Have you ever built a monstrous army in D&D? What happened? DEMONS BELOW ▶▶ www.drivethrurpg.com/product/296020/Demons-Below PATREON BENEFITS ▶▶ www.patreon.com/thedmlair FREE D&D ADVENTURES I'VE CREATED ▶▶ www.thedmlair.com/

I remember a time when it was normal and expected for high-level PCs to build literal armies, and the game had official rules for combat involving hundreds to thousands of participants on a battlefield -- if you were playing the classic module "Test of the Warlords" you literally had to build an army (preferably of human soldiers).

0:46 Is the barbarian... smarter than he lets on? Disguised BBEG confirmed!

My party tamed a few mimics they trained to be the cart they travelled on keeping there cargo very very safe.

RIP, Captain Carrot. We never knew you.

Tie up the army in bogged down logistics like long marches, supply runs, and campaigns that shape the world, not the dungeons. Say if you place your army in a town to defend it against a possible incoming siege while the players handle a dungeon delve into the enemy stronghold, explaining why the base isn't filled with the enemy's endless numbers. Or you need to explore a poor land with no food to provide for such a large army. Or as part of a treaty, you aren't allowed to bring more than 10 soldiers with you at a time that act as your valets and hirelings.

My players didn’t make as much of a “monster” army as they did a militia of soldiers that they rounded up from all the neighboring towns called the second Legion that my paladin PC was the leader of. He felt so awesome to control this Legion. So I came up with things that made sense in the story to give his army things to go do. There was that same level of “Trust” you talked about! I agree! One time he thought they were more capable than they were and they suffered many casualties, and another time they went and personally handled a situation I originally wrote for his army to take care of, it’s always cool what they do with it. Overall I always try to embrace what things my players want in their world! LOVED your story!

Hey Luke, Gary the intern is actually an NPC companion in my groups Aquititions Incorporated, and my players LOVE HIM

I had someone who convinced my BBEG to join him and now they are working to remove the ban on necromancy

I was DMing and my one and only player wanted to work with in the dungeon as a guard, so I had a bugbear give him an interview, he got hired and was probably the most hilarious and interesting game I've DMed

Haha that reminds me of when my players. Made the evil npc necromancer part of newly formed city council after the town was raided by devils. As you can see it's a ripe time for the necromancer...plenty of dead bodies. Vulnerable people and with his handy magical artifact that causes geas suggestion and modify memory. He was able to take over the city and make it a necropolis. And then my players noped out of town. Haha.

Eberron rising from the last war actually goes in to a bit of detail regarding military forces in the group patron section, which could really help both players and dungeon masters

You hit the nail on the head. Having that understanding between the players and the DM really helps to keep everything cohesive and allowing them to get the most out of the campaign that the DM worked so hard to put together while at the same time, allowing the players to make their own path within the said campaign. Great stuff!

If I remember correctly, L5R has a decent system for narrative battles. 3.5e Heroes of Battle could be useful as a guide too. A few ideas of what you could do when the party recruits a monstrous army: - If you've set up a rally point for this monstrous army and it's some distance away, there's a good chance some of the monsters you've convinced to join might not make it to the rally point - either getting attacked along the way or simply deciding they don't want to work for you after all. - Different types of monsters may not like working together. You may get back to your rally point and find a battle! - Certain monsters may like you are not keen on fighting others of their kind and may refuse to go and murder everything in the dungeon you just pointed at. On the other hand, they may go in an convince more of their kind to join you! - The monstrous army is attracting attention and now some other adventurers have come to deal with this new threat. I've tried to experiment with phones at the table, especially for Eclipse Phase. Before the session, I'd prepare a number of messages, information boxes, character portraits of missing persons, etc. I send these to players whose characters may have access to that information while others may not.

In my opinion, D&D becomes a different game when building armies. Now and then, I may have stories involving armies, but would not have it as the central theme of a D&D campaign. It is just my preference, and other DMs probably handle campaigns involving armies much better than I can. :-) p.s. I am missing the poor Rogue PC.

Matt Colvile's Strongholds and Followers is an interesting look at this sort of thing as well.

I already have a suggestion at 2:53 If your army outpaces you in levels because you just send them in to deal with every problem then they have an increased chance of turning on you 7:37 Have it so when the players try to change a monsters name, they feel like they're being talked down to and demeaned, thus. . also increasing the chances of the players being betrayed.

