Does anyone know of a system where mass battles are done with a flow chart instead of dice or a map?

I ask because in the systems I am familar with the casuties are too high and to evenly distributed.  Real battles are far, far more one sided than anything I have ever seen presented in the rules.  That makes sense if we see the battles as a game.  In a game each side should have a chance to win.  But Role playing isn't that kind of a game.  It doesn't matter if the DM's side looses, and if the players side loses game is over.  The players need to be able to lose so their actions have meaning, but they they should also be about to set things up so their victory is assured.  This realtes back to the thread about "Arithemetic, geomentric, logrythimic actions."  Or tatical, strategic, logistic (not sure where political fits in there).  

Any way in the battles I have read, quite most of the time one side has no chance and the other one kills with impunity.  A Commanche raid on a farm out post farmers never had a chance.  A Commanche attack on a sod hut full of buffalo hunters.  Commanche guns couldn't penatrate the sod, the new .50 cal buffalo guns could kill at over a mile.  50 or 60 male and female Isrealies holding off 3 divisions of Arabs durring one of the arab isreali wars.  In those situations even if their was only a 5% chance of a hit (20 on a d20) the outnumbered side would get ground down and lose.  But that didn't happen.  

The 300.  They held off what a million dudes?  "Our arrows are so thick they blot out the sun." "Then we will fight in the shade."  And they did, that means that arrows were no threat at all to heavily armored hoplites with big shields.   Not one chance in a hundred.  Completely not dangerous.  

No rational actor will take any where near an even chance with their life.  This explains the power of beserkers, they will, which means most people will run, cause if the beserker has an even chance so does the other guy and engaging on those terms is crazy.  Some medievil battles might disprove that theory, until you consider who is giving the order to engage.  A knight or lord in plate on a horse.  Even if his side has a 50/50 shot, he has almost no chance of dieing.  He is going to ride down peasents, or at worst get captured and ransomed.  Clearly that isn't entirely true, plenty of kinghts got killed but they must have felt pretty safe in their armor sitting on their horse.

Similarly I've read that commanders like to engage when they out number their opponets by 3 to 1 or better.  In the natural world if preditors had a 5% chance of a serious injury they would all be starving by the end of the year, to hurt to hunt well.   Sayings like "a good soldier should be marching, digging, or sleeping." suggest that, defensive positions and manuver is more important than individual prowess.  

So what to do about that.  I think a flow chart could be a really good tool.  I'm suggesting that battles are far more predetermined than our current games model.  but they still aren't completely determined.  So dice would/could still be involved.  But not in all the boxes.  Many of the boxes would have no caulties as the only possible out come.  Heavy infantry engageing from the front. Both well trained well fed and rested, well armed and armored.  For the first minuet of combat no one gets hurt.  Almost for sure.  If you role anything it would be to see who gets tiired sooner.  But engage one of those forces from the flank as well and it's muniets are numbered, its going to fold. That would be a different box on the flow chart.  Heavy infantry against light infantry.  The light infantry are toast.  Heavy infantry agianst Cav?  The horses won't charge a solid mass of men.  But break that square up and the infantry are going to get cut down.  

So battle becomes not about rolling big numbers but moving boxes on the flow chart.  This opens up a big role for player charcters, adventures and small squads.  Scouting, raids, recon, and disruption.  

I haven't built they flow chart yet but I think it could be a good way to go.

Two spring to mind:

1) Heroes of Battle for 3rd edition D&D had the GM preparing mass combats as flowcharts, and run them similarly to dungeoncrawls. It's a pretty clever way of doing things, and strongly maps to your request.
2) Legend of the Five Rings 4th edition included rolls on an "event chart" that presented characters with opportunities and danger as they waded through the fray of a war. It wasn't as involved as the D&D system, but it was so much faster

Actually, combining the two would almost certainly result in a really satisfying war combat system, and both are effectively system-agnostic. Huh. Huh...

Quote from: Headless;1009484... The players need to be able to lose so their actions have meaning, but they they should also be about to set things up so their victory is assured.  This realtes back to the thread about "Arithemetic, geomentric, logrythimic actions."  Or tatical, strategic, logistic (not sure where political fits in there).

What? Why should players be able to set things up in a mass combat so their victory is assured?

QuoteAny way in the battles I have read, quite most of the time one side has no chance and the other one kills with impunity.  ... In those situations even if their was only a 5% chance of a hit (20 on a d20) the outnumbered side would get ground down and lose.  But that didn't happen.  

That just shows that d20 is an inadequate mechanic to represent many situations. Often there is less than a 5% but more than 0% chance of something happening.

QuoteThe 300.  They held off what a million dudes?  "Our arrows are so thick they blot out the sun." "Then we will fight in the shade."  And they did, that means that arrows were no threat at all to heavily armored hoplites with big shields.   Not one chance in a hundred.  Completely not dangerous.

