Mass Combat in 4e

[Speeddemon87]

My group has learned that the war that we have been building up for is going to happen soon. I was wondering if there were any good ideas to help characters in 4e fight against massive hordes of enemies. We do have some armies on our side, but I'm looking for some way so that me and the rest of the players can shine in this battle. Any particular tactics that work well?

Our party is in high paragon and we have some ritual casters (and access to most any ritual we would want) but not much by way of battlefield control powers (1 defender and our control is mostly single target control).

[Beta Centauri]

I recommend handling this with concurrent skill challenges mixed with combat. If they have a ritual they want to perform to some useful purpose it will work, but finding a safe space to cast it from and keeping the enemy from finding out could be the concurrent skill challenges that casting it requires, just for example.

[Kurald Galain]

I would say, lots and lots of minions (surrounding a few actual monsters which are the enemy leaders/generals), then make them automatically hit for piddling damage, and give the single-target characters a way of dealing with minions. For example, they can make a strength check to charge right through (and automatically kill) an amount of minions equal to check result divided by three.

[Surrealistik]

Swarm creatures work pretty well; giant aggregate monsters that represent a horde of smaller creatures.

You could even have them dis-corporate and scatter into minions when bloodied.

[NecroRebel]

One idea that tends to work reasonably well is to treat enemy squads as single monsters. As in, a human phalanx would be just one Huge or Gargantuan creature mechanically, but story-wise would be ten or twenty soldiers. This way, you can have your players go up against a hundred men and still only have to deal with 5 or 6 enemies. Presumably you'd model enemies like this as a swarm.

If your party is high enough level that it's appropriate for them to take out whole armies on their own, and high paragon is, you could even count squads as minions. It's... somewhat odd, but thematically appropriate, for sufficiently-powerful heroes to take out twenty men with one swing of their sword, and this way you can reasonably have your party encounter nearly a thousand soldiers (12 minions representing 60 or so each, along with some enemy commanders) and actually have a reasonable chance of surviving.

[Beta Centauri]

Oh, I misunderstood.

Have them fight major, decisive fights in the middle of the battlefield, such as the fight against the Lord of the Nazgul in the Lord of the Rings. This would be like a normal encounter, except the hazards and skill challenges complicating things would be related to the battle raging around them. Also, reinforcements (for either side) could come in now and then, to cause a bit of trouble and then be dealt with. Spells and projectiles could be flying through or exploding randomly. The flow of the battle could separate groups of combatants.

[Speeddemon87]

I'm actually a player in this campaign, but thank you all for the suggestions. I'll see if I can suggest things like them to my DM for use in this battle.

I'm not sure how many minions there will be, our DM doesn't tend to tell us whether an enemy is a minion or not, and he might well have many normal enemies grouped in around them, though it would be worth our while to see what large scale tricks we could use to hit for minor damage over the battlefield to wipe a lot of them out.

I'll definitely want to look into if the DM would be okay with treating some large groups as swarms (or even minions like suggested) to wipe out large numbers of them in a very cool fashion.

Fighting the crucial battles against the more powerful enemies would be good, but I'm curious if there are any suggestions as for how to make sure these victories will hit the enemies the most (in terms of breaking the chain of command, lowering morale, etc.)

Doing skill challenges to protect our ritual casters while they do their thing sounds like a solid idea. My friend is doing the main ritual stuff and I know he had a few ideas as to rituals to defend the site where he will be casting them and possibly other command centers too, do you guys have any suggestions as to good defensive rituals to secure a site? And what are the best ways to reduce the time it takes to cast a ritual (that stack with each other, as I now scrolls cut the time in half but don't stack with some of the other things)

Also there is a power called Witch's Thorns (Wizard, Heroes of the Feywild) that can be used to create an ever expanding wall of difficult terrain that can Immobilize enemies, and it can keep on growing as long as you sustain it, and while it can be damaged other than it being destroyed by damage it lasts forever. I can't remember where it was but I was sure I had seen a staff somewhere that allowed you to completely change the shape of a conjured wall, so long as one space remained in the same square. Would it be possible to create a large patch of this some where on the battlefield and then as the enemies tried to move around it, re shape it around them so a large chunk of their force is bogged down and more open to ranged assaults.

[Beta Centauri]

I'm not sure how many minions there will be, our DM doesn't tend to tell us whether an enemy is a minion or not

Ugh. That misses the point of them.

Fighting the crucial battles against the more powerful enemies would be good, but I'm curious if there are any suggestions as for how to make sure these victories will hit the enemies the most (in terms of breaking the chain of command, lowering morale, etc.)

That's up to the GM. It can be anything. It can even be unrelated to the battle you fought. If you win (say by killing all the enemies, or holding them off for a certain number of rounds, or completing a specific task, or whatever), then the current wave of enemies is broken and the PCs' side has time to rest and prepare a counterattack. If they fail (based on a certain number of rounds running out, or the enemies in the encounter accomplishing some goal, or whatever) then the enemy gains ground, and the PCs are at some disadvantage going forward.

