[Mass Combat] When do the rules break?

[Kallatari]

I've used Mass Combat for "small combat" of a 6-10 on the PC's side (PC plus allies/sidekicks) versus 20-30 opponents. I find it does work well to speed up combat, but with a few minor tweaks of my own.

First, as someone pointed out, the duration of a round of combat is out of whack for small groups. You need to shorten the rounds down to 10 minutes, or 5 minutes, or even less.

Second, I modified the Misfortunes of War, in which, if you succeed the roll (i.e., suffer a misfortune), you take a hit that does a damage roll equal to the average damage roll of the enemy, with an extra hit for every 2 points by which the roll succeeded. You can apply DR normally. On a critical success, it's a critical hit - or you got hit by a more powerful opponent. Note, I've made this change for all types of Mass Combat, not just small scale, as I have PC with extremely wide ranging DRs, so I find this is the best way to take that effect it into account. Likewise, it also helps make the difference in damage taken between enemies who are humans with swords, or giants with giant two-handed axes.

Lastly, changes to casualties rules. It doesn't work well when you're dealing with only PCs in your army. A 50% casualty means nothing when only the Misfortunes of War will have any effect on their HP. So instead of representing casualties, I use it to represents supplies/expendables - if the PC suffer 50% casualties, then they've used 50% of their ammo, FP, mana points, charges, potions, grenades, etc. (note, it doesn't affect HP). I keep the penalty to the Tactics rolls because of "casualties", but it doesn't affect the PCs themselves. NPC with the party are fair game, however, unless they're Allies. edit: This also helps set the tone for the rest of the adventure, so they know what state they're in after defeating the evil warlord's 50 guards outside the palace and now they enter to face the warlord himself.