War in d20

[Charney]

In my fantasy campaign, some players want to begin a war against the orcs. How are wars handled in d20? I know there's Cry Havoc but it's too costly and seems quite complicated.

How do you handle big wars? Do you leave to dices, decide in advance, role play it?

The only system I could think of is the one from the old 1ED rule cyclopedia.

I'll try to invent one if I need to but I'd love some ideas.

[Jester of the FoS]

Tricky. The best way is to either have the players as generals or espionage agents. They either order the troops about and take little action themselves or duck around behind enemy lines sabotaging attempts.
A good war campaign will have elements of both. Keep things diverse.

If you do don't worry about major rules or statistics, keep it very simple and common sense. You examine the battlefield and strategy and decide who has the advantage. They declare a winner. Perhaps a few d20s could be rolled for each "unit", treat a battalion as a single creature.
If someone has the high ground and superior numbers with good tactics they’ll win.

Read a few books on war or scan some web pages for elements of strategy and war facts. The players (if they’re generals and the like) should have to be concerned with holding ground, troop movements, supply lines and the like.
Make many, many maps of the areas of the war and have them plot out their plan of attack. Where they strike and where they defend. Perhaps use game-pieces from Risk or Axis and Allies or other small figures to signify troops. Plan out how the orcs will react and let the game play out. Small battles can be easily solved Risk style (possibly using d20s and other damage dice) on a larger nation map. Luck and numbers resolve those. Larger battles (ie anything other than skirmishes) should require closer terrain maps.

Assuming its medieval you may even want to try it more like a Minis game with a grid map of the terrain and pieces with minor combat stats. Each with differing hitpoints, damage, attack bonus and AC. Keep it simple and limit special powers. Call each piece a ‘battalion’ representing a handful of troops depending on the size of the battle (from 5 to 50).

Really there is no official D&D way to ‘play’ a war. They’re just DM controlled events that happen on the sidelines while the players do their small missions.

When I get back into my Realms campaign (on hiatus now) the players will be involved in a war, so if feedback from you would be appreciated on what works and what doesn’t.

[Trebor Minntt]

My players are currently involved in a war and took part in the first major battle of the conflict. A nearby country invaded the land the Pc's call home and the Pc's were the first to encounter the invading forces, they sent out word and had several smaller setllements evacuated to nearby strongholds and nations while preparing for a battle at the only defendable settlement in the nation, the capital. The battle went fairly smoothly with single d20's being rolled for entire units and much arbitrating on my part. The Pc's each commanded a unit and I focused on them using their victories and defeats to decide the outcome of the battle. Magic was used to great effect on both sides, but beware in a full engagement things like Fireballs and other large template spells can cause devestation into oncoming troops.

I'd advise focusing your attentin on the P'cs units. using them as generals (as David said) and arbitrating the rest of the battle by how well yo beleive the PC's are leading their troop and what tactics they are using (my group built defenses using stone shape spells and funneled the attackers into them before unleasing a scroll of meteor swarm, which wiped out some 200 enemy uinfantry before the even reached combat.)

Don't work on a round t round basis, roll a few D20's for untis and then work out a rough win/loss ratio for the next hour or so based on those. Beyond that I agree with David the Pc's are unlikly to participate in multiple large battles and are more likely to try to assasinate leaders, gather inteligence or allies and take out supply trains, which while small scale is what eventually wins wars.

After the battle my group proceeded to a nearby nation where human Lords gather and are attempting to gain support against the invaders on the basis that the invading nation is growing to powerfull and threatens other human lands. Along the way they have even convinced a tribe of Stone giants to aid them in future battles.

War tends to be very complicted to run and unfortunatly for the the DM very unpredictable, which makes it hard to plan leaving you unprepared at times, that said i have found it immensly satifying anf my Pc's really feel as if they are making a difference in their world, and more importantly for me they really feel part of the world I have created, caring about what happens to it and it's inhabitants.

[Wiccy of the Fraternity]

My solution has always been DM's Perogative, but allow the players to have some effect on thinfgs with what actions they take. Run the game as normal and allow them toi make their own decisions.

