful either for unit disruption in the early parts of battle or for protecting commanders from magical attempted decapitation attacks and supply lines. It's not a bad idea to have a few mixed in with the irregulars for shock and awe at the earliest moments of the battle being joined, which is fortunate since that's where most generals are going to get them anyway.

* Watch out for the cavalry charge! Cav will skirt the battlefield and take the long way around combat for as long as possible. They're usually too few in number to survive any prolonged archery fire or breach a halfway competent spearwall, and they absolutely will *not* want to see combat with a siege monster. That said, if they catch an engaged/injured/priority target at the right time at the right angle, they'll very quickly cause enough casualties to break and rout whatever they hit. They shouldn't stick around long after a charge- in most circumstances, the result of the cavalry charge determines the result of a battle, and they will either regroup with their forces or flee depending on how it turns out to prevent suffering any serious casualties to themselves. They're far too few and too expensive to be risked in other manners. This is another good place to attach a combat mage, especially one with nasty attack spells like fireball.

So putting this altogether, place your players into a unit of irregulars. Give them command of two of the other irregular units, especially other adventurers. Each unit should consist of 20 fighters altogether; bolster the players' unit with NPC's until you reach this, and offer to let them control these- we'll ignore the morale of the players' unit because they're the heroes of the story. When the battle starts, the first thing they'll have to deal with are archer volleys. If they made preparations or can find cover (such as raising a shield), make this easier on them- otherwise have them make Dex saves to avoid being shot. Allied irregular archers can make shots as well, but keep in mind that they're just adding to the same volley that their side should be presently launching- it's helpful, but it's a drop of water in a lake. Let them injure or kill an enemy irregular or two for the upcoming fights if you want to make it feel more impactful. Next will come their first encounter with enemy irregular combat mages, including big attacks like fireball as they start closing the gap. The players can also respond in kind if they wish. Finally, combat will be joined in a swirling melee- since the players are acting in a command capacity, they can call for reinforcements from another unit, but make it clear that they reduce the effectiveness of any given side of the conflict to aid their's whenever they do this. For simplicity, have this aid come as a Strength saving throw against the entire enemy unit for a bit of damage, or replacing defeated members of their unit, whichever they'd prefer. Count down from a victory counter every time they do this. After they defeat the irregulars and earn a +1 for their victory count (or are defeated and taken to the healers, netting -3 victory points if this happens to the entire party and skipping to the next short rest), they have the option of saving one of their other units . If they're already at -5 victory, no luck- they were separated in the melee, and might have been defeated already. Otherwise, the players enter combat with an additional 20 irregulars at half health if they make this call, with victory affording them another +3. After this, the main army catches up and enters the fray while the party's called back for replenishment. Give each player and unit member a short rest and a healing potion. Next, the enemy tries to break the front line with siege monsters and the party is tasked with taking it out. Figure out whatever gribbly they're using, with or without handlers, and have their units engage again. Same rules as before with calling on reinforcements. If they win, they get another +2 victory points and have another option so long as they're above +3: press your own siege monster's advantage! Let them join their side's gribbly against a unit of soldiers to break the line, bonus cool points if it's rideable. This should almost feel cathartic, and probably be the easiest fight in the battle. If they did this they get a further +3 victory points and the enemy retreats from this side now, and the players are called to regroup and resupply as allied infantry marches in to surround the enemy. If the players did not press the advantage and have less than 2 victory points, they lose one of their irregular units during the defense. Give the players another short rest and healing potion unless they're at a -3: their supply line's been cut, so they only get the short rest. Regardless of whether the players helped break the line, the enemy pulled back because they were trying to expose their backs to the incoming cavalry charge. This works, but the players are fresh and ready for battle again, and happen to be in the right place at the right time. A cavalry unit is 10 strong (with an attached wizard or sorcerer to bring the number to 11), though there are many coming. The players take the vanguard to defend the command group alongside either of the other irregulars if they survived. If they happen to have spears, let them get a free hit against the incoming cavalry that causes an automatic critical if it succeeds. If any irregulars have survived, they can still be called in for reinforcements as usual. Victory here nets them +3. If at least one allied unit survived and their victory points are at least 7, that unit uncovers an assassination squad using magic to close the gap against the allied general. That unit is decimated and pulls back, but not before the players can engage them with their unit- if they made it this far with both units alive before this event, they get a reinforcement attack every round at initiative 20 and don't lose victory points for it. Winning this fight gets them +5 victory points.

