How do you run a full scale battle?

[Lizardfolk Lich]

Complete with armies, siege weapons, ect. I can't seem to find any information on it, can anyone help me?

[shadow_archmagi]

Well, you've got two options.

The first is to pick a set of houserules to simplify it. The second is to treat it as any other party vs party battle, only with way more people in it.

Both options have massive drawbacks. There may also be a "Big fight sourcebooK" but I have no idea what it is called or where it may be found.

[Lizardfolk Lich]

Basically, two armies of we will say 1000 men meet for battle on an open plain. So, how do I run the battle?

[kamikasei]

Basically, two armies of we will say 1000 men meet for battle on an open plain. So, how do I run the battle?

In a different system, because D&D absolutely sucks for this. Seriously! Play Warhammer as a minigame or something.

Alternatively, pick up Heroes of Battle, which is about this sort of thing.

[MeklorIlavator]

I'd look at the mob rules from the DMG2. They'll add a bit more, and be generally beneficial.

[Lizardfolk Lich]

Well, I don't have a DMG2 or any warhammer rules/knowledge at all. I highly doubt there is any way I can get free information on warhammer anyway, but if there is I would like a link or anything if possible. I am open to other suggestions as well!

[Glyde]

Divide the armies into individual groups and treat the groups as single chars that lose men as they lose hit points and get weaker.

Massive houserule, but we've had fun with it before. The PCs are seperate from these groups, and it gives them a good feeling when they mass slay a bunch of folks <3

[ZeroNumerous]

I ask myself 5 questions before I start a mass battle.

• 1) Where are the PCs during this mess?
• 2) Do the PCs have to be involved in this mess directly?
• 3) If yes to #2, where will the PCs be stationed?
• 4) Can I focus on the PCs and ignore everything else in the grand scale of things?
• 5) If no, then where else will I need to focus?

Once I have an answer for all five of those questions, I build the encounter. If the PCs don't have to be involved or aren't at the battlefield, then I ignore the encounter entirely unless it has some bearing on the plot.

If the PCs must be involved, then I make sure they're somewhere on the outskirts with the goal of finding an enemy leader and killing him. Or they're told to defend a leader of a regiment of soldiers against all comers. This way, I can ignore the rest of the battle and just throw encounters at the PCs. The battle plays out with a percentile die, with bonuses for the PCs defending their objective or killing other leaders.

If I need to focus elsewhere, I make sure it's quick, short, and cinematic. So that the PCs get a feel for how the rest of the battle is going without detracting from their action too much. Remember, the PCs should always be in the spotlight at all times.

[TheLogman]

Miniatures Handbook has a ton of rules for Massive combat. Although it contains a lot of product placement for the D&D minis, you can run everything in there with anything, not just the official minis, in which case just the advanced rules for the mini game are useless.

[Danin]

Heros of Battle was built for this and actually does a decent job ruling it.

Alternatively, what you could do is break the army into a few distinct squads and gague their relitive strength. The squad of first level warriors get a +1 bouns where the squad of angry war trolls get a +8. Then, you match up which squad is fighting which opposed squad and give it a d20 roll. Whichever side won the roll won combat for that round with the bigger difference in numbers meaning a bigger difference in the result. So if the warriors got a 7 and the trolls only a 9, the trolls won, but both sides took some damage. Reduce the number of survivors in the unit accordingly. For every 20% they loose, apply a -1 or 2 on their combat roll. The next round the Warriors some how roll a 19 and the trolls a 9 and the Trolls soundly get their butt's whooped. The warriors took a few casualties but they clearly inflicted more damage that round.

This system ends up being fairly simple actually, needing only a few d20 rolls a turn. Have a map, plan where the units are, see what happens.

As to the PCs, either have them involved in the big ol' meat grinder and have them butcher stuff or have them attempting to take out a bigger threat (Their pet dragon for instance).

[AslanCross]

As previously mentioned, Heroes of Battle. The idea is not really to throw the PCs into the middle of a battlefield, but more on sending them on "commando missions" to disrupt the enemy army, take out their siege weapons, etc.

IMO the simplest is just to dictate the outcome of the battle and not leave it to chance. Alternatively, victory or defeat could result from the actions of the PCs (which is basically what Heroes of Battle is about).

[Sleet]

I've not read Heroes of Battle, but when we do it I just run a series of small combats centered on the PCs, while describing the larger battle raging around them. Those combats represent the "interesting" bits of the PCs' involvement with the big battle.

[the_tick_rules]

complete warrior also has some stuff. or compare the relative strength of the grunts and roll dices on how many soliders die on each segment of the battle. like each solider on one side has a 10% chance of dieing each round, other side has like 15% if it's weaker.

