If you were a General...

[Storyteller01]

I was reading the thread on war in D&D, and something came up: with magic involved, current combat models don't work! (go figure) So I ask you, the members of ENworld:

If you were a general, how would you build your army?

Assume that a typical 1st level Warrior will cost about 1 sp a day to maintain (We can work on actual cost on another thread. I'm just using an abstract for now) . Increases in level increases the pay (2nd level = 2 sp, 3rd level = 4 sp, 4th level = 8 sp, etc).

Upgrading to fighter class adds 50% to the pay.

Upgrading to rogues/bards adds 75% to the pay

Upgrading to spellcasters doubles the pay.

I can't recall a price for siege equipment, so if you remeber please let me know.
If you think of an unusual idea, include a maintanence cost. If you can't someone here can figure it out!


I'm leaving the details up to you (if we had dragon mounts [include an estimated cost for maintanience], if I came from this civilization, etc...), but I would like to see fairly realistic numbers (ie: soldiers are 2-3 level, officers are 5-6, generals can be up to 12-13 level). However, if you have reasoning to do different I'd like to hear it.

So, what would you do, and how much will it cost?

EDIT: Also, how much do you think a kingdowm can afford t spend on such a war?

 

[JackGiantkiller]

Assuming the baseline assumptions as regards the rarity of magic and monsters?


The basic unit of organization is the fire team, or Lance. Humorously, it has four members. They correspond, roughly, to the typical adventuring party:
Heavy Weapons (Mage)
Medic/Morale (Cleric or paladin)
Sniper/scout (Ranger or rogue)
Melee specialist (Fighter or paladin, leaning toward fighter by preference)

The higher level the better. Quality over numbers, because, face it, in D&D, the Adventuring party can kill any number of goblins or warrior1's. I'd prefer to start with fifth level characters, even if it meant I could have 1/100th the total army. (Draft the adventurers...)

Organization changes somewhat as the numbers increase.

A Squad is 2 fire teams, with two additional fighters, hopefully higher level.(Say 6th) (10 members)

A platoon is 4 squads (40 members) plus specialists: A bard, a few experts, and a command lance (as above, but higher level, around 7th or 8th)



At about the company level you'd get dragon support , etc.

See..on the D&D battlefield, you get so much variety that flexibility and power is the key, not specific tactics...a massed charge of heavy cavalry goes poof in a single fireball...and that is pretty much why we don't use them in the modern world as well. (Artillery...)

Flexible, detached units with their own cohesion, capable of being sent on independant missions far from the main force, capable of fighting beside their companions...but in no way dependant on formation fighting or the like, since such things get you all killed when the dragon pulls a flyby. (Substitute a Hawker Harrier with miniguns, and you get the idea pretty well.)

Each and every combatant would be supplied with both ranged and melee weaponry, again, for maximum role flexibility.

 

[Storyteller01]

Assuming the baseline assumptions as regards the rarity of magic and monsters?

Actually, I'd like to see baseline as well as high/low magic availablity. Just have some justification beyond the RAW.

 

[Aust Diamondew]

See..on the D&D battlefield, you get so much variety that flexibility and power is the key, not specific tactics...a massed charge of heavy cavalry goes poof in a single fireball...and that is pretty much why we don't use them in the modern world as well. (Artillery...)

It would take a significantly higher level wizard to easily wipe out a group of well trained kights and even then he could only effect a 20ft spread of a battle line.

Lets assume the heavy cavalry men are 3rd lvl warriors with a 12 con. That gives him an average of 22 HP (about as much as his horse). A 5th level wizard only does 5d6 damage with a fireball averaging 17.5 damage. Not quite enough to wipe them out unless he rolls well and they fail their saves. You'd need to be at least a 7th lvl caster to be gauranteed to wipe out everyone. And even then it wouldn't be anywhere near entirity of a charging enemy battle.

In rea life cavalry charges were used effectively pretty much until the mid-late 19th century and it was the evolution of bettle individual firearms as a whole not just cannons that led to end of cavalry.

