Massive Battles: DnD on a grand scale. - Downloaded from the Wizards Community, all coding removed by Solauren

Massive Battles: DnD on a grand scale.

Post/Author/DateTime Post
#1
nekros22
Jul 20, 2010 14:50:52
I'm a fan of most fantasy games and novels. That being said, I'm inspired by the Warhammer Fantasy world and the worlds of Robert E. Howard and J.R.R. Tolkien.

What if I want a massive battle, Warhammer style, in my campaign? I've downloaded the most recent DnD Miniatures Rules and the old 2004 Chainmail Rules, but those cater more towards "warbands" of 7 to 8. I'm talking 30 to 40+ mini's on the field, wizards firing spells like artillery, and enough giants, beholders, demons and what have you to satisfy any wargaming fan.

How would I start?
#2
OskarOisinson
Jul 20, 2010 15:53:02 I know it's not what you asked for, but in DnD, the only way this could really come into play (would HAVE to come into play) would be if the PC's were generals of some kind. When I've DM'd massive combat, I have made it a series of rapid-fire encounters that oscillated between combat and skill challenges. I would use randomized hazards and multiple objectives to represent the action all around and utilize HORDES of minions (sometimes modified as 2 or 3-hit kills). The one major time I used such a method (as it requires a lot of effort on the DM's part to be good) was during a beach landing where the PC's were split up, some given squads of allied minions and then sent to gain certain footholds by sea, land, and air. It worked out pretty well as the whole thing was one extended encounter and I had made four more-or-less identical maps (one for each character) so I could easily switch between each character in initiative order. Over-all it worked out so that, they spent the first half of the encounter performing skill-related challenges to get off the beach and achieve a set of primary objectives, while in the second half, they they rendezvoused and had to deal with a more combat oriented set of secondary objectives, culminating in a bozz fight. This method of 'massive' combat is much more compelling from a story perspective as it inserts the players directly into the heat of the action, in variable theatres of combat, while still forcing them to working cohesively as a team and presenting real risk and urgency to their challenges.

Anyway, hope that helps, like I said, it's not exactly what you asked for, but that's my take on massive combat.
#3
nekros22
Jul 20, 2010 15:57:36 @Oskar

That's a fine way to do massive combat. Warhammer it's not, but certainly serviceable.

Anyone else have any ideas? Preferably more unit and tactic based?
#4
Johnathan_Vagabond
Jul 20, 2010 16:01:55
The easiest thing to do is scale out, treat the PC's mini as a unit led by that PC, and use companion creatures for other, non-PC led units. Hit points become a representation of how many men are left in the unit and what their fighting condition is.
#5
OskarOisinson
Jul 20, 2010 16:25:33 That is actually more or less how I handled it, since two of the PC's (cleric and warlord) had squads of allied minions to command. I basically had a 2-hit rule with their allies and used a d12 to represent each squad. The PC was dealt damage normally. For the other two characters, which were, I believe, a ranger and a warden, I let the ranger parachute in from an airship and try to stealth around, sabotaging the enemies backline, while the warden helped prevent them from retreating (of course, flavour-wise they were being helped by NPC's but I didn't represent these mechanically, I just told the players they were out there).

It should be noted that, while the cleric and warlord had squads, I made sure to thin them out quite a bit by the time the two groups rendezvoused and then made an excuse for the minions to be relieved before the PC's forged on ahead. The minions did not generally serve a combat purpose but were utilized as modifiers in the the various skill challenges, e.g. demolishing a wall and breaching the fortifications on the beach, sabotaging 'big guns,' and restraining/interrogating a prisoner; that, or they were used for dramatic scenes, for instance, one the minions, which our cleric had taken under his wing (being the 'chaplain') ended up being killed and I used the moment to have a dramatic farewell, where the cleric tries to heal him but eventually has to give him his last rights.
#6
wrecan
Jul 20, 2010 18:13:26 I had an idea to make a swarm-like solo monster of soldiers (called a squadron). Say, a colossal swarm that represented 100 soldiers. When it was bloodied, it would break apart into a five standard large monsters called a platoon, which each represented 10 men (the remaining 50 men from the squadron would be wounded or corpses on the battlefield). When a platoon was bloodied, it would break apart into five individual soldier minions (and leave five corpses behind).