Let's say they may choose between aiding Town A or Town B against siege by leading a group of guerilla soldiers to attack the enemy. They choose Town A, meaning that Town B is lost until they can send word for additional support to aid that settlement. Then run the game from that point with the players attempting to aid that town.

I know the example provided is pretty simple and only applies to a certain scenario, but it does work. I ran a campaign the followed a siege on Hunadora, the best thing I found was not to detail to much and just writew snotes of what will happen at set times and let the players run the show, filling in details by ear as the game goes along. In all my games since I have run everything in my games this way.

[Charney]

Thanks for the input everyone. I'll be taking note of all this. For now, I won't be playing this war so it'll take a while before I can add some feedback. Most of you figured it well: the players will be generals but my little finger tells me they will do like in Ancient battles: be on the front line.

I doubt the US commander in chief will be doing the same anytime soon

[Rucht Lilavivat]

I realize that the author of the thread has probably gotten what they need out of this, but I just wanted to respond, since I've recently run a number of war scenarioes.

In my recent d20 Future war campaign, I had the characters all members of a special forces unit. I specificially instructed the players to design characters with a particular specialty. And, I explained that everyone would need ranks in Hide and Move Silently, since there would be a lot of sneaking around. It worked well. Our sessions were military missions with primary and secondary objectives. Their success or failure helped determine the outcome of the war.

When it came time to do a full-scale, all-out battle, I started us off with a bang. I divided the table into three maps. On one map, I had the captain of the party leading an attack on a large Neutron cannon. On another map, I had the lieutenant of the party leading a raid upon the enemy base. Finally, on another map, I had the interior of the enemy base all drawn out.

We rolled initiative, and action on all three maps happened simutaenously. So for instance, if you were attacking the Neutron cannon, you would take your actions on your initiative, affecting that map. If you were attacking the base, then all of your action on your initiative count would happen while you were on that map.

The effect was very "Star Wars" with simultaenous actions all happening at once. Something exciting would happen in one scene, but instead of finding out what happened, we would cut to another scene and see what happened there. The feel was very epic, and we had a blast.

Recently, the party is been in a platoon. I gave each PC control of 2 NPC rank-and-file soldiers. Each NPC has a full background, history, and litany of loved ones back home. I explained to them that while the platoon was made up of over 100 soldiers, the NPCs would symbolically represent the number of soldiers in the platoon. So, if one NPC dies, you lose 10% of your platoon. This has made it very interesting, since now the focus of the campaign is protecting the NPC soldiers and "bringing their comrades home."

[Gonzoron of the FoS]

I was recently a player in a castle seige. We were low-level members of a mercenary band, Low men on the officer totem pole, but above the grunts. We had a barracks in a castle that was overrun by orcs. They had catapults breaching the wall, and our job was to hold the breaches, preventing the orcs from getting in with archers and footmen.

The DM presented it as sort of a zoom in on our section of the wall, while other stuff was going on elsewhere. We held our own as refugees from other sections of the walls that didn't hold poured in. Eventually, the overwhelming odds forced us to retreat to the inner keep, where there was another cool fight with some trolls that had been 'ported in. Once there, our commander told us about a secret exit that we had to fight our way to so we could retreat.

It was very fun, although a bit railroad-y.

[Wiccy of the Fraternity]

When I ran Siege on Hunadora, I let the players mostly drive the story, using my set times and dates to keep the series of events running, it ewas alot of fun and by far the best way to run a siege, at leasy in my opinion.

[Pacal]

I know you already dismissed Cry Havoc as expensive and complicated. But... The system isn't complicated at all. Actually it's very simple. It basically assigns a unit the combat characteristics of a single entity. This may sound strange and may look complicated at first but let me assure you that it is actually quite easy to use and does a very admirable job of preserving the atmosphere of a large scale combat. Unfortunately I can't help you whereas the cost is concerned other than to point out that it is a Malhavoc Press book which means its good quality and cheaper than the same book would be if Wizards released it.

[Charney]

Your imput is appreciated Rucht

Well, my PCs include players who might prefer the commando-like missions (like assassination attempts) to the army commander role. So your imput is uselful.

