Mass Conflicts in the (D20) Fantasy Campaign

from: http://www.gmmastery.com
By Samir@chisp.net

How to Have a Huge Battle In One Night

Please send your feedback and questions to Samir.

In the past year I have been involved in 3 different games and each of these games culminated in huge wars. The first involved a castle siege between two armies, the good guys numbered 2000, plus mages, clerics and 4 catapults and the bad guys numbered 10,000, plus undead, colossal creatures, druids, clerics and 5 catapults. Both sides had archers. It lasted 5 real weeks. The second one involved breaking the siege of a city. The good guys numbered 500,000 with elves, dwarves, halflings and humans (Each player was in control of a faction) and the bad guys numbered 13,000 with demons up to CR 25. Again each side had archers. It lasted one night. The third and latest battle involved 360,000 good guys and 600,000 bad guys and took place in open terrain. Each side with magical artillery, flying troops, archers, reinforcements (the good guys had limited reinforcements and the bad guys had the ability to raise the dead) and hidden positions. The bad guys also had animated juggernauts. This battle lasted one night.

I tried to find D20 resource material to help me with these battles. Unfortunately, at the time there was nothing that I was satisfied with using. In the first battle I was not the GM, The second battle I was Co-GM. The third battle I set up based on what I had learned in the previous two.

First off, everyone loves a huge battle. (Well, most everyone.) However, the longer a battle
goes and the longer between turns a player has the wait, the less enjoyment your average
player gets from this type of scenario. The Key word to keep everyone involved and
interested. Abstract, abstract, abstract! The goal is to have fun and minimize the dice
Rolling, to maintain an exciting pace.

Here is what I learned. The way to speed up the epic army verses army is to abstract
everything. (dare I say it again?)

Eleven Steps to Speeding Up Mass Combat

1. You will need an ample playing area. A huge hex/square map, large table or clear out the
living room floor. Don’t forget you will need a tape measure if you choose the latter two
options. Mark increments on the battle field. On the hex/square map
you can number every fifth grid or hex for ease in marking locations. On the floor or table I would tape pieces of paper or card stock
that have numbers or letters on them. These numbers or letters represent grid location
markers. Place them sequentially, not randomly.

2. For ease of play MOST of the soldiers need to be the same level. I.E. All infantry need
to be 10th level or 1st level or 5th level. All clerics need to be 5th. Etc. This will help
in Hit Point Management later on.

3. Choose the scale of the battle. As a result the standard 5 ft square/hex increments may
not work depending on the size of the armies. Or the size of the battle ground. You
can/should base it on the average movement that your troops can move in a extended time
frame. The normal time of rounds cannot be used. I chose 5 minute rounds with each hex
representing 500 ft in size. This means your archers and mages have an approximate range of
one hex for their spells and missile. Mounted troops will get a movement of 3 hexes (light)
Heavy Calvary would only get a move of 2 hexes This may not sound correct for movement but
you have to remember troops in formation do not run all the time, they have facing changes,
formation changes, equipment changes (from bows to swords etc.) So 5 minute, 500 hex sizes
is a good abstraction of the movement-range ratio. REMEMBER you are the GM, what you say
goes and the players will be able to get a handle on this quickly.

4. Get an assistant GM to help with the battle. It frees you up so that you can handle the
side issues the players will come up with, also if the players want to infiltrate or recon
with their characters you will be able to handle that while keeping an eye on the big
picture. You will need to sit down and discuss how aggressive you want your assistant GM to
be, since they will control the strategy of the opposing army. The less you have to
interfere, the faster the battle and the more your players can accomplish.

5. Put the players in charge of their sides tactics. (unless it goes against your campaign
plot.) Have them roll on an appropriate skill, verse the opposing Army Commander. This gets
the players focused on the battle. (In my game I allowed the players to choose if they went
first or last as a benefit for having high skills instead of rolling for it. It also sped
the game up by eliminating that die roll.

6. Throw away Armor Class, Saves and Magic Items (for the armies) unless your game world is
ultra high magic, very few common soldiers will be carrying magic arms and armor. This will
help in the Combat Management later on.

7. Choose how large each army unit is. Round numbers are not required but helpful in
determining damage. If you have less then 100 per side I would not use this system. Divide
the troops into equal units. 5-10 units per Player character is a good easy to manage
number. Your assistant GM should make as many units as they can handle. One note of caution:
Really large units tend to smash smaller units quickly. So if you are balancing this to let
the players win, then let them have larger units. If you want them to sweat, then insure all
units are equal in size.

8. Determine off board artillery (or on board if you wish, however the artillery is subject
to damage and should not be able to move.) Having the Artillery off board speeds the battle
due to the damage it can do. Having the Artillery on board will prolong the game because the
players will target the artillery sooner or later. Abstractedly make the artillery able to
reach any point on the map. It should do hideous amounts of damage. Limit the artillery
batteries to no more then 5 per army. Apply the rule that the players must plot where the
artillery falls two rounds in advance. Any targets in the specific targeted hex/square take
full damage and those surrounding the hex/Square take half damage.