I'm not sure how well this would play out.

This would make a good high Paragon challenge, in my opinion, depending on what creatures comprised the army. If the PCs are on the army's side, you can stat them out as companions.
#7
greatfrito
Jul 20, 2010 21:59:31 Every time I've tried to stat up units of men/critters, or ships, or any other "larger scale" elements, I eventually keep taking "Well, this would really be less complex..." steps of logic backwards, until I get back down to the base rules in the first place, with a "Pretend all of the powers/features/what have you represent a unit, instead of a single creature. The end."

Probably not satisfying for most, but using the players' normal stats to represent a "unit" they've trained and prepared and lead into battle, works for me - so long as the other side is represented by the same things (an elven archer represents a unit of archers; a troll represents a full unit of trolls). Questions of "scale" can be answered by pointing to the "many" creatures in the unit (such as "if we're on battlefield-scale now, why does the Wizard's wall of fire cover so much more land?" "Because it represents the whole unit either augmenting his spell [not a rule, but it works for me], or casting their own to add to the range.").

Honestly, I'd leave it at that. Maybe represent "lone creatures" one step down on the "creature types" (So a normally Solo dragon gets bumped down to "Elite" at battlefield-scale; a normally Elite devil gets bumped down to "Standard"; and a normally Standard berserker gets bumped down to a "minion" - maybe even reduce their size two steps down on the battlefield).

As others have suggested, use "Companion Characters" to fill in some non-PC units (perhaps under PC command anyways), and I'd call it done.

Might work for a quick one-off battle here and there... but I would probably look up a better "wargame" set of rules (perhaps one of the many free games online) if I wanted to instead run a longer, more detailed, "war campaign".
#8
erik_the_guy
Jul 21, 2010 14:31:40 Swarms are probably the best. In mass battles, single soldiers are often many levels below more elite units such as the players. For example, if you have level 10 players and level 3 soldiers, make a 'Pike Formation' a 4x4, level 8 or 9 enemy with multiple attacks, and burst attacks. The formation can become 1 size smaller and lose attacks when bloodied, and have vulnerability to area attacks, resistance to ranged and melee attacks.
The idea of organizing armies into units instead of individuals is that you can solve the level problem, giving units the ability to hit higher level enemies, and you can make combat simpler, by turning 50 soldiers into a single unit.
#9
Igfig
Jul 22, 2010 13:51:51 I've been thinking about this very topic quite a bit recently, and I came to much the same conclusion as Greatfrito (or at least his first point) and Erik_the_guy. I started out with all kinds of complex ideas, pared them down and down again, and in the end what I had was very similar to a Gargantuan swarm.

Not quite identical, though: there are a few subtle differences.
Swarms spread out chaotically to fill nearby spaces, which is why they have the Swarm Attack aura. Units are more orderly: they march in order, hold ranks, and can often only attack in one direction at a time. (Think about the Greek phalanx.)

Swarms are generally designed to fight a party of PCs, but units are likely to fight both PCs and other units. What works in a vs.-PC context might not in a vs.-unit one. Attacking multiple PCs makes sense, but multiple units less so.

Swarms are generally very straightforward to run, but units probably need clever tactics to realize their full potential. Swarms work alone--or at least independently--but units enjoy company, in the form of massed ranks or inspiring commanders. Mechanics should support this.

And those are just the conceptual considerations. The actual mechanics--close vs. melee, autodamage vs. Swarm Attack, special auras vs. special attacks, flavour vs. simplicity, template vs. theme vs. keyword, etc--are many and varied in their possibilities, and I'm not actually sure what would be best.

Say, how about a "The Last Word: Mass Battles" thread? "The Last Word", if you don't know it, is a series where we pick apart all the various approaches to a houserule until we can find which one is best. Would anyone here be interested in taking part in something like that?
#10
nekros22
Jul 22, 2010 16:53:18 @Igfig

I would love to see it. I think it would be interesting for the DnD Community at large to sponsor wargame-esque DnD campaigns.
#11
OskarOisinson
Jul 23, 2010 14:40:19 You know, if WoTC ever got around to that digital table-top, events like the one you just described would be very easy. The potential inherent in that tool is actually incredible when you think about it. You can play with anyone, anytime, anywhere; you can organize multiple DM's and parties for truly epic scale combat and storylines, parties can be much more fluid in their storylines and character make-up; hell, whole new campaign settings could easily be constructed on the go. It annoys me to no end that I signed up for DDI and they have released little to no info about this tool since they first advertised it in the back of the PHB.

