I just started running a new L5R game, and we crammed four sessions into the last week. This is my first experience with this edition, and it's the first experience with L5R for all three players. We're definitely still working out the kinks, but in general, people seem to be really enjoying the system. They've made very different characters, and all seem to have fun, meaningful choices to make. My read is that posters here generally don't love the dueling system, but we've had three duels so far, and though I want to make some tweaks, they all seemed appropriately tense and with sufficient meaningful choices. Our first arc ended with a mass battle though, and that's where things fell a little flat for us. Here's how I'd sum up the issues:

1. Perhaps the core problem is that the FFG rules assume all players will be commanding troops. For a variety of reasons, there are some (most?) mass battles where this won't make sense, in which case there isn't anything for players to do.
2. Even if you are leading, the choices are few. Depending on the Strategic Objective your Commander chose, there might be barely any choice at all for which action you take.
3. All choices use the same skills (Command and Tactics), which makes it feel like there's only one way to make a character good in mass battles. I know dueling is specialized as well, but I'm okay with running a game where not everyone can duel. Ideally, I'd like to run a game where everyone can have fun, meaningful things to do during a mass battle.

In the future, I'd be inclined to just run it as a series of skirmishes, which makes it seem like the whole conflict type isn't working. Is anyone else having these problems?

I think mass battles are meant to be relatively quick and general. Though I haven't played a mass battle myself yet, I think it is ok that the rules favor Tactics and Commands. Afterall, Skirmishes mostly favor Melee and Fitness and Tactics.

There are some shuji for mass battles too.

I can understand you don't feel they are that much tactical (and some of the "goals" are a bit iffy), so you should feel free to adjust as necessary. Maybe your players who are not commanding troops could have other roles that you feel would fit their characters. After all, not every Samurai would realistically partake in mass battles.

Regarding duels, I wonder what you feel the tweaks should be. I personally think they are mostly fine with adding the 2opps critical strike possibility to iaijutsu katas and maybe making finishing blows a bit less deadly (looking into making it + severity = to twice your martial skill instead of doubling), but I also am thinkering with making deadliness in the game more severe by making it + deadliness = to your melee skill. This would be less brutal than the +4 optional rule, especially for starting characters, but would make most weapons capable of dealing ok critical strikes. Then for finishing blows in duel it would simply be 2 times that number. Again, smoothing out the curve for lower rank characters and balancing a bit the deadliness of the different weapons.

Kind of like a personal take on the optional extra gritty rule of the corebook. And also making duels a bit less devastating for lower rank characters. As right now the deadliness of duels is just so high compared to regular skirmishes. Trying to find a just middle here using a scalable rule.

Yeh. The system is underwhelming and the premise that all characters will be commanding troops is quite silly. Makes it pretty useless otherwise.

There is a very decent system in 4th edition that works basically this way:

- Conflict takes X rounds depending on scale. On each round commanders roll certain Atribute/skill (Perception/Battle) and compete for succeses.

- On each round characters decide wether they want to be at the front (in the thick) of the conflict, or less engaged (there are different "areas").

- Each character rolls Water + Battle (i think) and depending on how engaged they are and if their side is winning or losing, they receive Glory, damage and there is a chance that a Heroic Opportunity pops up. You get a lot of examples for those but I prefer to make my own for each battle. Those are mini-encounters... You have to save a fallen ally, or engage one of the enemy commanders/lieutenants, save you army's flag from being captured, give a honorable death to an agonizing rival, etc... Heroic Opportunities if completed succesfully give points towards battle resolution and can help win the overall battle.

Imho its so much better. I just adapted it, lowering the amount of damage characters take each round, since Wounds are now a lot less, but it stil works very well.

I loved that system. I lowered background damage (since it's such a lame way for a PC to die), but Heroic Opportunities are so much more fun than what the current system uses. I think I'll follow your lead and find a way to adapt it.

