Dungeon Master Assistance
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D&D 5E – Mass Combat Rules
Posted by on January 31, 2015
Rules for conducting massive battles in D&D.
You can download a free copy here: D&D Wars 5E.pdf
This is a complete re-write of the rules I published before (3.5 version here) (Next version here). In keeping with the spirit of 5e, these are simpler and play faster than any of my previous attempts.
D&D Wars is a supplement to fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons that provides a set of mass combat rules for conducting battles with units as small as one to armies numbering in the thousands. D&D Wars are not simply armies making battle with each other. It is armies intermixed with monsters and NPCs. Added to this mix is a group of PC heroes doing what they can to change the tide of the war.
– The rules are compatible with Dungeons and Dragons version 5E.
– There are rules for creating armies comprised of units of various sizes and compositions.
– It has consistent rules for scaling the battle from a small group of villagers with torches and pitchforks all the way up to epic battles with thousands of soldiers on both sides.
– The rules accommodate individual monsters wandering across the battlefield as well as other NPCs and PCs that are not part of the units.
– It uses standard combat rules without modification as far as possible.
Enjoy!
Thank you for continuing to update and create content. Really appreciate it!
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It makes me feel good to know that someone appreciates it. Please let me know if you attempt to use these rules. I am in a bit of a D&D vacuum right now, so these have not been adequately play-tested. Any feed-back would be great.
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Hi Ronnie, have you compared theses rules to the Unearthed Arcana rules WotC released?
http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/unearthed-arcana-when-armies-clash
I am keen to try them out, but large battles come up so rarely in D&D that it has remained on my ‘to-do list’ for quite a while.
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No, I was not aware of these. Thank you for pointing them out to me. I will review and post a comparison of them to mine. In my defence, I posted mine in January last year and it looks like those came out in March. Like you, I haven’t had any need to use mass combat rules since then. It almost needs to be a major campaign event for it to be worthwhile. But if you want a war and your players are up for it, it is good to have rules at the ready.
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Sorry for the prior reply, I had the Spanish predictive keyboard activated. I’ve said that I’ve uploaded to the DMs Guild a file with rules for battle formations. These rules acknowledge the problem of mid to high level magic by giving similar benefits than the Shield Master feat to the soldiers in several formations. Here it is the link
http://www.dmsguild.com/product/203805/Battle-Formations?src=newest_in_dmg
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Thank you very much for sharing this. I haven’t had the time to read it closely, but it looks very good at first glance. It looks like it could easily be incorporated into my mass combat rules.
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