Humanoid Swarms for Mass Combat :: 5e D&D

I was doing research on mass combat rules for D&D 5e for …reasons… and I know there's nothing completely official. There is a 2017 Unearthed Arcana for Mass Combat [PDF] published by Wizards of the Coast. In fact, there are two PDFs for this, the other likely from 2015.

In previous editions, there were the Battlesystem rules, especially the Battlesystem 2nd Edition that I was most familiar with. These were D&D's answer to other miniatures combat rules from Ral Partha et al.

In 3rd edition, there were two books, Heroes of Battle and the Miniatures Handbook that could be used for the same purpose.

But as far as an official mass combat system for 5e, there is only the playtest UA stuff above. In my research, I stumbled upon my same question on a Reddit post from a few months back.

Posts from the dndnext
community on Reddit

And one of the commenters suggested setting up stats for large groups as swarms and then run normal combat. And they linked to a page on The Homebrewery for Humanoid Swarms. This is an interesting idea because it simply enhances the monster stat block for one humanoid and expands it to an unnumbered swarm of variable size. The sizes match monster sizes above medium; large, huge and gargantuan.

• Commoner → Mob of Commoners
• Pikeman → Pike Square
• Archer → Mass of Archers
• Bodyguard → Company of Guards
• Hedge Witch → Coven of Witches

Another reason that this catches my eye is that one of the …reasons… or themes matching why I started searching this in the first place was that I wanted something remniscent of an old video game that I was a huge fan of growing up called Ancient Art of War on the Macintosh Plus (1985). There were three troop types in that game; knights, archers, and barbarians. Along with other rules, the combat advantage for the three types was similar to rock-paper-scissors.

• Knights, with their heavy armor, were strong against barbarians, but too slow to deal with archers.
• Barbarians were quick and nimble, easily crossing the battlefield to defeat archers, but fell easily to knights.
• Archers could fire volleys of arrows and easily defeat knights, but could not hit barbarians with any accuracy.

The "swarm of humanoids" has some ideas in common with this.

• Pikemen are clearly knights...
• Archers, archers
• Bodyguards are potentially barbarians (although...)

So it would be possible to use this a bit. The problem I anticipate is that you can't have a mixed squad of barbs and archers and knights in varying numbers. This was almost always a strategic way to win in Ancient Art of War. Here's some nostalgic gameplay footage I'm saving just for myself.

Bonus: Check out more along these lines with a post named mass combat belongs in the monster manual on Blog of Holding.

Campaigns Anew

Quite by happy accident, over the last year I've suddenly found myself running two separate Dungeons & Dragons games with a third one potentially starting soon. I'm also playing in a Star Wars: Edge of the Empire campaign, which is a first for me. Even young Samwise is getting into the game a bit. I run a game for him by himself, and keep things super loose with the rules since he's only 8. Here's a quick summary of the games in progress.

Valgora

For middle child Joc and their friend Avery (and sometimes Lauren), I'm running a campaign using a homebrew campaign I found online called Valgora. It's pretty well developed and has some elements I like a lot. The ancient past had a great cataclysm, but the world has been steadily recovering and is in an extended era of peace. The characters are as follows.

• Pyral (⚧ Silver Dragon / 5^th-level Dragon / LG) [Played by Joc]
• Zinc "Zech" Cortielia (♀ Halfling / 5^th-level Bard / CN) [Played by Avery]
• Drest Ranio (♂ Human / 5^th-level Rogue / NG) [Played by Joc]
• Hinkle of Turen (♀ Gnome / 5^th-level Rogue / LN) [Played by Lauren]

There are various NPCs around, including a wife of sorts for Zinc and a recurring villain (or two). And the dinosaur is still at large.

Dark Sun

Lisa and I and our group of grown-up friends are playing a Dark Sun game. The characters are a big group when every is available.

• Joe - Half-giant Cleric
• Michael - Dwarf Fighter / Cleric
• Lisa - Halfling Rogue
• Jess - Elven Fighter / Wizard / Arcane Archer
• Chris - Human Warlock
• Ben - Elan Psion / Uncarnate

The party is escorting a caravan around the Tyr region and the time period is right at the death of Kalak.

Bytopia

Oldest child Reese and their friends, we will be starting a new campaign that is guaranteed to be super non-serious. I'm basing it on the outer planes setting of Bytopia and the three thematic elements they requested were (1) f*cking dinosaurs, (2) all ogres talk like shrek and (3) airships! So that will be fun. They have character concepts that involve memes.