Oh well, honestly, if they could come up with the meta-game tools to make an engaging digital table-top, they could basically just sit back and stop publishing material, the subscription money for that alone would probably be more than enough profit and they wouldn't have any costs except maintaining the site.
#12
GlimmTheGnome
Jul 23, 2010 17:27:39 The Miniatures Handbook (3.5) has a chapter with rules for running mass battles. The rules use the skirmish game as a starting point for mechanics but then zoom out so that units of miniatures move and attack as a single entity. I've never tried those rules though, so I'm not sure how well they work.
#13
kieferz
Jul 25, 2010 14:27:16 I use a homebrewed system that's based on the Warmachine miniatures game. Each piece on the board represents a unit of troops, a particularly powerful hero (like a PC or an important general or champion) or a monster of some sort (troll, dragon, warjack, treant, etc.).

The thing to remember when doing this sort of combat is to make it interesting. A RTS-style "kill all the opposition" isn't the best way to do it. Introduce objectives, like a gate that needs to be held for a certain number of rounds, or a group of troops that needs to get to a certain point with a certain number alive, or a particularly powerful enemy that needs to be killed.
#14
pnxer
Jul 25, 2010 14:44:29 GEt out some of your favorite minis. For the player characters, let them use their tokens, but tell them to pick out two or three of their powers. The squares on the battlefield now represent 100 yard areas, the tokens are battalions (with the PC battalion being a command battalion).

The battalion of goblins fights like a goblin skirmisher would, except that instead of one goblin shifting around the enemy to attack them, imagine the entire battalion darting to one side before attacking.

The trick is with your command battalions. Whatever the class of the pc was, the battalion needs to be a leader/controller sort of deal, so use their powers in a new light. I actually wrote a large supplement on this that uses a hex grid and my PCs, i can email it to you if you'd like to take a look.

