Has anyone used the basic structure of the Mass Combat system for other encounters? A competitive check is fun for a single climactic moment, but Mass Combat provides a pre-written system for multi encounter events in which the PC's have an influence each time. I like that each roll has an impact, but the entire battle doesn't always hinge on a single roll.

The situations that immediately popped to mind where:

• An Election
• A large debate with major system or sector wide consequences.
• A major Social event (such as a Governors Ball) where political opinions can be swayed.
• A Search and Rescue operation where the weather becomes the opposition
• A Hunter and the Hunted episode, through a jungle, across a dessert, through an uncharted region of space etc

Any thoughts, ideas, inspirations or suggestions?

I think this is a great idea, but I don’t know if I have anything useful to contribute to this discussion.

At least, not yet. I’ll be watching, and waiting with baited breath!

Mass combat is about organizing large amounts of resources, people, etc to accomplish a task opposed by other resources and circumstances. I see no reason it couldn't be applied to a myriad of possibilities with different skills possibly being substituted for Leadership potentially.

I don't know how much use there would be for it though. I'm personally somewhat tepid on the mass combat rules altogether. The challenge is tying the PCs into it in a more direct fashion other than the one with the highest Leadership modifying the roll. Staging scenarios that influence the dice pool for instance. I'd also prefer there was some direct risk/reward way for PCs to influence the roll itself.

I think this is a great idea, but I don’t know if I have anything useful to contribute to this discussion.

At least, not yet. I’ll be watching, and waiting with baited breath!

Like wise

I don't know how much use there would be for it though. I'm personally somewhat tepid on the mass combat rules altogether. The challenge is tying the PCs into it in a more direct fashion other than the one with the highest Leadership modifying the roll. Staging scenarios that influence the dice pool for instance. I'd also prefer there was some direct risk/reward way for PCs to influence the roll itself.

I've seen this come up. The players and I were all feeling like we were rolling dice just for the sake of modifying our next round of rolling dice. It wasn't fun.

I don't know how much use there would be for it though. I'm personally somewhat tepid on the mass combat rules altogether. The challenge is tying the PCs into it in a more direct fashion other than the one with the highest Leadership modifying the roll. Staging scenarios that influence the dice pool for instance. I'd also prefer there was some direct risk/reward way for PCs to influence the roll itself.

I've seen this come up. The players and I were all feeling like we were rolling dice just for the sake of modifying our next round of rolling dice. It wasn't fun.

I really wish there was a personal involvement rule of some kind. One of my guys wanted a direct risk reward kind of thing where the PCs impact the combat directly through some heroic deed(s). Something like choosing to take a critical hit +X on the roll and that adds something to the battle result, success, triumph, something. We haven't used it much so I haven't really put alot of brain grease to the notion yet.

Using mass social encounters would, from my POV, give Agitator's Incite Rebellion talent a home.

After finally looking over the updated rules, I can see one big benefit: they alleviate some of the workload off the GM's shoulders. Instead of having to sweat over thinking up a mass battle scenario for the next game night, they can outline the competing forces, add the modifiers and rely on the dice to determine what happens. A GM can also introduce a mass battle on the fly, if necessary. And as a third benefit, the GM doesn't have to develop any predetermined outcomes, but can rely on the dice. And the obvious, a GM only has to roll two or three times to determine the outcome of some massive space battle, as opposed to... how many times otherwise?

Personally, any use of mass combat would build the backdrop to what the PCs are doing. They would have their own objectives, and it would sway the outcome, but they aren't just sitting there while I roll dice.

I'm personally somewhat tepid on the mass combat rules altogether. The challenge is tying the PCs into it in a more direct fashion other than the one with the highest Leadership modifying the roll. Staging scenarios that influence the dice pool for instance. I'd also prefer there was some direct risk/reward way for PCs to influence the roll itself.

If you're talking about the Mass Combat rules in Lead by Example, it seems to me that's exactly what they're intended to do. The example on p76 shows how the local events the PCs might be in can be used to influence the Mass Combat dice pool. So I guess I'm not understanding the complaint.

