In 40 hours or so, we will be having out first mass combat in the L5R5th system.

Any advice I need before I go in? Things to do/not to do?

Advice along the lines of "Don't do it" won't be terribly useful and will be ignored. The battle will happen. Of course, it might be our last mass combat, if it turns out badly enough.

It will be fun, actually. The players should carefully re-read the available actions before the scene to understand how things work, since you will need to use all four actions to win, you can't just spam Assault. Also, keep the Strategic Objectives in mind: Cut Off The Head and Grind Them Down are both very good. Other than these, Panic is the main concern in a Mass Battle because an army can potentially fill half its Discipline in a single turn but Attrition output is much more limited and armies can take more of it too. Also, don't forget Battle Fatigue.

Here are a few things that helped us:

• Take a minute to explain/remind players that the scale of combat is greater than in a skirmish and that they are commanding a large group. Having your character successfully swing a sword or fire a bow is not the same as encouraging/ordering troops to do so. They will be using different skills and trying to achieve different things.
• Remind players that they are not limited to the handful of actions listed in the Mass Battle rules and encourage them to be creative. It might help to ask them what they want their cohort to achieve each turn (take that hill, hold this position, reinforce the gates, etc.) rather than what they want to do (assault, move, etc.).
• If it fits the situation, give players time before the battle to prepare. They might lead workers in setting up barricades, meditate on the battle to come, seek divine assistance, talk to the troops, etc. Then, try to incorporate these things in the battle by having a barricade position, having traps be set, losing strife or getting some bonus, seeing higher morale among the troops, etc.
• Use a simple map, only for reference. Mass Battles are fluid and troops are supposed to be able to move about and reinforce each other a bit, but it helped us to have a simple map with a few bits of terrain and simple pieces for each cohort. In our case, it mattered which way the cohorts were facing or marching because they could be flanked, resulting in a bonus.
• Be creative in describing cohorts so the players can tell them apart. Rather than samurai groups 1, 2, and 3, they could be a contingent of Daidoji harriers, ashigaru spearmen, and peasant levies. If they have small mechanical differences, great, but even if they are only different thematically, that would help.
• Track Panic and Attrition publicly and give narrative queues like "your ashigaru spearman repel the assualt, taking minimal casualties, but they are visibly shaken and may break soon."

Have fun and let us know how it goes.

"cut off the head" is busted, I'd suggest you not to use it. otherwise, simply spamming that is how you win easy and fast.

also, be careful about allowing mounts because they are extremely good. Just because the PC is sitting on a pony the footman soldiers in his unit are all of a sudden twice as strong. You might want to add the bonus if all (or most) of the unit is mounted, but if it is only the leader on a pony, it is a bit cheesy.

aside for the mechanical part, the guy above mentioned all that is necessary; narrative FIRST.
a map is also kind of important. and, obviously, stats and RP for all the NPC leaders.

2 hours ago, Avatar111 said:

"cut off the head" is busted, I'd suggest you not to use it. otherwise, simply spamming that is how you win easy and fast.

This was my impression. It appears to need some sort of limiting condition.

2 hours ago, Avatar111 said:

also, be careful about allowing mounts because they are extremely good. Just because the PC is sitting on a pony the footman soldiers in his unit are all of a sudden twice as strong. You might want to add the bonus if all (or most) of the unit is mounted, but if it is only the leader on a pony, it is a bit cheesy.

Could you perhaps expand on this a bit, please?

2 hours ago, Tenebrae said:

This was my impression. It appears to need some sort of limiting condition.

Could you perhaps expand on this a bit, please?

it just gives a lot of free bonus successes, only for being mounted. as per the mounted rules, since almost all actions in mass combat are "movement actions".
but to me, I think I would only allow it if also a majority of your unit was also mounted. your call though.

regarding "cut off the head", finding some ways of limiting it, not allowing it as every action, seems good. compare it to the other actions and balance it accordingly. as written, it is just way too good and will make your mass battle mostly about that. then again, your experience may vary.

Personally, I like to plan out mass combat challenges as a narrative scenario before dice are even rolled, that way you can help guide the process. My PCs have never shown much interest in commanding armies, so your experience might be different. Regardless, it can be difficult for players to know what needs to happen for a set objective to be completed, and they might not even know what objectives there are. Make it clear what needs to happen before any special action such as "cut off the head" can even be attempted.

The mass battle in the beta game is a great template- preferable to anything unguided or largely improvised in the moment.

10 hours ago, Tenebrae said:

Quote

"cut off the head" is busted, I'd suggest you not to use it. otherwise, simply spamming that is how you win easy and fast.

This was my impression. It appears to need some sort of limiting condition.

That limiting condition is its momentum point difficulty and the fixed rate you can crawl towards it.

7 hours ago, T_Kageyasu said:

Regardless, it can be difficult for players to know what needs to happen for a set objective to be completed, and they might not even know what objectives there are. Make it clear what needs to happen before any special action such as "cut off the head" can even be attempted.

