How do you other DMs handle large scale battles with low level players

How do you other DMs handle large scale battles with low level players

Like a seige or something where the players can't tear shit up and actually half to hide and find reinforcements if they want to fight

I tend to handle the combat on a squad level. The party faces a single squad out of the enemy army. They can also identify and eliminate high priority targets like siege weapons or commanders.
I would handle finding reinforcements as a non-combat encounter and only start up a fight when the players start to actually fight.

Groups of enemies with collective hitpoints. If a gobbo has 4HP, then a squad of 20 gobbo has 80HP. This means that one really nasty melee attack can wipe out the majority of them.

Large groups get to make multiple attacks that have fairly large accuracy modifiers

Same thing I do with the fodder, I micro them as the dmpc commander well I roll to see the result of the other fields. Deploying special unit in their area if they are in a bind like soldier see hero saving the day.

Legend of the Five Rings has a cool-ass Mass Battle system, we use that with some modifications.

9 times out of 10 it is crazy fun. The remaining 1 is when the rolls go out of control and shit gets serious.

Is this large scale battle part of an ongoing campaign in a specific system, or is the main focus of your sessions going to be large scale battles?

I was once playing a fairly decent one-shot at a convention that consisted mainly of medium and large battles. The idea was, that rather than rushing all in, our characters were given a command of specialized units (like heavy infantry, cavalry and so on). Each unit had its own statistics and number of troops. Based on our rolls and enemy rolls it was decided how well the command were executed, how many casualties sustained and so on. It was fun, because rather than mindless chopping, it encouraged tactical planning and cooperation with players.

At the end of the session, our plan was good that we managed to successfully conquer a castle with less than 15% casualties on our troops.

I want to start with a battle that has the players either attack their current government, try to defend their home or just run away altogether
or whatever they want

I do the same kind of thing with the addition of battle maps to give more of a reference as to what's going on/help me decide upon events. Generally speaking though, I've found the mass battle rules for L5R leave stuff lacking in terms of forging a narrative for the grander battle outside of 'your characters can do x for y bonus'. There was a GURPS book (I think it was Vikings) that was similar but went into more detail with stuff like individual units and morale and stuff like that. It's been a while though so I don't really remember how it worked.

I tend to do a kind of cinematic approach, breaking out into tactical combat (with occasional interspersed hazards) when the players react to something.

So for instance, in a medievalish type of siege, say the party's standing on the walls.

>Start off, everyone has to make dodge or whatever equivalent defensive rolls for arrows or rocks incoming, failure means you take 2d6 (or whatever) damage.
>oh look, the enemy is siege towers all along the wall, any particular one do you want to go after?
>As they do so, call for a perception check from everyone. Success notes some furtive activity from their side of the wall, some soldiers who aren't quite right for whatever reason trying to get to the gates.
>Failure to do so means that at some point later down the line, the spy opens the gate, and enemies pour in through. Of course, fi they leave the wall, that probably means that some or all of the towers successfully start disgorging troops, giving a headache on that front.

Continue with the various checks to notice/inspire/dowhatever, and tactical combat when the PCs themselves are directly engaged, and work out a flowchart with different levels of success and failure depending on how well the PCs do. Leave some flexibility in case they surprise you.

If it's only going to be one big battle in your campaign then you can worry less about the tactics and just throw encounters both combat and non-combat at the players but if your campaign is focused on the battles you'll want to develop a strategy for the enemy and work on building up to it.

The problem is, if you just throw a series of encounters, the players don't have much agency. Now, depending on the circumstances, maybe they shouldn't, especially if they're say, grunts in an IG style setting or similar conscripts without much chance at initiative.

Usually though, PCs on a battlefield are some sort of semi-elite unit detached from regular formations, and dramatically, they often should be critical to the ultimate outcome (although obviously, this varies with the sort of game you're playing and where you are in it).

I do think though, that the PCs should be given several opportunities to make decisions that affect the outcome, not just tests of whether or not they can kill the enemies and survive the incoming fire; there should be things they can notice or order or otherwise do more than just a super-strong soldier.

