Quote from: Azraele;1068778Hey Shark

I don't have any special war machines, but I DID write an entire section on doing war combat in 5th edition. Fair warning: this was rejected by the freelance job offer I was attempting to get, so it's pretty c-list. However, it does use by-the-book 5th ed, so it's very easy to adopt to your home games.

Spoiler

War combat
Some battles pit heroes against hordes of enemies; dozens, even hundreds at once! To keep a handle on the scale of these enormous conflicts, we introduce some rules abstractions that make running such epic battles no more difficult than a standard combat.
In these rules, a collective mass of troops is referred to as an army. Armies function similarly to characters, but have some new rules.

Shared Defense and Health
The members of an army share a unified health track, lumping their collective HP into a huge communal pool.
This abstraction allows the GM to easily track the overall fighting strength of the army without the need to track individual HP totals within the throng.

It is a mixed blessing for players. Martial characters now leverage the full damage of every strike (indeed, GMs should encourage meaty descriptions of broadswords cleaving multiple foes at a swing!). However, an army attacks at full strength until vanquished, so players cannot rely on victory by attrition.

When players wish to attack an army, they make their attacks against the shared AC of the foe. If they hit, they do damage to the communal health pool.
Should the players attack the army with an effect requiring a saving throw, the statistics of an average member of the army is used to make the save.

Army attacks
When battling an army, players enter a world of strategic abstraction, where clever positioning and armor matter more than a foe's relative skill
To simulate the hectic, opportunistic nature of war, heroes are dealt damage based on two factors; their armor class, and their overall exposure to attacks.

Fronts and Armor categories
While operating within the abstraction of mass combat, characters have three broad vectors which can be attacked by the foe: Left front flank, right front flank, and the rear.

• Without utilizing cover or strategic positioning, a character exposes all three fronts to attack.
• Fighting back-to-back with an ally, behind ½ cover, or with their back to a wall protects one front, closing it off from attack.
• Fighting in a triangle formation with two allies, behind 3/4ths cover, in a regimented squadron, or from a corner protects two of a character's fronts from exposure, closing them both off as vectors form attack.

Characters behind the battle line or full cover are Unengaged, and may neither attack or be attacked by an army.
A similar abstraction determines the protection offered by a character's armor.

• Characters with AC 15 or less are considered Lightly armored.
• Characters with AC 16-18 or less are considered Moderately armored.
• Characters with AC 19+ or less are considered Heavily armored.

Armies deal damage (or make attacks) against all characters battling them. Such characters take injury based on their overall exposure and armor according to the army's threat Chart.
Example: Horde of Berserkers Threat Chart
Deadliest threat
12 automatic damage
 
8 damage
 
4 damage
 
Attack roll with advantage; +3 (4 damage)
Minimum threat
Attack roll; +3 (4 damage)
 
The Horde strikes lightly armored, fully exposed characters with 12 automatic damage every round.
For every Front a character closes off from attack, reduce the Horde's threat level by 1 step.
Example: A character fighting with their back against a wall would close off the rearward Front, reducing their automatic damage by one step to 8 every round.
For every category of armor a character wears above lightly armored, reduce the army's damage by an additional step.
Example: a character with AC 16 reduces the Horde's damage by one step, to 8. A heavily armored knight with AC 20 reduces their threat by two steps, taking only 4 damage every round.
These abstractions encourage players to maneuver and make use of terrain, as well as armor themselves as heavily as possible when marching to war!
 
Morale
Armies live and die by their morale. Panic spreads like wildfire through an undisciplined force, resulting in routes. Well-drilled soldiers stand resolute through the searing flames of war.
Whenever an army takes enough damage a portion of its membership may quit the field in retreat.

An army's Breaking Point is the threshold of damage it can take before requiring a Morale Test. This threshold is broken every time its stated damage is received, meaning that a single, powerful attack can cause multiple Morale Tests!
A Morale test is similar to a Wisdom saving throw, and generally it is taken the exact same way. Armies whose troops are weak-willed, undisciplined or otherwise demoralized take this save at Disadvantage, while inspired, well-disciplined or bravely led troops take it with Advantage.

If the save is failed, a squadron within the army breaks and flees. This is abstracted by damage to the army's shared HP total (as they no longer contribute their health, having retreated!). The amount of damage taken is listed under the army's Break Damage entry.

Areas of Effect
Some attacks, like cauldrons of boiling oil, catapult grapeshot and explosive spells, deal damage to every target within their area of effect. Against armies, such effects do their full damage multiplied by the density of troops in the area they target.

• Loosely spaced: X2
• Closely spaced: X5
• Tightly packed or regimented: X10

Undisciplined hordes tend to be loosely spaced. Cavalry tend to favor closely spaced formations. Troops in shoulder-to-shoulder shield wall formations, or massed around a critical point are tightly packed.
Ultimately the GM's description decides the density of the targeted area.

