D&D: Want Mass Combat in Your ‘Dragonlance’ Campaign? Even WotC Says ‘Play a Different Game’
In Shadow of the Dragon Queen, war comes to Krynn. But if you want rules for running mass combats, you’ll have to look elsewhere.
From the fields of Pellenor to the Battle of Brenna, fantasy stories are full of mass combats between deadly armies. Hordes of soldiers with swords and shields, rushing headlong towards their opposite seems to be written into the fabric of fantasy tales. And the opportunities for character moments, thrilling fights, and epic romances alike are enough to power a whole series of games. Looking at you Fire Emblem.
So how will WotC bring mass combat to D&D? The short answer is, by releasing a companion board/strategy game that releases alongside the main adventure. The long answer is the rest of this article.
Because even the designers of D&D know the game has its limits. But just take a look at how they handle War in Dragonlance. There’s actually a pretty ingenious set of rules. But if you want a fight with hundreds of people, you’ll want a different game.
Dragonlance Mass Combat – Fantasy Battles For D&D
In Dragonlance, the War of the Lance is the defining narrative of the campaign. Your adventurers will be heroes swept up in the tides of war. As the Dragon Armies of Takhisis invade the lands of Solamnia, war plays an important role in the campaign. But you won’t be taking command of squads of soldiers.
After all, in the adventure, you’re still the normal D&D character. And Dungeons & Dragons, for all its strengths, breaks down a bit once more than 10 or so combatants on either side get involved. But that doesn’t mean mass combat has no place in the game.
As WotC suggests, you can play a different game. In the video, they mention Warriors of Krynn, the companion piece to Shadow of the Dragon Queen. Warriors of Krynn is a strategy/board game that does have rules for units of fantasy troops moving around the battlefield. And it has mechanics for player character-type heroes, including rules designed to “import” your D&D character. So you can still play a personal role in the fighting.
But the other way Shadow of the Dragon Queen handles mass combats is through “battlefield encounters.” And this approach feels like exactly what you’d want. Instead of an encounter taking place in a forest or dungeon, it takes place “in a battlefield.” D&D’s Wes Schneider outlines the process in the video above. These are moments where “the camera” of the game zooms in on the players, who are fighting amid a raging battle.
To this end, there’s a table of battlefield events that a DM can roll on to see what happens. Much like lair actions, and how they represent an epic monster’s influence on the land around them, the battlefield gets an initiative count of its own. It goes last, and at the end of each turn, the battlefield changes. Riderless horses might stampede through, or stray arrow volleys can pierce your combat.
And this is a pretty ingenious way of handling it. It simplifies the mechanics of war or the like while keeping things personal. D&D, at the end of the day, is all about characters. And these rules keep the focus on the characters. So you can still have your setpiece encounters set in a massive battle.
You might just want to grab Warriors of Krynn too
