Have you ever ran a small part of a larger battle? Where the party is just one part of a greater offensive. How did you do it? I am thinking about starting a DnD session in the middle of a battle with the party being mercs, but I am not sure how I should go about it. Maybe make however well they do effect the DC of the roll to decide which side won the battle in total? Was also going to use it as a good opportunity to do some fun environmental dangers like long range magic artillery strikes peppering the area, or a cavalry charge acting as a moving wall of hurt that tramples whoever so happens to be in between them and whatever goal somewhere off the battle field.
>>98365852Yes, this can be done. Read Heroes of Battle (the 3.5 book) for a lot of good ideas. Basically, the heroes are special forces
>>98365852>Maybe make however well they do effect the DC of the roll to decide which side won the battle in total?maybe make it more than one roll and do it openly for some more tension. Like 1 roll is about if reinforcements arive, one roll is about if the front lines hold, 1 roll is if the right flanking force won, and 1 for the left. that way you have building tension and you can narrate between and you have eventualities for success failure or a draw.
>>98365852I havn't yet, but I do know about this thing.https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/493265/mass-combat-victory-tracker-hex-flower?affiliate_id=774882Seems like it might help you.
>>98365852This has been done since the 70's. In fact it was done before dnd was a thing.
>>98365852Had my pcs hold a flank in a defensive siege. The battle was decided ahead of time but known npcs would live or die based on their actions. I let them know before the campaign that they cant win every encounter so they understood when the battle was going poorly they needed to retreat. I just gave them a set number of people to fight and depending on when they retreated certain things would happen.
>>98365852>have map of battle with forces arrayed >plan out how battle generally goes and outcomes in traditional wargame measures of >major victory, minor victory, minor loss, major loss >sort out specific location of player characters in battle>create objectives for player characters>tie success or failure at objectives to aforementioned larger scale battle outcomes >be able to mix that together as the game you're playing unfolds Depending on how much player character mortality you're playing with, having fallbback routs and options for the players will be important so they can still act in the world if their army gets clobbered.
