Micro to Macro - Mass Combat Encounters and PC Influence

[Wesley Street]

I'm interested in codifying guidelines for PC influence in a traditional sci-fi/fantasy mass battle encounter while avoiding having an abstract RPG become a six-way Warhammer session.

My goal is for a PC to play only his character but to have his successes and failures influence the outcome of the encounter as a whole. The example I have in my head is the standard Helm's Deep model - small number of defenders holding a fixed point against a swarm of attackers.

One method that seems obvious is to have a PC serve as a "spotter" and buff NPC artillery units. Another is to use a Charisma-based skill to buff skirmisher units. And another is for a player group to go guerrilla on isolated target groups. But how would I go about using a PC, in the thick of the front line and swinging a sword, to influence the encounter outcome? Other than by simply surviving one attacker after another, that is? If a target is put down within a time frame a "survival bonus" is applied to allied NPCs? I'm a little stuck for ideas.

Suggestions, threads, pre-created modules or resources that I can be pointed to would be appreciated.

[Stubbazubba]

Hm, I suppose the question is what method of resolving mass combat encounters are you using? Then we can better analyze what the PCs' actions can affect.

[Josh_Kablack]

Some options:

1. PCs have the role of "strike team" against the backdrop of a larger conflict. This is basically just running a D&D session, except instead of the goal of "clear the orcs from the dungeon and kill their evil overlord" the goal is "clear a path through the onrushing orc army and kill the evil wizard enchanting their catapults" or similar change in window dressing. This is really easy to do. It seems like what you want to do is have a list of about 4-6 of these sorts of war-quests and then let the PCs pick which ones they prioritize or how they split them amongst the group. Have consequences for success and failure, and have the available mini-quests expire to be replaced with new ones during the war. So for PCs defending a fort in a siege you might have initial missions of "Destroy enemy catapults", "Disable enemy Fliers", "Prevent their battering ram from reaching the main gate", and "Infiltrate ranks and assassinate their chief wizard" but as those are completed or time runs out the new mini-quests of "Remove the ladders from the East wall", "Get underground and stop those Bulette from digging beind our walls", "Hold the courtyard while other forces regroup behind the inner walls", and "Get the infant Heir to safety" open up.
2. Traveller on Friday night, Starfleet Battles on Sunday afternoon. You run both an RPG with PCs and a wargame with armies in the same setting and the same campaign. The results of the wargame battles determine the course of the war, but the actions of the PCs provide benefits to one side or another in each round of the wargame. This is a pain in the butt to set up, and the objectives of a co-operative RPG and a competitive wargame are very different, but it can be very entertaining if done right.
3. Build your own mass combat system by scaling the game using the same basic engine. Instead of a Fighter having "Hit Points" and 'Armor Class" and moving 20' per 6' round round a company sized unit of fighters has "Morale Points" and "Resilience" and moves 1 miles per 30' long turn. The trick here is scaling things so that either units get better by having PCs attached to them, and so large and/or powerful fantasy monsters or PCs can act on the larger scale as individuals and you can run battles of a company of knights against a great dragon in the mass combat system.

[Wrathzog]

But how would I go about using a PC, in the thick of the front line and swinging a sword, to influence the encounter outcome?

I always imagine Lu Bu in these kinds of situations.

At low levels, attaching Lu Bu to a unit will give them an overall boost in combat ability. With him around, the unit kills more dudes and receives less damage. They're also less likely to run away or something.
As Lu Bu progresses, his fame and power grows. People start to recognize the dude on the red horse wearing eye shadow. The bonuses he gives to his unit increase and any enemy unit engaging him either loses morale or otherwise becomes less effective in combat (because holy shit i-i-i-t's LU BU!)
At the highest levels, there's no need to attach him to a unit any longer as he is fully capable of massacring entire platoons of men on his own. He inflicts such pants-shitting terror in his enemies to where all but the bravest of men will rout the instant that he engages them.

