I was reading over the Mass Combat rules that just came out in Lead by Example and though the rules are rather straight forward, I am curious on one thing. The book speaks about how Jedi use to play a key role in large battles and how the quickly they rose to Generals/Admirals in the CW, which is pretty cool. But what I want to know is how would fellow GMs plan to incorporate the use of Battle Meditation into the new Mass Combat System. My initial thought would be that the answer would be " it depends".

For example: if the player is only initial invested in the Force Power then maybe it only provides a Boost to the roll or possible add a "Trivial". But as the player further invests in the Power and their number of Force Points increases I could see the use of the Power add a "Vast" or even "Overwhelming".

Just wanted to hear what other people thought about it. thought about it.

EDIT: Wow. Just noticed the complete copy/paste fail.

I haven't read the new rules yet, but I do know one thing: Battle Meditation both has an upgrade that allows for planetary scale uses, and the potential for an incredibly large amount of targets. I'd have to compare both, but Battle Meditation might be able to be included with mass combat without making any new rules or additions.

They do not. The provided mass combat section does not mention how one could incorporate Force Powers when determining the acting and defending Force Strength.

Considering that Battle Meditation is designed to help large forces over a large battle field, I was hoping for a little guidance.

At the bare minimum, the power, when used with the Control should allow you to bypass the penalty of reducing upgrades by Leadership ranks in the event of communications being knocked out, if you use Battle Meditation to connect to each commander of a squad/squadron/large ship that would be affected by it.

Outside of that, it's hard to lock down what the Success or Skill rank copying aspect should do without things getting too out of hand, both with the side using Battle Meditation becoming too powerful as well as handling dice bloat if you convert things to Boost Dice, or with things getting over complicated if the power doesn't affect everyone it might need to.

Wow. Really bad copy/paste on the OP. My bad.

Well I guess the Successes from the basic and the upgrade would apply to the mass combat check so maybe not much has to be added there. And maybe for the mastery power if the skill is an applicable combat skill (gunnery, piloting space, etc) then upgrade the mass combat check?

Thoughts? Or am I on my own island on this one.

Wanted to give a big THANK YOU to the Order 66 for selecting this question and having it answered on you latest podcast! (Episode 71 - Gray Matters) I greatly appreciate it! And THANK YOU Sam for taking the time to answer it. I will attempt to summarize his response for others to see.

Again THANK YOU!

I'd be interested in a summary, Arrakus. Our resident Battle Meditation PC just joined the group who will be doing a lot of Mass Combats and I was wondering how to deal with it.

Unfortunately Mass Combat only really cares about the ranks in Leadership. Talents and Force Powers that boost Leadership in some manner don't really do the same for Mass Combat. That's the downside of it being it's own mini-game.

How different are the Lead by Example Mass Combat rules compared to those found in Onslaught at Arda I?

Hope I got this right. If someone can double check, that would be awesome.

Order 66 Podcast #71 - Gray Matters, @ 74:26min

Sam:

He is right that the most basic version of Battle Mediation is probably boost dice worthy when you are talking about one (1) automatic success at engage range spread out across 3-4 people. It is a party buff, it is not a "Go Forth My Legion!" type of thing.

But I like his point, if you are upgrading and upgrading it can start to get pretty impressive. You can start adding in ranks from a chosen skill at the mastery level; which is really good. You can add more successes and can affect a lot more people. I think at that point where it affects mass combat is at the ability dice step. Which also is the step were you build the basic dice pool base on how sweet your troops are. How good are your troops and how good are the opponent's troops.

Battle meditation at its highest levels, when you saw it in the comics and even in the books, it was a force multiplier. Troops went from "joe-shmo" farmers to the elite Spartan 300 fighting at the Hot Gates in perfect unison. I think it could increase the ability dice pool by one (1) or increase it by two (2) at the mastery level. Or maybe it only increases it by two (2) if the force user her/himself is a bad-ass warrior.