Unearthed Arcana Unearthed Arcana Mass Combat

http://media.wizards.com/2017/dnd/downloads/2017_UAMassCombat_MCUA_v1.pdf

I wasn't expecting an article today...looks like a rehash of the old Mass Combat rules.

I was really hoping for the Mystic....

Pretty radically different from the previous attempt, much more abstract and fast paced; which is good, because it has been gestating for two years!
[MENTION=697]mearls[/MENTION] has been talking up various DM options in the works; looks like those will get the exposure for a little bit, now.

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[designbot]

I like this idea! Making each army (or army unit) count as one "monster" built using the table is quick and simple.

If you're going to count each unit as one creature, wouldn't it be more direct to use the stats of the creatures that make up the unit?

 

[zaratan]

If you're going to count each unit as one creature, wouldn't it be more direct to use the stats of the creatures that make up the unit?

Depends of the quantity of that creature in each unit. And many times an unit doesn't have just one creature type.

What is good in this is you can emulate some units atributes with creature features, like siege monster, parry, falange formation, vulnerable to piercing, resistence to slashing.

Each unit type has your utility agaist another, player can plan how distribute they creatures in units to archieve the features and gain advantage in some situations. And balance the units power to avoid lose all low br units and stay with only one powerful, but that will be defeated later to the enemy army.

I see this as a "mini game" inside the campaing, I think my players would like to plan they army.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

[MENTION=9629]Slyflourish[/MENTION] on Twitter mentioned ignoring BR and just using CR instead. (Assuming, I suppose, homogenous units). Thoughts?

After doing some more examination of the DMG CR table, and pondering how units should scale and a few case studies (githyanki knight vs. N orcs; ancient white dragon against N young whites or young reds), I've concluded that [MENTION=9629]Slyflourish[/MENTION]'s suggestion has more merit than BR. BR magnifies the difference between CRs, which makes it scale too quickly. One Githyanki Knight cannot beat forty orcs (BR) but he might be able to beat eleven of them. (It's tough, since he'd only last two or three rounds against all eleven of them at once, but it's plausible if he exploits his individual superiority well enough. He can straight-up beat 6 orcs at once, more than half the time.)

Contrary to what I'd previously believed, the CR table is surprisingly linear. Between 1st and 20th level, 1 point of CR pretty much gains you 15 HP and 6 points of damage. Between 21st and 30th levels (inclusive), the rate of gain triples: 45 HP and 18 points of damage. CR 1 has about 5x the HP and 2x the offensive power of a typical CR "step" (but of course, most CR 1 creatures in the MM are not actually as tough as that table predicts). That means that all of the non-linearity after CR 1 comes from gains to-hit and AC, which kind of offsets the early stat HP/damage boost that comes before CR 1. Linear is good for mass combat because if you sum a linear measure, you can be pretty sure the result will come out close to your actual result.

I'm still running sims to find a BR measure that is plausible to me. So far, it seems roughly plausible to assign BR = CR for CR between 1 and 20.

Data points: purely by the numbers, a Marilith can take on 20 orcs, just barely, but loses pretty badly to 21. A Githyanki Knight can take on 6 orcs, about 70% of the time, but loses about 60% of the time to 7, and it's hopeless against 8. (In a real fight these differences would be less extreme because terrain and tactics come into play, but we're just talking pure numbers here, which is what mass combat is all about.) A pit fiend handily beats 30 orcs reliably (10/10) but loses reliably to 35 (9/10); the tipping point seems to be about 32. (Pit fiend winds 50% of the time against 32 orcs.)

So, I think you wouldn't go far wrong to start off saying that BR = CR (in conjunction with some set of rules that's better than the UA rules, e.g. http://bluishcertainty.blogspot.com/2017/02/mass-combat-rules-revision-to-unearthed.html), with CR 1/2 counting as BR 2/3 and CR 1/4 counting as BR 1/3, and anything over CR 20 counting as perhaps BR 20 + 3 * (amount over 20), so CR 30 is BR 50. Then the DM can adjust things on the fly as needed, e.g. he can say that an ancient red dragon (BR 32) against 300 orcs (BR 200) counts as BR 320 for offensive purposes because its breath weapon scales so well against massed targets--so the ancient red's commander just needs to find some kobold or goblin meat shields to soak up orc javelins while the ancient red annihilates the orcs, and he'll be able to win. Similarly, a DM might reasonably rule that Ogres are not BR 2, they are only BR 1, barely better than orcs. (He might also downgrade them to CR 1 as well, but that's a separate conversation.)