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 nekros22 Jul 20, 2010 14:50:52	I'm a fan of most fantasy games and novels. That being said, I'm inspired by the Warhammer Fantasy world and the worlds of Robert E. Howard and J.R.R. Tolkien. What if I want a massive battle, Warhammer style, in my campaign? I've downloaded the most recent DnD Miniatures Rules and the old 2004 Chainmail Rules, but those cater more towards "warbands" of 7 to 8. I'm talking 30 to 40+ mini's on the field, wizards firing spells like artillery, and enough giants, beholders, demons and what have you to satisfy any wargaming fan. How would I start?
#2 OskarOisinson Jul 20, 2010 15:53:02	I know it's not what you asked for, but in DnD, the only way this could really come into play (would HAVE to come into play) would be if the PC's were generals of some kind. When I've DM'd massive combat, I have made it a series of rapid-fire encounters that oscillated between combat and skill challenges. I would use randomized hazards and multiple objectives to represent the action all around and utilize HORDES of minions (sometimes modified as 2 or 3-hit kills). The one major time I used such a method (as it requires a lot of effort on the DM's part to be good) was during a beach landing where the PC's were split up, some given squads of allied minions and then sent to gain certain footholds by sea, land, and air. It worked out pretty well as the whole thing was one extended encounter and I had made four more-or-less identical maps (one for each character) so I could easily switch between each character in initiative order. Over-all it worked out so that, they spent the first half of the encounter performing skill-related challenges to get off the beach and achieve a set of primary objectives, while in the second half, they they rendezvoused and had to deal with a more combat oriented set of secondary objectives, culminating in a bozz fight. This method of 'massive' combat is much more compelling from a story perspective as it inserts the players directly into the heat of the action, in variable theatres of combat, while still forcing them to working cohesively as a team and presenting real risk and urgency to their challenges. Anyway, hope that helps, like I said, it's not exactly what you asked for, but that's my take on massive combat.
#3 nekros22 Jul 20, 2010 15:57:36	@Oskar That's a fine way to do massive combat. Warhammer it's not, but certainly serviceable. Anyone else have any ideas? Preferably more unit and tactic based?
#4 Johnathan_Vagabond Jul 20, 2010 16:01:55	The easiest thing to do is scale out, treat the PC's mini as a unit led by that PC, and use companion creatures for other, non-PC led units. Hit points become a representation of how many men are left in the unit and what their fighting condition is.
#5 OskarOisinson Jul 20, 2010 16:25:33	That is actually more or less how I handled it, since two of the PC's (cleric and warlord) had squads of allied minions to command. I basically had a 2-hit rule with their allies and used a d12 to represent each squad. The PC was dealt damage normally. For the other two characters, which were, I believe, a ranger and a warden, I let the ranger parachute in from an airship and try to stealth around, sabotaging the enemies backline, while the warden helped prevent them from retreating (of course, flavour-wise they were being helped by NPC's but I didn't represent these mechanically, I just told the players they were out there). It should be noted that, while the cleric and warlord had squads, I made sure to thin them out quite a bit by the time the two groups rendezvoused and then made an excuse for the minions to be relieved before the PC's forged on ahead. The minions did not generally serve a combat purpose but were utilized as modifiers in the the various skill challenges, e.g. demolishing a wall and breaching the fortifications on the beach, sabotaging 'big guns,' and restraining/interrogating a prisoner; that, or they were used for dramatic scenes, for instance, one the minions, which our cleric had taken under his wing (being the 'chaplain') ended up being killed and I used the moment to have a dramatic farewell, where the cleric tries to heal him but eventually has to give him his last rights.
#6 wrecan Jul 20, 2010 18:13:26	I had an idea to make a swarm-like solo monster of soldiers (called a squadron). Say, a colossal swarm that represented 100 soldiers. When it was bloodied, it would break apart into a five standard large monsters called a platoon, which each represented 10 men (the remaining 50 men from the squadron would be wounded or corpses on the battlefield). When a platoon was bloodied, it would break apart into five individual soldier minions (and leave five corpses behind). I'm not sure how well this would play out. This would make a good high Paragon challenge, in my opinion, depending on what creatures comprised the army. If the PCs are on the army's side, you can stat them out as companions.
#7 greatfrito Jul 20, 2010 21:59:31	Every time I've tried to stat up units of men/critters, or ships, or any other "larger scale" elements, I eventually keep taking "Well, this would really be less complex..." steps of logic backwards, until I get back down to the base rules in the first place, with a "Pretend all of the powers/features/what have you represent a unit, instead of a single creature. The end." Probably not satisfying for most, but using the players' normal stats to represent a "unit" they've trained and prepared and lead into battle, works for me - so long as the other side is represented by the same things (an elven archer represents a unit of archers; a troll represents a full unit of trolls). Questions of "scale" can be answered by pointing to the "many" creatures in the unit (such as "if we're on battlefield-scale now, why does the Wizard's wall of fire cover so much more land?" "Because it represents the whole unit either augmenting his spell [not a rule, but it works for me], or casting their own to add to the range."). Honestly, I'd leave it at that. Maybe represent "lone creatures" one step down on the "creature types" (So a normally Solo dragon gets bumped down to "Elite" at battlefield-scale; a normally Elite devil gets bumped down to "Standard"; and a normally Standard berserker gets bumped down to a "minion" - maybe even reduce their size two steps down on the battlefield). As others have suggested, use "Companion Characters" to fill in some non-PC units (perhaps under PC command anyways), and I'd call it done. Might work for a quick one-off battle here and there... but I would probably look up a better "wargame" set of rules (perhaps one of the many free games online) if I wanted to instead run a longer, more detailed, "war campaign".