In general, failure shouldn't be based on the PCs dying, unless there's a preplanned way to bring them back and replace them.

Doing skill challenges to protect our ritual casters while they do their thing sounds like a solid idea. My friend is doing the main ritual stuff and I know he had a few ideas as to rituals to defend the site where he will be casting them and possibly other command centers too, do you guys have any suggestions as to good defensive rituals to secure a site? And what are the best ways to reduce the time it takes to cast a ritual (that stack with each other, as I now scrolls cut the time in half but don't stack with some of the other things)

If you're thinking in terms of casting a ritual during combat, forget it. There might be a way to do it, but they were specifically designed NOT to work in combat.

The basic defensive ritual is Magic Circle. It blocks a type of enemy and their effects. Unless the enemy is composed of a single type of being, that won't be all that useful.

The other thing to keep in mind is that nothing about 4th Edition is intended to be used in this kind of scenario. 4th Edition is about things useful to a small group, not an army, and there are bound to be things in the world that wouldn't be useful to adventurers and therefore aren't listed. It stands to reason that there would be an entire line of rituals specific to warfare. What your GM has to do is have the commander NPC hand the PCs a scroll and say, "We need this cast from that location there!" and point to a dangerous, well-defended spot. The PCs have to fight their way over there, start the ritual and then defend the location until the location is completed. The ritual would have some requirement that the caster stay within a certain location for the duration of the casting, but can otherwise move and fight normally (so they're not left out of the fighting). The enemy would be trying to kill the caster, or move him out of position. After a certain number of encounters and challenges are dealt with successfully, the ritual is cast. Otherwise, it fails, or it becomes too late for the ritual to be effective.

Edit: Or the idea might be to defend an existing ritual. Magic Circle is broken if a powerful enough enemy tries to get through, so the PCs would have to block the elite enemy (who isn't trying to actually kill them) while being attacked by the lesser ones. Or, not necessarily Magic Circle, but something like it. And instead of rituals, it could be an eldritch device, or a battle standard, or just a person.

Because you're trying to do something the D&D wasn't strictly intended for, you'll need to think outside the box and come up with some original ideas to make it work. If the combat rules come into play at all, it should be to simulate a small group skirmish. For anything else, use skill challenges or narration.

That said, are you sure the DMG doesn't offer advice on this topic?

Also there is a power called Witch's Thorns (Wizard, Heroes of the Feywild) that can be used to create an ever expanding wall of difficult terrain that can Immobilize enemies, and it can keep on growing as long as you sustain it, and while it can be damaged other than it being destroyed by damage it lasts forever. I can't remember where it was but I was sure I had seen a staff somewhere that allowed you to completely change the shape of a conjured wall, so long as one space remained in the same square. Would it be possible to create a large patch of this some where on the battlefield and then as the enemies tried to move around it, re shape it around them so a large chunk of their force is bogged down and more open to ranged assaults.

Don't think of any character power as suitable for a large battlefield. That's not what they're for. The GM can decide that a power does whatever he wants it to, but otherwise don't get into the habit of trying to figure out how a power would work on the battlefield against a larger mass than you'd normally see in an encounter. That's going to create a lot of weirdness.

[Inevitability]

Swarm creatures work pretty well; giant aggregate monsters that represent a horde of smaller creatures.

You could even have them dis-corporate and scatter into minions when bloodied.

As always, Surrealistik's monster advice is spot on. Seconded.

[obryn]

I ran quite a few mass battles when I was running a Dark Sun campaign.

The basics were this... Modified swarm rules.

(1) Units are very simple monsters, using basic stats as appropriate - Soldier, Skirmisher, Brute, etc.
(2) They take half damage from (and are immune to effects from) all Melee and Ranged attacks, except those made by another Unit.
(3) They also take half damage (and are immune to effects from) any Close or Area attack that doesn't hit at least one interior square. (That is, one that's not on the edge of the Unit.)
(4) Each has a Morale DC - Hard of their level for Irregulars, Moderate of their level for Regulars, and Easy of their level for Elite troops. Commanders might be in the units themselves (as NPCs), or PCs can command troops within 10 or 20 squares. I let them command 1 unit, [;us 1 per +mod on their Charisma score. Morale checks are forced when a unit is Bloodied, and sometimes at other times as appropriate. (I had a Gladiator unit which needed to check morale on getting within charging range of an enemy unit; failure broke the squad up into minions which all charged the target.)

Units have a Move action, and can use it just like a normal monster. Their Standard action can be used either to Attack (generally 1 target or an AoE ranged attack with standard damage), or switch between Melee and Ranged weapons. They shouldn't need Minor actions for anything, but can make Opportunity Attacks like normal. Some units don't need to swap - we had a Templar unit that could operate both ranged and melee as needed.

Units also, when using Melee weapons, can make a free attack against any enemy starting their turn within an Aura 1 or 2 (for stuff like pikes).

You can get easy or complicated from here. I went Easy and ignored anything like facing, but a simple facing system wouldn't be too complex to implement - only give Aura attacks against units in front, and require a Move action to 'turn' 90 degrees.