[Chamomile]

I remain baffled by Koei's conviction that Lu Bu is the most awesome warrior ever to grace the Han Dynasty and possibly all of China. I mean, seriously, look at his track record.

-He's apparently very likely to kill Cao Cao in a fight. Just like practically every other military officer in all of the Romance.

-He beats a bunch of pip officers I can't even remember the names of at Hu Lao Gate. I think Yan Liang and/or Wen Chou might have been among them? And also I think that may have been Hua Xiong at Si Shui. Either way, Guan Yu kills both of them at Guan Du, so that's not a huge deal in the league of legendary Three Kingdoms generals anyway.

-He's said to be evenly matched with Zhang Fei for a hundred bouts and is later overwhelmed by the three brothers together. So, the first time he fights a main character, he loses.

-He assassinates Dong Zhuo, and then loses to Li Jue and Guo Si.

-After bouncing around China for a while, he attacks Cao Cao while the latter is distracted and loses again.

-He tricks Liu Bei into giving up the Xu Province, which works mostly because Liu Bei didn't want it in the first place. When he later turns on Liu Bei as part of his alliance with Yuan Shu, he is promptly torn to pieces by Cao Cao.

-He once shot that halberd with an arrow, so there was that.

Granted, most of his defeats as a warlord had more to do with strategy than personal prowess, but Lu Bu's accomplishments really don't stand up to those of Guan Yu or Zhao Yun, the latter of whom was said to have a compromised immune system such that if he were ever to take a wound in battle, no matter how minor, the resulting infection would kill him. And he was one of, if not the, most impressive generals for the Shu-Han anyway. According to that story, he finally died when his wife accidentally pricked his finger with a needle.

Anyways. /derail

[ckafrica]

I had 2 thoughts about doing pseudo mass combat

One is to treat units like vermin swarms. After all 100 L1 orcs definitely qualify.

The other is to make units like a special kind of equipable item that acts augments the unit leader.

Unfortunately I'm not sure how to implement either, at this point its just a concept.

[Blasted]

I'd probably handle it in a very video game way.
You fight off a wave of low level monsters, followed by the boss.
Maybe run 2 or 3 stages, with the outcome of the battle dependant on when/if they have to retreat.

i.e. Fight 20 Orcs, followed by the Ogre,
Then fight 20 Gnolls, followed by the Giant,
Finally fight 20 Warriors, followed by the BBEG.
Each represents a unit on the battlefield, maybe killing the Ogre will move them to a draw, the Giant for a win and the BBEG for a complete route.
With more imaginative unit choices I think that it would work fine for an evening's combat.

[Wesley Street]

Hm, I suppose the question is what method of resolving mass combat encounters are you using? Then we can better analyze what the PCs' actions can affect.

At the moment I'm not. My original approach was to use handwavium and take the approach of, "If the PCs survive X number of monsters then by default the defenders hold the fort." I'm looking for something a little more granular but I admit I could be over-thinking matters.

Here's the approach I was considering:

- fort defenders are made up of skirmishers, heavy ranged units and support units (medics & engineers)
- for the sake of simplicity, attackers are skirmishers but outnumber defenders by a factor of 10
- defending skirmishers, heavy ranged units and support units make group rolls to determine success of their tasks. Skirmishers roll against attackers, ranged units roll against attackers, attackers roll against skirmishers and some set number to whittle down fortifications, support units roll to heal wounded skirmishers and return them to fight as well as to reinforce damage to fortifications
- PC actions either boost or hamper defending skirmishers, heavy ranged and support units, depending on success or failure of task. Successful PC skirmishers add a bonus to defending skirmishers's roll each round, ranged PCs add a bonus to ranged defender group rolls, and support PCs keep the walls up and get more wounded back on their feet faster.