• Sadie (elf cleric)
• Mars (human sorcerer)
• Tyler (half-orc ranger)
• Reese (half-elf rogue)
• Danni (elf bard)

Anyhow, I'm having a blast. Oh and Sammy is running a sort of Elvish Fighter/Mage and the campaign is sort of Zethul, but again I'm being super loose with the rules.

Reddit: Want to learn to play D&D? You can start right now!

New post today caught my eye. Want to learn to play D&D? You can start right now...

It is an interesting post inviting new players to learn about D&D, but what I love most about the comment threads are the gold nuggets of wisdom and links to online tools that can be used in gaming. Here's a few I dug out, but as the post ages it might gain more.

• Monster Advancer Classic
• The Digital Dungeon Master's D&D 5e Pre-made Character Sheets for Levels 1-20, Every Archetype
• RPG Tinker - D&D 5e NPC Generator
• Download: Monster Slayers, The Champions of the Elements - A Dungeons & Dragons^® Adventure for Ages 6 and Up [PDF]
• Download: Monster Slayers, The Heroes of Hesiod - A Dungeons & Dragons^® Adventure for Ages 6 and Up [PDF]

Those last two are geared towards introducing younger kids to the game, which is relevant to my interests as a dad. Another repeatedly mentioned suggestion was Roll20, which I've been hearing about often in my current adult group.

Fire Genasi

I once played in an extended Planescape campaign (2^nd Edition) where I chose a slightly different character race, a half-elemental half-human type creature known as a Fire Genasi. They are a descendant of Efreeti or Fire Spirits who had paired with a human. My character's nickname was Koal, though he had a longer name that the other players never learned to pronounce, and which I can't recall now. Though the four elemental types of genasi always bear some part of their features that undoubtedly marked them as something other than human, the exact feature differed quite a bit. Fire Genasi usually had red or black skin with red hair or sometimes ashen gray. I chose that Koal's skin would be deep black like pitch and his hair would be very light gray. His eyes were dark with red tints and reflected (or shined) red in low light. Personality-wise, like most Fire Genasi, Koal was an arrogant jerk and made several attempts to strike out on his own.

Tonight I was discussing with Nate on the phone the possibility of playing a Fire Genasi in a new online campaign. I was intrigued by this and so was Nate, but I feel it would be important to find a 3^rd edition version of the Fire Genasi to balance correctly. So naturally, my first logical step is to turn to Google.

I wasn't entirely exhaustive in my search, but from what I have found there doesn't appear to be an officially sanctioned version from Wizards of the Coast. There are a few that were posted here and there, but a lot of the sites were down or there seemed to be little interest in the races of Planescape.

First listing I found useful was on Portalkeep.net [site down]. The Google Cache was helpful for what I needed.

Fire Genasi Racial Traits

• +2 Intelligence, -2 Charisma. Fire Genasi have bright minds but are easily angered and poor in dealing with others.
• Medium size humanoid.
• Fire Genasi base speed is 30 feet.
• Control Flame (Sp): Fire Genasi can cause a nonmagical Fire within 10 feet of them to diminish to the level of coals or flare to the brightness of daylight and double the radius of its illumination. This ability does not change the heat output or fuel consumption of the Fire source, lasts 5 minutes, and may be done once per day. they use this ability as a 5th level sorcerer.
• +1 racial bonus on saving throws against all Fire spells and effects. This bonus increases by +1 for every five class levels the Genasi attains.
• Darkvision up to 60 feet.
• Automatic Languages: Common, home region. Bonus Languages: Any (except secret languages, such as Druidic).
• Favoured Class: Fighter.

The one question this result did not answer was whether Fire Genasi have any Level Adjustment for their heritage. The lack of a listing seems to indicate that they do not have one, which seems unusual for this kind of race based on my presumptions.

Here are some other results that I found helpful from a Google Search for "Fire Genasi".

• Quoted above, Portalkeep.net - Fire Genasi [down] [Archived on Google] goes into quite a bit of detail with one full page with everything from history and common names
• Planescape Races [down] [Archived on Google] which does not go into as much detail but gives +1 LA in addition to a +4 on Planar Survival checks
• The Artwork of Amy K. Brown - Fire Genasi - a good artistic representation of the common Fire Genasi encountered in their home plane
• Planetouched Deities (Faerun) - including common deities for Fire Genasi, most likely Tempus as a good choice for Koal
• Wizards.com Community Board - Genasi Revisited - where the capabilities of Fire Genasi in 3^rd edition is discussed
• Planetouched Templates - Planescape fan forum where the capabilities of Fire Genasi in 3^rd edition is discussed