Mixing it Up Time!

I’m running Kobold Press’ Scarlet Citadel (5E D&D) for one of my groups. I’m also a sucker for big fantasy battles, so mixed in MCDM’s Kingdoms and Warfare. Highly recommended!

Kingdoms and Warfare by MCDM is a D&D 5E supplement that allows players to run their own domain and go to war against various enemies. It introduces new rules for domain intrigue and warfare, as well as new action-oriented monsters, magic items, and a complete adventure.

Scarlet Citadel by Kobold Press is a dungeon crawl adventure for 5E D&D that spans 10 levels of play. The adventure includes a town setting, a multi-level dungeon, new monsters, spells, items, and traps, and a map folio with poster maps and overlays. It is set in the Midgard campaign setting, but can be adapted to any fantasy world. It’s both a great and highly flawed adventure, but that’s for the Fixing Scarlet Citadel post here.

Scarlet Citadel and Kingdoms and Warfare books — The books

Many DMs prefer to keep the big battles as narrative backdrop and just describe them while player characters do PC things. Some of us like to play to see what happens. I’m in the later group, but I don’t want a six hour Avalon Hill style battle, I want something abstract and with concepts easy for a 5E player to grasp.

That’s Kingdoms and Warfare’s sweet spot.

I only used the Warfare chapter, and hand-waved the Kingdom part. Might use that later.

Deep inside the ruins of Scarlet Citadel a group of trollkin mercenaries hang out in the ruins of an old dwarven barracks, basically doing nothing but waiting for the PCs to come and fight them. However, according to the book, they long to be out and about assaulting good folk, raiding, and being warlike jerks.

So after my PCs had trashed the upper levels of the dungeon, I had the boss (Gellert the Gruesome) send the trollkins out to raid the town the PCs had set up shop in, Redtower. A small town with a wooden wall and a nice big red tower.

MCDM didn’t provide trollkin units (trollkin being a Kobold Press creation), but not to worry. I took hobgoblin units and added regeneration and changed their name. Done. And used the trained owlbear unit from the Special Unit Deck. The battlefield is not a map, but an abstraction, but it does support walls and towers. And mud. I used mud for the small stream by Redtower.

Since this was our first Warfare game, each player only controlled one unit. At least until round three when the cavalry (the Knights of Khors for you Midgard fans) showed up. We started with just archers and infantry, including some peasant levies bolstered by druid magic.

Every PC uses extra powers from their class to buff their unit. Our fighter gave extra damage to their infantry. The warlock gave a wand of acid (great vs. regenerating foes) to their unit. The bard made the enemy afraid, and so on.

My trollkins assaulted the walls, my owl bears turned from infantry to calvary for one round and attacked the flank, but alas, the PCs held the line. Attacks use a d20, and are very swingy. A string of bad rolls on my part put the baddies on the back foot. In hindsight I could have added harpies to the mix, but that’s hindsight for you. While the PCs’ peasant levy was mauled, the trollkins ended up loosing at the end of round 3, and retreated on round 4. .

Then we cut to the PCs who had come to challenge the trollkin leaders face to face. That combat took place after the battle at our table, but simultaneously with it in the fiction. At the end of round 3, the trollkins know they lost the battle and the PCs get huge morale boosts with extra actions. A trollkin shaman raised their hands “We fought with honor, but we lost. Allow us to withdraw to the northlands and never trouble you again.”

The PCs agreed, and ended game night with a double victory.

If that sounds fun to you, check out Kingdoms and Warfare. You can add it to your campaign. You could add it to Pirates of Atlantis, maybe on Earthforge Isle! Kingdoms and Warfare is meant for 5E, but you could use it for any fantasy d20 game, like Pathfinder or 13th Age, with little or no work.

More about Scarlet Citadel soon.

You can get Kingdoms and Warfare here.

Have you ever run a mass fantasy battle in the middle of a roleplaying game? What rules did you use? How did it work out?