Rules for Commanding and Sustaining Armies

A while ago, I created a series of custom classes that cover ideas not represented by traditional D&D classes. Among that list was a class called the Commander, whose powers derive from being able to lead and empower allies to victory. And since the birthplace of D&D (and thereby tabletop games at large) is in miniature wargaming, it's not a huge stretch to add the commanding of armies to the game. In this guide, I will outline the rules required to allow your players to command armies with or without the Commander class--read on for the full treatment on how to expand the scale of your battles. 

The first step is in building an army. If you're using the Commander class, build an army means using the Persuasive skill to convince people to join you. Without using the class, you can also use a Persuasion, Performance, or even Intimidation check to get people to join your team. You might also pay soldiers to be a part of your cause. For paid soldiers, use the following breakdown: 

• Infantry: 5 copper per day
• Archers: 7 copper per day
• Heavy Armor: 8 copper per day
• Cavalry: 9 copper per day
• Lieutenants (can command smaller units of soldiers): 1 silver per day
• Mages: 1 silver per day
• Siege Engineer: 1 silver per day
• Healers: 15 copper per day
• Player Character Level NPCS (at roughly the same level as the party's level): 2 silver per day

As you can see, building and sustaining an army can get expensive quickly. A contingent of 50 people in a balanced unit might include 20 infantry, 12 archers, 8 heavy armor, 3 lieutenants, 3 mages, 1 siege engineer, 2 healers, and 1 leveled NPC. This would cost a total of 368 copper pieces, which translates to 3.68 gold pieces. And this is only the cost of paying the salaries of the soldiers. In the section on sustaining armies below, we'll also take into account the cost of feeding them and keeping them supplied with gear. In some campaigns, your players will have more than enough money to pay a small army, or even a fairly large one, but there are other concerns to worry about besides money. We'll get to that soon; for now, let's finish building the army. 

When your players contract these soldiers, you will probably want to give the important ones names and personalities. Your players can just interact with nameless, faceless soldiers, but it's much more vivid and exciting when the players start to get to know some of the NPCs around them. To that end, you can use this database of NPC names and personalities to make it easier to make them a part of the game. At the very least, you want to give a first name to the specialized units. Everything in the bulleted list above from Lieutenants down should be given a name. If the party utilizes the army well, figures like healers and player-levelled NPCs will become like extensions of the party, so it's important to be able to characterize them. 

You also want to have the players convince the soldiers of the validity of the cause they're fighting for. Even if the party ultimately misleads the army about their cause, most of the soldiers are going to want to know what it is they're going into battle to do. You may incorporate Persuasion/Performance/Intimidation challenges to determine this, and you might just have most soldiers accept a simple answer if the paycheck is good enough. 

Then we have the second step: sustaining the army. Paying them ensures that they show up, but you have to care for the soldiers' needs as well. The most pressing consideration in this vein is in food. As commanders of the army, the party can arrange for mass amounts of rations to be delivered to the army from nearby towns; you can apply a 2 copper piece per day charge for every soldier. For the hypothetical group of 50 soldiers I used above, this would translate to 1 gold piece per day to feed everyone. But you don't have to buy food. You can also have your soldiers forage and hunt. If one-quarter of the army hunts and forages in woodlands or other abundant areas, they can feed the entire army for one day. If the area is less plentiful in terms of food, one-half of the army must hunt and forage to feed the army for the day. If the army decides to pillage a farm, the entire army can eat for one hour's worth of work from one-quarter of the army. However, hunting in others' hunting grounds will upset the locals, and repeated instances of it may result in a conflict between the locals and the army. Similarly, pillaging a farm will enrage the locals, who may go so far as to attack the soldiers. 

There are other concerns with sustaining the army as well. Their gear must be kept in proper condition or risk losing its effectiveness. The party can pay 1 copper piece per soldier per day to maintain all gear at the soldiers' own work. They can also hire or designate a quartermaster, whose job is to maintain all of the army's gear--the quartermaster rank confers an additional 5 copper pieces per day to the chosen soldier. We also need to worry about the soldiers' morale. After losing soldiers, some of the other soldiers will be upset and may consider leaving the army. Disagreements with the party can also lead to this reluctance to keep fighting. The party can use Persuasion/Performance/Intimidation in order to influence the soldiers. In general, a change to several soldiers' moods or thinking should ripple through the rest of the army, with the other soldiers updating their thoughts to match the others--but this won't be true of difficult-to-believe ideas. 