This topic is covered pretty thoroughly in both the MCDM books and lightly covered in the Ravnica book. Look at the Boros renown progression rewards. By 50 renown points, you have a following of 30 to 50 low CR soldiers. If you're planning to take the campaign into tier 3 or 4 play, then you should let every player build their own army. Just make that resource part of their downtime. The rogue should be building a thieves guild from tier 2 onward. The fighter, barbarian, paladin, and whatever 3rd party homebrew melee base class you allow should start gathering soldiers to their war banner early on. Monks can build monasteries. Bards can build colleges. Charisma casters can build cults of personality. Rangers can broker peace negotiations with Fey and get some weird magic super weapons or resources/agents. The wizard should have been researching their interdimensional wizards tower all along, and the artificer should be building a fleet of airships or their own Mortal Engines style moving city. Bards and rogues could easily also build their own spy networks. How do you run these things? After your players gather their npc factions, use them to hand the hooks and quests to the PCs. "Your spy network uncovered these secrets. Your mercenary company found this thing while on a mission. Your cult uncovered this magic secret. Your thieves guild found out about rival factions working against you. Your web of 200 simulacrums you made by fast casting the simulacrum spell with the wish spell used your divination spells to pinpoint these issues you'll want to address." Don't take these hordes of npc into dungeons or to negotiate with world powers. Have them sent out to deal with other simpler issues while the players remain the highly trained strike team that can walk into any high-risk situation and get results. This how what high level D&D campaigns should be structured. The PCs have already established themselves as political forces in the campaign world. They have agents out doing their bidding. When any number of those agents find a thing or get killed on a mission, that's when the party gets called in to finish things.

I’m a relatively new player, and took on the task of being a DM very recently. Your videos are really helping me to think through what I have planned in a different way. Many of my players are new, too. It’s been a challenge finding ways to allow them to do the crazy things they think up, rather than just saying no. I like the “Yes, but...” and the consequences you set out as part of the way a campaign can progress

Good I’m not the only one who is up now, just got done making a dnd map Edit: glad to hear your voice better than how it was on the live stream

Your campaign honestly sounds a lot like my current one. The players have essentially become a small military task force for Waterdeep after I ran Dragon Heist. Since the events of Gralhund Villa where all of Floxin’s Zhentarim were captured, Manshoon recruited the left overs and essentially waged war against Waterdeep. I’m running Tales of the Yawning Portal right now and I weaved Against the Giants into the story by saying that Manshoon was trying to recruit the giant kings to march on Waterdeep

I've told the story about the Artificer Halfling and his pyramid scheme army before in the comments of other videos, but I haven't told the story of Paul, the Spectator. The party had changed a lot as they progressed through the Lost Mine of Phandelver, but the Artificer was still playing and still trying to gather monsters into their troop. A Wizard that joined us was also very into the idea of recruiting their own little battle group. The party found a Wraith, who promised them that he would let them grab anything they wanted from his library as long as they killed whatever was destroying his "experiments". The players didn't trust the Wraith, but they wondered what he feared, so they searched the cave and found a Spectator. The creature seemed more curious than hostile, and the Wizard and Artificer convinced it that the Wraith wanted to destroy the thing he had been summoned to protect. They asked its name, but the creature didn't have one, so they dubbed him "Paul" and went back to the rest of the party, who had stayed behind. Now, the Wraith had demanded proof that the creature was dead, but the party didn't want to kill Paul, so the Cleric taught Paul how to play dead, and they walked its "corpse" to the Wraith. He saw right through the ruse, though, and attacked. Paul fought along side the party missing a lot due to bad rolls but distracting the Wraith long enough that the Cleric could strike him down with the help of her deity. They cleared the Wraith's room as much as they could and carried it outside to their cart. While outside, Paul started to vanish, telling them that he had fulfilled his mission and was going to go home now. But he drew a rune in the floor, and told them that he would be happy to help them again sometime in the future. And that's the story of Paul.

One of my favorite campaigns, we have been this one playing for a few years. I was playing as a female wizard who was the daughter of a king who’s land and people where massacred and our keep was thrown in ruin. I choose a Necromancer build with a high Charisma. At late game I started spawning Wights and used my high Charisma to convince them to fallow me even after the control spell wore off and I sent them all to the old keep with orders to gather zombies and kid nap masons rebuild the keep. This snowballed after my DM allowed me to invent a spell to allow me to control my skeletons and zombies permanently, do long as I never run out of spell slots in any individual level.

Hey great video and story! It sounds exactly like something that could happen at my table, and I love how you tied it all back together Nice

my players made a kobold army that flooded my dungeons killing everything in sight, after watching this video, it really helped me prevent that from happening again

Great example of giving the players agency and letting them do fun things. I have had player adopt a beastmen child (goat headed mutant) a runt ogre, goblins, pixie and all sorts of things. and Merry Christmas to you and yours, I think I'm going to try run a game for family this holiday.

Excellent video! Similar to something going on in a campaign I'm involved in right now. The players are currently collecting 'pets' in the form of sentient creatures with a strong negotiating strategy. They have been asking the evil creatures 'do you like having teeth more than freedom'. Turns out....most things like having teeth. ^.^;

Awesome video, Luke! One of my PCs is currently trying to build an army in the name of a made up shadowy figure who's gaining power in the region. I had no idea how to handle it, but this video gave me some great ideas!

In Exalted I rivaled the Mask of Winters military power, of which I was employed. I had an Undead army of gestalted monstrosities, hordes of zombies, platoons of spectres, squadrons of intelligent undead, and many exo-suits of bone and flesh, not to mention the more mundane aspects of ballistas, catapults, and trebuchets. These were all carried inside my hunormous enchanted undead "looks like a cloud" sky jellyfish, of which I hollowed out and used as a flying hidden base/transport/attack platform. It used its tentacles to pick us up and drop us off, as well as lifting up and tossing enemies through the air from height of a thousand feet sometimes.

I have a player who turned their caster character into a necromancer who's taken to throwing their zombies at obstacles, and I found that a lot of this advice still applies. Thanks! In another campaign that I'm a player in, the entire party rolled up characters with "monster" races (except for the one person who rolled up a wood elf.) So our allies are more often than not also monsters (my half-orc learned that his dad is still alive and also still the warchief of a tribe, so let's see how that pans out in the future.)

Droop, from the Lost Mine of Phandelver, a goblin who shows up in the Rebrand hideout joined the game to become a PC for my brother who joined late. It was awesome to see an organic entry of a character to the team.

Having only read the title: This is exactly why I got myself Matt Colville's Strongholds & Followers. Having seen the first minute: I am about to let my players recruit a monstrous army, but haven't done it myself yet. Having finished the video: Very well done. I got inspired.

A few sessions back in the campaign I'm playing in, me and the other party members convinced a town's military to join us for a big fight against an army of cultists. While they weren't the most compitent fighters (epsecially the captian who rolled a nat 1 for one of his turns in the combat lol), they gave us enough backup to help us get through the fight without losing anyone important lol. So recruiting NPC's can sometimes be a good strategy for big fights

this one is great, hope you have a awesome Holiday season. :)

When I saw Captain carrot i was confused

My current campaign has an apocalyptic world war going on thats related but separate from what the party needs to do to stop the apocalypse involving collecting relics in a race against time. Bit of a Fellowship of the Ring vibe. Even though the outcome of any of the theaters of war is mostly irrelevant to the win condition, having certain factions and places get destroyed by far less friendly factions is kind of a priority for us to help our chances in the real struggle. This was a perfect environment for narratively and tangibly significant army building that doesn't reshape the structure of the campaign. We spent a bunch of time and energy recruiting and raising the money to equip volunteers from a nation not yet at war to go help break a siege of a vast port city and their traditional trading partner, gathering troops on river boats as our slowly growing force meandered toward the coast to reach the port. Inspiring speeches, political intrigue with suspicious or hostile local lords, nervewracking small fights where we risked losing our rookie volunteers to dangers WE would have no trouble with in a kind of 'objective based encounter' where losing our investment, and not death, was the much scarier stakes. And new NPCs with pre-established emotional attachments because the officers were raised from random troops who did something memorable along the months of progression. All the while we're still going through traditional encounters while the convoy makes its way to the city because four level 14 characters have very different capabilities than a hundred inexperienced guys with spears and we would NEVER risk their deaths on trivializing encounters meant for us, even as our force got bigger and more experienced, because its meant for something important down the line. So now months later with hundreds of somewhat experienced troops and a handful of memorable organically developed NPC relationships, the arc for saving this city has a whole extra dimension alongside the politics and personal heroics, with essentially an extra friendly faction to influence and interact with the local factions being introduced. And now we're all a bit nervous for our stabby little children cuz they have to be put in enormous danger now in a conflict so much bigger than they are, but they stopped feeling like a simple tool a while ago.