If the players end the battle with at least 10 victory points, the enemy army full retreats at this point, having lost their last bid to turn the tide of battle. The allies have few seriously wounded and even less dead, being a legendary victory. In their hasty retreat, the allies capture the enemy's general and a few other important figures, marking the near-certain end of hostilities. The players are credited as the heroes of the battlefield, responsible for achieving this victory. The bards are already composing poems and ballads about it.

If the players end the battle above a 5, the allies won at some cost. The players are credited with fighting in the thick of it and proving themselves as warriors. Anyone who fought there that day won't soon forget them. Peace may be brokered, but it's just as likely that the war will be fought another day.

If the players end the battle without going into the negatives, the allies barely held on. The casualties were extreme, and their enemies are likely to attack again soon after licking their wounds or gathering reinforcements. The worst is to come...

If the victory points ended on a negative, the allies lost. Though valorous and with no shortage of heroism, they were forced into a retreat. The players either retreated with them, or were taken captive by the triumphant enemy. This is a dark day, indeed.

In the event of any positive outcome, grant the players rewards based on how many victory points they achieved. Maybe even draft a list of things they can earn with them and show them before the battle begins to entice them to fight with all they've got. They are soldiers of fortune, after all!

[Amnestic]

Even wargames are a bit silly when it comes to how battles generally go down. Everyone assumes Tolkien's battles to oblivion, where some or all of the combatants are supernatural and either side faces annihilation if they lose. If your story includes a fight like this, ignore this next recommendation, but-

*Actual combat usually ends after a relatively small number of casualties (casualties meaning both wounded and dead, not just slain, a common misconception). 10% casualties, the literal definition of being decimated, generally only happens if that side was unusually brave or disciplined enough to fight that long, the other side spent time hunting them down, an allied general was incompetent, an enemy general was a genius, or some combination of these things. The idea of nearly 100% of an army being annihilated is the thing of fiction, and to my knowledge has never happened in anything outside of small skirmishes.

Due to this, a squad of highly talented player characters can indeed make a huge splash on a battlefield. They only need to demonstrate their capacity for violence enough to cause significant damage to a unit or two

I get your point, but, this is fiction we're playing, and reality would probably be disappointing in that regard. From a player perspective if we barely dealt with 5-10% of the enemy forces and they all broke and ran away I'd come away feeling like the DM softballed the wargame/battle/whatever you want to call it.

[Waterdeep Merch]

I get your point, but, this is fiction we're playing, and reality would probably be disappointing in that regard. From a player perspective if we barely dealt with 5-10% of the enemy forces and they all broke and ran away I'd come away feeling like the DM softballed the wargame/battle/whatever you want to call it.

The alternative is actually a bit sillier. If an army gets obliterated, then little to nothing is defending their people anymore. Even if the heroes don't do it, someone is going to conquer them immediately after losing their forces like this. Sure, there would still be defenders, but they can't possibly number enough to survive without whatever they had assembled in any serious invasion force.

It may be different for others, but I'm constantly running into people that roll their eyes when they find out an army killed to a man in a major battle somehow had enough reserve forces to put up a serious defensive or secondary offensive later. It's not just more realistic to have the enemy flee (and suffer from attrition and desertion during this that will greatly eclipse the number lost in the battle), it allows the enemy to be a credible threat later. Assuming this isn't the end of the campaign, anyway.

[loki_ragnarock]

Do you have a copy of L5R lying around?

Because if you do, steal that. It's a pretty fun framework.

Characters choose which area of the battle they want to be in, back lines, mid-lines, in the thick of it, etc. This determines which set of random encounters they have to deal with. It also determines how much damage they take *between* the encounters from the strain of being in a battle. There's glory to be found in the thick of things, but more dangerous encounters and more damage between encounters. Of course, in the thick of things you're surrounded by other people in the thick of things. Being on the edges makes you less likely to pull bad random encounters, but the bad ones are *bad* as you find your position surrounded and overrun as a flanking maneuver hits.

Give it a look. Alot of good ideas there.

