Large Scale Battle Questions

So I found a really nice Hi-Res map from Hero399 on DeviantArt called  Blackwall Keep with which some of you may already be familiar. In any case, I am thinking of running a Magnificent Seven type of large scale battle where the PCs are forced to defend this outpost from a large horde of orcs, ogres, giants, etc. I have some questions. 1. The full image is 22MB, and I've resized the map to under 5MB which works, but I am still looking at a 150x150 unit map with 5 foot squares. Roll20 tells me the map that size might not load. What has been your experience with large maps. 2. For the Battle Royale, how many tokens can Roll20 handle without lagging? 100? 200? 500? 1000? 3. Have any of you tried to break a battle like this up into sectors - perhaps north, east, west, south? 4. Does anyone have any macros for mass combat? Like, 'Orc Regiment 1' fires 40 arrows at the walls? I would love to hear of any experiences with battles like this, what cool things your PCs did, how to work manageable mini-encounters into the grand scheme, etc. Thank you all for your help!

i have mapped several levels of the temple of elemental evil and all are very large..they take forever to load

Hi KJJ! You scored. Great find for a Roll20 game map. That particular digital artist is actually a professional Marketplace artist also, and he does great work (it's David Hemenway, I recognized him on DeviantArt):&nbsp; <a href="https://marketplace.roll20.net/browse/search/?keyw" rel="nofollow">https://marketplace.roll20.net/browse/search/?keyw</a>... Mass combats can be really fun. I've had them play-out both fun/epic, and other times slow / boring / cumbersome / disappointment. Both at the game table, and everything in between, on the Virtual Tabletop too.&nbsp; I also enjoy huge map areas even for regular-size party of PC's to explore. 1. Good job on reducing that map to 5MB, if you become a Subscriber Roll20 account you can do it at 9-10MB. I'm not surprised if it looks perfectly good at 5MB, so you're all set there. However I have occasionally had loading problems with an individual map graphic over 5500x5500 pixels. Anything over that, I usually do as tiles. You can try it as all-one tho. 1b. Regarding 150x150, you should be fine. The warning of Roll20 kicks-in at 50x50 or 51x51, but many people regularly go beyond that. There are exceptions, other things that can cause lag and build on top of this, but a 150x150 with a 5MB underlying map, is not a problem by itself.&nbsp; On a bad older computer it might be a problem, but on decent internet-speeds and recent mid-tier computers it should be fine. I've run many 2E games on many Map Pages of 180x220, and 160x180, with many different other variables, with 5-15 players. I've found some variables that can easily cause lag on a large page like this, but it's other factors, not just the page size alone.&nbsp; Even the times I experienced lag issues, it's usually playable, rarely completely unplayable. I would say "Go for it", and with that in mind, I will list some precaution areas. 1c. The biggest pitfall / precaution areas (of graphic mapping; excluding the issues of Character x Attribute bloat) are: Dynamic Lighting (which is for Plus/Pro subscriber-created games); Advanced Fog of War; and the different "Emits Light" advanced settings on tokens that go with Dynamic Light and Advanced Fog.&nbsp; If you aren't using either of those features, you're much more safe on a 150x150 page. Also using a fractional grid-size like .5 or .1 instead of the default "Grid Size: 1", can allow more discrete token-movements and sharper measurements, but it's creating a TON of little squares on the map -- Roll20 does this very efficiently, mathematically, so it rarely causes a problem. That said, IF you use Hex map (and especially if you turn on Hex Numbering), that can cause a problem on huge pages and fractional grid sizes.&nbsp; 1d. Use regular Fog Of War, or no Fog at all. Skip the DL or make the Dynamic Light walls very simplistic and straight if using DL, which, the OP is not.