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LucasClaus
2010-09-23, 09:33 PM
I'm in the process of planning a 3.5 campaign with loose Suikoden/Fire Emblem themes. Basically, the players will obtain a castle and build up an army that will be used for some sieges. Alongside this they will get a number of special units (Inspired by Suikoden's Stars of Destiny) that will off bonuses. The PCs won't play any personal part in these large scale battles, instead the general siege flow will go something like this -

Initial fight between opposing armies > PC infiltration of enemy base and fighting the commanders.

The initial fight however would serve to change the difficulty of the infiltration phase (for example, If the PC army "wins" then the commander would likely have less grunts to shield him). While the players may not have a hands-on role in the battles, they are still in charge of recruiting the bonus units and developing tactics. Because of this though, I need to come up with some kind of system that will decide the outcome quickly without bogging down the game with a lot of background rolling, but still substantial enough that it doesn't boil down to "You have X special units, X normal units, and N Tactic. You win."

My only idea right now is to try and treat each army as a single unit, giving a BAB/HP depending on the number of units within the unit. Give AC bonuses based on terrain/fortifications, and then finally circumstantial bonuses for bonus characters and tactics. This feels kinda clunky and prone to breaking easily though.

So, I'm open to any ideas or advice.

DualShadow
2010-09-24, 07:28 AM
May I suggest using the Mass combat system from the Heroes of Battle book (if memory serves). It have multiple scale ranging from barony (100 vs 100), kingdom (1000 vs 1000) and empires (10 000 vs 10 000) from what I remember. And while the heroes and other important NPCs (your star of destiny idea, SUIKODEN RULE!!) are important unit in the war they cant win the war by themself.

DragonOfUndeath
2010-09-24, 07:34 AM
how big an army are we talking about here?

Duke of URL
2010-09-24, 09:18 AM
My only idea right now is to try and treat each army as a single unit, giving a BAB/HP depending on the number of units within the unit. Give AC bonuses based on terrain/fortifications, and then finally circumstantial bonuses for bonus characters and tactics. This feels kinda clunky and prone to breaking easily though.

So, I'm open to any ideas or advice.

Shameless plug: the Referee Guide for Boundless Horizons contains such a system. Basically, it allows multiple individual units to trade their actions to act as a single higher-CR unit (the CR of the aggregate equals the EL of the combined units). For simplicity, you treat each of the individual units of a single type (archer, foot soldier, etc.) identically, and allow them to group with other units of their own type. Adding a "leader" of a higher-CR creature provides a bonus to the CR of the "advanced unit", but the leader no longer has its individual actions.

As the "advanced unit" loses members through attrition, it's combat ability lessens accordingly.

When pitting advanced units against each other, the battle abstracts even further, with one individual unit removed for every multiple of a single unit's HP done in damage. (An individual fighting a group still needs to target specific enemies.)

Oslecamo
2010-09-25, 09:14 AM
So, I'm open to any ideas or advice.

I already designed a template for that. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=129179) Comes in two flavors, mob (disorganized group) and unit (disciplined group), you can add leaders to boost them up, and then all their combined actions are quickly solved with a couple rolls. Also allows for interaction between the unit/mob and individuals.

Mind you combat would still take some time because units/mobs will be quite resilient, unless one of the sides has cleave/greater cleave, in wich case the mob/unit goes down much faster.

LucasClaus
2010-09-25, 10:20 AM
Oslecamo, I've only skimmed it, but so far that template looks like something I can definitely work with. I'll also check out Heroes of Battle again.

I'm not sure how large the armies will be for sure. For the most part I'd use a percentage (Probably around 10%) of any given city's total population/size.

Oslecamo
2010-09-25, 12:08 PM
Oslecamo, I've only skimmed it, but so far that template looks like something I can definitely work with. I'll also check out Heroes of Battle again.

If you find something tell me, because I've just skimmed the book and couldn't find anything. The book focuses on the PCs performing several tasks to aid the big war effort, but not actualy anything for mass combat.



I'm not sure how large the armies will be for sure. For the most part I'd use a percentage (Probably around 10%) of any given city's total population/size.

My template can handle up to hundreds of warriors, so it depends on your seting. Cities with thousands wouldn't be much trouble, but cities with hundreds of thousands/millions, things start geting complicated.

Mind you, the DMG (somewhat correctly) says a city can only have around 1% of it's population as a standing army, anything more is simply unsustainable on the long run. 10% of population is for militia wich is just called when the situation is dire.

Ashtagon
2010-09-25, 04:55 PM
Just as a fyi, Heroes of Battle has nothing for mass combat. I think the Miniatures Handbook may have something. Failing that, 3pp has certainly come to teh rescue several times.

Easiest way is for the GM to decide ahead of time that X number of allies the PCs recruit will be enough to swing the battle. Saves a lot of dice rolling for a battle that will not directly involve the PCs. Rolling out fights between groups of NPCs is only slightly less dull for the GM as it is for the players.

DualShadow
2010-09-26, 06:58 PM
Just as a fyi, Heroes of Battle has nothing for mass combat. I think the Miniatures Handbook may have something. Failing that, 3pp has certainly come to teh rescue several times.


Yeah sorry about that, its in the Empire handbook from the third party develloper AEG. Its for the 3rd edition D&D.