Joe W
Topic Author
Posts: 1
Joined: Fri 02 Sep 2022, 21:37

Workable Rules for larger engagements

Fri 02 Sep 2022, 22:16

Bottom Line Up Front: I think TOR 2e would benefit from a simple way to simulate larger battles. Has anyone found / home-brewed a set of rules for this?

Background: I have run a sporadic campaign of TOR 2e for my wife and a couple of friends since March, and my wife and I have recently also started a cooperative Strider Mode campaign. I am loving the system, so far. The more I get into it, the more I appreciate how the mechanics support a really authentic Middle Earth experience.

That being said, one thing is missing for me. Battles. Some of the most climactic moments of LOTR and the Hobbit happen during pitched battles. I mean, how can you meaningfully fight the Enemy without a battle (unless you happen to the ring-bearer).

Issue: In our Strider Mode campaign, my wife and I have discovered that orcs are massing in Eriador for some obviously bad reason. However, I can foresee our future adventuring will start to break down in the face of this, as there is a limited amount that a pair of adventurers can do to counter this threat. We can, of course, inform Elrond and the Rangers and the folk of Bree about the danger (and that is going to be the crux of our next several sessions), and we can scout orc camps, pick off leaders, discover relevant magical items and lore, etc. But unless we can somehow bring it all together and defeat a large mass of the orcs, we will never really be able to engage the threat in a satisfying way that mitigates it meaningfully, such that Eriador is not under imminent threat of invasion (which, of course, it isn't by the time of LOTR).

I don't foresee a battle of thousands being necessary (like the famous battles of Five Armies, Helm's Deep, or Pelennor Fields), and such a battle wouldn't really fit in canon (which I strive to keep). But an engagement of two sides of a few hundred each seems like it will be necessary.

Request: Has anyone come to a similar conclusion? Has anyone found or created a set of battle rules? (I think there were some in TOR 1e, but I am not sure, as I never bought it).

If you have anything to share, I would be grateful.

PS: I have posted this question on other forums like r/oneringrpg and RPGGeek, and have received some preliminary answers. While I am extremely appreciative of the input I have gotten, no suggestion has, so far, sounded like something I would want to integrate into my game (tastes differ, after all). I am starting to think I may have to homebrew my own rule-set, which has got me thinking about what I want out of any battle rules. Below are my general thoughts on the matter, which may be of interest (or not).

My ideal kind of system would 1) be relatively uncomplicated and narratively focused, such that we don't reduce the battle to a math problem or one giant dice-roll and 2) keep "zoomed in" on our PC's individual actions, but provide a way for our individual actions in combat to both influence and be influenced by the context of the wider battle. I think a good / realistic system would allow for 4 distinct outcomes: 1. the PC's side wins the battle, and the PC (or PCs) are personally victorious (ie: they defeat the foes they engaged), 2. the PC's side wins, but the PC(s) were either killed or forced to flee the battle, 3. the Enemy wins the battle, despite the fact that the PC(s) were personally victorious, and 4. the Enemy wins and the PC(s) were killed or forced to flee.

At the moment (unless someone has an already finished rule-set), I am thinking of mixing the mechanics for combat with those of a skill endeavor--with the actions of the PC(s) in their own combat increasing or decreasing the likelihood of success on a series of meta-rolls (possibly an Oracle roll) that will determine the course of the battle with a pre-determined success threshold, like a skill endeavor. I imagine that, if the battle is turning against the PCs, their combats would get harder (more / tougher enemies), and if things are going well, the PC's combats would get easier.

Just some preliminary musing....
 
Dunheved
Posts: 494
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Location: UK

Re: Workable Rules for larger engagements

Sat 03 Sep 2022, 01:10

I am going to guess that you have explored or examined some of the older forums that were around for TOR1e?
In those places, James Brown had a Mythic Battles set of rules for abstract battles that the Players could participate in. And there were some others too.

If you could look at some of those, you might get a lot of ideas to build your own set.

Quite recently, I used a set piece siege of a village that had been taken over by a mixture of orcs and bandits. I was acting as the LM for a TOR1e game based in the Anduin Vales.

A dozen units (with about 20 Beornings in each unit) stormed and defeated these usurpers. The Bandits numbered about 8 units of comparable size. The Beornings had to defeat the defending archers, breach the fences, and then fight their way in to cross the dead ground and finally scale a single tower acting as a redoubt.

To involve all the Players, I made each one a captain of a Beorning unit. The actual combat was based on Unit v Unit actions per round of combat. It was designed to be an exact parallel of a single PC fighting an NPC in "normal" close combat. The higher the quality of the unit, the better it's weapon skill; I added a d6 for advantages and took one away for disadvantages. It all worked fine, as the Bandits were routed for a defeat of only two Beorning Units.
(There is a bit more I added for the use of battering rams and ladders; as well as the benefits of cover, and having other Units in Support) The whole fight is over on Tavern Keeper, under the name " The Darkening of WILDERLAND" in chapter 14.

In TOR2e the mechanics would be essentially the same. So it would run just like individual combat, except that the unit that comes off worst* MUST retreat to get back to a Supporting Unit, or into some sort of Cover (e.g. some walls or trees). Any Unit that loses and cannot get into support or cover must break and run.

Finally, to get the personal touch, if the Leader of the Unit can roll a Success at Battle, then the next attack by their Unit is a Favoured roll - best of two d12 is used in the attack roll.

