Thread: What are the best rules for Army-combat

I have a plot that requires the PC's to chose one of three factions, and twice in the story, there will be major battles between the factions and their respective armies, and these will have been improved, or sabotaged, by the PC's to further their factions gain. One army is mainly just gunslingers and tanks, one is naturistic and animalistic mutant-druids, and one is sorcerers and necromancers, so it has to be compitable with the system for powers, in particular Mutations, sorcery, and magic.

Any ideas?

Originally Posted by The_Scilent_chronicles

I have a plot that requires the PC's to chose one of three factions, and twice in the story, there will be major battles between the factions and their respective armies, and these will have been improved, or sabotaged, by the PC's to further their factions gain. One army is mainly just gunslingers and tanks, one is naturistic and animalistic mutant-druids, and one is sorcerers and necromancers, so it has to be compitable with the system for powers, in particular Mutations, sorcery, and magic.

Any ideas?

Fields of Battle from Troll Lord Games is good:

Troll Lord Games

How detailed do you want to get with it?
There are several farily decent approaches to mass combat in RPGs. But it really depends on how detailed you want to make it, and how much you want your PCs to have an impact on the overall battle.

The Battle System from Pendragon (the new one), uis one of the best for giving the fell of a group of people swept up in a battle, but also gives them a bit of tunnel vision. They tend to see the battle from the perspective of their unit rather than the whole army.

But if you don't mind some abstraction, you could adapt the Spirit Combat rules. Give each army a Rating like, say Army STR, and have each side make opposed rolls on the resistance table like in spirit combat. You could even adjust the Army STR based on tactics and terrain, and what the PCs do. You could even adjust the damage die from 1D3 to something else based on weaponry. It doesn't have to be very complex.

This is more or less what I'm doing for low-scale mass combat, let's say <100 of each side. Each party has a cohesion between 10 and 20. Most of the time, the ennemy party has a higher one: no danger, no fun. I make a cohesion vs. cohesion roll like for spirit combat, each party loosing points, with the exception that for each big ennemy killed (leader, monster, ...), or for each 2 to 5 smaller ennemies (like average Broos or warriors), the party loses one extra cohesion point. Could be 2 or more for an ennemy champion (his men flee the battle at once). When a party reaches 0, it disagregates, the massacre can start. This way, the players realy feel like having a true influence on the battle -or I hope so.
I add some very basic "random encounters", since you don't always chose whom you're going to fight in a melee. It is quite simple.

These systems are all good for your general Basic Roleplaying Army Battle, but Since this army battle is so big for the story, I figured I needed something that'd allow a clear view of how the army the PC's are affiliated with is affected by their actions, and as well a clear view of what damage the PC's have done to the enemy troops through scouting missions and sabotage.

One thing that came to my mind was to build an army like a character, where the HP is like Morale points, and when an army is out of morale, it shatters and is defeated. For skills, there could be different kinds of troops, with higher percentage the bigger the power of the unit. Say for an example, one side has 30 mutant liondruids, who are sswift and strong, so they have an Attack percentage of 2-3% per soldier, while they're not very tough and wear light armor, so they get only 0,5% per soldier in deffence, rounded up. Put this all together, and you have one "Skill" unit that attacks for 90% and defends for 15%, against another troop who, say, attacks for 12% and defends for 76%, first the attacking side rolls for attack, and the defending side for defence, then you somehow calculate losses between the groups, and then the defending side rolls for attack, and the attacking side for defence, and repeat the procedure.

Is this making any sense? Do you people have any brilliant ideas to help me out here?

Originally Posted by The_Scilent_chronicles

These systems are all good for your general Basic Roleplaying Army Battle, but Since this army battle is so big for the story, I figured I needed something that'd allow a clear view of how the army the PC's are affiliated with is affected by their actions, and as well a clear view of what damage the PC's have done to the enemy troops through scouting missions and sabotage.

Pendragon. does just that.

What it does is assign the BAttle an Intensity rating, which the PC's unit commander must try to beat each battle turn (about hn hour).

If the PC wins, he gets to chose a maneuver for his unit., If he fails, the group doesn't get to maneuver and get attacked by a random unit. Now, the Intensity varies some each battle turns but it also is affected by what the PCs try to do and how well they do it. If the Intensity his zero the PCs side wins. If it rises over 40 (that's 200% in BRP terms) the PCs side looses. When Intensity gets close to either extreme, the losing side will begin to retreat. On a really good intesity roll (or a really bad PC roll) the PCs get double teamed.



The GM gets to use a table with 20 sample eneny units for each battle (tailored to the type of opponents you have).

One thing that came to my mind was to build an army like a character, where the HP is like Morale points, and when an army is out of morale, it shatters and is defeated. For skills, there could be different kinds of troops, with higher percentage the bigger the power of the unit. Say for an example, one side has 30 mutant liondruids, who are sswift and strong, so they have an Attack percentage of 2-3% per soldier, while they're not very tough and wear light armor, so they get only 0,5% per soldier in deffence, rounded up. Put this all together, and you have one "Skill" unit that attacks for 90% and defends for 15%, against another troop who, say, attacks for 12% and defends for 76%, first the attacking side rolls for attack, and the defending side for defence, then you somehow calculate losses between the groups, and then the defending side rolls for attack, and the attacking side for defense, and repeat the procedure.

Is this making any sense? Do you people have any brilliant ideas to help me out here?

Well you could adapt the Pendragon method and come up with something similar to what you are talking about. Basically what you need to d is:

1) Give the battle a Intensity skill that the PC leader must oppose with his BAttle< Tactics or other skill that you got for such things.
2) Allow it to adjust by up to +/-40% or so each turn (say !D100-50?).
3) Give the PCs some possible maneuvers and work up Intensity modifiers for them based on how well the PCs do.
4) Come up with a table of random foes to fight. You fdon't need fully detailed sheets here just the basic combat stats.

"Hordes of the Things" (HoTT) is very good, and free. It's simple - if you can get past the legalese - and has a highly respectable pedigree, being written by the 'Wargames Research Group' authors of DBA, DBM etc.

Basically, you pick which of about 20 different types best represents each unit of troops, and normally have 12 or so units a side. To decide a conflict with an enemy unit, you roll d6+ bonus for the unit on each side. Usually, the loser retreats a bit, or gets destroyed if they lose badly (i.e. opponents total is double theirs), but troop-types can vary outcomes. Command-and-control is important: roll d6 on your turn and you can move that many groups (not units) - so if your troops are disordered, by a few little retreats perhaps, it gets a LOT harder. Feels realistic, and is surprisingly a laugh even for those of us who aren't serious wargamers.