 

[Bawylie]

After doing some more examination of the DMG CR table, and pondering how units should scale and a few case studies (githyanki knight vs. N orcs; ancient white dragon against N young whites or young reds), I've concluded that [MENTION=9629]Slyflourish[/MENTION]'s suggestion has more merit than BR. BR magnifies the difference between CRs, which makes it scale too quickly. One Githyanki Knight cannot beat forty orcs (BR) but he might be able to beat eleven of them. (It's tough, since he'd only last two or three rounds against all eleven of them at once, but it's plausible if he exploits his individual superiority well enough. He can straight-up beat 6 orcs at once, more than half the time.)

Contrary to what I'd previously believed, the CR table is surprisingly linear. Between 1st and 20th level, 1 point of CR pretty much gains you 15 HP and 6 points of damage. Between 21st and 30th levels (inclusive), the rate of gain triples: 45 HP and 18 points of damage. CR 1 has about 5x the HP and 2x the offensive power of a typical CR "step" (but of course, most CR 1 creatures in the MM are not actually as tough as that table predicts). That means that all of the non-linearity after CR 1 comes from gains to-hit and AC, which kind of offsets the early stat HP/damage boost that comes before CR 1. Linear is good for mass combat because if you sum a linear measure, you can be pretty sure the result will come out close to your actual result.

I'm still running sims to find a BR measure that is plausible to me. So far, it seems roughly plausible to assign BR = CR for CR between 1 and 20.

Data points: purely by the numbers, a Marilith can take on 20 orcs, just barely, but loses pretty badly to 21. A Githyanki Knight can take on 6 orcs, about 70% of the time, but loses about 60% of the time to 7, and it's hopeless against 8. (In a real fight these differences would be less extreme because terrain and tactics come into play, but we're just talking pure numbers here, which is what mass combat is all about.) A pit fiend handily beats 30 orcs reliably (10/10) but loses reliably to 35 (9/10); the tipping point seems to be about 32. (Pit fiend winds 50% of the time against 32 orcs.)

So, I think you wouldn't go far wrong to start off saying that BR = CR (in conjunction with some set of rules that's better than the UA rules, e.g. http://bluishcertainty.blogspot.com/2017/02/mass-combat-rules-revision-to-unearthed.html), with CR 1/2 counting as BR 2/3 and CR 1/4 counting as BR 1/3, and anything over CR 20 counting as perhaps BR 20 + 3 * (amount over 20), so CR 30 is BR 50. Then the DM can adjust things on the fly as needed, e.g. he can say that an ancient red dragon (BR 32) against 300 orcs (BR 200) counts as BR 320 for offensive purposes because its breath weapon scales so well against massed targets--so the ancient red's commander just needs to find some kobold or goblin meat shields to soak up orc javelins while the ancient red annihilates the orcs, and he'll be able to win. Similarly, a DM might reasonably rule that Ogres are not BR 2, they are only BR 1, barely better than orcs. (He might also downgrade them to CR 1 as well, but that's a separate conversation.)

Ok please help. I am too dumb to comprehend this after reading twice.

Do we need to go above CR20? Are we doing armies vs tarrasque?


-Brad

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Ok please help. I am too dumb to comprehend this after reading twice.

Sorry. You're not dumb, I'm probably not explaining enough context. The context is:

I have a simulator which can run combats dozens or hundreds of times to estimate the outcome of combats, e.g. 22 orcs vs. a Marilith. I'm using that, and simple analysis of the DMG table, to try to find a rule of thumb for BR which makes BR pretty much fungible, so that 50 BR worth of units is pretty much as good as any other 50 BR worth of units.

This was inspired by your question, "Why not just use CR instead of the BR table?" The initial answer I gave to you was, I think, wrong. It took me some thinking through examples to conclude this, and I checked myself by examining the DMG CR table and running some sims. In my post I examine the proposal you originally made of just using CR and conclude that it's actually not too bad.

Do we need to go above CR20? Are we doing armies vs tarrasque?

That probably wouldn't be an exciting story, and not one that is well-suited to a mass combat system: Tarrasque kills the army and takes no damage because it's immune to nonmagical weapons. (Even if there are a handful of guys with magic weapons, it's still probably better-suited to playing out as a detailed combat, not a mass combat.) Mass Combat systems shouldn't be used when the outcome is already predictable.

Feel free to ignore CRs above 20 if they don't fit your story, but as for me I think it's nice to be able to know how to handle ancient dragons-that-are-not-whites, as well as krakens, empyreans, etc. Especially I like knowing how to handle a Rise of Tiamat-type scenario where e.g. 100 young dragons, 20 adults, and 4 ancients on one side are fighting against 30 adults and 10 ancients on the other, and I like having some assurance that the results I get from doing so are going to roughly match up with what I'd get from playing the battle out in detail. Treating CR 24 as BR 32 seems to do that better than treating it as BR 24.