9. Set up the terrain. One of the things that War Hammer 40K and Mage Knights taught me was
that ordinary junk can be terrain features even on the hex map. The bad guys should set up
first. Anywhere within 5 hexes/Squares of their map side. Place hidden units (if applicable)
like army commanders and special villains (if the army commanders are taken out, I imposed
penalties to the appropriate side, for instance loss of artillery or no reinforcements).
Then the Players should set up their forces, hidden units (PCs if applicable). Remember the
PC that are commanding the battle cannot also adventure with any PC that are doing recon,
infiltration etc.

10. Plot artillery strikes for 2 turns later. Remember when we made those grid
numbers/letters? This is when they become useful. Choose a spot for the artillery. For
example: Your side thinks that the enemy will be near number 33 on the hex map but not on
it. Guessing a spot you write down the grid number (remember to choose the north facing of your battle
area/map) you would say #33, 2 hexes to the west and south one hex. That would be one plotted
artillery strike. After you declare the strike(on the appropriate turn.) The other player
(or the GM) should check to determine if hidden units got damaged also.

11. Players and Army GM alternate moving their units, then doing Archery attacks, then
Magical, then Melee, then Artillery.

Remember, these numbers are not statistically proven for the most part. Nor are they true
averages. I did a little fudging on the side of fun. You can alter them as you see fit. Most
of the assumptions take care of fog of war and Goth Factor.

Tracking Units

The unit information is as follows:
Level of unit(type)= its hit points + 1d4 (con bonus: we will assume that all the soldiers
Con bonus is exactly the same) times the number of soldiers in the unit equals the number of
hit points a unit has.(see chart 2)

For example; A troop of 1000 8th level averaged
fighters has 48,000 hit points (d10+2 times 8)/2 x 1000= 48,000. (Work with me here, its
not exact math but works in a pinch) Now comes the fun part. Damage. So I have provided
several handy little charts that work those abstract numbers for you. These charts are based
on several assumptions. 1 is that not everyone is going to hit their target, some will not
be able to get to their target and that no one does all the damage they can when swinging.
The damage assumption is 1 in 20: being that 1 in 20 people will do damage to their target.
Each time your unit takes damage subtract it from your total and use the next lower damage
position on the chart. You can recreate the chart if you wish to lessen the gaps for damage
increments but in the abstract sense the huge gaps can represent the inability to do actual
combat for a variety of conditions ranging from helping the wounded to personal first aid to
helping block to plain combat fear.

To track hit points loss you need to reverse calculate. Unfortunately this system does not
allow for damage spreading, each number represents ONE soldier taking the damage until they
drop dead and then the next soldier steps up and presents themselves for the heroic damage.
Unit size divided by # of hit points of soldier type (see chart 2 or look at your quick
reference unit card) divided by remaining hit points. For example 60,000 HPs (unit size
1000 fighters) / 60 (tenth level fighter averaged hit points = remaining soldiers (of a 1000
man unit). So if they had 58,800 hit points after being struck by artillery and hobbit
Archers (1d8 weapon) from a 1000 man unit leaves you 980 people. Which means your fighters
with longswords now do 100 points of damage as opposed to doing your former 200 points (not
realistic with this chart, but you can easily expand the numbers to compensate.) Make sure
you calculate your changes each time you take damage before any unit fires, unless you are
doing simultaneous damage per round.

How to Identify Your Units

You will need a card for each unit or a piece of paper with the following chart
to represent each unit.

Charts

Chart 1:Magic in Battle

The damage numbers from chart #1 are assumed. While spell casters are very
powerful, they are limited. This chart shows how many times they can use their
damaging spells. The chart only contains the break points at which levels casters gain
new spells. It also does not count bonus spells.

Using the above chart as a guideline a unit of 7th level Wizards can cast damaging spells
10 times before their effectiveness is cut. Clerics instead of doing
damage can heal that value instead. Obviously the casters are limited in the amount of times
they can cause that listed damage.

Chart 2: HP per level for the common soldier based
on class. HP Averaged. Plus con bonus if any.

Take the HP of the averaged trooper and multiply it by the number of troops in the unit. You
then have the total hps for the entire group. Track your HPs as your hit points go down
your unit size will decrease as will your damage potential.

Chart 3: Cross ref the damage downwards with the size of the unit across. The number in ( )
is averaged.

Based on the above chart you can either roll a 1d4 and multiply it by the size of the
unit/20 or just take it for granted that a unit of 1000 mages engaged in battle will do 100
points of damage with their daggers. Always round down for damage. If you do have an army
equipped with magic weapons you will have to do some math to refigure the charts. Or just
move the damage right one column (abstract it!) For magic weapons and stage it left one
column if they have magic armor. You can also stage the columns based on race too.
Constitutionally weaker races would take more damage, Stronger would take less. I would not
recommend changing anything except the damage chart. With this simple system you can have
your ravening horde of orcs and throw several lances of troopers at them too. Thats about
the gist of it, tweak it as you will. This should speed up all battles. Email me if you have
further questions.

Feel free to up the damage ration from 1 in 20 to 1 in 15, 1 in 10. You get to do the
calculations and new chart btw. I would not move it to higher then 50% of the unit. (1 in
2).