Op said they're low level characters.

So? For starters, most systems have even low levels of what the characters play are still better than your bog standard rank and file grunt.

Secondly, even low level characters might be in the right place at the right time, or on hand to make the right decision. The notion that you need to be high level before you can make an impact is just stupid.

Stealing this. Many thanks user!

> maybe they shouldn't, especially if they're say, grunts in an IG style setting or similar conscripts without much chance at initiative
>although obviously, this varies with the sort of game you're playing and where you are in it
I don't know if you're samefag or not but I was responding to these aspects of the post.

And yes, most systems that have low levels have starting characters be better than a mook, but not strong enough to win a battle single handedly. I wasn't saying they shouldn't be given an opportunity to influence the battle as a whole, only that the way in which the battle goes on around them doesn't need to be as fully fleshed out with troop movements and timing if the campaign isn't focused on mass battles.The novelty of having characters caught up in the frontlines of a massive siege will fill in the gaps of their imagination, it's only once said novelty wears off will you need to make the battles more complex and overarching.

tl;dr: One battle doesn't need as much detail per battle as te battles to keep players interested because novelty.

>The novelty of having characters caught up in the frontlines of a massive siege will fill in the gaps of their imagination, it's only once said novelty wears off will you need to make the battles more complex and overarching.


That is an incredibly shitty tack to take on Dming as a whole. You should be fleshing things out as a matter of course, coming up with logical consequences to player action and inaction, and crafting the situation such that player actions matter, no matter what the situation is, from pitched battle to investigating a hospital to trying to talk someone into doing what they want.

Relying on "novelty" as an excuse to half-ass anything is stupid, lazy Dming, centered around the idea that your players are stupid and can only notice a few things at a time, and once you hit the gratification button once or twice, your job is done.

You shouldn't be "making battles complex" as a prop to garner player attention, and adding more features with their individual attention levels. You should be crafting them with the same level of detail and attention that you craft everything else, if the game's plot is putting the players in the path of a mass fight.

Dude, I am the laziest shit DM when it comes to designing combat encounters and stuff. I acknowledge that. That's why I focus on social encounters and puzzles. And when I do bother to put effort into designing a combat encounter it's usually treated more like a puzzle then a fight.

>Same detail and attention
I haven't planned more than an hour in advance while DMing since 2008. When I stopped, my campaigns and player enjoyment skyrocketed, and I have actually enjoyed being the DM for a change.

Pre-planners are like pre-built modules, except worse since they get attached to their ideas and can't adjust to all the crazy shit players do. Or then they just ignore rule of cool/fun because "but it says here that it wouldn't work".

This. Also, the fight as a whole is largely pre-scripted and only changes if the players do something major I didn't expect.

>players have to hide

I've never met a single group that's willing to ALL sit back and act smart. If they can't go in there like it's Dynasty Warriors then they won't go at all

I did exactly this recently - I had the level 5 party and some townsfolk vs a large orc army in 4e. I basically took some level 5 orcs, made them 2x2 tiles, and said 'they're groups now'. I also used the rules for swarms - groups are vulnerable to area attacks but resist half damage of single-target melee and ranged attacks. I also made ally groups using much the same rules.

Since the amount of enemies is more or less infinite from the player's point of view, combat rolls down to frantic few rolls. Enemies go down in two to three average hits, or in one if it's a crit. Since the party is completely outnumbered, this becomes more of a tool for navigation than combat. The key is no longer to kill every enemy you see, but to kill the ones that are a problem.

Kinda like L4D. Your attacks are a tool to clear a path or take down the occasional high-value target that, if left unchecked, would threaten the party.
And sometimes you get that big enemy that turns the action into regular combat for a while.

As for what the party actually does in the encounter, generally objectives that serve a bigger purpose in the grand scheme of things, such as clearing out enemy fortifications, securing chokepoints, and destroying war assets.

I have. It consisted of two players who went through Hoard of the Dragon Queen like it was a black trenchcoat tacticool game of Shadowrun. It was the most fun I've had GMing... ever. The game fell apart near the end 'cuz other people tried to join.