Mass Combat, Avatar Last Airbender Campaign

WolfLord

Hello my name is Dan and im fairly new to the OP community but rly excited to be a part of it =] so two things, first im having a arch right now in my campaign about a siege and i was looking for some ideas for encounters, such as rescue hostages, take out trebuchet, hold the wall, etc. looking for any tips or thoughts of any kind =] as well as looking for any comments or thoughts on my campaign based on the tv show avatar: the last airbender.

here is the link to the campaign: http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns/avatar_adventures

and here is the link to the rules, it is a d20 system with some d&d 3.5e thrown in, thanks for the help :) http://www.scribd.com/doc/35806756/Avatar-the-Last-Airbender-D20-RPG-Printable

arsheesh

Hey there TolsmirWB, welcome to the Portal! I am currently running a mass battle arch in one of my own campaigns as well. If you do not already own it, I would highly recommend getting your hands on the 3.5e supplement "Heroes of Battle":http://www.amazon.com/Dungeons-Dragons-Fantasy-Roleplaying-Supplement/dp/078693686X that WotC put out a few years back. I think this is such a rich supplement that it would be well worth the investment. There are tons of ideas on how to use a small party size special ops team within a massive war and still manage to retain the small scale feel of role playing (e.g. Cut off enemy supply lines, Take the Hill, Get reinforcements etc). In addition, there are some great rules for helping to simplify and keep track of mass combat.

I recently posted some quick "overland battlemaps":http://www.cartographersguild.com/showthread.php?13360-The-Battle-of-Dawnhaven I had done (inspired by the maps in Heroes) for our last campaign session over at the Cartographers Guild; they might serve as a resource for helping to think about how to keep track of the flow of combat in a massive war.

Also, I recommend taking a look at "this thread":http://forums.obsidianportal.com/comments.php?DiscussionID=1623&page=1#Item_9, which may give you some helpful ideas.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

DarkMagus

Hey Tolsimir, good to see you on here!

People should totally check out his campaign, especially if they're fans of Avatar: The Last Airbender. Good stuff!

WolfLord

Wow thanks a ton arsheesh this is extremely helpful! i just found a PDF of heroes of battle it is great, i had some fairly similar ideas but this gives me a real solid framework, and your session looked great congrats! your maps are excellent, this is rly helpful. i will definitely use this info to help me with my arch =]

and thanks DarkMagus i really appreciate it! im really excited about your gaming music project too it's great!

arsheesh thanks again i appreciate the in depth and detailed advice it will be a great help =] how exactly did u do the flow for going from one objective to another? i feel like too much just fighting infantry no matter how fun would eventually become arbitrary rolling, any tips on how to keep the flow going and keep the adrenaline up?

arsheesh

Hey glad to here you found the supplement helpful, I know I sure did. I agree with you that simply slogging through a bunch of lines of infantry would soon make for a rather dull role playing session. Some of the tips that I drew right from _Heroes_ were: (a) "Think Big / Play Small", (b) consider "Player Character Role", and, (c) consider "Pacing". I'll take these in turn.

*Think Big / Play Small*: The idea here is simple. The war is much bigger than the PCs and their individual actions. Unless you plan on having them directly in control of entire armies, then _you_ should be the one to figure out the movements of military units and the outcome of individual battles ahead of time (This is where creating overland battlemaps to track the movements of individual units becomes important). Your player's knowledge of, and impact on these events will be determined by their level of experience (more on this in a minute), but in general their level of knowledge and concern ought to be on the scale of their own particular mission, rather than the overall war itself. Rather then having your PCs wade through countless lines of militia, think about creating a range of level-appropriate challenges for them to take on (as individual missions) as the war proceeds. For instance, perhaps a unit of Stone Giant heavy artillery is picking off entire squads of human militia as they race through a narrow ravine to try to move into a flanking position behind the opposing army in the valley ahead. The PCs could be tasked with taking out these giants. Of course there are tons of other missions that could occur within the war, but you get the general idea. In general though, you should have a decent enough grasp of how the war is going, and the PCs place within it all to be able to describe the particular situation the PCs find themselves in. An analogy here is to think of the war as a massive ever-changing dungeon and the PC mission as individual rooms within the dungeon that the PCs explore one at a time.