 

[Storyteller01]

In rea life cavalry charges were used effectively pretty much until the mid-late 19th century and it was the evolution of bettle individual firearms as a whole not just cannons that led to end of cavalry.

So what tactics would you use, given the availablity of magic?

 

[WayneLigon]

I pay for about 16,000 competqnt trained veterans, recruit peasents for free from the surrounding countryside to serve as irragular militia (arrow soakers), then I spend a metric ton on about seven assassins to go across enemy lines and poison every spellcaster they can get their hands on, destroy spellbooks, etc. Levels the playing field a great deal.

 

[Andor]

It would depend on what I wanted the army for. Granted you don't get to do a custom rebuild every month but an army designed to reist an orc invasion is not the same one I'd want to invade a necromancers kingdom.

For the Orc killer army you'd be expect a mix of pitched battles and guerilla actions. So a few thousand War 1s to form your battle line with a levening of force multipliers (Clerics, Marshals, Bards) My highest level hero would be a bard kitted out with stuff to increase the area of his music (Wasn't there an instrument that gave los?) inspire courage is a battle shifting event. Light cav horse archers and heavy cav serve as giant killers. And you want at least one each high level druid and wizard on counterspell duty, switching to offense if the orcs don't have much in the way of spellcasters.

The other half of your cash buys leveled rangers, barbs and druids to fight the guerilla actions and serve as skirmishes and scouts for the mass battles.

For the necromancers kingdom you're anticipating magic users and undead primarilly. And you're probably not trying to hold territory, at least untill after the necromancer is dead. You actively don't want those thousands of war 1s. At least not unless your plans include giving the necromancer thousands of shadows. You want a much smaller and higher level band of fighters, paladins, clerics and mages. It's a good idea to hire some drow mercs to serve as skirmishes and suck off spell fire. But basically the power level and funky abilities of the undead means that this campaign reads like a dungeon crawl writ large, with extra paranoia.

 

[gizmo33]

Upgrading to spellcasters doubles the pay.

16 Wiz-5s and 15 Ftr-6s for 1,000 sp/day. I'll get as many units of them as I can afford.

Cost/availability of high level characters is probably a big factor in how this goes. IMO a DM has to reverse engineer these things to produce the kinds of armies he wants in the campaign.

 

[SWBaxter]

You can't really discuss military issues without discussing the economy that pays for it, and D&D doesn't do economy very well - the basic assumptions of magic item availability and character wealth by level require that there be millions upon millions of gold pieces worth of stuff produced just for a single group of high level adventurers, and it's hard to see where that wealth comes from in a pseudo-medieval setting.

There are some systems and settings that try to be relatively realistic - HarnWorld, for example. The Shorkyne regional module prices out the cost of the Shorkyne Royal Army (Shorkyne is roughly analogous to medieval Germany with some France thrown in). It consists of about 2200 soldiers, and costs a little over 2.2 million silver pennies per year. So using D&D conversion rates, that's 220000 GP per year - less than equipping three parties of 7th level characters. This is not the total forces Shorkyne can muster, just the standing army - there's also a feudal levy (military service owed by knights in exchange for their land) that can in theory add up to 11680 more combatants during campaigning season. Those forces are paid for by the nobles who owe service, so the general leading them doesn't have to finance them.

A lot of the cost of putting an army in the field is supply. If I were a fantasy warlord of a kingdom with some staying power, I would probably look into troops that don't require as much support - undead or constructs. If you've got around 200000 GP a year to spend, then that's a pretty decent number of golems, particularly if the nation's been doing that for a century or two. Of course, going down that road leads to an increasingly bizarre arms race.

 

[drothgery]

Hmm... if I'm typically fighting the stereotypical humanoid low-level barbarian horde, I think I'd go with a blaster-magic heavy approach. My basic unit is three mid/low-level tanks (defensively-built warrior types, higher-level than the barbarians, on average; I think I want paladins or monks for this, for good saves), one mid-level healer (probably a postive-energy channeling cleric, but other things work) and one mid/high level blaster (warmage, kineticist, or evoker, with feats, items, and PrCs for maximizing areas of effect). I'd say I want one of these squads for every fifty to a hundred barbarains.