The question of tiny men.

[ETortoise]

When I play D&D style games I love tiny men. Henchmen/cohorts who have real classes and are only a few levels behind are very useful but I really feel like my character has "made it" when he's being followed by ten or so knights or has a longship full of raiders at his disposal. I have a dirty secret though.

As a MC they drive me nuts. An outdoor fight can slow to a crawl as the 20 crossbowmen roll their d20s, then there's the cavalry charge, and the infantry come to bear. So many D20s. How can I reduce the overhead for tiny men so that mercenaries are fun for everyone?

In Torchbearer its pretty simple, guards provide helping dice in combat unless you have enough soldiers that you'd be using the Battle conflict instead of Kill or Drive Off. In any case, all conflicts in TB basically work the same, just with different relevant skills and weapons.

First: List of hopes and dreams for combat with tiny men.

-Works basically the same as smaller scale combat.
-Doesn't overshadow the abilities of the PCs.
-Involves no more men than a Warhammer Fantasy army box set.
-Takes about as much time as a regular fight.
-Would work for naval engagements too (I'm dreaming.)

Looking at my design goals, what about a paradigm where soldiers are buffs for their commanders, rather than a commander being a buff for a unit? Having men-at-arms riding with a knight character would allow him to do more damage, slay more dudes and give him some ablative armor.

My lunch break is over, so I'll leave it at that for now.

[name_here]

Soldiers as a buff for commanders is definitely doable, so the real question is whether your players are happy with it. The primary problem I see is that your players are going to reasonably expect that AoE spells will be more effective against bunches of tiny men. They may also want mass buffs to make their tiny men better, and battlefield control to interact somehow.

If you create a fixed relationship between a dude's stats and the benefits he gives as a supporter, it wouldn't be excessively complicated. If a dude, say, contributes 1/10th of his attack bonus, getting +2 to hit from bless translates to +1 per five guys. In tiny men mode, AoE could hit one unit and have the ablative armor get reduced by damage * number of guys. Battlefield control, however, would be more difficult.

[fectin]

I really like Exalted's method ("armies are like pants: you wear them. They give you bonuses"). I think it would work for DnD too, but would need a new subsystem.

[Josh_Kablack]

The usual answer here is to have groups of lower level soldiers reduce to a single unit on the battlefield and suffer "morale" loss instead of "hit point loss", while PC level units are still individuals and then adjust the map scale and combat round time frame for truly large scale conflicts. That's fairly simple to design and can be scaled to any sized combat if the groupings and scalings are done right.

It works basically the same as smaller scale combat, there are the same to-hit and damage rolls, but a group of mooks only makes one roll for the entire group, and the roll is based on group size as well as base stats and weapons.

It allows the PCs to still feel special as each PC is their own unit, and equivalent or slightly superior to a platoon/company/squadron / etc of regular soldiers

It doesn't add that many more figures to the battlemat, as units move in formation and can be represented by a single fig or index card or something.

It does take longer than a regular fight, but by a reasonable additional amount. As you are only roughly doubling the number of combatants in a battle instead of increasing it tenfold or more.

And it works for naval engagements as well as your base system works for naval engagements. Which in D&D terms, means battles that look nothing like any real-world naval battle ever, regardless of how low-level things are.

[Cyberzombie]

I had a couple fixes I was toying with. Obviously both these systems probably need quite a bit of numerical tweaking, as I've never actually playtested either.

Grouping Method (slightly faster)

- Eliminate auto-hit on natural 20. This prevents just trying to throw multiple d20s and praying for a natural 20.
- Minor characters can pair off with others, granting the character with the lowest attack bonus a single attack at +2. Pairs can also pair again with a force of equivalent numbers, so every doubling of the force grants an additional +2 bonus. A group made in this manner gets only a single attack with its bonus regardless of how many people are in it.
- All members of a given group act on the same initiative.
- When pairing you can fit twice the usual number of troops in a square, without any squeezing penalties.
- When a group must make a saving throw against an area effect, it rolls once for the entire group, using the lowest save modifier. On a success, only 25% (round down) of the group are considered to have failed their save. On a failure, 75% (round down) of the group are affected. The group itself can choose which members succeed and fail the save.

Attrition Method (much faster)
- All members of a given creature type act on the same initiative.
- If the creature can only hit on a natural 20, it doesn't make an attack roll, instead it inflicts attrition as a standard action, having the same range as its attack. Attrition causes the target to lose hit points equal to the BAB of the attacker, or half that amount for a ranged attack. Attrition damage can never reduce a target to below 1 hit point. It takes a legitimate attacker to actually drop a foe.
- When a group must make a saving throw against an area effect, it rolls once for the entire group, using the lowest save modifier. On a success, only 25% (round down) of the group are considered to have failed their save. On a failure, 75% (round down) of the group are affected. The group itself can choose which members succeed and fail the save.

[Avoraciopoctules]

The Pathfinder Module Rasputin Must Die had rules for treating troops of infantry as individual monsters. They were pretty badass too. If you switched some of the attacks around, that might be possible to adapt.

[ishy]

For those of us without that module, what were the rules like?

Mass combat rules in Kingmaker for example were so bad, that even people who think the core 3.5 monk is just fine, immediately threw them out because they sucked so badly.

[Avoraciopoctules]

I think there was a preview on the blog, let me google it...

http://paizo.com/paizo/blog/v5748dyo5le ... ARE-COMING