I'm personally somewhat tepid on the mass combat rules altogether. The challenge is tying the PCs into it in a more direct fashion other than the one with the highest Leadership modifying the roll. Staging scenarios that influence the dice pool for instance. I'd also prefer there was some direct risk/reward way for PCs to influence the roll itself.

If you're talking about the Mass Combat rules in Lead by Example, it seems to me that's exactly what they're intended to do. The example on p76 shows how the local events the PCs might be in can be used to influence the Mass Combat dice pool. So I guess I'm not understanding the complaint.

That provides zero PC involvement, it's just explanation for the various dice options pulled from the tables.

I'd like to see the PCs themselves able to influence the dice pool more directly in a risk/reward fashion. Again, not something I've bothered thinking about much because no one was really wanting more of it at the table anyway, and the campaign isn't centered around mass combat all that much. What little we involve is more or less background and there isn't really a need for dice rolling.

I kinda sit in the middle here. I think the intention is that a PC doing something heroic will add a Boost or 2, but if you have a party of 5 all doing heroic things then there's 5-10 Boost in the mix, that's a lot!

I would prefer if all the Upgrades to the check (or at least some) came from the Heroism of the PC's and Nemesis instead of the Leadership of a single person. But I can see how the writer and Devs where trying to make Leadership the skill it should be.

I think part of the problem is Leadership doesn't get used enough; there are charming leaders, coercive leaders, leaders who negotiate and there are deceptive leaders, but all of them use the leadership skill. If a PC is trying to get someone to do something, and doing it from an authoritative position (real or pretend) then leadership is the skill. Any way side track.

I do think that a lot of the suggestions for spending ATTD could be an action a PC focuses on for a phase, the bigger the effect the harder to pull off. But for example the 1 Triumph reinforcements; a diplomatic character could be in a nearby city trying to convince the government (or other) to join the fight... It's going to be tough to do, but with another PC backing them up it's possible.

There seems to be a good backbone of a system here, it just needs meat added to it. I have a lot of ideas but I'm holding back as I don't want to dump verbal diarrhoea on you all. I'll put an example together anyway and if it's not crazy then I'll post it. It's probably something that needs discussion. Anyone know people who talk about meat?

Maybe you can start a thread for ideas on using mass combat, like the adventure seed threads?

Possibly another way to make PC actions more involved is to think of new ways to increase and upgrade the ability, as well as decrease and downgrade the difficulty. If the difficulty is in part because the Imps have heavy artillery, if the party spends the first phase disabling the guns, that would reduce the difficulty, and if they can capture the guns and turn them on the Imperials, that would increase the ability.

That provides zero PC involvement, it's just explanation for the various dice options pulled from the tables.

Are we reading the same thing? I'm not getting this from the example in the book. E.g. for Phase 2 on p77 the PC captain: "...decides to try something daring. She takes the wheel of a heavy speeder truck...[to] batter down the exterior wall...". The way I read that, the encounter where the PC captain is can be a full blown combat encounter, where the player decides to use the speeder truck in the midst of combat. After the encounter, the results can be applied to the overall Leadership roll.

You could have a variety of simultaneous PC encounters (maybe even splitting the entire party), and all their results (positive and negative) might apply in some way. IOW, you don't just *say* you took a speeder truck and rammed the Imperials, it's a result of that particular encounter.

After all the PC's encounters are tallied up, then you have a single Leadership roll to see how the battle went as a whole. You might only have 1 or 2 of those rolls in a session.

At least, that's how I'm interpreting that section. It's *all* PC involvement there, not zero.

It worked well for my group. It was used as a Mass Sabotage check, with one side hunting a rare animal, while the PCs and allies did their best to muck up the works without direct combat. The deck was stacked against them, but they gained multiple bonuses with personal actions during each phase. The biggest moment was when half of the PCs infiltrated the enemy force as hunters and one threw a whole backpack of frag grenade equivalents at the enemy force's main tracker.

That provides zero PC involvement, it's just explanation for the various dice options pulled from the tables.