Luke, thanks for making this video, I think it is a concept that many DMs knee jerk a "NO!" reaction to. I'd like to share my own experience with this: My Players felt they couldn't take on Strahd by themselves in The Curse of Strahd module, and decided to 'recruit' the 'barbarian tribes' that live around the Yester Hill area. Boy what a fun time they had with that! The plot line went into pause mode as the group had a fantastic time convincing , and then training the barbarians to help them.... Just like Luke says in this video though... they are STILL THE BAD GUYS! The barbarians continually insisted they wanted to raid and wipe out the villages of Barovia FIRST, then go to the castle to fight Strahd. The players had to fight tooth and nail to keep them on track to go to the castle. I was concerned that the players were getting 'off story' when the whole situation began, but three things convinced Me the DM that this was the right course for the adventure: 1: The players felt AGENCY - they had come up with this plan all by themselves and the DM had not told them it couldn't be done 2: The players were all enjoying themselves - Each player took on some aspect of the training so that no player felt they weren't included, and all felt important 3: It got the players INVESTED in the game - this was THEIR army, and they began to enjoy the idea that bad guys in the campaign were going to help them with THEIR goals instead of opposing and hindering them. In the end the players loved making a 'Monster Army' because they felt like they had somehow 'Hacked' the game, making it easier on themselves to accomplish the adventure. As a DM, I can say it was fun for me too to come up with new content for a pre-written adventure. My group and I can now honestly say we played out The Curse of Strahd in a way NO other group did! :-)

This story is for Pathfinder, but we had something similar happen to us. One of my favourite characters was a Ogre Fighter named Ogg. He had the lowest intelligence that a playable character can have; and was a walking slab of metal and muscle. He got along with the party well enough, but he saw the Catfolk Rogue as a mighty wizard due to the stealth. He travelled around with the party and fighting with them for around six months in game time; but everything changed when our loveable but dimwitted Ogre was possessed by an ancient Lich. No one noticed at first....until our ten foot tall Ogre in full plate armour fighting with a six foot tall Warhammer was raising vast armies of the Undead. Yet the Undead army was used against our enemies, mostly Demons and a host of Rogue Angels; so the party tolerated our newly magical Ogre. What finally broke the party was a horrific and malformed second head sprouted from Ogg's shoulder; and the Lich took over; forcing him to become the BBG.

Everytime I try to watch your videos I can't get past these intros. Definitely an acquired taste. Time stamps would be great.

Our party did actually built an army to defeat Ras-Nsi. We had kobolds, aarakocra, dwarfs, Tritons, sirens and human soldiers. We used a siege document we found online and we completely took out the yuan-ti city.

Good Morning DMs

I really can't wait for next week's video! I need to know the best tips SOOO bad about the phones! lol

AD&D Fighter Lords (9th) level attracted an army. Dungeon Masters used to have no problem running a game with armies.

We built an army of the undead and used them to defend the kingdom where most of us were from. The citizens weren't fond of having undead stomping around within the kingdom but they were fine with having them fighting on the borders. We compromised with the DM so that occasionally there would be a big battle where we would have missions for the PCs while the army fought. The overall battle would be affected by our success or failure and the overall battle was handled as a narrative.

I don't have a story of my players convincing a monster join their side, but I do have a silly story of a similar nature. I was a fairly new DM, and nearly all of my players had been playing longer than I had, so they knew the ins and outs of their characters a bit more. As such, the bard knew what the Command spell did. I did not. She used it on my big boss for the session, and he failed the save. She told him to grovel. And my players beat the tar out of him, which I really should've expected, but still. Ouch. (To add insult to injury, this was a Ravenloft campaign where she was playing a bard that only sang Disney songs. Which is hilarious in its own right, but I was a little salty about it at the time.)

Recently, I was playing in the pathfinder module, Reign of Winter or something like that. At some point, we're supposed to help these poor beleaguered dragon riders who are besieged in a tower so we can get some mcguffin from them. Instead of breaking the siege or sneaking in or negotiating our way in, I said "let's go annex the nation that's attacking them and when it becomes our army, we'll negotiate with the besieged forces and in return for a ceasefire, we'll take their mcguffin." The party said this seemed fine, so next session we walk our way over there as a small band of adventurers, we proclaim that we (or rather I) was there to violently usurp the throne. Since this nation was also led by a powerful dragon, the lot of them just guffawed at us and let us through reasoning that it would be a good laugh seeing us get eviscerated by their king. So anyway, one full attack routine from someone who spent something like 30,000K in consumable scrolls, potions and special ammunition for this one fight and the king is dead, long live the king. There's some internal purging and other such but for the most part, the nobles who have been promised that they can keep their positions are too afraid to try and act out and within a short while, I control their army, we go out, get a peace deal and get the mcguffin. So at this point, I'm the leader of the nation, have their army at my disposal. I did what any responsible player would do at that point. I let them be a part of the background of the campaign world and didn't use my army of dragon riders to help us in any of our combats.