The final ingredient in this recipe for armies is in the actual commanding of those armies in battle. In order to effectively issue orders to the soldiers, the party must be able to be heard by those soldiers. In the pitch of battle, this can become an issue. This is where Lieutenants become highly helpful. The Lieutenants can act as intermediaries, relaying commands from the party to the soldiers. This still means that the Lieutenants must be close enough to the party to be able to communicate. One workaround to this is through the common D&D item which allows people to communicate at a distance without issue. I've heard many names for this item--the name doesn't matter too much--what matters is that the right people on the battlefield hear the commands. 

Commanding an army is about more than telling troops where to go. It also means setting objectives for the soldiers. Some sample commands that can allow your troops to execute specific actions: 

• Taking a Location: You can tell your troops to assault a specific area. It may be an attack on a fortified location, or it may be a race to take that position first. Troops will fight off enemies in an effort to keep this position. 
• Hold the Line: You can tell your troops to defend a location. With a DC 15 Persuasion/Performance/Intimidation check, your party can grant your soldiers a +1 to AC while defending. 
• Eliminate a Specific Enemy: You can direct your troops to focus their assault on a specific enemy. This can be especially useful in the enemy forces have healers, mages, or other experts. 
• Rallying Cry: You can direct your troops to regroup and empower them. With a DC 15 Persuasion/Performance/Intimidation check, your party can grant all your soldiers a +1 to attack for three rounds. 
• Clean-Up: You can direct your troops to take prisoners or wipe out remaining troops. When your troops have a decisive advantage, you can end the battle earlier by pushing your troops to overwhelm the enemy forces. In this situation, the party's army gains advantage to overpower the remaining enemies. 

The final ingredient for commanding an army is in the actual damage done by the soldiers. We could choose to run standard combat to determine the fate of battles, but with so many soldiers involved, the numbers get out of control quickly. That's why I've simplified army combat to reflect average damage output rather than making the DM roll attacks for every character. Here are the health and damage ratings for each of the soldiers listed above: 

• Infantry: 5 damage/turn, 15 hp
• Archers: 5 damage/turn, 12 hp
• Heavy Armor: 5 damage/turn, 20 hp
• Cavalry: 10 damage/turn, 12 hp
• Lieutenants (can command smaller units of soldiers): 3 damage/turn, 18 hp
• Mages: 12 damage/turn, 15 hp
• Siege Engineer: 12 damage/turn, 12 hp
• Healers: 3 damage/turn, 20 hp
• Player Character Level NPCS (at roughly the same level as the party's level): variable--at least 15 damage/turn, at least 30 hp

On any given turn, soldiers automatically deal their damage per turn to the enemy within reach of their choosing. They also take proportional damage from the enemies striking them on the enemies' turns. When a soldier on any team reaches 0 hp, they are rendered unconscious. At the end of the battle, unless actions by an army overrule this, half of the unconscious troops die, and the other half are collected by the remaining troops and nursed back to health. It's a good idea to have the players in the party roll for their attacks and damage and have NPC soldiers roll to attack the party, as this keeps them engaged with the combat, but spare yourself the details of the many soldiers and apply regular damage when player characters are not involved. 

There you have it: all the rules you need to add entire armies into your game. If your players are excited by the grand scale of this combat, you can build a campaign around it. Rather than simply defeating the ultimate villain, the party must reckon with their assembled armies. It would shape up to a dramatic and strategic showdown between the party and the commander of the opposed armies. With complex terrain and other complicating factors, you can keep these battles fresh. So get out there, build up your armies, and raise combat to the next level. 

That's all for now. Coming soon: how to use historical research as inspiration, how to implement Hope and Despair as a storytelling mechanism, and a one-shot adapted from the movie Napoleon Dynamite. Until next time, happy gaming!

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