The Course of Events

blasts a gap in your front lines, it’s time to commit the reserves to plug the gap. If you’ve fought your way to the doors of the castle you’re assaulting, commit the reserves to break through the doors after the main assault has worn down the defense. Before that critical juncture, the reserves are usually lurking somewhere behind the front lines, often on or near a road that gives them quick access to the battlefield, near the headquarters, or atop a hill or other terrain feature that lets them monitor the course of events. Mark their location on your battlefield map.

Supply Lines: Soldiers have to eat and drink (well, most of them do), archers need arrows, and wounded troopers need access to bandages and healing magic. Unless the army is foraging for all its needs, those supplies are coming from somewhere behind the front lines. Mark on your battlefield map the routes that supply wagons take to reach the army, and where the army stores its supplies prior to dispersing them to front-line units.

Fantastic Elements: All the elements you’ve drawn on your battlefield map are ones that you’d find on a real-world battlefield map. But D&D is a game of high fantasy, so many of the battles will have an element of the fantastic about them. Don’t be shy about adding overtly magical elements to your battlefields, whether they’re just there for descriptive effect or have some strategic function. Maybe the fantastic element is a tool one army can use to gain an advantage over the other, or perhaps the fantastic element is what the two armies are fighting over. For example, a huge pillar of fire appears at the center of the battlefield, and neither army knows why. It illuminates 400 feet away as brightly as daylight, even at night, and the battlefield squares adjacent to it are areas of severe heat (as described in Heat Dangers, page 303 of the Dungeon Master’s Guide). The presence of the pillar won’t have a huge impact on the battle, but it’ll make the battle more memorable, and it might lead to a future adventure if the characters are curious about why it appeared. Or perhaps the battlefield has Stonehenge-like circles scattered across it, and anyone standing within such a circle gains fast healing 1. Control of the circles becomes an important key to winning the battle, because battered units can more quickly restore themselves and rejoin the fray. A portal between an underground realm and the

Elemental Plane of Earth might draw the attention of warring dwarf clans, both of whom will stop at nothing to claim the portal and start mining gems from the caverns of the Plane of Earth. The inky-black pit surrounded by crumbling rock is the focal point of the battle, and whichever army seizes and holds it wins the battle. THE COURSE OF EVENTS

Now you know how the battlefield looks at the beginning of the battle. But just as no plan survives contact with the enemy, no battlefield map is accurate once the trumpets of war sound. Go back to the copies you made of the battlefield map. Now consider how the battle would play out if the PCs weren’t taking part. At periodic time increments—every two hours during the day and once at night works for most battles—draw a new map that shows how troops have moved around. You’re creating a time-lapse version of your battlefield map, taking the battle from its beginning to its conclusion. That means you’re deciding who wins the battle—and that’s okay. The PCs will still have their chance to influence events using victory points (explained on page 78). Right now, you’re establishing the baseline result. If the PCs are clever and heroic, they can earn enough victory points to turn the tide of battle upward from the baseline. If they’re cowardly, unlucky, or overmatched, their army might do worse than the baseline result you’ve established. Concern yourself only with major troop movements— ones that result in territory changing hands or that otherwise have an impact on the outcome of the battle. For example, a battle between orcs and elves might begin with an orc infantry charge across no-man’s-land, which is repulsed by elf archers. Two hours later, elf skirmishers try to

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MOVEMENT ON THE BATTLEFIELD MAP

One convenient aspect of the 200-feet-per-square scale is that 200 feet happens to be how far an armored foot soldier will march in a minute’s time, given good terrain. That makes it easier to figure out how long it takes to get from one part of the battlefield to another. Troops can hustle, of course, but they’ll also have to contend with all the terrain features you drew that slow movement, such as forests, bogs, and so on. One of the most important “terrain features” troops must contend with is the presence of other friendly troops. Unlike the tactical scale, which allows creatures to move through friendly squares unhindered, the battlefield map scale imposes a half-speed penalty for moving through a friendly unit. No matter how well organized they are, it takes time for two crowds of people to move through each other.

Because of the small scale of the battlefield map, it’s easiest to just count up the number of ways movement is impeded, and cut the unit’s speed in half for each one. Simpler is better on the battlefield map, because you’re just trying to get to the next encounter—and hence the next fun playing experience. All the following conditions cut movement on the battlefield map in half: • Significant terrain in the square, such as forests or hills. Count each terrain element separately; a square with both forest and hills will reduce movement to one-quarter normal. • Friendly units in the square. • Significant fortifications in the square. • Unit is trying to move stealthily. • Unit is moving in the dark (even if it has light sources or darkvision; it’s hard to navigate when you can see only a few score feet in front of you). pqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqrs