War Woes: A few thoughts on running war

Making your PCs weak inevitably ends in them looking for outside sources to help. Hirelings are easy with OSR games and require very little thought to make work, but I have found that if the PCs find, build, or spontaneously conjure an army the mechanics of the game have trouble keeping up and making things easy on the GM.

I am not a wargamer. I have no idea how most wargames work, but I wanted to take a swing at some mechanics and tips for elf games.

#1 Swarm War

Lump all HP totals together into their units. So all allied soldier dudes are a single swarm. All enemy soldier dudes are a single swarm. A large number of special units get their own swarm. Each swarm has a single HP total. When a swarm attacks use the base unit's damage + (the number of units / 10). So if allied soldier dude The swarm's attack bonus is equal to the base bonus + (the number of units / 10).

So if Soldier Dude: +1 Sword (1d6), HP: 3, AC: 11, HD: 1d6, Saves: +1

Then 10 Soldier Dudes: +2 Sword (2d6), HP: 30, AC: 11, HD: 10d6, Saves: +1.

And 15 Soldier Dudes: +2 Sword (2d6), HP: 45, AC: 11, HD: 15d6, Saves: +1.

And 20 Soldier Dudes: +3 Sword (3d6), HP: 60, AC: 11, HD: 20d6, Saves: +1.

Thus it is easy for PCs to interact and it fits right in with Initiative.

#2 HD damage.

When HP gets too high Swarm War gets more difficult. So basically do the same thing except do not increase damage and HD become HP. Combine the number of HD and this becomes their health pool.

So 10 Soldier Dudes: +2 Sword (1d6), HP 10, AC: 11.

If a PC or notable NPC wants to interfere roll up the necessary HD for their health.

#3 Give the Players Command

Even if there is no reason for PCs to have command over an allied army, give their players control of the allied army, assigning parts of it to each player. Not really a mechanic, just a way to give the players agency and fun.

#4 War Roll

# of HD x 4  then round to the nearest die on the chain, rounding down. So if the units in the army have 1HD each, then you get a 1d4. 5 HD x 4 is 20 so you get a d20. 4 HD x 4 is 16 so you get a 1d12. If one side is has a significant numbers advantage or other strategic advantage also give them 1d4 for each advantage.

Then roll both of these dice/dice pools and consult the chart below, assigning one side to the top and the other to the left.

The number shown is the number of the losing side that dies during a round."C" stands for Clash. It means none die on either side.

So if I have 100 5 HD Snakes and 50 1HD Soldier dudes, I roll 1d20 +1d4 for the Snakes and 1d4 HD for the poor Soldier Dudes. I rolled low and got a 5 total for the Snakes and got a 1 for the Soldier Dudes. I am obviously having great luck today. I assign the snakes to the left and the soldiers to the top and consult the chart. It appears 4 Soldiers die from a weak offensive from the Snakes this round. Each round I would roll this again until one side is eliminated. 

You could probably make a cleaner chart and find some rules to let players interfere with this more easily. 

I could see this happening on an Initiative or before each round of combat and if the PCs want to wade into this, have them roll Luck checks which are modified by how much attention they are drawing to themselves on the battlefield to see how many enemies turn to fight them and also allow some kind of Charisma or Personality check for them to rally soldiers to aid them. All such enemies and allies are removed from the calculations of the War Roll and become apart of the PCs instance, proceeding like normal combat or Swarm War rather than being adjudicated with the War Roll.

Truly huge opposing forces could be split up into multiple War Rolls for each set of units or squads or army or you could multiply the numbers int eh body of the chart by an appropriate number for the size of the forces. You could multiply them all by 10 and probably have a suitable system for really large scale battles.

Special units or war machines like catapults could bestow Strategic advantage dice and thus make for great targets for the PCs to mess with. Castles would probably need a whole nother friggin set of niche mechanics.

#5 Treat Armies as Creatures

When you really reach the level of large scales of military conflict. It might be good to simply write up the entire force as a single creature kind of like Swarms but not quite.

Each One would have:

Attack Bonus = the accuracy and discipline of the force, affected by their leadership and their supply of ranged units.

Damage = the kind and quality of the weapons given to each unit plus a measure of the strength of individual units, affected by the presence of war machines.

HP = An abstraction of the numbers of the army. Small/Medium/Large/Huge/Gigantic = 10/20/30/40/50, affected by the conditions of the army like if their food supplies are running low or they don't have the proper clothes for the climate. These conditions would probably just straight up deal damage to the force.

AC = An abstraction of the armor given to the basic unit affected by fortifications and battle tactics.

A Saving Throw = probably purely affected by how well trained or prepared the army is against the particular effect being Saved against. If the force has been trained on what to do if magic fireballs start falling on them, they will have a higher save or if they know about hot oil falling from the walls, they will have a higher save against that.

This could obviously use some tweaking and I am not sure exactly how it would play out but it would give the players obvious targets for shenanigans. Scouting the enemy's defenses would give the allied force a bonus to their Saves. Destroying the enemy's war machines lower their Damage. Keeping the enemy force from being comfortable at night lowers their health. Taking out their leader reduces their attack bonus and so on.

I started thinking about this after a player character summoned 100 5HD Snakes in my DCC game so look forward to more tales from the Weird Marches in an upcoming post.