[TheSteelRat]

I've seen one interesting program that tries to incorporate a bit of randomness, as well as "common" features in combat that could be important.
Input includes the following

• Armor Class
• Base Attack Bonus
• Leader's Charisma
• Average Troop Level
• Average Movement Speed
• etc

You can download and try it out there. It has some custom feats associated with it, but I don't think they're particularly necessary. Things to consider for custom modifiers for higher level characters are Mass/Legion Spells, Bardic Music, Marshal's (and other class') Auras, etc.

[link]http://www.farlandworld.com/battle.html[/link]

[Darkantra]

I haven't read HoB but I ran across something in the Red Hand of Doom was something called Victory Points. Essentially the PCs would be given certain objectives and would gain said Points after succeeding. Depending on how many points they gain the battle could go to either side with varying degrees of victory and defeat.

If you wanted things to be pretty structured then you could have a set number of scenarios that the PCs must succeed in or their side loses the battle. Otherwise you can do what Danin and the others have said and have the battlefield evolve around them as they watch.

How will the PCs be oriented in this battle anyways? Are they part of a mercenary group being tossed into the front lines, are they the bodyguards of their side's leaders, skirmish units or what?

[Kojiro Kakita]

Basically, two armies of we will say 1000 men meet for battle on an open plain. So, how do I run the battle?

I just ran a battle tonight. Using 500men on each side. So I will offer my advice. It was a Dand D game but I borrowed aspects from the l5r RPG. Basically, one of the characters (the one that had the highest in Knowledge History) was the general so he didn't fight. However, he got to assign where the other PCs would fight and the tactics for his army.

The areas of assignment were Heavily Engaged, Engaged, Disengaged, and Reserve. Depending in what area the PCs were in certain effects would happen. They may get assigned to fight a party of equal lvl, a boss like character who could be one of the leaders of the opposing army, a duel, get a friendly cleric to heal and buff, etc. Depending if they won their scenario, they would generate a certain amount of victory points.

Going back to tactics, the general of each army would be able to choose a single tactic (the list varied due to the generals knowledge history) which would have advantages against certain tactics and weakness against others: basicall generated or depleted victory points.

At the end of the turn of battle, the leader would role a victory roll and add whatever victory points were gained by the PCs and the tactics chose. The difference between the two scores (I called it momentum) would then be awarded to the side that had the most victory points. When the gap in momentum reached a certain point (say 30 for tonights battle) the side that had the most would win the battle.

[Rutee]

Run it just like a normal fight, except Troops are gear that buff base stats. Gear that gets weaker as the character loses HP.

That's just me though. I prefer simplifying things and keeping the focus on the heroes of both sides. Feels more epic when two titans clash while their underlings maneuver for position to aid the big boss as best they can.

[Tempest Fennac]

You could try using the rules from Mazes and Minotaurs: page 37 of http://mazesandminotaurs.free.fr/RMM4.pdf

[Ossian]

I have to agree that D&D just won't work for full scale battles, at least if you run them and give your players the command position.

It may work, on the other hand, as it was suggested in the 2nd edition of WEGs Star Wars. In this approach, the outcome of the battle is almost decided before the battle begins, although the players don't know it.

In a doomed battle of 10 Space Marines to one Harry Potter wizard it may b e an easy bet, but even if it is a closely tied strife of 1:1 and equally prepared and equipped troops, the DM should already know how things will end without having to roll 100000 d20 for the hits every round.

What the WEG suggested was to divide the battles into cinematic scenes. A battle that could last (say) 6 hours, could be split into 3 or 4 scenes.
Each scene will influence the next and failing or succeding in the right scenes might turn the tide of the battle (if it was doomed, the PCs might escape with their lives, if it was a pice of cake they might screw things up horribly, if they were going to win 50/50, that might give the DM some extra data to make a final decision on the battle outcome).

This is useful because:

• It breaks things down and allows you to handle fairly well what happens. You just have to DM what you throw at your PCs and describe them what is happening to the rest of their army for some added drama
  
• It make the PCs presence influential and relevant. The can affect the outcome of the battle directly or indirectly
  
• It makes a 6 hours long battle last no more than 1 or 2 hours of game time.

Drawback: it will frustrate the hell out of the strategists and miniature players in your group.


I can make up an example of what I have described above if you want (like the Siege of Looolalooolaland, 10.000 badass orkz Vs 3000 lilac eyed elves)

Ossian

[Ascension]

I just finished reading the 3rd party Fields of Blood book, which is entirely dedicated to marrying d20 roleplaying with strategy gaming. I think their system of realm management ranges from overly complex in places to boring in others, so I'd just ignore the resource management half of the book and skip to the actual combat rules. The real gold in the book comes in its methods for taking the stats from the MM and converting them so that you can field (or face) units composed of all sorts of various D&D races. Similarly, it has total conversion rules for applying core D&D magic on a grand scale in battle. I'd never suggest using its rulership rules unless your party is composed of those people who think that resource management is the most fun part of RTS games, but the stat conversion rules are handy.

I just totally repeated myself. I need sleep.