[Wuzza]

Battle as backdrop. They have a specific role to perform (taking a hill, removing an obstacle, etc). Their performance changes how the battle evolves, but the background battle doesn't roll dice. It has particular paths that branch based on what they do.

As for command, give them too many objectives to do alone and a squad of soldiers. They have to decide who does what and how. But their action happens "off screen".

Totally this. I've only done large scale once, which was about 200 orcs, but separating the battle into sections works really well. You can change the other results on the fly taking into account army numbers, how well the PC's have prepared, and how benevolent you are feeling. :P

[Droppeddead]

*Actual combat usually ends after a relatively small number of casualties (casualties meaning both wounded and dead, not just slain, a common misconception). 10% casualties, the literal definition of being decimated, generally only happens if that side was unusually brave or disciplined enough to fight that long, the other side spent time hunting them down, an allied general was incompetent, an enemy general was a genius, or some combination of these things. The idea of nearly 100% of an army being annihilated is the thing of fiction, and to my knowledge has never happened in anything outside of small skirmishes.


The Persians at Marathon, the FFL in Cameron, the Romans in Teutoburgerwald and the knights at Fort Saint Elmo would disagree with you. ;) Also, the definition of ’decimated’ is a punishment in the Roman legions, not suffering a certain number of casualties.

You are correct in that the norm wasn’t total destruction of one side, though.

[Chaos Jackal]

The Persians at Marathon, the FFL in Cameron, the Romans in Teutoburgerwald and the knights at Fort Saint Elmo would disagree with you. ;) Also, the definition of ’decimated’ is a punishment in the Roman legions, not suffering a certain number of casualties.

You are correct in that the norm wasn’t total destruction of one side, though.

Exceptions prove the rule, as they say. But still, not the best examples.

The Persians lost about 6.5% of their soldiers at Marathon, if one follows the numbers of Herodotus; between 15% and 25% if we go by modern estimates. Certainly a lot in the latter case, but far from total annihilation.

Fort St. Elmo wasn't an actual battle, but a weeks-long siege that essentially culminated into a last stand, and also it certainly didn't hold the entire military force of the Order. Not to mention that the defenders of the fort were vastly outnumbered.

Teutoburg Forest was less of a field battle as well, and more a massive collection of rapid small skirmishes and guerilla strikes following strategic ambushes.

In general, you can find several 10% cases, although they're certainly not the norm. And it is a very rare phenomenon that a side's entire army is annihilated in one massive battle, unless the numbers of one side are overwhelming.

The worst estimates of the Battle of Cannae come to mind, and it's the very abnormality of the event that makes it so famous. There are likely a few more cases, but typically speaking, a side losing, say, 70% of its troops in a few hours while they number several thousand or tens of thousands of soldiers is indeed the kind of thing you'll only see in fiction. Losing so many soldiers is rare even across entire campaigns (Napoleon in Russia, for example), especially before the days of modern weaponry.

But D&D is D&D.

[Darzil]

Agincourt was one such battle. And is therefore well known, as it was exceptional.

[Droppeddead]

Exceptions prove the rule, as they say. But still, not the best examples.

Well, sure. If you move the goalposts and ignore the actual point being made they’re not. ;)

[Mystral]

In the next session that im running, There are going to be several armies meeting and fighting. Despite its wargame roots, modern D&D isnt really well equipped to handle combat on that kind of scale, and i dont really have a system off hand to switch over to for the purposes of running the battle. Short of just going out and buying or finding a large scale combat system, what are some ideas yall have to allow the PCs to participate without having them be either totally irrelevant or having them be the only creatures that matter? Additionally, at least one player has expressed a desire to actually command part of the battle, so bonus points if he can be in a command position and be more than just a token leader.

Generally I've found that it's best to employ characters as special forces that operate behind enemy lines, tackle powerfull opponents and deal with things your average soldier can't.

If your players want to participate in the leading role, make that the first half of the battle. Give each of them some troops, have them do a nice speech, make them do some maneuvers. You can just handle this part narratively without any hard and fast rules.