Yes is a good way to start Merry Christmas

Ok dumb idea that popped into my head when Gary appeared in the rogues place. I can imagine the entire party turning into a Gary so we just have a barbarian Gary, a wizard Gary a DM Gary etc. This was an awesome story. The idea of leading a monster army is so cool. I get why the storm giant was only a lieutenant at first seeing as the bugbear was already the commander but I wonder why he stood by and let the orc become the new commander. Meh still an awesome tale, I'm just here trying to brainstorm cool ways to use such an army.

Not really a raising an army story, but early in my current campaign, the party had followed a disused old road north to a place called The Fields Of Blood, where a weeks-long battle a generation ago took place, They were hired to bring a token to the tomb of a particular soldier who was buried at the edge of one of the mass grave mounds. - When they arrived, the found the run-down keep nearby was inhabited by a tribe of goblins who were so well established that they had fields, chicken pens and two ballista on the most intact towers. The party took refuge in a nearby watchtower and the next day sent their stealthiest person to scout the keep. The found a tribe of goblins who, feeling pretty confident, were willing to trade with the party for information and food. - The party surprisingly made some trades. That day they found the grave they were looking for, and an underground area with evil temples they chose to desecrate, some abandoned constructs one of which worked well enough to give them a fight, a few underground critters, a dessicated young dragon skeleton they looted for bones to turn into magical weapons, and a fire demon trapped between two flooded passages. - They cleared the whole place out, and emerged near a stone circle that was giving off an aura of fear. They translated enough of the runes on the center stone in the ring to realize it was responsible for the fear aura. They rented a ballista from the goblins to shoot the runes to try and break the spell, which worked, and triggered waves of skeletons to burst out of the burial mounds. The party ran back to the watchtower just ahead of the skeletons, had a pitched battle which they narrowly won. - After the battle, the goblin shaman showed up with herbs and potions to sell, and offered up some "religious salts" to sprinkle on the skeletons to prevent them from rising again. - The party left the area, and about a month later, actually argued with a Baronial knight who was set on going to that keep to kill all the goblins. They got this knight, an elf, to agree to give the goblins one day to abandon the keep only if they headed north out of the kingdom.

I'm thinking something like this. The Party is sent to Fight a War for their Kingdom and their allies, but the problem is that the Kingdom doesn't have a lage army so they are given orders to recruit man, beast or monsters. The reward is that the army they made will help with siege that will free them up to fight the Big Bad without fighting through an army to get to him.

Funny enough, it was the rogue in my party that hired the army of ogres and trolls... which he later double-crossed after we two-rounded a bebilith. At least I respect my summoned creatures and dismiss them.

I like this idea. Currently my All Goblinoid campaign has taken over a human outpost and is building it into their own town. This was not planned, but gave them a base and I'm cool with that. I think as they grow followers and villagers I may give them the option to send out raiding parties for supplies, etc. Plus there will be internal conflicts as the goblins all come from different tribes. Also may let them use the townsfolk as a distraction when the final showdown comes. Use that army to break through and get to the final boss area.

Another tactic. If they players are going into dungeons with their armies, start building adventurers that make it their only option for success. Or, go the other route, throw in something like the heated room from White Plume Mountain or the gapping maw / portal of the tomb of horrors to make getting your army into the dungeon more difficult.

We were playing the lost mines of phindelver, and my brother was who was a human fighter noble, managed to convince the local goblinoid bandits to join him. A week in game, he trained them, showing thing respect. And while the main cast was away, said goblins defended the town from their own tribe.

What you don't know is Luke is actually part of identical quintuplets and in the skits are his brothers

7:40 this happens to me ALL the time, I feel your pain ...

maybe you have it where you actually help your army in the front lines, for example, you could have it where A. you have your soldiers fight and hold off the lesser enemies in a group enemy encounter while you and your party personally deal with the leader of the enemy or A. you and your party fight a big boss but just with the help of your army

My party have built a massive animal group. Lions, tigers, dire wolves, a trex and more. But, once they came back to where their farm of sorts, they found only a small pack of dire wolves, about 2 lions, and a full looking trex

Luke: I will get my revenge on my players. Me: (thinking of Flanders and Swann) YOU SHALL SMART FOR THIS!!