[Premier]

The old Mentzer series of D&D rulebooks (and consequently, the Rules Cyclopedia) had a very easy-to-use sytem called Warmachine (and its expansion Siege Machine) which could determine the outcome of any large battle with a bit of very simple arithmetic and a few dice rolls. If you can find it, it's readily adaptable into WotC D&D. And it also gives PCs the chance to carry out 'special forces' missions - steal enemy plans, assassinate enemy leader, etc. - and thus aid the army win the large scale fight.

[AslanCross]

I haven't read HoB but I ran across something in the Red Hand of Doom was something called Victory Points. Essentially the PCs would be given certain objectives and would gain said Points after succeeding. Depending on how many points they gain the battle could go to either side with varying degrees of victory and defeat.

That's actually how HoB does it. The DM would have to prepare a mission flowchart that would illustrate situations like the following:

"The PCs have to take out that ballista or climb the cliff to get above its firing angle. If they climb the cliff, they run into rival forces. If they beat the rival forces, wyverns come in and drop alchemist's fire on them. If the PCs choose to take out the ballista, however, they have to deal with the rival force's fire giant lackey, etc etc."

Depending on what they accomplish, they gain a certain number of victory points, which affects whether they win or lose the battle, and how much of a victory it is.

Btw, there are stats for siege engines in the DM Guide and in Heroes of Battle. (HoB has the really big ones like Heavy trebuchets)

[Zenos]

I would simply just storytell about the battle an let the battle go agaisnt the PC's allies if they're doing badly.

[Lizardfolk Lich]

Wow, thanks for all the responses! I especially like the farland rules on Mass Combat, but I have yet to actually read the other rules. This however leads me to other questions... How many mercenaries does a standard mercenary camp have? And how many people should a normal city have? I'll have to look into this Heroes of Battle book as well.

EDIT: Storytelling is not an option, I actually don't think the PCs will even join in the battle, if they do it will probably be one or two at the most. The rest will be generals in the army, each one directing a portion of the army.

[nargbop]

When I DM large battles, I have three groups : PCs, bad guys, and good guys. The bad guy group has a single initiative roll, the good guy group has a single initiative roll.

I completely ignore D&D rules for every battle action that does not directly involve a PC. A hundred bad guys fire arrows at the good guys, and the PCs are not nearby to be hit by stray shots - I roll a single d20 to guage success, and just keep moving. Rolled a 2? The good guys successfully got behind shields or cover. Rolled a 20? Massive damage and life loss to the good guys.

If a PC wants to take shots or close with the bad guys, they have to roll the individual hits and deal with attacks of opportunity and all that. THUS! It is better for everyone if the PCs intentionally go and confront the commander, or snipe the healer, or something like that. D&D is made for small battles, not big ones. It gets boring otherwise.

[Siberys]

a) As a backdrop for the real action - the PCs.

b) Just scale up the normal combat rules. Have one set of stats instead represent a large group of creatures, and each square represent 50 feet. Otherwise, run as normal, and maybe change a few words. Works marvelously, actually.

[Moral Wiz]

Infernum has a good, simple variant way for determining battles of scale. It accounts for troop HD, general's skill (adding a skill for the purpose) and random chance.You'd have the attacker make checks with the skill, with the combined HD of all your troops being a modifier (50X HD being somthing like -30 I think). The results depict one "round" of the battle, and can be anything from 50% casualties, to no losses for either side. You could use this to determine the entire battle, or split it into sub battles, and run each seperatly.

Book of the Damned, the main book which includes the system, is free on drivethru RPG. It's under Mongoose Publishing, in other publishers.

[Benejeseret]

I am planning on using a similar idea in a future battle within the campaign I am running.

My plan is to run a Warhammer fantasy battle (earlier, the choices of the PC and the range of their success determines the types of units and total points available for them to 'build' their army - built fully from warhammer books)

The PC's will be on the battle field and basically running much of their side of the battle as 'non-combat' figures on the table attached near units and the like. The game will run nearly entirely on Warhammer rules and game-play. However, whenever the PC encounter one of a number of special locations or enemies the game will "zoom in" to a regular DnD style fight with important enemy units or fortifications with only a few (maybe the nearest unit) of allies for support.

Ie. PC's run into enemy boss = mini-game zoom to DnD.
Ie. The unit the PC's are with takes heavy loses or breaks - zoom in and the PC's have a chance to turn the tide back.

Otherwise all PC abilities and stats are suppressed and not useful unless zoomed in. The exception will be any permanent aura (bard/martial/pally) which will be home brewed to fit some generic bonus to Warhammer. Long-range spells can also be used (but will be treated as a zoom-in so that DnD rules apply)

Ie. Wizard PC casts fireball at a unit of 30 orcs. So zoom, cast spell, determine saves and damage, figure out number dead, zoom back out, take off that many casualties and if a unit with 2 warhammer wounds if half-dead during the DnD-zoom, it has 1 wound after zoom out.

Note: this will take a long time since a Warhammer game takes a long time and we are adding in DnD battles.