I have a small war looming in my saga (Welsh vs Normans with the poor covenant stuck on the border). I'm wanting to give the group combat a little "test drive" this weekend, just to see how it works. Since one of our companions is a Norman knight, thought I might play out a small border skirmish in our next session.
I'm wondering if anyone has any tips for running a group combat. Thanks
arm everyone (the good guys) with their weapon of choice, so that their specializatiin bonus counts towards the Trained Group Bonus total.
Another question, I know the rules say groups should be between 1-6 members, but do things "break" if you have larger groups? Could I have a group of 20 men at arms, or should I break it down into 4 groups of 5?
You can have larger groups, but smaller units are more effective. The Trained Group Bonus is the sum of the Martial Ability scores of the members (hich is why I suggested arming them wit their weapon of choice), but the limit is capped at 3x the leaders score in Leadership.
But how large is this combbat scenario you are imagining? I would only woryabout the unit the PC's are part of, and do the rest by fiat or use a different larger scale wargame.
What I was planning was having the knight's player handle one unit consisting of himself, a squire and maybe 4 mounted men at arms. Since the other two players don't have any of their own characters involved, I was planning on giving one of them an NPC knight with a unit similar to the above and giving the other player a larger unit of infantry, representing the local feudal levy.
I was thinking of sending them up against a similar force of Welsh skirmishers, consisting of a unit of light cavalry, some infantry and a unit of bowmen.
I'd like the forces to be large enough to represent a "small battle" but small enough to be easily manageable.
Yeah, three units per side should work. Treat each unit as an individual combatant for the purposes of movement and initiative. Are there any magi mixed into any of these groups?
Only if one of my PC magi suddenly gets bellicose, so hopefully not.
I had considered throwing a magus in on the Welsh side (you may recall my post of a month or so ago about Blackthorn's potential role in this conflict) but I think I'll forgo it this time, for the sake of simplicity.
Another question, does the leader count toward the max. number of trained warriors a group can have? For instance, our Knight has a Leadership 4 specialized in warriors. Can he lead a trained group of 5 men plus himself (6 total) or only 4 men plus himself (5 total)?
magic can make combat quite "interesting" to say the least 
Well, gave it a shot and it went pretty well.
Group combat seemed to resolve faster than regular, though it might have been the scenario and the fact that the Norman knight (who played vanguard for an untrained group of Norman cavalry) has an outrageous Single Weapon skill.