Quote from: Philotomy Jurament;1145859Battlesystem

I haven't played this in a long time, and I haven't played it enough to comment on how true to D&D probabilities it is. Someone else may be able to fill you in better on this option. When I tried it, decades ago, I formed a mildly negative impression of it, but I don't recall the details. I've thought I need to give it another try and a second chance now that I'm more familiar with wargaming, in general, but I simply haven't gotten around to it.

I used Battlesystem quite a bit including for other editions of D&D. It strength is that it statistical math to represent multiple character rolling dice at one. It simplifies damage calculation by using Hit Dice inflicted instead of Hit points inflicted. And does this in a minimal page count.

I figure out the math for handling Ascending AC and used it for 3rd edition and Swords & Wizardry as well as AD&D back in the day.

http://batintheattic.blogspot.com/2013/08/one-thousand-four-hundred-and-fifty.html

http://batintheattic.blogspot.com/2013/08/reflections-on-lot-of-dead-orcs.html

It only downside it that it uses miniatures. But it tremendous upside that everything D&D translate on a one for ones. There no fudging required unlike other miniature wargames including Battlesystem 3e.

GURPS Mass Combat
When I just want to use a pen & paper resolution I turn to GURPS Mass Combat. it work in terms of factors so you are using a different RPG than GURPS, you can get an effective translation by scaling the various factors .

It is excellent for focusing on a war or campaign as a battle is resolved in a few die roll including the fate of the players.

Quote from: ZetaRidley;1145844Title says it all. I've been working a lot on making combat interesting and fun in my personal game, and so far I think that it has worked out rather well. I'm planning a new campaign since the previous one finished, and there is a chance for large combat. How would you handle that in tabletop terms? Any special tricks you all have up your sleeve?

Minions.

Quote from: estar;1145946I used Battlesystem quite a bit...Its strength is that it statistical math to represent multiple character rolling dice at one. It simplifies damage calculation by using Hit Dice inflicted instead of Hit points inflicted. And does this in a minimal page count...It only downside it that it uses miniatures. But it tremendous upside that everything D&D translate on a one for ones. There no fudging required unlike other miniature wargames including Battlesystem 3e.

I think I remember you mentioning this in a previous thread, actually. Its pros and cons sound very similar to Swords & Spells (which also translates D&D probabilities perfectly, and uses minis), perhaps without the "you don't roll dice in combat" aspect. Do you recall Battlesystem's default figure scale? (Swords & Spells is 1:10.) Another possible downside with Swords & Spells is that it requires a large number of individually based minis (that are then organized into units), and the mini bases have a relatively large number of sizes they can be (depending on the weapons carried by that unit). This makes preparing armies for play a bit fiddly, and also makes moving the units around the table fiddly (although "unit trays" can help with that). How does Battlesystem handle scale and basing requirements?

Quote from: David Johansen;1145941ICE's War Law, one nice thing about it is that it's built around a small hex map.  8.5 x 11 is a size you can work with on the table.

I played a bit of War Law when I was into RM. It was a solid system (and worked very well for a Rolemaster game, obviously). Sadly, I no longer own the game, though, and I don't recall many details about it. I know it used counters, like a hex-and-chit wargame, rather than minis. And I think it had a pretty big unit scale, if I recall correctly.

One counter is generally a hundred men.  One of the nice things about War Law is that the men in units can be beaten up and wounded without being dead.  It's also nice that the ground scale is also used in Sea Law so you can integrate the two and do landings and boarding actions.  Like Battle System the results are statistically adjusted so it maps well to the rpg combat results.

You can use multiple maps for bigger battles but the key advantage from a roleplaying perspective is that it fits on the table with all the other crap.  I'm a big fan of miniatures games but they don't really integrate well with roleplaying games.  It's the clutter factor.  You've got dice and pencils and character sheets and snacks and it's hard to keep space free for a big battle map.