I had a group stumble into a kobold nest that was raiding a town about to crown a bully. Our tiefling, with help from the others, burst in claiming to be a goddess come to free them from their wretched state. With the high rolls and kobold stupidity they formed a cult. In time wiping out or taking in the Billy's forces. Now they have the kobolds building and working on a farm the group bought as the Golden Goddess Kobold Coral Ranch and Company GGKCRC. Helped that along the way they killed a dragon and seemed to take its spirit so the kobolds now whorship them

Unless the players are escorting the monsters to trollhold they might decide, "hey nobody is in charge of me!" and head out on their own. Then like you said there could be a fight at Trollhold to see who is in charge as that is the way monsters figure it out.

Add some complications when starting an army; like aquiring money/resource to upkeep the army, give exhaustion if they marched too long, targeted by rival army, and etc.

Well, if Kobolds count as monsters, I am currently working on essentially creating a supercolony of Kobolds with my Kobold PC by going from city to city to try and find nearby colonies and persuading them to join me in this united Kobold colony. So far I have only begun persuading the Kobolds of Waterdeep to ally with me and in order to gain their trust, I need to deal with some threats within the sewers (I think they're called Umberhulks). For one of my first games as a player in DnD, it's been a pretty interesting time

I also would like to offer another suggestion. If they choose to 'send their army in' .... Have them make soldiers in their army as an elite unit... But also give them a couple gumbies each. ----------------------- When I was younger, I ran a menzoberranzin campaign and some players owned gladiators that they treated very well. I'd have them battle in matches. They loved their gladiators as much as their own characters. And more recently in an underdark campaign turned top side, they bought a quoggoth pack and set it free top side after teleporting not all that long after purchasing. Granted the quoggoth were in an alien environment, so they just stuck close and the PCs all made a quoggoth for fun. I asked them to limit the extra quoggoth in an adventure to one. They did. Fun times.

I can imagine in a situation like this that if the players are just never there, but constantly sending these creatures to the same place to make an alliance, many would wonder if their commanders are ever returning. Many would seek to capitalise on this opportunity to gain control of this army. Sure, the players wrecked them when it was 20 vs 5 in a small dungeon. But what if the boss they beat and turned to their side now has 300 orcs under his command? He's likely to have another crack at it. There would likely be different racial tensions between the species in the army. Some would be particularly loyalist to the player characters (it would make it a bit more fair) while others are directly against them, and others just want to profit and don't really care about the players. Have the loyalist commander send a message back to the party, telling them that the situation is getting out of control and the army is on the verge of splitting up into multiple groups and fighting itself. Having a large external threat like those knolls would then help unite them. Also, another huge factor would be food. A gigantic army needs to either have the resources to supply themselves or the money to purchase those supplies, or they need to start raiding the landscape, organising a system of tribute from the surrounding countryside, or moving on to a different area to raid. There's no other choice or the army will disband.

Given I was playing Shadow of Mordor...a guy with a blue handprint on his face enthusiastically talking about building a monster army is even funnier.

Short of putting dangerous equipment in player inventories, I've found that no matter what the players convince you to allow them to do they will create their own opportunities for things to fall apart.

There is a lot of fun ways to deal with that and problems they will have to solve. Like how to keep them fed, keep them from all killing each other. How to arm all of them. Making sure they don't all turn on the party. Lots of money and thinking to keep an army tame

This video does raise the question Why haven't all the dungeons been cleared out & looted years ago by powerful adventurers or kings with armies of followers?

I was running Lost Mines of Phandelver and I had a player who would spare as many goblins as he could to join his army. I decided to increase the threat of the orcs in the campaign so that they had to send a goblin strike force against the orcs while they went into wave echo cave

Thought i heard elmo for a minute there in that intro.

I agree, everyone does love gary the down to earth kobald intern

My DM whenever i build a party or an army he expects that i can cover the wages and sallaries of my soldiers, i need to cover their necesities and deal with the intern problems tha they come across, and dosnt allow me to take them into some dungeon or specific place of the campaing, last year we had to sneak into a city and i come with the idea to laid siege to another hold about a week of distance from the city so the enemy was forced send their entire forces to break the siege... it was fun and a usefull solution to our dilema. And the army function as the retainers for the knight background, and only captains and generals can be persuaded to come to our adventures, but we have to split our chares and if they die in combat we have to give money to their family and have to search for a substitute or if they die in a manner that its not an honoureable one maybe their fources leave our ranks

Did the party had One ring or one from shadow of war? Since I cant really imagine realistic scenario (considering party dont have some sort of charming power) , various (specially chaotic) monsters just join just like that(not to mention mutiny and turn against party or just kill each other when fighting for leadership for control)

I would assume that _Strongholds and Followers_ also has some advice on how to keep players from just delegating away the adventure, no? I would love to get it, but I don't think anyone else in my group (except perhaps the DM) would be even remotely interested. :( On another note, it has occurred to me that your party doesn't have a dedicated Charisma character (Sorcerer/Warlock/Paladin/etc.), yet they still avoid murder-hoboing like lunatics. Frankly put, that's just plain awe-inspiring. Good bunch you've got there.