Then, there's an opponent that only they can face. Maybe the enemy summons a mighty immortal, or there is a great beast of war, or the magic of the clashing armies unleashes an elemental, or it's just that the enemy has their own powerfull commanders. Make a nice battle map with enough room to maneuver because the rank and file soldiers steer away from the big fight, with some obstacles. If you must, include a few soldier npcs that fight on either side, but most soldiers should be more akin to scenery.

If you need to have a bit of crunch, track some scores for the maneuvers of the characters in phase one and how long they take to defeat the big enemy in phase two, and have the end result of the battle hinge on that.

[DragonBaneDM]

I feel like this has been said/asked already but I couldn't find it:

What do your players want to do?

I had a DM bust out a tactics game on me once when I was excited about playing a still-pretty-new build for a character, and I was pretty put down by it. I had expected to play DnD, and would have really appreciated the "battle as a backdrop", which tends to be my go-to.

However, I've come to get REALLY into war gaming lately, and if I was given the chance to play a homebrewed mini game now, I think I'd be cool with it and want to give it a shot. As long as my DM talked to us about it first and the rest of the party also decided that it sounded fun and wanted to play it.

So, what I would do is take the advice you're getting, and ask your players this same question. For all I know, most of them are NUTS for fantasy army games, and have been chomping at the BIT to try out some of the mass combat rules that have been suggested. But maybe they're all just going "Ah man, but I JUST hit level 5 and it would be SO fracking cool to blow like 10 orcs up at once!"

I know if I suggested a mass combat rule change to my current party, it would bomb. However, if I just GAVE it to them and said "this is what we're doing tonight, friends!", I think that would go even worse.

[MarkVIIIMarc]

Battle as backdrop. They have a specific role to perform (taking a hill, removing an obstacle, etc). Their performance changes how the battle evolves, but the background battle doesn't roll dice. It has particular paths that branch based on what they do.

As for command, give them too many objectives to do alone and a squad of soldiers. They have to decide who does what and how. But their action happens "off screen".

Generally PC's are special especially if they're much past level 1.

In the army a group of level 5 pc's is going to be some kind of special force. Think of a war movie. 1917, Saving Private Ryan, A Bridge Too Far, The Longest Day, Band of Brothers. Heck, even 300 can provide some inspiration.

I might use your scenario to give my PC's some choices int he next session.:

- Go rescue a VIP who was captured. Regular soldiers can't do this. The PC's can request the rank and file provide a distraction to help them sneak into the enemy camp or whatever

- Hold this very important area or pass. I have a Paladin and a couple other players who would LOVE a chance to kill a platoon or two of regular soldiers in a game. For this one I think I'd have to have them hold it for 3 challenges. A frontal attack, maybe another frontal attack but more serious because the bad guys have magic that can teleport some solders right behind the lines? Maybe the bad guys bring in minor artillery next time? Some napalm like greek fire would be terrifying.

- OMG, this one bridge needs captured so we can advance! We can teleport you there where you have to first capture it from whoever and wait a few hours. Well the few hours ends up being a few days.

- Our army is outnumbered! In a last desperate move the party is assigned to attack the enemy's leadership while we launch a hopeless attack. If you can kill their generals we'll win for sure. If not, they'll win and their victories forces are sure to round up and kill the PC's.

- Steal the plans!

- Destroy their 75' tall mechanical warhorse before it makes it to the battle!

- Attack their supply column, if they can't eat they can't win.

- Kidnap THEIR VIP, the general's wife, son, mistress whatever.

- Operation Pedestal, Our supplies must get through! Escort this or that into our trapped troops or to the army in general.


Just make sure what the PC's do has an effect on the battle. Sometimes these things can be ambiguous also. A pyrrhric victory might change the course of the war. Even 1/3 the supplies getting in at a terrible cost could keep the army fighting.

[Jinxed_K]

I’ve had a GM that ran a standard battle on a hex map, but scales were increased. Nothing on your sheets changed, but your basically your hp represented your army strength like hp x 100 were the number of soldiers under your control, weapon/spell damage the army’s attack, AC was your army’s defense, etc. Your token on the map represented the army and you maneuvered on a battlefield as opposed to a dungeon.

The PCs were in charge of a group of infantry + specialized units depending on their class, so a mage using fireball would represent a unit of mages casting fireball or a fighter attacking would be a unit of elite soldiers attacking and causing 100s of casualties wasn’t too much of a stretch.