Some of what I'm considering Josh_Kablack and Wrathzog have already hinted at. Taking the small unit against the bigger backdrop approach is always do-able. But if a PC wants to walk into a field of orcs alone and begin slashing away, I'd like it to matter beyond simply surviving. What I'm trying to figure out is how to scale the orc-killer's actions into the overall tide of battle. Assuming that an orc is disposable and easy to defeat, would it make sense to have a defending skirmisher bonus added for every X number of orcs defeated by the PCs? How should the defending skirmishers be penalized due to PC failure? If a PC fails in combat, he dies. If he takes a wound, it might make sense to add a penalty to defending skirmishers but at what point is that excessive?

I don't think there's a right or wrong answer. I'd simply like to be consistent in how to approach this.

[echoVanguard]

Is this a "what is the best way to emulate this mechanic" question, or a "what is the best way to have a mass-combat-centric encounter or setpiece in this campaign I'm running?"

If it's the latter, your current example of "survive X encounters, and the defenders hold the fort" is perfectly fine, and honestly quite sensible. If it's the former, things tend to get a bit complicated.

echo

[Wesley Street]

It's a "what's the best way to emulate this mechanic" question.

[echoVanguard]

In my opinion, the best way to emulate the mechanic is to perform full statistical abstraction on the grouped units (we'll call them formations). However, this is an awful lot of work.

For example, let's say we're using the traditional 3.5 stat block for creatures. The things you most care about are AC, Saves, Hit Points, Attacks, and Damage.

Hit Points = the sum total of all the hit points of all creatures in the group.
Saves = the average of that save among each unit in the group.
AC = the average AC of all the units in the group.
Attack Bonus: the average attack bonus of all the units in the group. If a unit has multiple attacks, average them on a per-unit basis.
Damage: the average damage dealt by each unit, multiplied by the number of attacks that unit is capable of, multiplied by the number of units in the group.

You will also need two additional statistics: Number of Units per Formation, and Average HP per Unit per Formation. You probably also care about speed, but that's obviously the minimum speed of all the units in the formation.

When a formation is attacked by another formation, subtract the attacking formation's Attack Bonus from the defending formation's AC (this gives you a general idea of what percentage of the attacker's units hit). Then, multiply the resulting number by 5% and apply that percentage multiplier to the attacking formation's Damage statistic. If this number is higher than the defending formation's Average HP per Unit, decrement the defending formation's Number of Units appropriately for each multiple that the damage exceeded average HP.

if the entire formation is subject to a spell with a saving throw, subtract the unit's average save from the spell's DC, and convert to a percentage (multiply by 5%). Assume that percentage of units was affected by the spell.

Example:

Formation 1 is composed of 20 units, with an average HP of 8, an average AC of 16, and an average of 1 attack at +4 dealing 1d8+1 points of damage. This formation has an average AC of 16, an average attack bonus of +4, a Damage of 20d8+20, and 160 HP.

Formation 2 is composed of 10 units, with an average HP of 12, an average AC of 18, and an average of 2 attacks at +10/+5, dealing 1d8+1 points of damage. This formation has an average AC of 18, an average attack bonus of +7, a Damage of 20d8+20, and 120 HP.

Formation 1 attacks Formation 2. 18-7=11, meaning that 55% of their attacks have connected. Rolling damage, Formation 1 deals 102 points of damage, of which Formation 2 takes 55% - in other words, 56 damage. This is higher than the average HP per unit of 12 for formation 2, so we reduce Formation 2's Number of Units by 4 and its total HP by 56. This means that Formation 2's damage also decreases from 20d8+20 to 12d8+12. We can also roll 1d10 a few times to determine that units 2, 7, 8, and 10 were the ones that died.