Are we reading the same thing? I'm not getting this from the example in the book. E.g. for Phase 2 on p77 the PC captain: "...decides to try something daring. She takes the wheel of a heavy speeder truck...[to] batter down the exterior wall...". The way I read that, the encounter where the PC captain is can be a full blown combat encounter, where the player decides to use the speeder truck in the midst of combat. After the encounter, the results can be applied to the overall Leadership roll.

You could have a variety of simultaneous PC encounters (maybe even splitting the entire party), and all their results (positive and negative) might apply in some way. IOW, you don't just *say* you took a speeder truck and rammed the Imperials, it's a result of that particular encounter.

After all the PC's encounters are tallied up, then you have a single Leadership roll to see how the battle went as a whole. You might only have 1 or 2 of those rolls in a session.

At least, that's how I'm interpreting that section. It's *all* PC involvement there, not zero.

That's still just fluff being applied to the one character making the mass combat roll. The rest of group is not involved in any way. That was my table's complaint is that the rolls really didn't have anything to do with the group. They have no way to directly influence the roll.

Like I said you can craft encounters where they complete some mission and that provides an upgrade or something to the pool, but we found if the group is successful in storming the Guns of Navarone as an example, then the major combat should be a success and there isn't really a need to roll as the battle proper can just be handled narratively.

I didn't say the rules are valueless, I just find them lukewarm in overall usefulness for a group. It becomes dice rolling for the sake of dice rolling. I also don't like giving up narrative control of the major events unfolding as that's part of how I choose to guide a story and craft a campaign. These are just my views on the rules, everyone can do as they like at their own tables as always.

I definitely see it as a great chance to spread the party out. As an example let's say the Party consists of: Tactician, Hotshot, Propogandist, Sabotur and Commando. It's a planet side battle between Rebellion skirmishers and an Imperial garrison near a town. Each phase could be an hour long, this is hit and run tactics here.

Looking at a single phase:

Hotshot jumps in a snub fighter with wingmen and launches the opening attack, targeting the anti-air and anti-infantry on the base

Tactician is using a converted truck as command centre, directing the fighting, making perception/computers/leadership/cool/vigilance checks all relatively close to the action.

Propogandist has snuck into town and is trying to incite rebellion and get the townspeople to rise up against the imps

Sabotur and Commando are working together, on the ground with the troops, trying to bring down more defences

Like I said you can craft encounters where they complete some mission and that provides an upgrade or something to the pool, but we found if the group is successful in storming the Guns of Navarone as an example, then the major combat should be a success and there isn't really a need to roll as the battle proper can just be handled narratively.

I didn't say the rules are valueless, I just find them lukewarm in overall usefulness for a group. It becomes dice rolling for the sake of dice rolling. I also don't like giving up narrative control of the major events unfolding as that's part of how I choose to guide a story and craft a campaign. These are just my views on the rules, everyone can do as they like at their own tables as always.

I'm seeing where your coming from there. I think the intended purpose is to make a battle feel bigger than the PC's alone. So let's say the PC's do take out some defences, and get some reinforcements, that doesn't mean the larger battle is won. There is still a fight between Rebel troops and Imperial troops happening and no matter how much the 5 PC's do a force can be completely obliterated by overwhelming odds. So instead of the GM plonking 30 minion groups of 10 imps and their commanders on the table they can just roll once every hour or so of the game.

I really would love to hear Sam or Andrew talk in depth about it and run through a scenario. I think it's suffering from the same problem as Vehicle Combat. It's a subsystem that needs a large amount of explanation and examples, something that doesn't fit well within a rule book. The idea is there, it's the varying ways it can be applied and its overall intended form that need further discussion.

And let's be clear. I'm not expecting a Mass Combat to be the opening encounter of a campaign (unless it's an overwhelming odds, forced retreat from Hoth style to set the tone). I would expect the PC's have been involved in the planing for this engagement, mustering troops, sabotaging the enemy, forming supply caches, gathering Intel. All contributing to the size of both forces at the beginning of battle, essentially building and modifying the entire dice pool over a number of sessions.