Post by blissinfinite on Oct 14, 2011 9:55:13 GMT -6
In my most recent S&W session we had a battle of about 40 ghouls vs about 30+ soldiers and a couple of PCs. As I wasn't yet 'fluent' in the S&W mass combat rules and thought I'd like to see the battle play out in 'real scale' we started rolling the dice. It actually worked out pretty well and didn't take too long, though we still have to finish the battle in the next session.
However....
I don't think I would run something like that again as a straight combat. So it was off to explore the S&W Mass Combat rules.
I ran through the same combat, minus the PCs, on my own to see how it would turn out compared the actual combat. Using the mass combat rules the Ghouls pretty much overwhelmed the soldiers. I may run it again this afternoon to see if I come up with a different outcome. Regardless, a number of issues came up.
Ghouls normally get 3 attacks per round, would this hold true in Mass Combat? Thus three chances to 'wound' a unit and roll a d6 for reaction results? That would seem pretty extreme but perhaps true to the monster. Perhaps just one attack with a d6 damage would be fine. For other monsters as well? Thoughts? How would you handle the paralyzing effect of their attacks?
How are PC's handled? A Monster unit scoring a hit and rolling damage would do half-damage to the PC. In this case, would Ghouls still get their 3 attacks? How would the PC's presence affect the ally unit's moral on breaking?
I know the Mass Combat Rules are a very broad stroke to handle a situation like this and maybe works fine for larger scale battles but groups of about 50 combatants on each side should be handled by this rule. So maybe this isn't mass combat but something in-between?
If anyone has any thoughts on this I'd love to hear from them. I'd want to keep things pretty quick and simple using the Mass Combat rules but tweaked a bit to make it a bit more scaled to a large group of combatants and not so much an army.
Any thoughts, suggestions or direction?
*Also posted on the S&W forum
However....
I don't think I would run something like that again as a straight combat. So it was off to explore the S&W Mass Combat rules.
I ran through the same combat, minus the PCs, on my own to see how it would turn out compared the actual combat. Using the mass combat rules the Ghouls pretty much overwhelmed the soldiers. I may run it again this afternoon to see if I come up with a different outcome. Regardless, a number of issues came up.
Ghouls normally get 3 attacks per round, would this hold true in Mass Combat? Thus three chances to 'wound' a unit and roll a d6 for reaction results? That would seem pretty extreme but perhaps true to the monster. Perhaps just one attack with a d6 damage would be fine. For other monsters as well? Thoughts? How would you handle the paralyzing effect of their attacks?
How are PC's handled? A Monster unit scoring a hit and rolling damage would do half-damage to the PC. In this case, would Ghouls still get their 3 attacks? How would the PC's presence affect the ally unit's moral on breaking?
I know the Mass Combat Rules are a very broad stroke to handle a situation like this and maybe works fine for larger scale battles but groups of about 50 combatants on each side should be handled by this rule. So maybe this isn't mass combat but something in-between?
If anyone has any thoughts on this I'd love to hear from them. I'd want to keep things pretty quick and simple using the Mass Combat rules but tweaked a bit to make it a bit more scaled to a large group of combatants and not so much an army.
Any thoughts, suggestions or direction?
*Also posted on the S&W forum