Grand wars in D&D (3.5)

[Salarion]

Well first off I'm new here so hello to the communitiy.

Now when that's done I'd like to explain my problem, or a question.

Anyways I've been DMing for about half a year now and I'm prepearing to create a grand war in my campagin. So my question is what would your suggestions be regarding the mechanics of grand scale combat leading and simmilar problems that arise when faced with thousands of NPCs in combat.

The PCs are CN or NE with the fighter having leadership. The plot is that they've awoken an ancient race through magical ways and that race now wishes to reconcquer it's past territories appointing the PCs to lead (either the army or part of it) in that quest.

As noted in the title this is 3.5 campagin, didn't know if there's a seperate forum for older rulesets.

All suggestions are welcome

[Stworca]

I rolled a d10 twice for every 100 men, and the result would be how many survived this "round" (10 in game rounds, you can make it 5 or even 1, but it would be a bit inaccurate, since a round is 6 seconds.) of combat. Toss in bonus for leadership (if present) and a separate bonus (or penalty) if the PC's give an exceptionaly good or terrible order. Leading a cavalry charge uphill towards a phalanx wall would get a -50 (or higher!) penalty for the horsemen (let's face it, it's the worst idea possible and the chance that anyone survives are slim) and a bonus for the pikemen if their pikes are long enough, and their formation has no holes.

However if the charge was downhill in the pikemen backlines.. The rolls would take a 180 turn. If the horsemen were under the effect of silence aoe spell, then the bonus would be even higher since they wouldn't be heard, however if... if if if.. the list goes on. You're the DM, you decide what counts as a potential bonus or penalty

NPC's with level 2 would count as 2 men for the survival part and so on.

The only problem will be mages on either side of combat, mainly their area of effect spells. But again some dxx rolls would determine how many foes would be caught. Then an average reflex / whatever roll (if it matters.. If one has a 15d6 delayed fireball show ~45 damage then a rank one NPC still dies horribly even if he manages to make a reflex roll, thus the roll isn't needed)

'tis how it worked for me.

An alternative would be taking an average of AC and roll an average attack roll, then an average dmg roll each turn for each side, multiply it by the number of succesfull attacks, and lower the total health of foes.. but in my opinion it requires too much rolling and too many statistics to keep track of.

[GawainBS]

Heroes of Battle has rules exactly for this purpose. Check it out.

[Siberys]

Personally, I just like to use Risk rules. When it gets to be in the multiple hundreds of troops, I just count one kill as ten kills at that point, and then once it breaks to 100 I go back to single kills.

[WickedD]

Heroes of Battle, as GawainBS said if you want to roll the dice.
Personally I just go with the flow, deciding who'll win depending on obvious strengths, and allowing the players to shift the tide of battle through individual deeds and self-sacrifice where fitting.