5E Mass Combat Tracker

[bayne7400]

https://forge.fantasygrounds.com/shop/items/184/view

Now you can easily run mass battles inside Fantasy Grounds with the 5E ruleset! With this extension, you build your armies and you assign your commanders. The extension does all the calculations for battle rating, morale, and space. All Combat rolls are imbedded into the tracker. Your players can lead an army and will get their own mini battle menu to monitor the units battle rating, perform attack/defense rolls (with advantage and disadvantage), and roll for morale.

Check out these two videos for more information. The first goes over the basic Mass Combat Tracker. The second is a short video showing two last minute additions. ( A mini battle rating calculator and a button that you will use to calculate battle ratings before the battle starts).

Mass Combat Tracker Overview
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_jYmkSuxVU

Short Update Video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTHMWToCmMU

Unearthed Arcana Play Test Rules- WOTC
https://media.wizards.com/2017/dnd/d...at_MCUA_v1.pdf

For bug reports or for features you would like to see message me here or on Discord Bayne#7400. Thanks.

[damned]

Well done. Nice work.

[MeAndUnique]

Super cool. I had completely forgotten about that UA, so thanks for the reminder as well as supporting it!

[bayne7400]

Thank you. Hopefully people enjoy it!

[dokakbey]

Is there a place other than Forge where I can buy it? PayPal is banned in my country and I can't pay for that reason

[bayne7400]

No I am sorry only the forge.

[bayne7400]

Updated this today. Button behavior is now more as expected. I also cleaned up some icons graphics and some of the scripting. This was one of my first extensions so lots of areas to improve it. I look forward to feedback from people.

[Ghostwheel]

Hi There!
Thanks for your work on this. I am just about to wrap up an 18 month campaign I am DMing for some friends and family. I anticipate we have about 3-4 sessions remaining, and I wanted to end things in an epic way. I've been looking at ways folks have carried out mass combat in 5e and the 2017 UA system seems like it can work well enough for what I'm shooting for. Your extension sealed the deal.
I have a couple questions for you...well really a question and an ask for what I consider an improvement.

First the "Ask". I'm finding it very frustrating that large units with higher CR individuals (>= 1) tend to generate BR numbers that make the d20 rolled by the player/PC irrelevant. Even if they roll a 20, the final combination of 20 +BR is essentially = BR. In an earlier version of the Mass Combat rules (see for example Chapter 9 of the D and D Rules Cyclopedia available at DriveThroughRPG), the player/PC adds the BR to a d% (i.e. not a d20, as described in the 2017 UA rules).
"Results: When the BR is modified as described above, each player rolls d% and adds the modified BR to the result. the total is the combat result. The player with the highest combat result wins."

I don't pretend to know the math that went into the 2017 UA rules, but I have to think that there is a typo or misunderstanding of what is supposed to be happening by allowing the PC/player to affect the outcome with a roll. There obviously needs to be a good balance between the BR and the range of values contributed by the PC/player's roll. Using a d% might not make as much sense if the initial BR is small. So, I'm thinking about scenarios where using a d20 or d% is preferable at the start of the battle and we would use that throughout.

So...my ask is that you include an option/button to generate a d% + BR result from the mini mass combat window. That would be amazing and would make the tool much more flexible for me. What would be AMAZING, is if you made that die roll box editable by the DM, so I could CHOOSE what the players roll (i.e. d20, 2d20, 5d20, d%, etc). Then we would be free to pick a die combination that was well suited for a balance between allowing the PC/player's roll to have an impact and making the BR meaningful.

My question is this: I've read that very soon (in the next couple of weeks), FGU will release an update that will break many extensions. Can you please try to make any updates for this extension to keep it working when this happens. I would be incredibly disappointed to bring my players up to speed on this combat system and extension, only to have it break during the epic conclusion of our campaign.

Thanks in advance for considering all of this. I think the addition of an editable dice window will go along way to bringing this system to a lot more tables. It is not fully baked as a combat system, but it think with this change it will work very well for my group (and probably others).

[bayne7400]

First. I always keep my extensions updated.

I noticed the same thing with the BR roll but it per the rules. So basically your saying the roll is a d100 not a d20 but same mechanic? I don't have the book you are referring to.

[Ghostwheel]

First. I always keep my extensions updated.

Thanks. That is awesome and much appreciated.

I noticed the same thing with the BR roll but it per the rules. So basically your saying the roll is a d100 not a d20 but same mechanic? I don't have the book you are referring to.

Yes. A d100 option along with the existing d20 would be great. If what you can do is hard code a d100 and d20 options, I would be happy with that.

But even more preferable would be to allow the dm to edit the PC roll component of that roll (i.e. define that part of the roll is 1d20, or 2d20, or 1d100).
I know what you have is designed to work with the UA RAW. But as with a lot of the UA stuff, when it gets play tested the cracks appear. The big issue for me is the scalability of this mechanic.

In the end, the player's die/dice roll has to be on the order of (i.e. within about a factor of 2-5 or so) the starting BR. If the die/dice roll is less than 10% (or so) of the BR, it's irrelevant. If the starting BR is less than 10% (or so) of the die/dice roll, then the BR does not matter. For either of them to matter, the need to be less than 10% different. Probably more like within 25%-30%.

So making the player roll part of the ([player roll] + BR) = contested challenge score calculation editable by the DM would be AMAZING. It would go a long way to making the mechanic work.
I'm probably not being as clear as I need to be, so if you wanted to chat on discord at some point I'd be up for that. Otherwise, I'm happy to have a convo here. I think what you've done is really cool and I can imagine using it quite a bit. But the UA rules are just not set up for the kind of scalability (i.e. skirmish to all out war) most of us need to make this worth bringing into our game.