*Consider PC Roles*: The impact an individual group of PCs can have on a war will depend upon their level of experience. Low level PCs probably won't be able to affect the overall impact of a particular battle, but they can focus upon smaller missions such as keeping the unit that they are attached to alive (e.g. by taking out that Ogre that just ripped apart the last squad). Mid-Level PCs can have a more direct impact upon the course of a battle, both by taking out more critical threats and by leading large units themselves, and thus determining the movements of those units. High level PCs can rip apart entire armies and thus will likely be the target of enemy special ops teams seeking to take out major threats. Whatever level your players are at though, make sure that you are designing encounters to meet their level of experience. In my campaign for instance, the PCs are 10th level and I had them form into a special ops unit that ran interference for an entire brigade. While they did have to slog through a few lines of grunt orc militia, their main focus was on taking out larger threats such as Warg Cavalry, Orc Shaman Artillery and some War Hulks (Huge Giants that could trample through entire platoons of men).

*Pacing*: This is where I could have done a bit more work in my own war session (the entire battle I ran took about 6 minutes!). The idea here is that you want to both maintain the flow of events (so the session doesn't get bogged down), and allow for needed downtime (so PCs and armies can rest up and heal up). Here is where in addition to a large battlemap, it would be helpful to create a battle flowchart that describes what happens if the PCs do A or B, and what happens if they succeed or fail in these missions. Important things to think about when planning this flowchart are: time (think about having a certain amount of downtime), terrain (this makes for more interesting tactical decisions), Varied enemies/encounters (to stave off boredom), timed elements (perhaps the PCs only have a limited amount of time to accomplish their objective), and magical and environmental obstacles.

Well, those are just some of the ideas I gleaned from _Heroes_, I'm sure you'll uncover a host of other ideas as well. Good luck, and be sure to let us know how it turns out.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

WolfLord

Thank you sincerely this will be overwhelmingly helpful, and you have very efficiently put the main concepts the book touched on into very simple easy to understand sections i highly appreciate it that you took the time to be so in depth =] i have a much better idea for how im going to make it flow now, and the flow chart will be great. My party is level 7 so they will be more along the special ops side of things. thank you so much i will let you know how it goes in a week or so =]]

gnunn

I definitely concur with Arsheesh on all points. I too have been making use of the rules described in HoB for my campaign. I haven't yet reached a point where I'm running full scale battles, but I did just recently run my PCs through a castle assault with NPC support. I've really been working a lot with the concept of the maneuvering unit as described in HoB. i.e. I set up squads for my PC's support and the opposition they would face. Each squad consisting of 10 low-level soldiers and an officer or two. Some of the things I've found that help in mass combat:

# Limit the different stat blocks in each squad to 2 or 3, so you don't have to hunt for the right AC or to hit modifier every time you have them attack. Keep it to Officer, 2nd in command, soldiers, or Officer, mounts, soldiers.
# Only make rolls for direct interactions with the PCs. If an NPC support team attacks an NPC opponent, just trust your gut and narrate that combat without rolling anything. Or, if you feel compelled to roll, assume all the NPCs deal average damage to each other on each successful attack, so you only need to roll attack, instead of attack and damage.
# If you use a laptop at the table, the "WOTC dice roller":file:///C:/Users/Geoff/Documents/D&D/DM%20Resources/Dice%20Roller.htm is your best friend for mass combat situations. If my players are up against 12 enemies (10 soldiers + 2 officers) I simply set the d20 line in the dice roller to 12d20. When I hit the roll button, it gives the grand total followed by each individual roll. If I know the officers need to roll "x" to hit and the soldiers need to roll "y" I make that one click and then count up the number of rolls higher than the minimum and roll damage accordingly. Once you get the hang of it, it greatly speeds up the NPC portion of each round.
# morale checks add an interesting dynamic to big group battles. If the NPCs are outnumbered 2to1 or worse, if they lose half their members, if they lose their commander, or if any member is at half damage, they make a will save. Anyone who fails shifts their morale downward. If it gets too low, they flee. This can add some cool tactical flair for your PCs. Take out the leader, or crush the enemy squad with a couple fireballs and the group breaks. The party ends up looking & feeling like badasses. They can be a bit tough to get the hang of, so maybe start off getting comfortable with the other tricks before working them in.

Oh! also, I came up with a great mechanic for coordinated strikes during my castle assault. My PCs had a couple NPCs with them before the attack who were asked to set up a distraction on the opposite side of the castle. When the PCs started their assault, I rolled a percentile dice to see if the distraction occurred before or after the PCs started rushing for the walls (50 being a perfectly synchronized attack). In this case, the timing roll was 46, so the distraction went off just before the players broke their invisibility to attack.