1 minute ago, MonCalamariAgainstDrunkDriving said:

I loved that system. I lowered background damage (since it's such a lame way for a PC to die), but Heroic Opportunities are so much more fun than what the current system uses. I think I'll follow your lead and find a way to adapt it.

@Shosur0

if you eventually design a full fledge rule system for it, that is easy and comprehensible and take into consideration 5e core, be sure to send our way!!

lets make this game great again!

Alright, you might have to explain to me what you're wanting out of a Mass Battle or what you think the Mass Battle is better, because I'm not sure I really understand this as a problem at all. To my understanding Mass Battle is still fundamentally a battle , so commanding troops on the macro scale would be about your only way to actually influence one, other than fighting a strategic skirmish inside this battle (or that one shuji that lets you deescalate conflicts). Unless you do shift the conflict type, big soldier blobs have to fight, so your only way to be in it is to fight with your blobs, or figure out a way to make it smaller scale. This is not suited to everybody, but if you're in a Skirmish with absolutely no combat skill there's not really a whole lot for you to do well either. Majority two skills may not be diverse by count, but they are from different groups so unlike say a duel or skirmish (which are all Martial), so a character without any combat focus could just as easily still have some in the required skill and not be going outside their build. And I'm pretty sure every conflict does still have the special action rule - if you want to try and pull something off not on the list, spin it to the GM and they figure the results if necessary. If Objective choices are too samey, I mean this can be how any Conflict can boil down to if they get repetitive. As GM you may have to vary up the scenario so players feel compelled to take different actions, same as in a skirmish you may need to come up with a reason the conflict is not just "I hit them with my sword" for 3-4 turns.

That all said, I feel like I know FFG from many previous products, I am dead certain a future sourcebook (guess is Lion) will either involve an overhaul to Mass Combat which will be more detailed but complex, or new additional actions, objectives and other modifiers to the Core system - along with a splash of Techniques which apply to Mass Combats to give people trying to run a diverse mass combat campaign many more options.

EDIT: Also, with the Heroic Opportunities thing, that sounds kind of like a tone area, which should be up to the table and GM. If you want to do something like that, that's cool, I wouldn't necessarily get on FFG for leaving it out - there will be some campaigns and tables who do want a straight forward tactical push of guys together and everybody knows there will be a lot of mass combat, so it's not necessarily a microscale "you are heroes in this conflict" type deal.

I can phrase this another way actually - if the point of the actual conflict is not to be doing the mass battle part, where you command and coordinate units of troops and make them fight other units of troops and take macro positions, why make the Conflict the Mass Battle type? Just because a huge battle is going on does not mean you have to be taking part in the "mass battle" part - big stuff can go on in the background and if players aren't planning on affecting it directly, they don't have to be in a "Conflict" about it. They could be in a Skirmish or Intrigue on a more specific location which they are actually in a position to affect than looking at the bigger picture - if the bigger picture isn't your thing. This is probably what I would do if I had a group majority not well suited to Mass Combat or uninterested in the mechanics. Heck, doesn't even have to be a conflict at all, it could be a purely narrative scene.

19 minutes ago, UnitOmega said:

Heck, doesn't even have to be a conflict at all, it could be a purely narrative scene.

You said it all.

But I think what people liked from the previous edition was that you could be a hero by participating in battles thru the heroic thing, kind of a high risk high reward gameplay. In 5e, there isn't much tension going on, unless you duel within the mass battle , the system, at least on paper, is a bit dull in its resolution for everybody else.

Though to be fair, "Intrigues" are also overly bloated and could be very much just putting the Persuade Action in the skirmish scene rules and making the initiative a sentiment check if no weapons are drawn.

edit: maybe I'm wrong here, but in my experience, there are a lot of rules you don't really need to make the game flow well. Intrigues and Mass Battle seem to bug or confuse a lot of people, and I think I know why. Curious to see your experience actually playing the game what would be your opinion on Intrigues and Mass Battles in actual gameplay.

It's been a minute since I played in a 3e/4e mass battle, but the way I remember it, you'd randomly be assigned a skirmish within the battle (or be assigned one by the GM). Maybe you fought a duel with an enemy duelist. Maybe you routed a unit of archers before the they could rain a volley down on a crucial unit of your infantry. Maybe you captured an enemy flag. Maybe you had a chance to show an enemy general mercy. The consequences of your individual skirmish might win you honor or glory or give your commander a bonus to their next role. You may not be single-handedly deciding the fate of the war, but it felt like you were making choices that mattered.

I think I see the current rules playing out one of three ways:
1. No one in the party is a commander-type, so Mass Battle rules are ignored in favor of Skirmishes.
2. Some of the members of the party are commander-types, but either Mass Battle rules are still ignored (since not everyone has anything to do in them) or a Mass Battle scene does occur but some of the players have nothing to do in it. Not having anything to do in a battle you're fighting in feels unfun to me.
3. All of the players are commander-types and the GM runs a Mass Battle as seems to be intended by the book. Even in this best-case scenario for justifying the current Mass Battle rules, there's very little variation in how to create a capable character or make interesting choices. All players are prioritizing the same two skills, picking from a very short list of relevant techniques, and taking the same actions in battle (as dictated by the Strategic Objective that, at best, only one of them picked). I won't say stances don't matter, but they sure seem to matter a lot less.

@Avatar111, I'll let you know if I cook up something I think is better.

Just to be clear though, outside of the battle, my players seem to be really enjoying the system so far.

5 minutes ago, MonCalamariAgainstDrunkDriving said:

@Avatar111, I'll let you know if I cook up something I think is better.

Just to be clear though, outside of the battle, my players seem to be really enjoying the system so far.

I'm loving that system!
But it needs tweaking... especially in the scene&conflict chapter. This chapter is a mess. sorry to be blunt.
Not just to make it "balanced" or what not (which I really don't think is an issue! theres only a few thing that are maybe broken, if even...), but most importantly to make it fun and improve the flow. skirmishes are solid, but intrigues/duels/massbattles are average at best.

We had an intrigue scene where players were trying to negotiate with the Eyes of Nanashi around a gambling table. Players rolled Games to accomplish their social objectives. They were losing money each turn, but they could mitigate those losses (or potentially even earn some money) with the expenditure of opportunity (in addition to all of the normal uses of opportunity). I thought it all played out pretty well. Intrigue seems like one of the better kinds of scenes to me.

13 minutes ago, MonCalamariAgainstDrunkDriving said:

We had an intrigue scene where players were trying to negotiate with the Eyes of Nanashi around a gambling table. Players rolled Games to accomplish their social objectives. They were losing money each turn, but they could mitigate those losses (or potentially even earn some money) with the expenditure of opportunity (in addition to all of the normal uses of opportunity). I thought it all played out pretty well. Intrigue seems like one of the better kinds of scenes to me.

yes, they are ok. I just think the Persuade action could be included in the skirmish rules and make initiative a sentiment check instead of a tactic check when there is no martial conflict going on. The moving/flexible initiative is just weird. Especially if a skirmish break out in the middle of the intrigue, then you need to reroll another initiative? and basically the character who decided to take out his weapon and attack could be the last in the new initiative?? So his action is not happening yet but everybody knows it is going to happen? and if he change his mind after all other played their new turns?
Probably it is best to just make a Sentiment initiative if no martial conflict is going on at the start and keep that initiative steady, no matter what happens.
Some of the goals are also iffy (I think Convince and Rumor are enough to handle all cases by themselves. basically, is your momentum track compared to the opponent's focus or vigilance? that is more than enough). And it should also be made clear that each player keep track of their own momentum tracks (making multiple players or npc raise the same momentum track just doesn't work really well. rule as intented I cannot really understand what is the designers intent though as it is a bit unclear, it might be that each player have their own separate momentum track for all I know).