Ranged Warfare
Armies equiped with ranged weaponry may elect to fire a withering hail of arrows.
Armies track ammunition in whole-army increments. For example, armies with 20 ammunition listed are considered to have the majority of their membership equipped with full quivers of arrows.
When an army elects to use their ranged weaponry en masse, they collectively expend 1 ammunition and force foes to take cover or suffer damage as described below.

Ranged Warfare and Fronts
Player characters facing a ranged attack from an army replace Fronts with cover.

• Uncovered characters are considered to have 3 exposed Fronts.
• Those behind ½ cover have two exposed.
• Those behind 3/4s cover have one.
• Characters behind full cover are considered Unengaged.

Experience and War
The entry for an army lists the experience point award for vanquishing the entire force. Additionally, there is an Interval Reward which is earned each time the Interval Damage is dealt. This represents damage dealt sufficient to vanquish a single member of the army.

Oddball interactions
Some effects interact strangely when they encounter the abstractions of these rules. In oddball situations, GMs are encouraged to rule with an eye towards preserving the in-game reality of an army representing hordes of individuals, rather than "one big monster".

Battles between armies
Direct conflicts between two opposing armies operate under a distinct, parallel set of abstractions. Such grandiose spectacles of war exist both as a clash of militaries and an epic backdrop to the individual heroics of characters.

The Clash of Armies
Armies act in minute-long rounds.
Engaged armies deal automatic damage to one another based on their War Damage Chart. This damage represented ten rounds of bloodshed and carnage between dozens or hundreds as the tide of battle ebbs and flows. Damage begins at the highest stage, but is reduced by poor performance or a foe's defensive positioning as described below.
Example: Horde of Berserkers War Damage Chart

Maximum bloodshed: 400 damage
 
300 damage
 
200 damage
 
100 damage

Rebuffed offensive: No damage
 
Every minute, each army makes a standard attack against each other. This uses the Mass Attack statistics and is against the rival army's AC. If this attack misses, reduce damage dealt by one step.
The foe's strategic positioning further reduces incoming damage.

• If the foe is positioned defensively in soft, natural terrain (trees, shrubs, etc.), reduce damage by one step
• If the foe is positioned defensively in hard, natural terrain (stone mounds, cave systems, etc.) or soft, constructed terrain (houses, huts, etc.), instead reduce by two steps
• If the foe has taken a fortified position (within castle ramparts, stone walls with murder-holes, etc.) reduce damage by 3 total steps.

Note that it is possible that one side takes no damage under some circumstances.
At the end of every attack, the army which dealt more damage is the winning side, and the one that received the most is the losing side.

Morale in War
The losing side makes a single Morale roll as normal. However, on a failure, they double the damage they received from the opposing army as a mass retreat takes place.

Military Objectives
The winning side gets to advance their military objectives by one step. The specific goals and steps vary by battle, but examples include breaching a sieged wall, pushing the foe into less favorable terrain, and capturing a strategically important hill.
Because of the tactical infinity of the game's world, it is impossible to make exhaustive guidelines for determining military objectives. GMs are encouraged to use the above examples as a guide to allow mass battles to proceed in dramatically powerful stages.

Epic Backdrop
Because they operate on a faster timescale, the swirling chaos of war acts as the milieu in which heroes experience a mass conflict.

Characters can charge into the fray using the above rules, dealing and risking damage to an opposing army. Additionally, they can perform any actions which operate below the fidelity of the army conflict abstraction; they can and should heal injured comrades, join regimented troops, climb besieged castle ramparts, set fire to enemy structures, and hurl bolts of arcane power into the rank of the enemy.

The GM simply records the damage done and dealt by armies, and metes out damage according to armor and risk as above. They roll every ten rounds to see how the tide of war is turning. They make morale checks when heroes scythe down enough of the foe.

With the above rules, you can easily and satisfactorily add the explosive thrill of warfare-scale conflict to your games. Enjoy, but remember; victory favors the bold!

And here's an example army I also prepared with some art I found somewhere online

Enjoy

Quote from: SHARK;1068815Greetings!

Very nice, Azraele! Do your players get into adventures with sieges? Have you had your players involved in wars?

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: Azraele;1068856It's a pretty common occurrence, yeah. I sometimes start campaigns on a battlefield. Being thrown into life-or-death situations, even with effective strangers, has this way of pack-bonding players. Other favorites include "lost in the wilderness", "on a sinking ship", and the evergreen "trapped in a horrifying dungeon".

Sieges are a bit rarer, because it requires two events two occur that, while not mutually exclusive, are nonetheless at odds with one another:
1) The players must play well enough, long enough, to acquire or create a castle or other keep
2) They must do something boneheaded enough to call down the wrath of an army on themselves
So they happen, but it's a much less common event.

Quote from: SHARK;1068857Greetings!

Azraele! Hmmm..."Trapped in a Horrifying Dungeon"? You've *started* the campaign like that? That sounds very cool, Azraele. How did you set that up? How did the players respond to that? Where did you go from there? Were you ever concerned that you would slaughter the player characters in such a vulnerable position?

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK