Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 Atlas4244 Apr 02, 2015 19:03:45	Hi! I'm new here, and I had some questions. I haven't really been part of a forum before, but I felt I could use some advice or tips from other DMs. First, a little about how I play. 8 years ago, my brother and I created our own world to play in, based off the Forgotten Realms Faerun map. For the most part, we play by 3.5e rules, but bent a few to our liking. He was the DM until about a year ago, when he passed the torch to me. It's been fun getting to plan and run the world. I have a lot of simultaneous story lines going at once, and control/play a LOT of NPCs around the world, making things happen that my players aren't even aware of. We've had the story span generations of characters over the years, and some have become related in some way to previous characters and players even without that being their original intention. There's a war going on in the world, and until this point, the group I've DM'd for has done a lot of covert type missions, either getting the drop on enemy forces, or being 1 step behind and falling into traps to fight small platoons or monsters. However, the next game is going to be the first time there's an all out battle where they're joined with a small force of soldiers and are up against 1000+ enemy soldiers. I've got the enemy formations figured out, the problem is that we usually play very in depth with combat, always making attacks specific towards a certain body part, spot on the armor, or weak spot on a weapon, taking environment, size, and anything possible into account. I'm curious if any of you have DM'd for a large battle before, because I'm not exactly sure how to roll for the mass number of enemies. Most of them are lower level than my party (who are primarily levels 15-20 at this point), standing at levels 5-15, which would make them fairly easy to kill man to man, but I just don't know how to roll for ALL of them without it taking days just to get a couple turns done. How do you guys handle these kinds of things?
#2 iserith Apr 02, 2015 19:08:38	There are free, official rules for handling mass combats. I can't speak to how good they are, but here's the link: When Armies Clash.
#3 Onelostroad Apr 02, 2015 19:28:58	I've played with the mass combat rules iserith directed you toward. The rules are what I'd call a good start - certainly not perfect by any stretch of the imagination. They give you a way to resolve massive combats like the one you're talking about without too much difficulty. You won't be calling shots to specific body parts with these rules, however. It's my advice to force every player to control a unit of troops... some of the problems in the rules come when there's a solo running around. Also, you'd better have a BIG map to have 1,000+ units on one side - the recommendation is that 10 men create a stand... that'd be 100+ stands just on one side of the combat! Modifying the rules to redefine a stand as more than 10 men would be quite an undertaking in my opinion...
#4 Atlas4244 Apr 02, 2015 20:16:26	The problem is the players aren't the commanders of the few forces we have, and they're only used to solo running. They have specific class abilities (some homebrew) that they would use as AOE type attacks. The generals of the forces are NPCs that I control, and I think the party would have difficulty jumping into a new roleplay scenario. It's also not side on side, the party and the troops they have were at a mountaintop summit and the enemy forces appeared via portal of planes and are completely surrounding them. One of them has a horn that calls an archangel NPC, who now called angelic troops in who are coming down from above, so just the logistics of where the soldiers are is confusing enough. The map is huge, and for the most part I have it figured out in terms of positions, my main concern was the time put into rolling. I could probably have party members take their turns and go through combat as usual, and then apply the mass combat rules to all the NPCs to take the rest of our side's turn and the enemy's turn. I'll definitely be looking more into those, thanks for the link.   It's quite an undertaking but that's what makes it more fun, and for the record this isn't even close to the largest battle that's gonna happen, it's the first real one yet, and with that in mind I really wanted to find a way to downscale the rolling and time put into it!   EDIT: After reading more, it'll be easy to keep my players and specific NPCs as solos, and organize the stands of enemies into units. Because of the strategic position of their ranks, creating the stands and units will be easy (however long it may take)   Thanks for the link, was exactly what I needed!