14 hours ago, MonCalamariAgainstDrunkDriving said:

1. Perhaps the core problem is that the FFG rules assume all players will be commanding troops. For a variety of reasons, there are some (most?) mass battles where this won't make sense, in which case there isn't anything for players to do.

I'd agree with @UnitOmega here; if they're not the commanders, it's not a mass battle.

The Battle For The Third Watchtower in the Beta is a good example of this; there are three sequential scenes; an intrigue (persuading the commander not to do something honourable but epically stupid), a mass battle (commanding the various cohorts), and a skirmish (facing down a specific 'breach'). The backdrop for each is "there is a battle going on", but that doesn't mean scenes (1) and (3) are mass battle conflict type scenes.

14 hours ago, MonCalamariAgainstDrunkDriving said:

2. Even if you are leading, the choices are few. Depending on the Strategic Objective your Commander chose, there might be barely any choice at all for which action you take.

Well....no. As noted, for it to qualify as a mass battle, it means there are a huge number of soldiers on the field - more than you can make a difference to with Martial Arts and a sword or Theology and a fireball. As it stands, Assault, Challenge, Rally and Reinforce are it, and Assault and Reinforce (both of which use Tactics) are the only ones which really move chunks of the army round the battlefield.

14 hours ago, MonCalamariAgainstDrunkDriving said:

3. All choices use the same skills (Command and Tactics), which makes it feel like there's only one way to make a character good in mass battles. I know dueling is specialized  as well, but I'm okay with running a game where not everyone can duel. Ideally, I'd like to run a game where everyone can have fun, meaningful things to do during a mass battle.

There is potential for this. Firstly, the checks for a mass battle may involve skills the PCs don't have, but whilst TN2 Tactics checks implies a competent general, TN1 Command is....pretty easy, let's be honest, even without the Command skill, and a pretty wide selection of schools (and not just Bushi) get access to a rank of Command at character creation.

• Challenge lets duellists be duellists (I strongly recommend using one-roll-duels to resolve the fight during the mass battle round, given that it represents an hour or more of the fighting)
• Remember that cohorts and armies should almost always have some sort of special rule; Rally lets you fend off rising panic against shadowlands monsters and lets shujenga play healer if you give them a 'Mystics' cohort. If you want a particular character archetype to be useful, then maybe follow the rulebooks suggestion of creating a cohort type that uses their particular special skills - Shinobi, for example, who use Skulduggery or Stealth checks instead of Tactics for Assault actions, or at least add bonus successes equal to said skill rank to the check.

20 hours ago, Magnus Grendel said:

On 6/26/2019 at 11:27 AM, MonCalamariAgainstDrunkDriving said:

1. Perhaps the core problem is that the FFG rules assume all players will be commanding troops. For a variety of reasons, there are some (most?) mass battles where this won't make sense, in which case there isn't anything for players to do.

I'd agree with @UnitOmega here; if they're not the commanders, it's not a mass battle.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying too. The biggest problem I'm having with this is in the text you quoted. Obviously your mileage may vary, but I don't expect there to be many parties where it makes logical sense for every character to be commanding troops. This feels like a step back from previous editions where everyone in the battle had interesting choices to make, even if they couldn't single-handedly turn the tide. I appreciate that some scenes within a battle I might want to resolve with an Intrigue or Skirmish type conflict. Right now, I'm leaning towards resolving all of them with Intrigue or Skirmish type conflicts because it doesn't make logical sense for all of my players to be Leaders. That makes me feel like there's probably a better design for Mass Battle rules.

20 hours ago, Magnus Grendel said:

On 6/26/2019 at 11:27 AM, MonCalamariAgainstDrunkDriving said:

2. Even if you are leading, the choices are few. Depending on the Strategic Objective your Commander chose, there might be barely any choice at all for which action you take.

Well....no. As noted, for it to qualify as a mass battle, it means there are a huge number of soldiers on the field - more than you can make a difference to with Martial Arts and a sword or Theology and a fireball. As it stands, Assault, Challenge, Rally and Reinforce are it, and Assault and Reinforce (both of which use Tactics) are the only ones which really move chunks of the army round the battlefield.

Four options doesn't seem like terribly many to me to start with, and again ymmv, but from what I've seen so far, the degree of choice is partially an illusion. Fortified terrain, your unit type, the current Strategic Objective, and your personal skill set could mean that only one choice is practical/useful. Some example limitations:

• There might only be one member of the party for whom Challenge is a genuine option.
• There are a handful of reasons why Reinforce might be good (to claim open Fortification, because your Commander is trying to Draw Them In, or because you're leading Ashigaru or Archers), but generally, for most players most of the time, there isn't a reason to choose this.
• Fortification can take Assault off the table for characters without sufficiently high Command/Tactics. Even without fortifications, you need some Command (or a very high Tactics) for this to be productive.

In most groups, I would expect at least one character is going to be stuck just choosing Rally every turn. But I get how a lot of this comes down to personal preference. If you think the options are sufficient, awesome.

20 hours ago, Magnus Grendel said:

On 6/26/2019 at 11:27 AM, MonCalamariAgainstDrunkDriving said:

3. All choices use the same skills (Command and Tactics), which makes it feel like there's only one way to make a character good in mass battles. I know dueling is specialized  as well, but I'm okay with running a game where not everyone can duel. Ideally, I'd like to run a game where everyone can have fun, meaningful things to do during a mass battle.

There is potential for this. Firstly, the checks for a mass battle may involve skills the PCs don't have, but whilst TN2 Tactics checks implies a competent general, TN1 Command is....pretty easy, let's be honest, even without the Command skill, and a pretty wide selection of schools (and not just Bushi) get access to a rank of Command at character creation.   

• Challenge lets duellists be duellists (I strongly recommend using one-roll-duels to resolve the fight during the mass battle round, given that it represents an hour or more of the fighting)
• Remember that cohorts and armies should almost always have some sort of special rule; Rally lets you fend off rising panic against shadowlands monsters and lets shujenga play healer if you give them a 'Mystics' cohort. If you want a particular character archetype to be useful, then maybe follow the rulebooks suggestion of creating a cohort type that uses their particular special skills - Shinobi, for example, who use Skulduggery or Stealth checks instead of Tactics for Assault actions, or at least add bonus successes equal to said skill rank to the check.

I'm going to respond to each of your arguments here as I understand them. Let me know if you feel like I've misrepresented any of them.

1. The TNs are low enough that players without relevant skills can still contribute.
I agree with you for Rally, but I think that just further makes it some players' only option. For instance, if you don't have Command, you need three successes on a Tactics check to do a single point of attrition to an unfortified army in an Assault.

2. Some characters who aren't built to be Leaders will still have some ranks in the relevant skills.
No disagreement here.

3. With some creativity, you can make other skills important too.
I would definitely explore this if I were to run another Mass Battle, but I don't think it solves the problem. For starters, I'm not sure it's always going to make sense narratively. To use one of your examples, what is this cohort that the Shinobi character is leading? Where did they come from? Why is the character leading them? Why don't they lead them outside of Mass Battle? What implications should their tactics have on the narrative? I'm sure there's a way to justify it all and maybe you'll be lucky and it will lead to a good story, but to me it feels like trying to force the narrative to make up for bad mechanics. Narrative concerns aside, I think this is very likely to just lead to switching which action is the only logical option for the character.

I haven’t run any mass battles in this system yet either, but I do have experience with the FFG Star Wars system which often has needs with large battles. Over the years I have found that the most crucial part to making large battles interesting isn’t the mechanics of how they run, but having meaningful reasons for the battle in the first place.

