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Kaladorm
Master of Realmslore
United Kingdom
1176 Posts |
 Posted - 24 Jan 2006 : 11:38:43
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Has anyone run a campaign, or part of a campaign using some of the ideas presented in this book? (for those unfamiliar it deals with large scale battles/wars and the party's involvement in such).
I know there was a thread a while back with methods from other websites and Dragon magazine, but I'm specifically interested in useage of this book.
I'd be interested to chat with you about your experiences if you have done, I'm curious :)
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Purple Dragon Knight
Master of Realmslore
Canada
1796 Posts |
Posted - 24 Jan 2006 : 21:57:38
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Why yes. I'm currently running a campaign called "Tales of Aglarond" and I am using the rules outlined in "Heroes of Battle."
Last night, I had a platoon commander send two concentrated volleys on a PC (two squads of archers -- i.e. 2 x 10 archers). It didn't hurt the character as the commander was just 3rd level with a poor BAB and poor Intelligence (i.e. an ogre leading orcs)
I'll remember that next time: use a high-level commander with low-level archers... as the level of the archers is irrelevant! :) |
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Bluenose
Learned Scribe
United Kingdom
134 Posts |
Posted - 25 Jan 2006 : 11:05:32
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I did a battle towards the end of my last campaign, and I thought it would worth using the HoB rules. I set up the flow charts, devised encounters, and then the night before the game was taking play I playtested it and it was a disaster.
The problem was that the flow charts they show in the book are based entirely around locations, and battles are decided by events. The flow charts encourage you to fight around locations and what happens in those locations. What they need to be based on is events, when/where those events happen, and who they happen to.
What I ended up doing was setting up a chart that worked through time. Decide what time the fighting starts, then set a time interval of 10 minutes for things to happen in. Then have a list of the groups that each army is divided into. This doesn't mean each unit. I realised that twenty clans of orc warriors who started in one group, stayed together, attacked together, and ran away as a group didn't need twenty entries. They got one entry, "The orc hordes", and had to be satisfied with that  .
Now I put down what each group is doing in each time period, and how many victory points their actions are worth. So my unit of Elven horse archers is "harassing the enemy cavalry, 1d6 VPs" (I don't like having set numbers of VPs, but that does add to the record keeping). You can enter that until the point it changes, but it can be changed either by PC actions or by the actions of enemy units. So if the PCs decide that the horse archers should be doing something else, and can either order or persuade the leader, that stops. Otherwise it might go on until you decide the enemy army does something, such as the Goblin archers entry three turns later "drive the Elven horse archers away, 1d6 VP".
Some positions are important enough to have an entry of their own. The fortified farm that the human army was using to rest one end of it's line on got an entry, as did the human rangers and hobgoblin mercenaries that were fighting over it. The farms entry was "contested, 1d6 VPs each side, 50VPs for decisive victory." Each side was inflicting casualties on the other army, but if either won decisively it would be important. The rangers and hobgoblins needed an entry saying "fighting over farm", so that I'd remember they couldn't be doing something else.
What you need to do for the PCs is have some encounters based on the groups they might meet. So if they go off to the farm and fight the hobgoblins then you need a hobgoblin encounter, probably a fairly hard one because they need to kill the hobgoblin leaders and drive the others away. Sometimes the PCs should have a choice of what they fight. When the Orc horde charges, the PCs can decide they join in and start killing as many normal orcs as they can (a lot, if they have even moderate levels). That should be a relatively easy encounter, but it isn't worth many VPs. Or they can go looking for the orc leaders, which is a harder encounter but worht many more VPs.
One thing I decided was that both sides would earn VPs throughout the battle. What I chose to do to decide who was was say that when one side was enough VPs ahead, but you could decide that an army is beaten when the other side has a certain number of VPs. Next time I have a battle I might try it that way.
If you're planning a military campaign, remember that a lot of the time could be spent sitting around using the craft skills that your PCs never bother to take.  A better idea is for the PCs to go out with foraging parties and pickets. You can find yourself doing plenty of diplomacy. A small party of foragers might have to persuade a village chief to give or sell them some food. If they run across a party of enemy foragers they might fight them, but it’s equally possible that they can persuade the enemy troops to share the only building in the area that has a roof rather than stay out in the rain. If your PCs are sneaky types then information gathering can be their main task away from the battlefield. There’s plenty of role-playing opportunities in this.
The other thing I'll say is that you should take one look at the organisation charts and rank structures at throw them away. It's just about plausible that dwarves and perhaps elves have this structure, but for human barbarian clans to be organised with squads, platoons and so on makes me     and  . It's as if the author read a book about how the US army was organised, and decided that every army must be done that way. It's not so. |
These, in the day when heaven was falling,
The hour when earth's foundations fled,
Followed their mercenary calling
And took their wages and are dead.
Their shoulders held the sky suspended;
They stood, and earth's foundations stay;
What God abandoned, these defended,
And saved the sum of things for pay. |
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Arivia
Great Reader
Canada
2965 Posts |
Posted - 26 Jan 2006 : 00:29:15
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| I'm using quite a bit of information from this book in an upcoming Impiltur game I'm running; a forthcoming Candlekeep Compendium article *might* contain some Impiltur-specific information for some of the systems outlined in the book. |
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Purple Dragon Knight
Master of Realmslore
Canada
1796 Posts |
Posted - 26 Jan 2006 : 13:15:12
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quote:
Originally posted by Arivia
I'm using quite a bit of information from this book in an upcoming Impiltur game I'm running; a forthcoming Candlekeep Compendium article *might* contain some Impiltur-specific information for some of the systems outlined in the book.
Good... good... :) |
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Fletcher
Learned Scribe
USA
299 Posts |
Posted - 26 Jan 2006 : 21:50:38
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On the rare occasion I have mass combat that is there for something other than flavor text, I'm afraid I still use the old 2nd edition skills and powers "combat and tactics" mass combat rules.
But i personally try to keep the players out of mass combat as much as possible. It is just too dangerous for them. They tend to get killed by mass archer fire, or focused on by enemy spellcasters as they have an effect greater than their numbers should allow.
Bad guys aren't dumb. They are mean, dangerous and on occasion, extremely brilliant tacticians. Once my players had to assassinate the leader of the enemy forces because he defeated them every time in mass combat. When he wasn't around, victory was theirs, when he was in command, they lost every time.
That and I often find it hard to have large battles without far ranging consequences. And i hate to try to think of them all. You know changes in local governments, and polotics. Changes in trade. Loss of productivity due to all those dead workers etc. Conflicts with over a hundred deaths are extremely rare in my games for that reason. |
Run faster! The Kobolds are catching up! |
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Heroes of Battle