WolfLord

That definitely sounds like a good way to do allied squads, i've been mulling over how to work with managing both sides during combat, having squads like that and describing the outcome in most cases will be an easy way around that problem. Only rolling for the PC's will rly help keep things moving. And as far as the dice roller goes...GENIUS. Morale is something i was looking at and i think it will add a great feel to the battle i agree great suggestion, but just as u said it did look a bit tough to get the hang of =P i think it will for sure be worth the late work to figure out how to smoothly utilize it i like the concept a lot, and in a real battle morale is HUGE.

That is a really cool idea :D thank you so much for the tips this will help a lot. I rly like the idea of having more chance involved so it doesn't feel quite so scripted. thanks again you have given me some more excellent advice to consider :))))

gaaran

I ran a fairly complex siege a while ago in my 3.5 campaign, and I came up with (with some inspiration from the 4e stuff in the Dungeon E-zine) a pretty cool (I thought) way of handling the battle. I treated it like a multi-tiered skill challenge (a concept introduced in 4th edition). You can read about how the battle went in this "adventure log":http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaign/melekar/wikis/the-battle-of-the-archway post.

Before the battle, there were several things that the party could do or have done that would aid them in defending the siege. These included laying magical traps, creating decoys, and sending out a suicide force of guerrilla warriors to harry the enemy. They did several of these, which gave them extra time to prepare defenses, and in the case of decoys and traps, they could get one-time bonuses during the siege.

I have three players, a ranger, a cleric and a sorceress and I wanted ways to have them all feel like they were contributing directly to the battle. They had to have five successful "battle rounds" (which I treated as an hour) before they failed three in order to achieve "victory" and for every round they "failed" they lost a regiment and their rolls became harder. There were three positions and five regiments, defending the gates, leading the army, and working with the artillery. One regiment at a position was considered adequate, two was ideal, and three granted a bonus. They assigned two regiments to the gate, two to artillery, and one with the leader on the walls. The fire-obsessed sorceress went with the artillery, the cleric took the lead, and the ranger went to help coordinate the defense of the gate. Every "round" would start with the cleric making a check to hold the morale of the troops. This was done with either an intimidate or diplomacy check, with situational bonuses and penalties. The cleric would then have a chance to take one action, such as using magic to bolster the gates, or providing healing to a regiment (although if a regiment was lost, they couldn't be healed), or anything else the cleric could think of in his power (in one round he disrupted some of the enemy casters).

Depending on how the cleric was able to improve the morale of the troops, the sorceress would get a bonus or penalty to her rolls defending the walls against the flying mounts of the enemy. The sorceress would choose to make a roll, either spot (to properly respond to the enemies movements), diplomacy (for morale), or something else situational and appropriate, and her result would provide a bonus or penalty to the most important roll: defending the gates. The sorceress would also have three normal rounds of actions to attempt to kill some of the enemy troops, and the number she killed provided dice bonuses to the ranger.

The ranger went last, because he had the most important job. It was his roll that determined in the "round" was a success or failure. Depending on the actions taken by the others, he would have a bonus or penalty to his roll as well as three rounds worth of actions to kill enemy troops in melee. He then was required to make an endurance check (Constitution based) to see it he was able to hold the gates. Success ended the round, and no enemy troops got into the compound. Failure meant that one enemy regiment got into the keep and that that round was a failure. Additionally, during any round that ended in failure the party also had a 50% chance of losing a regiment, and the next round would begin with one enemy regiment in the courtyard, imposing a penalty on the endurance check (which was cumulative if there was more than one enemy regiment). Any round that ended in success also removed one enemy regiment from the courtyard.

There were also a couple of specific events that awarded victory points depending on how they were completed. Once the battle was over, I tallied up victory points from the campaign so far, from how the battle went, how they did on their optional missions, and special events, to see how they did on an arbitrary table I had set up (this was for more than just the battle at the archway, but that was the final battle that the PCs were in charge of, trying to buy time for the main army to arrive in the city). I found that they had acquired just enough to hold the enemy army so they would arrive at the same time as the main allied army.

This format could be applied to any type of large battle, and my players and I thought it was a really fun way to have them be a part of the mass-battle (rather than having them be a strike force, which was the normal way I'd do it) while they felt like they were directly contributing to the outcome, rather than just killing hundreds of soldiers.