&nbsp; Use the Square grid, not the Hex grid and especially not the numbered Hex grid. Using a fractional Grid Size is okay (and is pretty cool, advantageous) but try .5 at first and definitely don't combine this technique with Hex grid or Advanced Fog of War. 2. Having a lot of tokens (100's) can cause lag. Having a lot of tokens WITH dynamic light settings (20+ with emits light, has sight, dim, advanced fog) is a more major potential lag area, here again -- if you aren't using Dynamic/Sight then you are less likely to encounter this soft ceiling. 2b. Because you want to have a LOT of tokens, don't use DL and definitely don't give them all Sight. 8-) 2c. There can still be a soft ceiling on having a lot of Tokens (or "Objects" on the tabletop). There are soft ceilings involving both the file-size (MB) total weight of the graphics, and also the sheer number of graphic-objects and Roll20 tracking the location of each.&nbsp; My guess is you'll be fine with 1 huge map object and 100 troop token objects.&nbsp; If you try to put 1,000 troop tokens that would probably crash.&nbsp; Can you put 250? Hard to say. Give it a try. It will probably take a long time to load, and then maybe work okay, up to a point. 2d. My advice is make "Troops/Unit" tokens that represents more than 1. See Also answer 4b, below. Maybe 1 token can represent 10 or 12 orcs (or 100, or 1000). Put a stat on the token that tracks how many Orcs are alive in that troop, or just pool all their HP together (Ex. once 100 HP damage is done, that token of 10 orcs is dead); or the best method I've found is just give the 100-Orc Token the HP of 1 Orc, representing the overall health of that troop-column. With this method, keep your token count lower (such as 20-50 tokens). Also make sure your tokens are decent MB (Kb) weight each (if uploaded by you to your Library and not pulling directly from your Marketplace account), not some huge graphics scaled-down to token size on-map using the handles, that has to load the larger graphic. 2e. The other biggest pitfall that can cause lag in Roll20 is having a LOT of Character Sheets in the Journal tab, particularly if they have a LOT of Attributes per character sheet.&nbsp; If you're using either of the popular 2E sheets (both are light-weight, particularly the 2E Simple Sheet, neither is devestatingly huge like the 5E and Pathfinder sheets), and you have less than 30-40 Characters under Journals, you should be fine.&nbsp; If you try to make an individual character sheet for every single orc and gnoll x100, that would cause problems loading. 3. Yeah. You can break it up into sectors, and that is boring and has drawbacks, which is why you want to do the mega-map. Do the mega-map! Forget the sectors for now, unless forced to go to that. Your battle will be much sweeter on-large with range attacks, rather than loading sectors; if you can make it load & run smoothly. Huge-area maps are awesome. 4. Nah. Make your own cool macros tailored for your battle, with the species of enemy, and their weapon name customized. 4b. If you use some AD&D systems for mass combat --- examples: BattleSystem; 2e High Level Campaigns version; Birthright setting version; probably some other conflicting official 1e and 2e mass combat systems.&nbsp; A basic straight-forward way is "Consider every 10, or every 100, or every 1000 troops, as a Character, and use regular-normal AD&D combat rules from there, to where each group gets ONE attack that summarizes their collective effectiveness".&nbsp; With this in mind I'll give you a sample macro, /me rolling a MASS COMBAT ATTACK A troop of ORCS attacks with a flurry of arrows! /r d20 is their overall hit-roll against another troop's average AC. If the ORCS hit then their troop-vs-troop damage is [[d12]] (if you do it as-if 100 is "1 character") or [[100d12]] if you feel it necessary to roll every orc. Next troop, you're up! There's other stuff I wanted to say but ran out of pixels for typing this. Roll20 has some sweet technology that loads a reduced thumbnail of your huge graphic if you are zoomed out, and it will split up the graphic to only load the section that a Player is looking at when zoomed in, if needed. Happy adventuring and post-back to let us know what happens! Take screenshots of your game and post on the 2E Tavern forum, please. Hope my feedback helps. Thread remains open for other Tavern members who have comments, experience with 2E Mass Combat on Roll20 Huge Map Pages.

