Interlude: Abstracted Bigger-Scale Battle Mechanic
Another non-review post, and it's also inspired by my Wolves Upon the Coast game!
My players, upon meeting the villagers of Ffordunum and learning that they were preparing to die defending their home from a 35-man Norse raiding party, decided that they wanted to help the villagers in a sort of Seven Samurai-esque situation. There had been a previous encounter with a group of about a dozen bandits fighting some soldiers, and when the players joined the fray I generally handwaved the rest of the fight and focused on their characters. But in this instance, I wanted to give it a little more substance without turning it into a full-on wargame slog, especially because there was a set amount of time before the attack was going to happen, which allowed for clever planning and preparation to tilt the odds in the village's favor.
To accomplish this, I've put together a largely abstracted mechanic for a battle of this size-- not a full on army thing, but not a quick scrum between small groups either. The core resolution is as follows:
1. Both sides roll a d20, add appropriate modifiers and compare the results.
2. The winning side loses 1 troop; the losing side loses 1d6 troops.
3. On a tie, both sides lose 1 troop.
To determine the modifiers, the GM should simply pick one for the antagonists-- whoever the PCs aren't helping. The things that should be considered when picking this number are the factors that would likely give an attacking force the advantage, and your can give them +1 for each bit; superior weapons, better armor, seasoned fighters, greater numbers, etc. For the side that the PCs are assisting, they gain a +1 modifier for each bit of preparation that the PCs successfully implement.
To successfully gain that modifier, the players should describe what the PCs are trying to accomplish and roll 2d6.
A 6 or less is a failure; no modifier is gained and the time is wasted.
A 7-10 is a success; a +1 modifier is added to all future d20 rolls for the battle.
An 11 or 12 is a major success; this can be a +2 modifier instead, or some other benefit at the GM's discretion.
In the case of the defense of Ffordunum, the party had 8 weeks to prepare. I ruled that each plan they came up with would be represented by 1-2 weeks of prep time, depending on the scope of it. They successfully implemented the following:
- Weapons training for the villagers (this was attempted twice for a total +2 modifier)
- Concealed pit traps dug into the ground around the village palisade
- Making arrows and training villagers in archery
- Building raised platforms for archers to get better angles on the attackers outside the palisade
- Teaching the villagers enough Norse language to be able to hurl insults (this not only gave the standard +1 modifier, but I also ruled that it affected morale checks, because it was an awesome idea)
At the end of the 8 weeks of preparation, the villagers had a total +6 modifier to their resolution roll. I had assigned the raiders a +7 before the session began, based on their being better equipped in both weapons and armor (+2), veteran fighters (+1), greater numbers (+1), terrifying reputation (+1), and a base +2 because they were The Bad Guys.
Once the "training montage" was complete, we just played out the attack as a normal combat, with PCs taking individual actions and fighting with raiders. At the end of each round, I rolled the opposed d20s to determine how the villagers had fared against the raiders and kept a tally of their numbers, factoring in any raiders that the PCs had slain on their turns.
Overall, it felt like it worked pretty well! I was able to describe a pitched battle of about 70+ combatants while focusing on the players and not getting bogged down with a huge pile of rolls, and the players still felt that their actions had influenced the outcome of the battle. Despite the villagers losing the first several rolls, the raiders that the PCs were killing still kept whittling down their numbers, and soon enough the raiders were forced to make a morale check, which was given a malus from the taunting plan.
After the session, I was also thinking about how this could be pretty easily modified to fit a lot of different situations, and could even get more granular if you wanted it to. For a siege situation, the roll could be done every week instead of every round, and the number of casualties could easily be modified simply by changing the die. Different preparations could have additional effects beyond adding a modifier; better fortifications could reduce the number of losses, or clever traps could cause automatic casualties.
This was a very fun session for my group, and I hope that this procedure might be useful for anyone else who reads this! Thanks for reading!