 

[Bawylie]

Sorry. You're not dumb, I'm probably not explaining enough context. The context is:

I have a simulator which can run combats dozens or hundreds of times to estimate the outcome of combats, e.g. 22 orcs vs. a Marilith. I'm using that, and simple analysis of the DMG table, to try to find a rule of thumb for BR which makes BR pretty much fungible, so that 50 BR worth of units is pretty much as good as any other 50 BR worth of units.

This was inspired by your question, "Why not just use CR instead of the BR table?" The initial answer I gave to you was, I think, wrong. It took me some thinking through examples to conclude this, and I checked myself by examining the DMG CR table and running some sims. In my post I examine the proposal you originally made of just using CR and conclude that it's actually not too bad.



That probably wouldn't be an exciting story, and not one that is well-suited to a mass combat system: Tarrasque kills the army and takes no damage because it's immune to nonmagical weapons. (Even if there are a handful of guys with magic weapons, it's still probably better-suited to playing out as a detailed combat, not a mass combat.) Mass Combat systems shouldn't be used when the outcome is already predictable.

Feel free to ignore CRs above 20 if they don't fit your story, but as for me I think it's nice to be able to know how to handle ancient dragons-that-are-not-whites, as well as krakens, empyreans, etc. Especially I like knowing how to handle a Rise of Tiamat-type scenario where e.g. 100 young dragons, 20 adults, and 4 ancients on one side are fighting against 30 adults and 10 ancients on the other, and I like having some assurance that the results I get from doing so are going to roughly match up with what I'd get from playing the battle out in detail. Treating CR 24 as BR 32 seems to do that better than treating it as BR 24.

Gotcha! So, in the interim, just using CR in place of BR will work alright. We probably will need an updated table for the UA after further analysis.


-Brad

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Sorry. You're not dumb, I'm probably not explaining enough context. The context is:

I have a simulator which can run combats dozens or hundreds of times to estimate the outcome of combats, e.g. 22 orcs vs. a Marilith. I'm using that, and simple analysis of the DMG table, to try to find a rule of thumb for BR which makes BR pretty much fungible, so that 50 BR worth of units is pretty much as good as any other 50 BR worth of units.

This was inspired by your question, "Why not just use CR instead of the BR table?" The initial answer I gave to you was, I think, wrong. It took me some thinking through examples to conclude this, and I checked myself by examining the DMG CR table and running some sims. In my post I examine the proposal you originally made of just using CR and conclude that it's actually not too bad.



That probably wouldn't be an exciting story, and not one that is well-suited to a mass combat system: Tarrasque kills the army and takes no damage because it's immune to nonmagical weapons. (Even if there are a handful of guys with magic weapons, it's still probably better-suited to playing out as a detailed combat, not a mass combat.) Mass Combat systems shouldn't be used when the outcome is already predictable.

Feel free to ignore CRs above 20 if they don't fit your story, but as for me I think it's nice to be able to know how to handle ancient dragons-that-are-not-whites, as well as krakens, empyreans, etc. Especially I like knowing how to handle a Rise of Tiamat-type scenario where e.g. 100 young dragons, 20 adults, and 4 ancients on one side are fighting against 30 adults and 10 ancients on the other, and I like having some assurance that the results I get from doing so are going to roughly match up with what I'd get from playing the battle out in detail. Treating CR 24 as BR 32 seems to do that better than treating it as BR 24.

Sounds like a cool sim.

After doing some more examination of the DMG CR table, and pondering how units should scale and a few case studies (githyanki knight vs. N orcs; ancient white dragon against N young whites or young reds), I've concluded that [MENTION=9629]Slyflourish[/MENTION]'s suggestion has more merit than BR. BR magnifies the difference between CRs, which makes it scale too quickly. One Githyanki Knight cannot beat forty orcs (BR) but he might be able to beat eleven of them. (It's tough, since he'd only last two or three rounds against all eleven of them at once, but it's plausible if he exploits his individual superiority well enough. He can straight-up beat 6 orcs at once, more than half the time.)

Contrary to what I'd previously believed, the CR table is surprisingly linear. Between 1st and 20th level, 1 point of CR pretty much gains you 15 HP and 6 points of damage. Between 21st and 30th levels (inclusive), the rate of gain triples: 45 HP and 18 points of damage. CR 1 has about 5x the HP and 2x the offensive power of a typical CR "step" (but of course, most CR 1 creatures in the MM are not actually as tough as that table predicts). That means that all of the non-linearity after CR 1 comes from gains to-hit and AC, which kind of offsets the early stat HP/damage boost that comes before CR 1. Linear is good for mass combat because if you sum a linear measure, you can be pretty sure the result will come out close to your actual result.

I'm still running sims to find a BR measure that is plausible to me. So far, it seems roughly plausible to assign BR = CR for CR between 1 and 20.

