PCs Leading the Troops...

© J.R.R. Tolkien... or uh Steve Jackson or New Line or something.
Look, it's just a cool pic, ok? Go buy LotR stuff. There. Happy?

One of the things that always seems to appeal to my gaming group is the prospect of one PC or another leading an army into war. We've tried several ways of simulating this but after many failed starts with such things as battlesystem and the minatures game for 3.x we usually seem to do most of our troop leading in what we like to call "flavor country."

Ruled by this guy.

Flavor Country basically means the thing or situation being described is for flavor text only. Sure they are battling against the enemy who is using the catapult to break down the wall behind the PCs. But the PCs wading out through the battle to get to the catapult, hacking away at the enemy forces is described in passing to set the tone for the battle to come. And once that battle starts all non-involved combatants simply do not appear on the battle mat leaving a simple encounter for the PCs to deal with. And this works very well... up to a point.

When it comes to the PCs actually directing the battle itself things get pretty hazy. And for good reason. Because the less hazy you make the process of directing the troops the more rules you have to either create or modify. This often is a very difficult balance to achieve and is a slippery slope that can very quickly lead down the path to having to just run the dang combat using the full D&D combat rules.

No one wants that. Not for running NPCs against the enemy. It puts too much of a spot light on them and takes it off the PCs. It bogs the game down.

So like many gaming groups we have stuck to "flavor country" because we didn't want to invent a whole other game we just wanted our PCs to have more responsibilities and to look cool leading a charge.

Well I've had a decade of that and I'm tired of it. Sometimes it's just not enough.

So I've been developing a rather simple but (I hope) engaging method of leading the troops into battle. And so far it goes like this:

Troop Units

Troops come in units. For the sake of sanity and simplicity all units are either whole or dead. What I mean by this is in a battle they might get damaged but we're not going to break it down into individual casualties here (unless for roleplaying purposes, of course, but that still won't upset the integrity of the unit that now dead NPC came from). So damage to units (much like HP) remains a bit nebulous and open to interpretation in other words.

So there are three levels of troop unit effectiveness: Green, Seasoned, and Veteran. Green units can take on the equivalent of one Elite 4e enemy. Elite enemies are the equivalent to two regular enemies, remember, and four minions are equivalent to one regular enemy. So if you think of units as being eight  combatants, each Green one of them is about the same effectiveness as a minion, each Veteran unit is at about 3/4 of the PC's effectiveness not going 8 troops for 8 standard enemies but 6 for 8, and seasoned units falling somewhere around 1/2 the effectiveness of PCs (And actually since most PCs can survive most encounters they are actually MUCH more effective than even the Veteran troops but that's why they're the heroes afterall). So to sum that up:

Green Unit = Takes out one Elite enemy
Seasoned Unit = Takes out two Elite enemies
Veteran Unit = Takes out three Elite enemies

Now when a unit is sent to battle (and I'll get to why you would even want to do this in the game in a second here) it takes out the equivalent number of enemies listed above and is damaged itself such that it falls one tier of effectiveness - falling from Veteran to Seasoned, from Seasoned to Green, and from Green to destroyed. Keep in mind that the troops aren't losing experience here - just their ability to function at that level of expertise due to injuries, deaths (though as I said before we don't deal in partial units here for sanity's and simplicity's sake), loss of morale, and other such debilitating aftereffects of battle.

So to continue with how this works say a Veteran Unit is sent to take out three Elite enemies or the equivalent (6 regular enemies or 24 minion enemies). They engage at Veteran status which means they eliminate the three and get reduced to Seasoned. But what if they engaged five Elite enemies instead because the enemy had reinforced that area and it wasn't known prior to deploying the troops? The unit would take out the three elites and be reduced to Seasoned. Then they would engage the two remaining at the seasoned level of effectiveness and defeat them, lowering their effectiveness down to Green. One more Elite enemy there would have killed the unit by reducing them down from Green to destroyed.

Units can heal up by sitting out battles. Please note they do NOT heal up for time passing. Since they are only used in the game for battles it is on that basis that they must have taken a rest from battle. For each battle they sit out they heal one level. So if the Veteran group that wiped out 3 Elite enemies and was reduced to Seasoned is used in the next battle they go into it as Seasoned troops. If, however, they sat that battle out and were called in for the battle after that they would be once again at Veteran effectiveness. A unit cannot heal up to advance beyond their current maximum effectiveness. Units can advance in maximum effectiveness by having the proper prerequisites to advance, which we'll cover next.

Leading

The role of the PCs, remember, was to be leaders of these troops. Not necessarily in their midst but directing the troops' efforts, at least, beforehand. PCs they can make sure that their troops are extra effective by surrendering their PC Action Point(s) to a unit that is fighting for them.