WolfLord

hmm this is interesting, i like the technique of assigning an amount of troops to target specific locations, i think the party would really feel like they had more control over, and through that responsibility for the battles outcome. haha your sorceress sounds fun. i actually do rly like some parts of this idea, since my group isn't rly high enough up in the ranks to have much of an active command in the army yet ill prob do spec ops for most of it but i think it would be invaluable to incorporate that system somewhere in the battle, maybe an officer becomes unavailable or dies and NPC's have to take charge and issue the troops to protect different points based on their own judgment without a present officer. May i say good adventure log as well looks like u got a good campaign going on, i especially like the elite 300 men holding the archway, reminiscent of the 300 at Thermopylae haha. Thank you for the advice!! i think im rly starting to get a feel for how im gonna run most of the siege now it's coming together, thanks in no small part to all of you giving excellent in depth and detailed advice!!! :D

RaseCidraen

Gaaran, that's absolutely amazing. Believe it or not, that's actually given me several rather dangerous ideas to play with :)

WolfLord

So my battle is underway and about half-way over it is going rly well! ive used a lot of the advice you guys shared. Im looking into doing a session where they have to infiltrate the enemy camp and save some high profile prisoners. They are being held near the outskirts of the camp, its in a valley. The camp is huge and they are being held on the outskirts because they are being "interrogated" before being taken to head guys of the enemy army. The camp is made of a combo of tents and bamboo huts and is HUGE. Near the outskirts where the prisoners are being held are hills going into the mountains with thick forests. the forested hills are fairly close to the edge of the camp and the party will be coming from that forest with 3 to 5 elite soldiers. I am basing this off of a encounter in "Heroes of Battle." but my variant has key differences, mainly in being part of a larger war camp, and i was hoping i could get some ideas on how to go about this session. I want to have a couple watch towers just outside the camp as well as sparse cover such as large rocks, trees, and perhaps a gully they can crawl in to get closer.

The campaign has no magic so don't have to worry about that. Below is the original adventure. My group is level 8 but element benders in my campaign are very versatile and powerful they can handle a lvl 10 encounter. The next comments will be the heroes of battle encounter im basing this on and i would like to keep some of the guard layout and the mage will be replaced with a high level firebender which is the equivalent in Avatar d20.

WolfLord

GET

WolfLord

This also is a human only campaign but there are many fantastic creatures, so the gnolls and ogers will just be re-rolled as human soldiers of varying classes and builds.

here is a link to a picture of the POW camp that will be somewhere on the outskirts of the town.

http://i1233.photobucket.com/albums/ff386/danbadour/powcamp.png?t=1299468151

gnunn

So, infiltration missions like this one fall really easily into the category of "easy to doable if the party uses smart planning and exploits the enemy's weak points, but far more challenging if they dont"

When I plan something of this sort, I usually try to establish clear guard rotations and details. For example, in the keep invasion I recently ran, there was a single guard at each tower. A guard and officer at the gatehouse and then three guards and the captain patrolling the walls. Having guards that rove at regular intervals can give your PCs a tactical challenge -slip through the gaps, or take out a single guard while he doesn't have backup. It also discourages them from leaving bodies behind where they can be found. I assumed the guards walked at half speed and paused for a couple rounds each time they passed one of their friends.

I also set up escalating levels of alert. e.g. 1. At the sound of a fight, any nearby guards will rush to investigate. 2. If they see its a serious threat, they sound three blasts on their horn to alert the ready reserve. The reserves arrive in x# of rounds and the off duty guards get suited up and arrive in y# of rounds.

For something like this that involves getting into a guarded position and out, set up a couple options for access points. The heavily guarded main gate, a drainage culvert etc. each with different advantages and disadvantages.

So, in your case, I would put 1 or 2 guards in each watch tower, and a couple perimeter patrols that leave gaps that can be exploited. You can also have the elite soldiers who accompany your players offer tactical advice (but I would only do this if your players feel stumped and perhaps if they try to kill the whole camp themselves.)

Oh, you should also have an idea about how the prisonmasters treat the pows in such a situation. Would they set fire to the prisoners' huts like in the example? Would they kill intruders or add them to the POW ranks? Do they have lockdown procedures? Would the reinforcements come from the main camp?

WolfLord

*When i said outskirts of the town i meant outskirts of the camp*

That sounds like a good idea, having solid patrol intervals and schedules will make it way easier to know id they are seen or not. And it will give them the opportunity to plan their stealth and infiltration.

I don't think they are gonna just try and kill everyone haha, but i dont know they are pretty confident with their abilities, i dont think that much though ;) and i think if they get spotted ill use your system, sound of combat brings local guards then horn to call in reinforcements ready warriors coming first then off duty that need to don their weapons and armor. and the enemy camp is GIANT like thousands so it would be in their best interest to go as un-noticed as possible.