Data points: purely by the numbers, a Marilith can take on 20 orcs, just barely, but loses pretty badly to 21. A Githyanki Knight can take on 6 orcs, about 70% of the time, but loses about 60% of the time to 7, and it's hopeless against 8. (In a real fight these differences would be less extreme because terrain and tactics come into play, but we're just talking pure numbers here, which is what mass combat is all about.) A pit fiend handily beats 30 orcs reliably (10/10) but loses reliably to 35 (9/10); the tipping point seems to be about 32. (Pit fiend winds 50% of the time against 32 orcs.)

So, I think you wouldn't go far wrong to start off saying that BR = CR (in conjunction with some set of rules that's better than the UA rules, e.g. http://bluishcertainty.blogspot.com/2017/02/mass-combat-rules-revision-to-unearthed.html), with CR 1/2 counting as BR 2/3 and CR 1/4 counting as BR 1/3, and anything over CR 20 counting as perhaps BR 20 + 3 * (amount over 20), so CR 30 is BR 50. Then the DM can adjust things on the fly as needed, e.g. he can say that an ancient red dragon (BR 32) against 300 orcs (BR 200) counts as BR 320 for offensive purposes because its breath weapon scales so well against massed targets--so the ancient red's commander just needs to find some kobold or goblin meat shields to soak up orc javelins while the ancient red annihilates the orcs, and he'll be able to win. Similarly, a DM might reasonably rule that Ogres are not BR 2, they are only BR 1, barely better than orcs. (He might also downgrade them to CR 1 as well, but that's a separate conversation.)

So... If CR=BR (other than CRs over 20 and under 1) How does the rest of it work? Like the UA article?

As an aside, I prefer smaller-than-400-mediums sized units. 100 sounds good off the top of my head.

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[FormerlyHemlock]

So... If CR=BR (other than CRs over 20 and under 1) How does the rest of it work? Like the UA article?

I'm planning to start with the UA article as a base but then change the combat resolution procedure completely, like this: http://bluishcertainty.blogspot.com/2017/02/mass-combat-rules-revision-to-unearthed.html

Long story short: roll 3d6 each round, multiply by BR/100 (not rounded), and that's how much damage in BR the other side takes each round. Whoever loses more BR is the "loser" and must make a morale check.

I may revise those rules after some playtesting to tweak the probability curve. I'm considering, instead of a cumulative penalty to morale, increasing the number of morale checks that must be made. That would let "unbreakable" units like zombies and skeletons be truly unbreakable.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

I'm planning to start with the UA article as a base but then change the combat resolution procedure completely, like this: http://bluishcertainty.blogspot.com/2017/02/mass-combat-rules-revision-to-unearthed.html

Long story short: roll 3d6 each round, multiply by BR/100 (not rounded), and that's how much damage in BR the other side takes each round. Whoever loses more BR is the "loser" and must make a morale check.

I may revise those rules after some playtesting to tweak the probability curve. I'm considering, instead of a cumulative penalty to morale, increasing the number of morale checks that must be made. That would let "unbreakable" units like zombies and skeletons be truly unbreakable.

Not bad!

I don't think I like the save-or-die mechanics of the morale save causing a whole unit to quit the field after only 10 minutes of fighting! (1 minute in the UA).

What if you made the units do twice as much BR damage to each other (or more!) and "Morale Save for Half damage"? Then you are wiped out when your BR is.



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[FormerlyHemlock]

I don't think I like the save-or-die mechanics of the morale save causing a whole unit to quit the field after only 10 minutes of fighting! (1 minute in the UA).

I'm sure I'm being influenced by wargames like Dominions, where crushing an enemy force with 100% casualties is something which essentially doesn't happen, and where low-morale troops will often rout after only a few blows are exchanged (10% casualties or so). To me, having a unit potentially lose cohesion after "only" ten minutes of fighting seems about right. (Note: a disbanded unit doesn't mean everyone in it is dead, and it could potentially be re-formed with the survivors. But it ceases to be a factor in the ongoing battle.)

I don't like the idea of fighting until BR is zeroed out. That doesn't seem realistic to me. It is a rare combat formation which will be able to fight on after taking 50% casualties.

One thing that I might consider is altering the penalty for failing a morale check. Thinking about Gettysburg (the movie) and the way the various units repulse and are reformed several times, I might consider a variant where morale failures are more like PHB Exhaustion: perhaps the first morale failure simply incapacitates the combat formation in confusion until it succeeds on a morale check (re-check every round, like a death check; until then, can't initiate actions, including Fights, can't move as a formation, etc.), and disbanding is caused by failing a morale check while already incapacitated (i.e. someone pursued you after a morale failure and beat you again). But so far those kinds of ideas are just in my head, not written down in usable form anywhere and certainly not tested.