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The original was posted on /r/osr by /u/FrivolousBand10 on 2025-06-08 18:48:06+00:00.

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Author's note: This is an additional house rule of yours truly intended for The Black Sword Hack. I have no idea if it's applicable to the Black Hack itself. That said, it's pretty simple and generic to the point of being nearly system-agnostic, so I figured I might repost it here. For clarity, in BSH the usage die degrades on a roll of 1-2.

War does not determine who is right - only who is left.

So, yeah. Sometimes, things move on a grander scale, and our plucky adventurers are either nowhere near where the action happens, or, worse, in the thick of it.

You've got two groups of people about to exchange violence, and you're not really feeling like winging it? Your brave band of never-do-wells joined the army (pressganged or otherwise), and you don't feel like ensuring they're on the winning side?

Well, I might have a solution for that. It involves the Usage Die.

Simple Mass Combat Rules

1. Assign each side a Usage Die, based on the relative size of the armies to each other. Assigning the smaller army Ud4 results in very quick battles. And anything bigger than Ud8 tends to drag things out.
2. If there is a large difference in Troop Quality, give the side with the better troops advantage on their rolls. If the difference is massive, assign the side with the worse troops disadvantage on their rolls as well.
3. If one side holds a significant positional advantage (i.e. holding the high ground, having fortifications, being dug in), give them advantage - this might offset disadvantages from shoddy troop quality. If one side has a significant positional disadvantage (heavy troops in swampy terrain, cavalry on unstable ground), assign them a disadvantage - this might offset advantages from superior troop quality.
4. Assuming there are no players intervening, simply roll once per turn, per side. The side whose Usage Die depletes first is broken, and will try to flee the battlefield, having lost. Should both sides deplete in the same round, both sides withdraw to regroup, with the battle resulting in a stalemate.
5. If there are players actively fighting in the battle, run their personal scale combat as normal. Each turn of the battle is equivalent of one combat turn of the players.

• Optional: Depending on the actions of the players and their results, assign Advantage/Disadvantage to the Army rolls (or not, if the battle is too large for them to have an earnest effect).
• Again, the side whose Usage Die depletes first is broken, and will try to flee the battlefield, having lost. That can mean that the players find themselves on the losing side of a battle, despite having "won" their local fight, and will soon face being overrun by the victors.
• If you are particularly interested in what happened to a specific NPC on the losing side of things, roll once on the Helpless Table.

These are what amounts to a quick-fix hack to run armies clashing without having to resort to GM fiat, with or without the players present.