AD&D and D&D 3rd edition on definitely wasn't meant for large army combat, OD&D and BECMI D&D actually was there's a whole section of those rules that deal with mass army vs army combat, siege warfare, base building, air to air and sea skirmishes. But that's to be expected since BECMI D&D and it's predicesor B/X D&D and Basic D&D were based on OD&D which in turn was based on Chainmail. Which later versions of D&D moved away from to focus more on just being adventurers. Yet to this day players will still try and build a army it's why I got my hands on a copy of the BECMI rules cyclopedia just to have something to base army combat rules on.

My characters first instinct to finding goblins enslaves by dark elves was to free them and start a goblin town

Alright, so I'm part of a club that runs AL tables, primarily. This was a particularly odd session, where we took a break from Phlan (ugh, Phlan), and assorted dragon cultist slayings to seek out some strange wild magic spewing pyramid in the middle of the woods. For some reason, it was a second session where most of the players were Bards (myself included). The previous session went incredibly well, so I was actually fairly excited. It had been fun defeating monsters in different ways than just hitting them till they fell down. We land at the pyramid, charm the bandits we found outside and proceeded inside. Inside we ran past the ghosts just in there, heard people, stealthed, saw cultists... disguised ourselves as cultists (we'd killed so many that having robes was easy at this point. We continued on, charmed our way into convincing the cultists there that we were also cultists and that we were obviously there as well because higher ups never talk to each other and know what's going on. At this point, one of our companions gets to murmuring with the dragonborn cultist about higher ups suspecting a traitor (dragonborns companion was a teifling) The rest of us were distracting her. At this point, we took out the teifling cultist, and gained the help of the dragonborn and his handful of kobold minions and proceed through the rest of the maze. In the end, we encounter a giant chimera to whom we feed all the kobolds, hoping to keep it from eating us... and... when it said it needed something bigger... well... I cast sleep on the dragonborn, and we fed him to it and ran for the door.

Totally built an army before. Trying to do it again.

Drizzt Do'Urdens Guide to Mass Combat is good for dealing with large groups of monsters. Also, one of my players likes to gets as many minions as possible, such as wolves that he tames and zombies from the Animate Dead spell and it's kind of annoying.

my group ended up doing that in rise of the runelords turned the thisletop goblins into our army

On my first d&d game, we befriend a goblin named Jerry. The DM solved the problem by suggesting Jerry try to tame some wolves the goblin were using. We agreed, and Jerry got eaten alive.

I'm a new DM so don't have much experience, however I think if my players created a monster army and tried to use it to complete their quests, like clear out a dungeon for example, I'd have the army do a double cross, join the monsters in the dungeon and therefore make that dungeon a total nightmare. Obviously that could likely lead to a tpk, but I think it would be an entirely likely thing to happen. After all and as you said, they're still evil monsters and will still behave as such.

ome of my GMs allows me to have a huge Undead army. they are always traveling with me in the adventure. we have non-verbaly agreed that i won't use them in combat (although sometimes it would have been nice to have 1 or 2 extra "players"), to make up for this i can use my undeads outside of combat, the biggest example i have is that i used them to rebuild a village that was attacked by a big monster and fill non-skilled jobs held by injured people

My brother got a small army(90ish goblins). He ovided using them because they are still goblins thus greedy so he had to share some loot thus only used them rarely.

DMS allowing a group to create an army of monsters is always a head-scratcher to me. Firstly, like you mentioned monsters are normally EVIL & right off the bat, If I had a group putting together an army of evil monsters, the Local Lord, king etc. will bring their own army to wipe out both the monsters & the players. Of course, the problem might solve itself when the "army" turns on itself or better yet, the strongest just takes over & decides to destroy the party along with the neighboring countryside. An Ogre may be low intelligence but it doesn't mean they are morons and that goes with any other monster that might join this army. But just for the sake of argument, let's say they don't do any of what I just mentioned, what about upkeep? The PCs cost to maintain an army should be massive (10k a month or more) and the reputation the party will get from the locals as they are suddenly shunned or worse yet, feared by the populace as their heroes turn to the dark side (perception is everything). Convincing a Strom Giant to join their army? I would have to hear that argument, and no, the threat of death wouldn't be enough. Strom Giants are highly intelligent and if they can't escape, they would attack and destroy the party at its first opportunity or just escape. I won't even bother with the moral implications of an allegedly "good" group of heroes putting together an army of evil monsters. To wrap this up, its a colossally bad idea and should not be allowed.