I think they will have a lockdown procedure i need to think of what the particulars will be on that, probably just setting up some kind of perimeter and make it rly hard for them to get away. And in that situations reinforements would come from the main camp. They would probably take the PC's hostage if they can, and if they were losing they would set the huts on fire. Better to kill the enemy and not get info than let him get away and give the enemy back their officer. They managed to capture the second in command and he is in one of the huts. It will actually be cool if they do get captured they will have to try and break out i will need to plan for both possibilities, if they try and stand their ground it is more than possible they could get captured.

Thanks for responding gnunn you give very thorough and helpful advice! =]

gnunn

Why thank you! I aim to please.

I think stealth mission, and in particular, jailbreak encounters are a lot of fun. You might consider adding a secondary objective that could pop up once the PCs get to the POW they are looking for. Perhaps he had highly sensitive documents on him when he was captured, which are being stored elsewhere in the prison camp. This could force the PCs to decide between getting their guy out of the camp immediately, or risking his life and theirs to recover the top secret info before it makes its way up the enemy chain of command.

I had my PCs get arrested once and the breakout scene was really entertaining. They had to scrounge weapons off of guards that they subdued and make their way to the evidence room to recover their gear.

On a mostly unrelated note, I developed a system for making mass combat rolls go much more quickly than simply rolling dice for each attack. I haven't actually had occasion to try it out yet, but plan to use it this Thursday.

I used the WOTC "dice roller":http://www.wizards.com/dnd/dice/dice.htm to generate 1000 d20 rolls in a single click. Copied and pasted the roll breakdown into a Word doc and printed it out. The next time my players fight a big group of baddies, I'll roll a single D20 at the beginning of the badguys' turn and then count in to the number string that many spaces. Then I just take the roll results listed on the paper as the unmodified attacks. I cross them out as I use them so that the same section is never reused. This way there is still an element of randomness (rolling to determine start point) on top of the predetermined results.

WolfLord

Actually that sounds like a rly good idea im gonna have to think on that one, that would be rly fun to have them need to secure some war documents =P and will add some more character choice to the affair.

haha ok i can just see that, that would be tons of fun to have to break out and not get caught, ill have to plan that out i dont want to make it so they get caught no matter what but i do want it to be an option. Thanks for all the great advice this is rly gonna help! =D

and that looks like a rly convenient idea! let me know how it goes i might use it for the end of my siege. =]

gnunn

I just wanted to bump this thread back up and share a nifty technique I tested out last week for quickly handling mass combat rolls. I call the technique the Rule of Fives, and it speeds things up by greatly simplifying the mental math required when calculating damage received by large groups of NPCs. Essentially, I adjust the hp of all minor NPCs to be multiples of 5. Then, any damage dealt to them is also a multiple of 5. I go into detail on the technique over at "my blog":http://www.roflinitiative.com/2011/06/rule-of-fives.html

In practice, using the technique worked fabulously speeding up my combat calculations without breaking the balance or sense of challenge in the encounter. If anything, it better reflected the frenetic energy of mass combat because I didn't have to pause to crunch numbers.

Anyway, I offer it up to anyone getting ready to run a mass combat in their game.

WolfLord

that should rly speed things up, my mass combat was rly fun and the party loved it but i was finding myself trying to get through the number crunching of the armies faster to get back to the party combat

arsheesh

Hey there Gnunn. Just read your blog post. You know I actually did the same thing in a mass battle I ran in my TDMV campaign. That is, I used what you aptly term the "Rule of 5s" as a base for determining both NPC HP and HP damage in combat. Each attack did one or more 5 point "ticks".

I also tried implementing new rules for dealing with horde attacks, whereby, rather than making an attack role for each combatant within a horde (or rather, within a military horde unit), I made a single attack role for the entire unit. This was meant to speed up combat, but it turned out that tweaking the rules in this regard called for a complete overhaul of melee combat. Our group ended up spending an entire session attempting to create a new system for mass combat that streamlined the new horde tactical rules with the core melee rules of 3.5e Pathfinder. I think we came up with a pretty good system in the end, but it certainly didn't serve the purpose for which it was initially intended (speeding up combat).

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

FemmeLegion

I'm glad this thread got resurrected. I've finally decided that once I decide who can or cannot play nicely with each other, I'm going to start up my "In Vitro" campaign, and I'm going to start it off with a mass invasion. I'd kind of had that idea all along, but the who and why of it changed as I fleshed things out more, so I had to double back and make sure that was still what I wanted. =)