Massed Combat in LoM - Number of Events in a battle

Games Discussion Ars Magica
1

I have a question about massed combat I'm just not quite getting from the book.

How many Combat encounters should there be for a battle, and how do you decide what battle factor ease to assign them?

Should this just be one combat encounter per player character? The book at one point says to run a combat encounter for each character whilst in another it says that three is the typical number of events., though the SG may want to vary this - do people usually only play 3, one for each 'stage' of battle with the relevant difficulties, or do you run more and if so how do you decide what battle factor ease to assign?

I'd really appreciate hearing how people deal with massed combat and how you determine what battle ease factor events should have in your games? What have peoples experience with massed combat been?

2

The first time I read it, I took it to be three difficulty rolls, and for each you assign an encounter/event of appropriate difficulty. I think the point is to have each of the three focus on a different character, but have their event involve as many of the players as possible. Obviously, this is easiest if the players all have a character (companion/grog) close to each other or working as part of the same unit.