If the mass battle has the vanilla goal of “defeat the enemy” then the options open to the players become very vanilla as well. But if there are important and sometimes conflicting objectives then things get far easier. The terrain needs to have interesting features too, places that can add spice to the narrative of the battle.

For an example the players could be part of a small force who is making a strategic retreat from a larger force, perhaps they have the objective of “Lure the enemy into the trap set by our main army”. But as a complication there’s a village nearby of peasants loyal to the PC’s. The PC’s know that if left alone that village is going to get ransacked.

This now presents the PC’s with some more interesting options. The Commander could declare on the first turn that they want the enemy slowed down, but also that a part of the army needs to race to the village and warn them what’s coming. This introduces the opportunity for new skill choices throughout the battle.

Another important aspect of this system, that I think FFG could have done more to highlight, is the friendly competition between the leaders of the army. The leaders are looking to earn Glory in these fights, which should really be a great motivator for some characters.

3 hours ago, MonCalamariAgainstDrunkDriving said:

To use one of your examples, what is this cohort that the Shinobi character is leading? Where did they come from? Why is the character leading them? Why don't they lead them outside of Mass Battle? What implications should their tactics have on the narrative? I'm sure there's a way to justify it all and maybe you'll be lucky and it will lead to a good story, but to me it feels like trying to force the narrative to make up for bad mechanics.

Any mass battle conflict scene generates the question of why the PCs have a cohort command. That's not a mechanical issue so much as a story element, and what any given bit of the army is doing in the scene before or after the mass battle is again a function of the story.

What I mean is that if you have someone like a Hiruma or Shosuro character, it makes perfect sense that you should look at having a cohort which is suited to them (unless you're deliberately pushing them out of their comfort zone), so putting them in charge of the army's scouts, rather than the 'archers' or 'cavalry' or 'left infantry wing', or whatever, makes sense. Giving the scout cohort a rule which where stealth or skulduggery is the skill used to generate bonus effects fits, even if it wasn't a sneaky character commanding them on a given day.

3 hours ago, MonCalamariAgainstDrunkDriving said:

1. The TNs are low enough that players without relevant skills can still contribute.
I agree with you for Rally, but I think that just further makes it some players' only option. For instance, if you don't have Command, you need three successes on a Tactics check to do a single point of attrition to an unfortified army in an Assault.

Yes, if you don't have command the tactics check is effectively TN3, though the usual caveats about stuff like fire stance applies - an untrained commander defaulting to fire stance and ordering "kill them all!!!!" and launching an all-out aggressive assault sounds not especially unlikely, and the bonus successes will apply.

Also, Rally providing assistance is useful; if there are no competent generals then on any given turn most of the cohorts rally in support of the 'spearpoint', who assaults using fire stance (especially if attacking fortifications)....then falls back and probably spends several turns recovering strife whilst supporting whoever takes over on the front line, and so on.

4 hours ago, MonCalamariAgainstDrunkDriving said:

Four options doesn't seem like terribly many to me to start with, and again ymmv, but from what I've seen so far, the degree of choice is partially an illusion. Fortified terrain, your unit type, the current Strategic Objective, and your personal skill set could mean that only one choice is practical/useful. Some example limitations:

• There might only be one member of the party for whom Challenge is a genuine option.
• There are a handful of reasons why Reinforce might be good (to claim open Fortification, because your Commander is trying to Draw Them In, or because you're leading Ashigaru or Archers), but generally, for most players most of the time, there isn't a reason to choose this.
• Fortification can take Assault off the table for characters without sufficiently high Command/Tactics. Even without fortifications, you need some Command (or a very high Tactics) for this to be productive.

In most groups, I would expect at least one character is going to be stuck just choosing Rally every turn. But I get how a lot of this comes down to personal preference. If you think the options are sufficient, awesome.

