Mass Combat

[OtterJethro]

Hello. My friends and I no longer have the rules book, just a few other sourcebooks, Jedi Campaign, Alien Species mainly. I am playing a Jedi Battlemaster with a fairly high tactics and command. We were trying to decide on how to handle mass combat. We don't remember what it says in the rules but right now I am leading a group of 100 men and it might get larger with more men soon enough.

Any ideas or insight in how you guys handle some of the situations with 100+ men in battle would be nice.

[Ankhanu]

I usually don't even bother with rolls for mass combat; generally it's a background thing, so operates on a more cinematic level with outcomes according to GM choice rather than rolls. Good/bad tactics and command rolls will alter outcomes at times though.

[cheshire]

I don't usually do mass combat, but I found a home-brew ruleset that I've linked here:

http://download.yousendit.com/EC249CE710555765

If you want to know how the rulebook tells you to handle them? They tell you not to. They tell you to make the heroes part of a small section of the combat and make it symbolic of the combat as a whole. They discourage doing mass combat. Instead the favor something more story or character centered.

[garhkal]

When it comes to mass combat for me, i usually have a big plot out of what happens at time x, Y z etc.. Then i give the pcs a chance to possibily change one of the outcomes...

EG 400 imp stormies are marching on rebel base X... No airsupport for either side, but the imps do have 6 chicken walkers (AT-ST).

Poss point 1. Pcs can sneak into imp base before they start marching, and take out the ATSTs..

Poss point 2. PCs harry the imps marching to break them up

Poss point 3. PCs kill the imp leaders..
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[Tupteq]

I agree with all preceding opinions.
I can add that no battle should depend on just army vs. army rolls or something like that. Such battles should be always part of scenario and no blind rolls (but player characters) should decide about their result. GM should know everything about battle and decide how player characters' moves can change result of battle.
Of course there may be battles where PCs have no chance to change anything, but again, it should be always a GM conscious choice.

[ifurin]

personaly i agree with the rest about mass combat, but if you realy want to do something i would suggest looking at the D6 starcraft game. its free and you can find it online.

[schnarre]

At times I've done multiple sessions of the Star Wars Miniatures Battles just to get a general idea of how the battle would proceed. With this finished, the actions of PCs can become more significant, possibly a deciding factor.
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The man who thinks he knows everything is most annoying for those of us that do.

[Samp]

what if its not hundreds of people, but maybe 50 on each side? I would think that splitting everyone into groups of 5, each group being ordered around by officers so they can combine actions (and simplify rolls/rules) would make it more than manageable.

I was thinking of running a large battle this way, except one of the players will be giving orders (and the others would be part of a special forces group). I would be running the "enemy" kind of like me (the GM) acting as the enemy "general" in the battle.

Would that be too hard to run? It would seem to me that the hardest part would be keeping track of stuns/wounds/etc. We would use a grid to keep track of the battle (I was thinking each inch square=5 meters) and a "squad" of 5 or so can fit in a square (and take cover if any is available in the square).