KJJ, glad to see you're taking things LARGE-Scale! Heh. Gold is going to have great feedback as usual. I think the limit is 8 MB for maps (8,192 KB). That's the biggest I've ever been able to load. I use Photoshop every day so I may have some tips on how to make sure your image reduces well and yet still looks good with JPEG or PNG or GIF compression. So if it's not loading for you or if it looks crappy because you've reduced the resolution too much and have a loss of detail - let me know and I'll take a crack at it for ya. Part of having a large battle is being able to see the whole field, the epic scale of the environment. If you cut it down into quarters just so the map & tokens load, you might be doing yourself a disservice. I think it would tend to devolve into 4 smaller battles then instead of one big one. I've never done "mass-combat" with armies (even though that is definitely going to happen in my campaign sooner rather than later) - but I have run combats with 100+ individual tokens, many of them unique, 1 demon, 4 specific death knights, an evil priest, 2 succubi, 10 PC's & NPC's, plus an assortment of "lesser" enemies which only have one entry in the right-hand "character" area, but there are many of them - so, 30 trolls, 30 goblins, 30 wraiths, etc. It worked out OK, and that battle ran well with all the players able to see the map. Turn dynamic lighting off. Use the "simple" reveal if you have to hide areas. So, yeah the "simple" fog of war, or as Gold suggested: No Fog of War at all if you can do so. And yeah, I also echo what Gold said about Macros. They are invaluable to me, I could not run the game without them. Mine are VERY simple and don't use any of the special targeting crap or fancy menus. Here's a to-hit example: The psychotic pixie flies at you, bloody claws flashing, hitting an AC of [[@{ThAC0}-(1d20)]] / [[@{ThAC0}-(1d20)]] or worse, doing [[1d4]] / [[1d4]] damage. And I basically just mentally compare that to the PC's AC, and tell them what happens. One last thing: Roll20 seems to be busier at certain times than at others. If you can, schedule your epic combat session during the week - it seems to me that the usage peaks during Friday Nights & Saturdays & Saturday Nights during UK & US timezones. Have fun and let me know if you need help with those graphics.

I don’t have DMing experience on Roll20 with mass combat per se. But, as a player, I was involved in&nbsp; mass combat using the AD&D 2nd edition&nbsp; Battlesystem&trade; rules. It seemed to work nicely. Battlesystem&trade; is meant to be played with the entire battleground revealed to all players, but some elite or covert units can be considered invisible and don’t have to be represented by tokens until another unit is within a certain amount of inches of them, such as ranger units in their home terrain. Alternatively, the inside of relatively new fortifications about which the attacking force has no avaiintelligence could also be kept secret. The main reason I think Battlesystem&trade; works so well with Roll20 is that units basically only have three major stats. Armor Rating, Hits, and Movement, which is perfect for Roll20 tokens. Overall, I think the main advantage of Battlesystem is the speed in which it is conducted. A siege can take as few as three rounds to conduct.

we set up our 9 poster board map to each have an area to map and DM out of&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; are those battle system from Rules Cyclopedia or a separate item

Battlesystem was for 2e and the Rules Cyclopedia had the War Machine

Mark W. said: Battlesystem was for 2e and the Rules Cyclopedia had the War Machine I'm surprised you never knew 1e had a&nbsp; Battlesystem&trade; boxed set.&nbsp; It looks like this:

Gargamond said: Mark W. said: Battlesystem was for 2e and the Rules Cyclopedia had the War Machine I'm surprised you never knew 1e had a&nbsp; Battlesystem&trade; boxed set.&nbsp; It looks like this: I knew there was a version for 1e too. the H series of mods used it

Actually, I want to say there is a Battlesystem set for the very setting I am running; Forgotten Realms' Bloodstone Lands. I haven't progressed so far with my campaign to be building my huge tower defense encounter, but when and if it happens, I will keep this thread updated.

thanks a lot guys&nbsp; we always&nbsp; struggled what went to&nbsp; what much appreciated

KJJ's right - The Bloodstone series of "H" modules was meant specifically for use with Battlesystem. Lots of good ways to integrate it.