For the siege idea, I actually did that once a very long time ago. Focusing on a the PCs part of the siege.

And yes , Cry Havoc is quite expensive here. Around 30$ which I don't have for LoB so not for Cry Havoc either. Also, I would have hope Cry Havoc had more than 2 War oriented PrC. I was hoping for those when I look through it.

[alhoon]

I like Strategy games, so I very often play D&D battles with thousands of participants in each side. It isn't very difficult.
A campaign I DMed recently, was mainly in a island where skirmishes and battles were almost everyday aspects. Goblinoids attacked orcs, orcs attacked orcs, both attacked humans, humans attacked humans etc.
My players used to travel with phantom steed spells and covered much distance in a day. So once every 2 - 3 sessions, they were involved in a battle (usually with a few hundred individuals in each side).

I use a fairly simple system.
Mathematical Statistics.

What is the chance of a 1st level warrior with 12 str to hit the AC 14 of the enemy? It is 40%.
So assuming the warrior has a battle axe, he does 1d8+1 = 5.5 hp damage average. 5.5 *0,4 (the chance to actually hit the enemy) = 2,2 damage on a round. That means that the average warrior would do 2,2 damage to an enemy with AC 14 each round. The damage done includes the chance to miss the target (60%).
So 1000 warriors would do 2200 hp damage in a battle round to their AC 14 enemies.
Yes, but how many enemies are killed? There is no way that these 1000 warriors would hit the same target, doing to him 2200 damage.
Assuming the average enemy has 6 hit points, the soldiers would IDEALLY kill 366 enemies.
Of course, the soldiers didn't perform as good.

Here I include a new stat called BATTLE RATING. Battle Rating (BR) corresponds to groups of fighting men. It is the summary of many adjustments like how well trained the soldiers are, how is their morale, how good leaders are their officers, the terrain, pure luck etc.
So lets assume that the BR of these 1000 warriors is an average one (about 100).

To find how many enemies were killed, I multiply (BR/2)% x the ideal losses.
In our case the (BR/2 )% = 50% So 366 x 50% = 183 enemies with AC 14 and 6 hit points each are killed. . .

[Shoon VII]

has anyone checked out Fields of Blood. if so, what did you think?

[Tommy Brownell]

I own Fields of Blood...haven't gotten a hardcore look at the combat, but the rules on running a realm look really solid.

The mass combat system uses a "Mass Combat Statblock" that's reminiscent of the Monster Manual stat blocks, so conversion for nonstandard units (such as monsters) or standard units (such as Law Enforcement stat blocks from any Gazetter should be no trouble at all.

It also has a nice section on Mass Combat Magic, including new applications of existing spells.

One thing is that it assumes hexes and not squares. But it does govern using your PCs within a unit or (if they have six HD or more) using them as a unit within themselves.

It *looks* good...but again, I haven't gotten to give it a good readthrough, or tryout.

[Gonzoron of the FoS]

I ran a Falkvonian assault on a refugee town last weekend, with about 80 soldiers, 3 officers, a zweifalk, a Talon, and 2 Broken Ones vs. 60 townsfolk and the PC's.

I used a modifed version of the system presented here:
http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=186064

My modification was to add an uncertainty to the number of hits. I figured out a rough approximation of the std deviation of the expected number of hits and made a little chart mapping a bell curve from -4 to +4 to a d20 roll that would be added to the base number of hits. So each unit got 1 attack roll and damage rolls for each hit. I also pre-rolled each unit's hp and made a chart showing the cut off points for each attack penalty due to losses.

It worked really well. The only trouble I ran into was the PC's wanting to split the townsfolk units down into small squads (handled by converting them into "damaged" units) and dealing with area effect spells. (Ice burst was highly effective. As was entangle. Not a big deal, but if I had to do it again, I'd throw more units at them.)

[Charney]

Well, there's a new war book from WoTC coming this Spring. Between Cry Havoc, Fields of Blood, Quintessential Fighter and Heroes of Battle, I don't know where to look anymore lol.