So before they go off to combat the PC gives away their Action Point right before their own next combat (no fair giving it up and then taking an extended rest to get it back - it's gone until they reach a milestone). Action Points can be used by the unit (at their commander's direction) to do any one of the following things per point:

• Prevent the unit from going down a single level of effectiveness after completing a portion of a combat.
• Allow the unit to raise their maximum level of effectiveness after completion of a combat.
• Allow the unit to heal up one level of effectiveness.

Say a Green Unit is given a total of three Action Points from three different PCs. They fight two Elite enemies. They defeat one and go down from Green to dead but they spend an action point instead and stay at green. They fight the second Elite enemy and again would be wiped out but they spend an action point again to prevent the unit from being destroyed. They spend their last point to learn from the experience and increase their maximum effectiveness to Seasoned. If they had yet another action point they could spend that to raise up to Seasoned status and go into the next combat at that level. Otherwise they would have to sit out the next combat to raise up on their own or would fight at Green effectiveness if called upon in the next battle.

About the only part of this that will be a bit fuzzy is determining how the PCs get their information on enemy troop strength. Which is something that is still important and difficult to ascertain even in warfare today so they will have to make their efforts and will have to deal with a bit of the unknown there. As a DM you'll need to adjudicate their efforts on a case by case basis and keep in mind the plans of the enemy and their precautions. Are they sloppy and over-confident? Or guarded and sneaky? Make the enemy leaders have personalities the PCs will have to get to know to know what to expect. If the PCs attack a fortress and fail because there are more troops there then how can the PCs get better intel? Sneak in and recon? Could they dress in enemy garb and plant rumors to lower enemy morale or loyalty? Let them come up with the way around the problem of a setback to encourage creative roleplaying.

The Spoils

So why would the PCs ever want to even use these troops anyway? Or why as a DM would you want to even use this system? Glad you asked that.

Some areas are simply too populated with enemies for the PCs to conquer on their own. Just like when Han Solo ran after a couple of lone stormtroopers in the Death Star was forced to turn around and run like hell when he accidentally stumbled into a whole legion of troops (Yes, yes I know in the original version of the film it sort of looked like the stormtroopers just spontaneously grew some balls and turned around on him but this is one case where a change in the Star Wars film makes it better, in my opinion.) so too would PCs have to stage a retreat to avoid getting overwhelmed by too many enemies. By coordinating troops to work with the PCs and help them, say, raid a fortress, the troops will soak up enemies while the PCs take on the remainder in the form of a challenging combat for their level. Provided that the troops survive an initial encounter and can go on to another they can also allow the PCs to gain a refresh equivalent of a 5 minute rest in as many rounds as it would take to spend healing surges to heal after a combat (i.e. up to 4 rounds, basically, if nearly full healing is required). If the PCs were by themselves they might have to retreat to a safe area to gain that much time to rest and heal but the troops either acts as their defenders for those rounds or as a distraction for those rounds if they are not in the immediate area the PCs are.

This allows me as a DM to do a few interesting things with the adventures. It allows me to place a perhaps obvious goal in the players' direct line of sight (take out that huge nest of baddies) while making sure that the PCs will need a deal of time and effort to take out such a powerfully supported area ("One does not simply walk into Mordor..."). So instead of being given a goal and having either the defenders set up things to be, frankly, rather stupid and not take advantage of either proximity and responsiveness and their force in numbers to defend themselves properly or having the defenders be absurdly weak compared to the characters (boring), or downsizing the whole area to make it more manageable for the PCs to conquer (which makes the whole thing feel unimportant) we create the opportunity for the PCs to have to win (or, I suppose, hire) forces to go to battle with them. And this brings up all sorts of good things. How do the players win the loyalty of a band of troops? Do they undertake a quest(s)? Role-play negotiations? Perform some sort of skill challenge? How does the world change if the PC's succeed? If they fail? What if an NPC that the PCs befriended in that troop dies in the attack? Who also knew them and how will they react to the fact that the PCs led him/her to their demise? Will stories of the PCs momentous victory bring them fame? Enemies? Rivals? People begging for help? Will the PCs have enough allies to face the consequences of their actions? Did that nest of baddies have allies? How will they react to this? Will they try to retake the area? Hire the PCs? Try to buy the troops out from under the PCs? Attack them? How does this tip the balance of power in the area?

You can begin to see why I wanted to develop this. There's so much more potential for drama when you up the stakes with more allies for the PCs to have at their disposal and more at the disposal of the enemy. You start to move beyond a small band of orcs as enemies and move up to entire armies of orcs on the march. The PCs don't just become tools for some general ("Go and take out this key area."), they become the generals leading the charge.

And that's just more fitting for a war adventure.