As you can see, it's very robust, but also incredibly time-consuming.

echo

[echoVanguard]

And, since this point will probably be brought up rather swiftly, it completely ignores the question of whether all the units in formation 1 can hit all the units in formation 2 based on what edges of the formations intersect, or somesuch, as well as whether or not units in either formation have limited-use abilities that then have to be further abstracted out. In other words, apply math to taste.

echo

[Stubbazubba]

OK, in that case, here's an idea that might work;

Have a general idea for how the battle is going without the PCs interaction, this is most easily done by a raw die roll, but it sounds like you want to go a little more complex, so probably an opposed roll or a series of opposed rolls

PCs will have objectives to accomplish within the wargame framework around them. Then, degrees of success determine bonuses or penalties applied to allied efforts. If they kill more than X goblins in a turn, it decreases the goblin unit's rolls by Y, kill 2X => goblin rolls take a penalty of Y+1 or what-have-you. Similarly, degrees of success with siege weapons or ranged units increase their attack rolls, damage decreases the other side's attack rolls.

Perhaps having skills or powers at a certain level give your unit an additional bonus. Each unit could have a commander which gives them a bonus either on rolls to attack or to defense (or what have you). The PCs can either go through and kill X goblins to achieve +Y bonus (which scales upwards with your level of success in goblin-slaying), or they can simply roll once against a DC, and the level of success determines how big of a bonus is added that round. All NPC commanders could, in fact, do the latter.

[Wesley Street]

Excellent! This is exactly the kind of information I was looking for. I know this sounds like a bit more die-rolling than most of you would care for in your games but I think I can make it work in mine with a bit of prep.

Thank you.

[Wrathzog]

I think you can do a lot to simplify this. You have the following stats:

Unit Strength: Number Value from 1-50, represents damage and unit integrity (health). Abstract, so don't think about it too much.
Unit Defense: Number Value from 0-5, represents the armor value level of the unit.
Unit Morale: Number Value from -5 to 5. It's a modifier to things.
Unit Description: This is text. You make it up. The same Unit Stats could be used to describe a small goblin horde, a dozen ogres, or a single red Dragon. Superficial.

When one unit attacks another, it rolls Xd6 where X is rounded up to the nearest multiple of ten (so, 5 strength = 1; 15 = 2; 25 = 3; 45 = 5).
Add the attacking unit's morale.
Subtract the Defending Unit's defense and Morale
Subtract result from the defending unit's strength value.

Player Characters can modify unit strength, defense, or morale... alternatively, they can add bonus dice to attacks or something... shift attack rolls up to a larger di...

Numbers need tweaking probably (can scale up to d8's or 10's instead of d6's or something) but that's fine because the system is simple to start with. imo, the key is to ignore tactical level details because all they'll do is slow down the game.

[tussock]

Heroes of Battle used flowchart battles for the most part. Work out what's going to happen in your head, pick a few critical points that might change the course of battle, and let PC actions decide which way it goes.


My own thoughts are that 3e battles come down to which army keeps it's high level monsters or characters alive as they try to gank each other. Once one team has the higher levels to themselves, it's just a matter of time, so mostly everyone keeps their heads down trying not to draw attention, while assassinating anyone who does.

Mooks basically don't matter if anyone mid level remains unopposed, and no matter how many mid level types you have, they in turn can do nothing against a single high level critter. The low level folk just serve to draw out successively higher level foes to be assassinated, dying by the thousand as they do.


Anyhoo, if your opponents have nothing of your level, but persist in attacking, just buff a couple of your highest level grunts and let them roll dice for a few hours until everything's dead. They won't need much healing along the way.

[hogarth]

Heroes of Battle used flowchart battles for the most part. Work out what's going to happen in your head, pick a few critical points that might change the course of battle, and let PC actions decide which way it goes.

Sounds similar to what Paizo has done in some of their modules. They set up some encounters that are part of a larger event, and each encounter resolved grants a number of "victory points". Then the overall result (e.g. "complete success", "partial success", "failure") is based on how many points they accumulated.

They used this approach in Shackled City ("Foundation of Flame", for a natural disaster) and Savage Tide ("Tides of Dread", for an attack on a town), for instance.