Looking for advice in running mass battles

[Glistam]

Next month I'll be running the season finale of my Heroes Unlimited campaign, where the players are going to be part of a massive raid on the main villain's lair. I intend to run this with the P.C.'s facing off against their own "group" of foes while the rest of the N.P.C.'s do battle in a vague, hazy, glossed-over way.

I've got two other one-shot games I'm working on that will do something similar, where there is a massive battle occurring around the P.C.'s that they are a part of, but they will be influencing only a (possibly significant) portion of it. So this upcoming Heroes game is sort of a test for how I'll do a similar type of Rifts or Chaos Earth battle.

I'm not sure if there's a better way of doing what I'm looking to do. I ultimately want to simulate the mass chaos of battle but not get bogged down by the rules in doing so. More of a narrative combat rather than a rules-heavy dice combat. In my Heroes game, I want to describe the police, suited up police, and other heroes all clashing against the mooks, the buffed-up mooks, and the villians, without delving into the madness of making every single roll. This is what's happening around the players. Meanwhile, they will have their own battles, and we will be rolling for that.

One thing I'm planning to do, while the mass of combat is the focus, is having abbreviated stats for the N.P.C. fodder for when they interact with or around the P.C.'s. Basically I'm thinking of something like this:

The bottom tier of N.P.C.'s are the basic villain mooks. They'll be last in initiative and any successful hit that does damage will drop them. They do 1D6 in melee and 3D6 ranged, but only do ranged when they're not in melee. No bonuses to strike or parry. One action per melee to impact the P.C.'s.

The next tier of N.P.C.'s are still basically mooks, but slightly tougher. This is either because of body armor, or drug enhancements, or minor mutations, or whatever. These guys take two successful damage hits to drop, or alternatively one big damage hit, like 30+ S.D.C.. Their initiative is before the mooks, but still below everyone else. They do 2D6 in melee and between 4D6 to 6D6 in ranged. Conversely, they may have no range and just do 4D6 to 6D6 in melee. +2 to all ranged combat actions, +3 to all melee combat actions. Two actions per melee to impact the P.C.'s. There are one of these guys for every 2 or so mooks.

The final "quick stat" tier I'm toying with is the step just below the big guns. These are the SWAT in power armor, these are the over-amped mutants on drugs, these are the extremely minor throw-away super villains and heroes. They have initiative over the other two categories but it's still not rolled for. They can take 4 successful damage hits before dropping, damage over 30 counts as two hits but damage over 60+ doesn't count as 3 or more (unless it's way over 60 - judgement call). They deal 4D6 to 6D6 damage, melee or ranged. +4 to all ranged combat actions, +6 to all melee combat actions. Up to four actions per melee to impact the P.C.'s. There is one of these guys for every 6 or so of the others.

One thing I want to keep in mind, these "quick stats" are for the characters around the P.C.'s. They aren't necessarily the stats for the ones they're directly fighting. But it gives me a rough guideline for how to deal with when/if the P.C.'s try to interact with them, or if I want to do some rolls to see how a section of combat is going. None of the major villains have quick stats, they are fully fleshed out. So this also functions as "quick stats" for when the major villains start tearing into the fray.

I feel like this can sort of work, but I'm wondering if anyone done anything like this before - mass combat battles which the P.C.'s are just a part of? If so, how did you run it? And more importantly, how did you keep it running smoothly?

If you haven't done this sort of thing, have you thought about it? How does this idea sound in that regard?

Any help or advice anyone could provide would be appreciated. Thank you.

[drewkitty ~..~]

In one of the rifters (20's or teens I think) there is a PF artical that deals with large format battles between armies.
(I think it is the same one with the h2h Fencing in it.)

[Glistam]

In one of the rifters (20's or teens I think) there is a PF artical that deals with large format battles between armies.
(I think it is the same one with the h2h Fencing in it.)

I looked through my Rifters first, before I posted this, and sadly I believe that the article you're referring to was more along the lines of grouping units together and handling them on a mass scale that way. That wasn't entirely the direction I wanted to take this - the combat I intend to run is going to be more of a free-for-all and less of a structured wargaming event.

[eliakon]

I had a game which due to events resulted in the PC group (a coterie of demi-gods) spearheading a divisional assault on an enemy city, complete with naval support. Since I was not really planning on gaming out a battle involving tens of thousands of soldiers on both sides I cheated.

The way I did it was that I had stated up the various tiers of NPCs ahead of time, and knew who was going to be facing what.
Then I figured out, based on the relative strengths what the general outcome would be, barring intervention.

Then when we started I kept track of how the PCs were doing. If they were wining, covering ground, destroying fortifications, and taking prisoners then I moved results up on my chart. If they ran, died, got taken prisoner or other such things then I moved it down.

At the end of the day I was able to give a summation of just how the battle had gone, complete with casualties, prisoners tallies, and other such information.

Hopefully this helps

[Genhuman]

And in case you are wondering, the end result was.... some of our own teammates tipped off the enemy leadership ahead of time, and they were able to teleport in reinforcements in a matter of a couple of minutes, instead of a couple of hours it should have taken. We were forced to withdraw.


Back on topic.
I do something similar myself. If there is a mass battle, I prepare a small battle for just the PCs, and depending upon how they do in the small battle, I mirror their results in the big battle.