One system that I've heard about and would like to try some day, is that if the PCs are combatants (not commanders) of a large army, then the GM scripts out the fight, but not linearly, more like a choose your own adventure book.  The PCs have specific fights they are involved in, and the outcome determines which branch of the battle-story plays out and what their next encounter is.  The players actions might determine whether the battle is won or lost, or it might not, but it always makes a difference.  Frex, if their side is badly outmatched, the PCs' efforts might make the difference between their side being able to run and their side being obliterated.

If the PCs are commanders, I'd be inclined to use something like the swarm rules for 4E, grouping the combatants into groups according to their abilities, with some additional splits to allow tactical play by maneuvering groups separately.  I'd choose the granularity such that I end up with no more than 30 units, since I find dealing with more than this to be tedious.

As outlined above, grouping the units is basically what I do. Overall defenses in the game are such that a 50% hit rate by NPC combatants is about right; hence the +1 to the check per additional attacker and one hit scored per two the defense is beaten by... essentially it's about a 50% hit rate with the d20 check as a randomizer (for 20 attackers that need an 11 or better to hit you might score 6 hits on the low end and 14 hits on the high end... for a 100 they'd score 46-60 hits).

Also of note is the setting is pretty Dark Ages in terms of populations; a HUGE kingdom is 100k people and 1000 men is a HUGE army and massing that many would leave said kingdom almost undefended save for peasant levies. More typical realms are 20-40k with armies of a few hundred men, so a major engagement with all the grouping and using the larger map scale might be 10-20 squads of 10 men per side (so 0-7 hits per round using the group attack option against each other).

At that scale PCs are still able to make a discernible impact on the outcome and don't need any special conversions; they act normally on their turns with only perhaps movement and attack ranges scaled down.

Anything larger should have the areas beyond the PCs immediate sphere determined by the GM (though if the PCs and their allies achieve a quick decisive win the GM can set up a new encounter for another sphere of the battle that the PCs engage with.

For example; the PCs choose to fight with the center lines of their army and crush the infantry charge there in short order. The GM determined that the enemy cavalry would hit the right flank hard while the left flank would be stalemated with another group of enemy infantry. The PCs could choose to aid the right flank along with survivors of the center lines, break the stalemate to the left, hold their lines in case of a second wave.

If they hold instead of aid, the left flank overcomes it's attackers with heavy losses while the right is crushed and the cavalry next strikes the center where the PCs are located, but will be reinforced in round 5 by the survivors of the left flank.

Quote from: Philotomy Jurament;1146001I think I remember you mentioning this in a previous thread, actually. Its pros and cons sound very similar to Swords & Spells (which also translates D&D probabilities perfectly, and uses minis), perhaps without the "you don't roll dice in combat" aspect. Do you recall Battlesystem's default figure scale? (Swords & Spells is 1:10.) Another possible downside with Swords & Spells is that it requires a large number of individually based minis (that are then organized into units), and the mini bases have a relatively large number of sizes they can be (depending on the weapons carried by that unit). This makes preparing armies for play a bit fiddly, and also makes moving the units around the table fiddly (although "unit trays" can help with that). How does Battlesystem handle scale and basing requirements?

The scale is the same 1:10, there are four figure sizes, small, medium, large, and an in between scale where the frontage is medium but the length is equal to large 1" by 2". Compared to Swords & Spells the system cleaner and more elegant to use. The main two innovation is a single table that combines a bunch of binomial distributions where the columns are damage dice. And simplifying the math greatly by calculating damage as hit dice instead of S&S hit points.

Effectively each hitdice inflicted is 4.5 hit points of damage. The higher damage result with larger dice is calculated as multiple# that 4.5 average. The use of binomial distribution add more randomness that is statistically accurate. Note you roll 2d6 + mods.

Unfortunately I have not cracked the math behind the table. I can get it to the point of how S&S lays it out but currently stalled on combing the different charts.

https://batintheattic.blogspot.com/2010/06/war-system-or-battle-machine-along-with.html

But in terms of scale, and handling figures in formation it is the same.

Battle system 2e jettisons this for an inferior system.

some good ideas at this link here for mass combat:

https://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=1566