#8 erik_the_guy Jul 21, 2010 14:31:40	Swarms are probably the best. In mass battles, single soldiers are often many levels below more elite units such as the players. For example, if you have level 10 players and level 3 soldiers, make a 'Pike Formation' a 4x4, level 8 or 9 enemy with multiple attacks, and burst attacks. The formation can become 1 size smaller and lose attacks when bloodied, and have vulnerability to area attacks, resistance to ranged and melee attacks. The idea of organizing armies into units instead of individuals is that you can solve the level problem, giving units the ability to hit higher level enemies, and you can make combat simpler, by turning 50 soldiers into a single unit.
#9 Igfig Jul 22, 2010 13:51:51	I've been thinking about this very topic quite a bit recently, and I came to much the same conclusion as Greatfrito (or at least his first point) and Erik_the_guy. I started out with all kinds of complex ideas, pared them down and down again, and in the end what I had was very similar to a Gargantuan swarm. Not quite identical, though: there are a few subtle differences. Swarms spread out chaotically to fill nearby spaces, which is why they have the Swarm Attack aura. Units are more orderly: they march in order, hold ranks, and can often only attack in one direction at a time. (Think about the Greek phalanx.) Swarms are generally designed to fight a party of PCs, but units are likely to fight both PCs and other units. What works in a vs.-PC context might not in a vs.-unit one. Attacking multiple PCs makes sense, but multiple units less so. Swarms are generally very straightforward to run, but units probably need clever tactics to realize their full potential. Swarms work alone--or at least independently--but units enjoy company, in the form of massed ranks or inspiring commanders. Mechanics should support this. And those are just the conceptual considerations. The actual mechanics--close vs. melee, autodamage vs. Swarm Attack, special auras vs. special attacks, flavour vs. simplicity, template vs. theme vs. keyword, etc--are many and varied in their possibilities, and I'm not actually sure what would be best. Say, how about a "The Last Word: Mass Battles" thread? "The Last Word", if you don't know it, is a series where we pick apart all the various approaches to a houserule until we can find which one is best. Would anyone here be interested in taking part in something like that?
#10 nekros22 Jul 22, 2010 16:53:18	@Igfig I would love to see it. I think it would be interesting for the DnD Community at large to sponsor wargame-esque DnD campaigns.
#11 OskarOisinson Jul 23, 2010 14:40:19	You know, if WoTC ever got around to that digital table-top, events like the one you just described would be very easy. The potential inherent in that tool is actually incredible when you think about it. You can play with anyone, anytime, anywhere; you can organize multiple DM's and parties for truly epic scale combat and storylines, parties can be much more fluid in their storylines and character make-up; hell, whole new campaign settings could easily be constructed on the go. It annoys me to no end that I signed up for DDI and they have released little to no info about this tool since they first advertised it in the back of the PHB. Oh well, honestly, if they could come up with the meta-game tools to make an engaging digital table-top, they could basically just sit back and stop publishing material, the subscription money for that alone would probably be more than enough profit and they wouldn't have any costs except maintaining the site.
#12 GlimmTheGnome Jul 23, 2010 17:27:39	The Miniatures Handbook (3.5) has a chapter with rules for running mass battles. The rules use the skirmish game as a starting point for mechanics but then zoom out so that units of miniatures move and attack as a single entity. I've never tried those rules though, so I'm not sure how well they work.
#13 kieferz Jul 25, 2010 14:27:16	I use a homebrewed system that's based on the Warmachine miniatures game. Each piece on the board represents a unit of troops, a particularly powerful hero (like a PC or an important general or champion) or a monster of some sort (troll, dragon, warjack, treant, etc.). The thing to remember when doing this sort of combat is to make it interesting. A RTS-style "kill all the opposition" isn't the best way to do it. Introduce objectives, like a gate that needs to be held for a certain number of rounds, or a group of troops that needs to get to a certain point with a certain number alive, or a particularly powerful enemy that needs to be killed.
#14 pnxer Jul 25, 2010 14:44:29	GEt out some of your favorite minis. For the player characters, let them use their tokens, but tell them to pick out two or three of their powers. The squares on the battlefield now represent 100 yard areas, the tokens are battalions (with the PC battalion being a command battalion). The battalion of goblins fights like a goblin skirmisher would, except that instead of one goblin shifting around the enemy to attack them, imagine the entire battalion darting to one side before attacking. The trick is with your command battalions. Whatever the class of the pc was, the battalion needs to be a leader/controller sort of deal, so use their powers in a new light. I actually wrote a large supplement on this that uses a hex grid and my PCs, i can email it to you if you'd like to take a look.