I would suggest that players should pretty much need to pick objectives based on narrative choices, much like the 'debate' in how a narrative plan evolves into an approach/skill/TN set when deciding what check to make in a non-conflict scene.

Every mass battle should be happening 'for a reason', and that reason, and the commander's overall goal, should be driving the army's objective, not the probability mechanics of the game determining which objective type is easiest.

Also, as noted, a map or at least some narrative sense is important; whilst 'distance moved' isn't a huge deal when every 'turn' might represent an hour of hard fighting, not every cohort will be able to attack every other cohort - at least, not without fighting their way past some intervening force first.

I like the idea of the mass battle rules, but I think they're the weakest conflict rules set; a few things are better tweaked to taste - like the rules for destroying a cohort; it takes attrition equal to a quarter of the army's total. Regardless of whether there are only two or three cohorts, or as many as half a dozen.

56 minutes ago, AtoMaki said:

That limiting condition is its momentum point difficulty and the fixed rate you can crawl towards it.

At the risk of (re)starting an argument, I'm not entirely convinced; since you receive 3 momentum every time you attack the leader's cohort, and you need momentum equal to their focus, few characters won't be cornered by three cohorts attacking.

Which is sort of fair enough; narratively one cohort being successfully assaulted by three others should be in trouble. But a key word is successfully.

A big issue is that unlike most other objectives it doesn't require the attack action to be successful (I feel that's the key error) - three failed attacks shouldn't lead to the commander being decapitated. It's the one objective where the 'defender's' skill means nothing because as written no amount of success with reinforce actions, fortified positions, or personal skill as a duellist matters; three cohorts attack you and the commander of the third gets a free finishing blow on you with a weapon of their choice.

34 minutes ago, Magnus Grendel said:

At the risk of (re)starting an argument, I'm not entirely convinced; since you receive 3 momentum every time you attack the leader's cohort, and you need momentum equal to their focus , few characters won't be cornered by three cohorts attacking.

First I was, like, "WTF?" because we always played against a difficulty set by the GM (usually 8+) and only now did I find it out that this is indeed the case because the information is in the fluff paragraph I had never bothered to read. Geeeeeeez !

I don't inherently mind it being tied to the target's focus; a more aware character should be less likely to get cornered and killed, after all. And assuming the enemy leader is something like a Venerable Provincial Daimyo (focus 7), it's not a dramatic difference.

My issue is that it feels like momentum shouldn't come in 3 point 'blocks', succeed or fail. A failed assault shouldn't help, whilst an assault which somehow racks up enough bonus successes to come within a hair of annihilating the cohort by itself should contribute far more. I'd suggest 1 momentum point for succeeding and then the normal 1 momentum per casualty the enemy army suffered works better.

I think the idea is that the objective is literally impossible to accomplish in given situations. If you have only two leaders against the Venerable Provincial Daimyo then you can never take out the guy because your leaders can only accumulate 6 momentum points ever. The objective being impervious to gambling is a nice touch in my opinion I'm just not expecting it to have such a low difficulty value.

"If an objective was not completed in a prior round, the commander may select it again, and the army’s progress toward it continues."

Momentum is not by default lost between rounds unless you change objective.

Overall, I am ok with mass battles being very narrative.

It is not the Actions that I feel are wrong, it is the Strategic Objectives. The way Panic is gained and how potent it is to spam some objectives. Also, in the case of cut off the head, lets say you have this nice mass battle with a big bad evil boss, the players can just decide in one turn to "corner the bbeg" and deal a finishing blow. This is just, very, cheap, cheesy, and anti-climactic.

Then again, sure, most of the strategic objectives are garbage, BUT, they are noted as "examples" (like a lot of the other rules in the game, because the designers probably couldn't stand behind the balance or fun factor of those). So, you can totally do like they did in Winter's Embrace and come up with your OWN Strategic Objectives that are suited to your session and plot.

This game requires a lot of elbow grease... But it can work if you are willing to do it. (same as making the mounted rule not applicable unless a majority of your unit is also mounted).

50 minutes ago, Avatar111 said:

So, you can totally do like they did in Winter's Embrace and come up with your OWN Strategic Objectives that are suited to your session and plot.

That is something I would strongly recommend. They're decent guidelines, but "what's your rough plan" and turning that into a set of three objectives (plus Seize Victory!) is not impossible, using the existing ones as guidelines.

7 hours ago, AtoMaki said:

First I was, like, "WTF?" because we always played against a difficulty set by the GM (usually 8+) and only now did I find it out that this is indeed the case because the information is in the fluff paragraph I had never bothered to read. Geeeeeeez !

This is the sort of thing that's the reason why I started this thread: I've read the mass combat section a few times - now what did I miss?

That said, this battle will likely be delayed. Apparently several players have sent me messages today, calling in sick.