Also that they were well trained, had good morale, and above all that the terrain severely limited the direction and breadth of the attack. They were effectively defending at 1:1 odds, with advantages for troop quality, using a long spear phalanx which was very well suited to stopping a frontal attack by the Per

QuoteNo rational actor will take any where near an even chance with their life.  This explains the power of beserkers, they will, which means most people will run, cause if the beserker has an even chance so does the other guy and engaging on those terms is crazy.  Some medievil battles might disprove that theory, until you consider who is giving the order to engage.  A knight or lord in plate on a horse.  Even if his side has a 50/50 shot, he has almost no chance of dieing.  He is going to ride down peasents, or at worst get captured and ransomed.  Clearly that isn't entirely true, plenty of kinghts got killed but they must have felt pretty safe in their armor sitting on their horse.

Similarly I've read that commanders like to engage when they out number their opponets by 3 to 1 or better.

Certainly the better the odds, the better. 3:1 is a common rule of thumb for attacking in situations with rifles or better, where it is a major advantage even without prepared positions to be the ones just trying to kill attackers and hold ground than the ones trying to advance into enemy-held positions. In general and all else being equal, 2:1 is considered even odds and 3:1 an advantage to the attackers.

QuoteIn the natural world if preditors had a 5% chance of a serious injury they would all be starving by the end of the year, to hurt to hunt well.   Sayings like "a good soldier should be marching, digging, or sleeping." suggest that, defensive positions and manuver is more important than individual prowess.

Yes. Also another reason why I like combat systems about maneuvering rather than comparing stats and rolling till one side is out of hit points. Also another case where rolling one d20 is an inadequate check for many things.

QuoteSo what to do about that.  I think a flow chart could be a really good tool.  I'm suggesting that battles are far more predetermined than our current games model.  but they still aren't completely determined.  So dice would/could still be involved.  But not in all the boxes.  Many of the boxes would have no caulties as the only possible out come.  Heavy infantry engageing from the front. Both well trained well fed and rested, well armed and armored.  For the first minuet of combat no one gets hurt.  Almost for sure.  If you role anything it would be to see who gets tiired sooner.

Why? Not realism, as at any moment a spear can happen to go into an unarmored spot, etc.

QuoteBut engage one of those forces from the flank as well and it's muniets are numbered, its going to fold. That would be a different box on the flow chart.  Heavy infantry against light infantry.  The light infantry are toast.  Heavy infantry agianst Cav?  The horses won't charge a solid mass of men.  But break that square up and the infantry are going to get cut down.  

So battle becomes not about rolling big numbers but moving boxes on the flow chart.  This opens up a big role for player charcters, adventures and small squads.  Scouting, raids, recon, and disruption.  

I haven't built they flow chart yet but I think it could be a good way to go.

Well, the larger reason why I like mapped combat is that it makes for a game I'm interested in playing. It shows the situation and leads to terrain and positions having effects that make sense. When I read the things you discuss above, I naturally think of wargame maps with terrain and units of different types and facings and so on. I don't naturally think of flow charts, personally. Though the GURPS mass combat system is sort of flow-charty (and I don't like that much, and it does have mushy casualties - I'm not sure if it'd be appealing or useful for ideas to you or not).

Thing is, in most real-world battles, at least one side is perfectly confident of victory (generally the attacker, of course), and that confidence from superior numbers, vastly superior tactics, or other factors. So, yes, most real battles are really bad for one side.

But, this scenario, while realistic, doesn't make for a fun game (unless you use victory conditions like "the 300 are still alive after 1 day, but can be all dead one second after that").

There's not going to be a generic flow chart for battles in general. If you've got a particular battle in mind, just make your one-off flow chart for that.

Seconding Heroes of Battle. It has its issues, but it has a lot of cool little tricks for managing the flow of war at various scales.

The best mass combat system I've come across, where the quality and number of the overall forces involved is the main determinant of the outcome, but where the players are still potentially capable of influencing that outcome, is Pendragon's Book of Battle.

However, PCs are at best leading small units, and are making tactical, not strategic decisions -- the system puts them in the midst of battle, not in higher command positions, so it won't be suitable for a lot of RPG situations where the PCs are assumed to be in charge.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;1009525Seconding Heroes of Battle. It has its issues, but it has a lot of cool little tricks for managing the flow of war at various scales.

I'd be interested in seeing a description of how it manages battles.

Seconding Pendragon's battle system.

Hmmm, I just realized that my Earthdawn4 Airships (& Boarding & Mass Combat) rules that I submitted for the companion would be very understandable in flow-chart form. They're being edited for the book atm, so probably won't post anything until we see what makes the cut.