Potentially fun idea: A bard acts as a politician and uses their high charisma throughout their adventures to convince enemies and NPCs to join the party's cause (but, notably, are loyal primarily to the bard). Over time, the bard begins to amass an army that's loyal to him. And he begins to use his army to dominate areas, annexing them under his control, and creating an ever-expanding empire. As his army and empire increase in size, the bard becomes more and more power-hungry, eventually seeking world domination, and basically becomes the BBEG for the rest of the party. The bard, dictating orders from high up in a castle he's seized, would be besieged by the other party members who have to fight through all of the monsters and NPCs they were previously aligned with in order to stop the bard's evil plans. What do yall think?

I think it's a matter of balancing things out, the players need to realize they are still running around in a world where the players have to personally do things, including dungeons, without an army. The dm can build scenarios where an army is helpful but cannot outright solve the problem without direct player help. Perhaps the army isnt strong enough to take on the enemy forces, but it can serve as a distraction for players to dlp past a lot of defenses. Perhaps as the army travels the enemy has it's own "heroes" that harass the army and fight a war of attrition, just picking off all the weak. Perhaps the army can lay siege to a castle but cannot take it, so the players have to slip inside. Maybe the army is practically useless on occasion as the dungeon has a lot of tight tunnels where numbers count for nothing and the defenses would slaughter the npcs. If they are actually recruiting monsters there are fun side effects like you mentioned, the army could have potential fights between races or tribes that have vendettas against other recruits, a big monster could come and attempt to usurp control of the army when the players arent there.

I can see players farming out all the dangerous dungeon delving duties to their monster army, sort of like the bots players use in Eve Online.

Are there any modules anyone knows of to give players stuff to do when they run a province whatever it might be called in a given campaign? I am thinking cool stuff like what was in Pathfinder: Kingmaker pc game but also have things for an army to do even. I'd like to give my players monthly choices to make when my player's citizens come to them with stuff or things are happening in or around their territory but that's so much content to make.

Gary the Intern??? I convinced a Kobold to join my religious sect , to fight for Glory for the good of world against demon incursions. He was blessed by Durgrimst the Pilgrim (the god) by Throthgar Stonehand (my DOOMslayer/40k Marine-esque Paladin). Got him on a workout regime, got him some armor, a better spear, renamed him from Driz to Decimus Meridius! It was all going swimmingly until our first combat. He was splattered in one hit by a demon :'( Rest in goo, Decimus Meridius, your heroic reforging of yourself was rewarded by Durgrimst to be welcomed to the tranquiline halls.

I DM on a Multi-DM Westmarch server and one player has hired an army to execute and loot the BBEG's lair. 5 blackguards, 10 knights, 4 war clerics, 2 abjuration wizards, 2 divination wizards. I'm debating letting him proceed with this (it's questionable whether or not he could hire them to kill a Mind Flayer Lich for only 4,000gp total). BUT I have several BBEG's roaming my world and the Mind Flayer Litch has a connection to a Hag Coven that's controlling a Sigil Robot and seeking revenge and destroy Kingdoms that have slighted them (pre established lore). Since the hired army is owned by a player with their own kingdom... ... I think it's very appropriate for the Hag Coven to send the Robot to attack/destroy his. (Marut)

When you realize the channel owner has to be your age. Between the total 90s rune necklace. The earring. Complete late Gen X early Gen Y.

My party convinced two kenku to join the party and help take down evil mayor

Captain Carrot! Love Pratchett!

Captain Carrot would be an improvement. In my group he would be Captain what's-his-name.

Just Brilliant!! I would like to have an imagination like you have :-)

I recently had to pull my Ne3cromancer from the D&D campaign I play in because the army of undead he was creating was too huge. Doing all of the rolls for 24 to 48 undead every combat round is a pain in the butt for everyone.

we had 2 necromaners and 2 rangers and we had a giant army off 16 skelitons 8 zombies and 20 other animalm as our army and the resrt of us were sitting like ."do we even need to do anything "

Easy answer with A a army or B massive AOE attacks including meteor rain and once i had my villain stage a massive amount to betray em