Yes and no. Fortified positions can stop you causing attrition. They don't stop the action succeeding, though. So 'if you succeed' still applies - much like resistance can reduce damage to 0 but doesn't make the successful strike go away.

Cavalry cohorts cause panic, not attrition, equal to your ranks in survival, and most armies have a discipline lower than their strength. So a competent captain of horse can rack up a few points of panic even if they don't cause many casualties.

Challenge - it's a risky option, agreed, but it does give a duellist or assassin an extra option.

Reinforce is the 'move to this point' action. There should usually be a reason for this, because - as @Richardbuxton points out - there should always be a reason for a fight. Either you're being attacked (take the front line and reinforce), you're moving into a position (take the position and reinforce) or your on the offensive (in which case either reinforce captured ground or reinforce somewhere 'in the way' of enemy counterattacks*), meaning there should almost always be a reason to want to move part of the army.

Don't forget there are a couple of mass battle shuji, too. Most are command-based but at least two (Feigned Opening and Rallying Cry) use Performance instead. I know "wait for more sourcebooks" is a cop-out answer, but it wouldn't surprise me if (for example) we see a phoenix-centric sourcebook with proper battlefield magic (" tell them to hold up their swords ")

Ultimately, I agree it'd be nice if there were more options. My observation is that there are enough characters who tend to spend intrigues hanging around looking brooding and not much else, or are rubbish in skirmishes. I don't want a character to be useless in any scene, but I'm more or less fine with them only having one or two options as long as they have a meaningful way to contribute something .

* This is a point worth noting. No, specific movement rules aren't included because mass battles are deliberately a lot more hand-wavy than skirmishes; it's an hour-long turn so there is in theory enough time to get anywhere, and range is irrelevant. But situations must exist where you can't target cohort A with an assault action without in some way bypassing cohort B first. That's more a GM call based on the terrain, but "I guard the general's cohort's flank from the goblins" sounds like a sensible (narrative) order, and in mechanical terms I would say it means a reinforce action in a position that your cohort takes the assault instead. I accept that's verging on house rules, but I feel like it's not too much of a stretch.

Another oddball cohort to consider for your more crafty samurai - Engineers and Sappers. Crab as a faction in the LCG have a few "trap" cards I believe, you could possibly alter terrain and undermine the enemy or support your own groups. I'm sure stuff similar to these suggestions will turn up in more detailed Mass Combat elements (similar to how Courts of Stone comes with an expansion of the rules and regs of specific duels it seems) but for the moment no reason you can't give a little to get a little.

7 hours ago, Magnus Grendel said:

Any mass battle conflict scene generates the question of why the PCs have a cohort command.

Exactly.

But your suggestion adds to the degree to which the mechanics are pushing the narrative rather than supporting it. To have my players involved in the scene, I'm not just coming up with a reason for them to be leading troops in general, but reasons why a specialized troop is there and why they would get to lead it. For instance, it's one thing to say the party's shugenja is leading ashigaru or a peasant levy. It's more of a stretch to come up with a reason why someone with no experience commanding is leading a unit of shugenja. It also means a ton of shugenja are around during the non-mass battle scenes, which may not work for the story.

And even if you get lucky and it does all work for your story, it still isn't making their choices any more interesting mechanically. They're still just choosing Rally every turn (with maybe a situational Reinforce). This doesn't feel like good game design to me.

For the record, I like your suggestion. I just don't think it solves the core problem. It also explicitly isn't how cohorts work by the book (pg. 280: "The sample armies provided here are for entire armies, not single cohorts, which do not have individualized profiles.").

7 hours ago, Magnus Grendel said:

Fortified positions can stop you causing attrition. They don't stop the action succeeding, though. So 'if you succeed' still applies - much like resistance can reduce damage to 0 but doesn't make the successful strike go away. 

My initial comment about Fortifications was that it takes Assault off the table for players without good Command/Tactics. If you have one of the specialized samurai armies that has a 'if you succeed' type bonus for Assault in a skill you have, maybe you conditionally reconsider, but I still think that generally holds true.