* Edit: by worst I mean the lowest Total Combat score. And rolling a Gandalf is an auto-victory! (Adversaries rolling an Eye auto- defeat the Free Unit.) If a Gandalf is rolled by the Player AND an Eye is simultaneously rolled by the Adversary, the Gandalf counts as 12, and the Eye counts as 11, to compare totals. But other folks might choose another more bloody result - both Units are broken and defeated, running away!
Last edited by Dunheved on Sat 03 Sep 2022, 08:36, edited 2 times in total.
 
Asgo
Posts: 143
Joined: Tue 29 Jun 2021, 12:18

Re: Workable Rules for larger engagements

Sat 03 Sep 2022, 03:16

...
To involve all the Players, I made each one a captain of a Beorning unit. The actual combat was based on Unit v Unit actions per round of combat. It was designed to be an exact parallel of a single PC fighting an NPC in "normal" close combat. The higher the quality of the unit, the better it's weapon skill; I added a d6 for advantages and took one away for disadvantages. It all worked fine, as the Bandits were routed for a defeat of only two Beorning Units.
(There is a bit more I added for the use of battering rams and ladders; as well as the benefits of cover, and having other Units in Support) The whole fight is over on Tavern Keeper, under the name " The Darkening of WILDERLAND" in chapter 14.

In TOR2e the mechanics would be essentially the same. So it would run just like individual combat, except that the unit that comes off worst MUST retreat to get back to a Supporting Unit, or into some sort of Cover (e.g. some walls or trees). Any Unit that loses and cannot get into support or cover must break and run.

Finally, to get the personal touch, if the Leader of the Unit can roll a Success at Battle, then the next attack by their Unit is a Favoured roll - best of two d12 is uswdmin the attack roll.
so you basically just moved the frame of reference of what an attack "is" and with some minor rules you basically have a battle if you frame it descriptively that way.
Nice, and it sounds like it would work particularly well with the abstracted combat stances as details like adapting/scaling positioning can be avoided.
Side effect of the abstraction is that you can have maps of your battlefield for visualization almost at any scale since you aren't bound to a small tactical scale.

Bonus, the players don't need to learn complete new rules. And having an extended prep phase creating and organizing those units (aka stating them out) would be a nice way to give players a way to personalize their units.

It sounds like the only limitation for this system is, that you basically have to split the players over different units to not complicate things
 
Dunheved
Posts: 494
Joined: Wed 11 Mar 2020, 02:07
Location: UK

Re: Workable Rules for larger engagements

Sat 03 Sep 2022, 08:24

@Asgo. Actually you have summarised what I observed as the LM during the battle really well. Thanks.
As my own house-rules go, this has been the one I am most pleased with. It was done on-line and no one asked me about any of the mechanics once we started. The players narrated what they did, and which units they attacked.

What was easy was giving an extra 1d6 for clever narration of tactics (e.g outflanking an enemy). Or giving 1d6 to the adversaries defending behind a fence. After the first time this happened, the Players were trying out all sorts of things.
E.g. One player narrated how they took their Unit downriver to attempt a surprise assault from the beach/harbour area on the enemy Tower. Great move: but unsupported. His unit was defeated and routed by an unlucky dice roll. I let him use Healing to save a few of his warriors, and get back to the boats. When he reported back to Ennalda (The Beorning general), she allocated one of the other Units as a fresh command for him, and he got his revenge later: storming the same Tower with three other Units in support on ladders.

I was also planning to spring a surprise on the whole army by having another 200+ orcs suddenly appear from a tunnel system under the village. Except my surprise was foiled by a spectacular success with a battering ram, when it collapsed a wooden gatehouse and opened up the orcs waiting in the hidden trenches. That lead to a mass slaughter!

Since you mention it, I did draw a map (with a grid) to post on-line so players could see which units were nearby. Archers could shoot up to 3 grids away, and the cavalry unit could move twice as fast as the others. But these were just my rules for this occasion: I found I could add in things as the Players came up with them.
Since TOR2e is very much geared into adding or subtracting d6, or using Favoured and ill-favoured rolls, I think that these rules would easily translate across. The key thing for me was to use the familiar rules and just scale them up.
 
Dunheved
Posts: 494
Joined: Wed 11 Mar 2020, 02:07
Location: UK

Re: Workable Rules for larger engagements

Sat 03 Sep 2022, 08:45

And having an extended prep phase creating and organizing those units (aka stating them out) would be a nice way to give players a way to personalize their units. ONE

It sounds like the only limitation for this system is, that you basically have to split the players over different units to not complicate things TWO
ONE. DARN! I didn't think of this. Excellent point. (To be fair to my river raiding player, he narrated a beautiful piece for the attack, and more importantly, for the Retreat with the few survivors he brought back.) The individual players instead went on a scouting mission to reconnoitre the fortified village on the day before.


TWO. And each Player was given their own Unit to run as you advise. So I strongly agree with you there.
(One player was absent for a while, so I did give that PC control over the battering rams, which was a script that wrote itself really, and I just narrated it.)
 
Eluadin
Posts: 18
Joined: Fri 10 Jul 2020, 20:41

Re: Workable Rules for larger engagements

Sun 11 Sep 2022, 11:22

Reach out to James Brown on the forum; he has a system called Mythic Battles. Got a lot if compliments from the game designer on its authenticity and compatibility with TOR mechanics. I might have a link to it, I’ll rummage around and see.
 
baldrick0712
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Re: Workable Rules for larger engagements

Sun 11 Sep 2022, 12:53

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