8 hours ago, Magnus Grendel said:

Cavalry cohorts cause panic, not attrition, equal to your ranks in survival, and most armies have a discipline lower than their strength. So a competent captain of horse can rack up a few points of panic even if they don't cause many casualties.

Okay, but note that you can't get momentum points for any of the Strategic Objectives without causing attrition (or sometimes dueling). None of the SOs measure momentum in panic. So if you're hoping to win via panic, you might not be supporting the strategy of the rest of the army.

7 hours ago, Magnus Grendel said:

I'm more or less fine with them only having one or two options as long as they have a meaningful way to contribute something .

I guess this is what our differences really boil down to. Perhaps we just have to agree to disagree on this? If the characters are fighting in a battle, I want them to have fun, meaningful choices that they can make, even if they're not the commanders.

My experience so far has been that Intrigues don't play out in the limited way Mass Battles do. The nature of the conflict type means mechanically simple actions like Persuade lend themselves very easily to lots of different kinds of play. I haven't yet had the issue of one player just being broody and not doing anything.

8 minutes ago, MonCalamariAgainstDrunkDriving said:

Perhaps we just have to agree to disagree on this? If the characters are fighting in a battle, I want them to have fun, meaningful choices that they can make, even if they're not the commanders.

Absolutely fine.

I think the core of my argument is that I feel like the game supports that okay - but that if you're using "zoomed in action" on people fighting, persuading, whatever, the game doesn't support that by mass battles.

Those are a bunch of intrigues, skirmishes and narrative scenes with the backdrop of a great murtherin' battle going on around you, not a mass battle scene per se - the point of which is to condense several hours of fighting to half-a-dozen rolls when you're in the situation where you are the cohort commanders.

There's nothing stopping you doing what you're suggesting instead of the mass battle, and if you think the players will enjoy two or three 'chained' skirmish scenes better (understanding that it's a much bigger investment in time to resolve), then go for it.

ultimately, everything needs a LOT of flexibility. As a player can drop a Pillar of Calm (or whatever the name is) shuji and make your whole battle scene useless by descalating it into a chit chat.

are the battle rules easy to setup/create ? easy enough for you to dump it in the garbage at a moment's notice ?
that is MY question about kind of this whole game. can I create scenes on the fly ? I feel the answer is a bit too skewed toward the "no" and I would rather this system fully assume its ever changing gameplay. But, it ain't that bad. Mass Battle have the intention of being easy to create. If you want to add to it or tweak it and make it more deep, it is also probably doable relatively easily/safely.

I like the intention of mass battles and they definitely have their place for stories involving command of troops or setting up a scenario for skirmishes within the larger context. My issue is the shallow mechanics and I wonder if the mass battle system could be improved using a less simplistic dice system (yes, I know that might sound bizarre).

Does Genesys or Star Wars handle mass battles in a more rewarding manner? I can imagine situational or circumstantial dice directly helping in building and resolving the narrative. Granted my experience with these other FFG systems is limited to listening to actual play podcasts, and they didn't feature mass battles, but I sense the potential.

6 hours ago, T_Kageyasu said:

Does Genesys or Star Wars handle mass battles in a more rewarding manner?

It's more stylized in terms of actions but actually probably better in overall resolution.

Because the game has positive and negative dice, the game resolves each 'period' of the battle with a single check; with your base 'stat' used as the size of your army/fleet and your base difficulty the size of the enemy army/fleet, upgrades for your commander's skill and opponent's skill, and +/- dice for things like morale, fortifications, etc.

Rather than having players have a stock choice of actions, it suggests having players intermittently do little scenario 'vignettes' (like "take out that walker in three rounds!") that feed into each mass battle round's overall success or failure, rather than scripted actions where each player gets one action from a stock list per turn, much like the rules for a skirmish.