So 400 veterans always win against the 44 storm giants.
Then the DM decides that the 400 veterans should rather be modelled as two separate units of half their size (200). DM tosses in an extra commander for the second unit.
The result is that those 2 separate units now have half BR (or 416 with one commander each) and will now always lose.
Currently, there has to be some DM's key decision on how to model the armies (how many units and what size and composition), if you want both sides to have a chance at winning. Otherwise, you don't run the battle but simply announce the outcome. This fact is not explained by these rules.
The BR is so swingy because it currently represents the equivalent of BOTH a unit's attack/defense bonus and hit points!!
So either we accept that the DM does some work on the initial units representation, or we have to increase the system complexity a bit, by using two different battle ratings instead of just one.
Then why bother having the rules?
I'm serious, if the DM in deciding the make up of the armies can set the outcome to be inevitable then what is the point of the rules?
This is a system designed to be used to represent battles the PC's might not have a direct hand in. It removes large and traditional strategic elements (walls only give advantage/disadvantage currently, which will never overcome the 20 point swing... meaning that you do not need a 1 to 3 advantage to take the walls) while making the outcome either a mathematical certainty or a slog through massive amounts of "hp".
And one thing that we haven't taked about for how long this would take is that you obviously aren't going to have only a single unit. To model the horde from the battle of Helmsdeep you should have multiple units, and resolving 20 units that take 8 rounds each to break and run... I'd rather pull out Axis and Allies, at least there I'll be able to meaningfully contribute.
The point of rules like this is so that the DM doesn't just arbitrarily decide the outcome... and these rules are set up so the DM can mathematically set up the outcome they desire leaving the players with no agency unless they stop using the mass combat rules and zoom in to normal DnD rules.
The abstraction is needed to simplify the Mass Combat System and make it easy to handle. But as others have said, the BR makes the System unbalanced. Li Shennon has well explained why:
BR has an high score because it need to rappresent hit points other than attack. But it is precisely this high score that makes BR more unbalanced. On the other hand, BR as Attack AND Hit Points has the value of allowing a more credible game situation: with the increasing of casualties, the Unit attack power decreases.
I think the latter feature needs to be kept.
In order to obtain this, I suggest that BR could be used as a Score that gives a aseparate modifier to Attack...like an Ability Score, that gives an highter modifier the higher is the Score. Simply, in this case Battle Rating will be an Health Score that gives a separate modifier to Attack.
And so we would have:
- BR continue to be calculated as described in the Playtest document, in base of the creatures CR.
- Every few BR points (10? 20? 50?) the Unit receives +1 in Attack. The Attack check will no longer be 1d20 + BR, but 1d20 + Attack.
- BR, instead, will count only as an Health score. A succesfull Attack will procude a loss of BR points. The more BR points the Unit lose, the less will be the Attack score.
- When the Unit BR falls below half of its original score, the Unit is destroyed.
What do you think?
Could potentially work, but there are a few bugs.
For instance when we get High CR creatures, each creature represents multiple BR. IF you have a unit of say CR 10 creatures, each one represents 12 BR. A loss of 5 BR then is... them losing half of a individual? It would represent them being injured sure, but then would that effect their damage?
It's highly highly abstract as a part of the design, sure, but it feels weird to me as a DM to see a unit losing attack power because one of it's members suffered some minor injuries, when to lose an equivalent amount for another unit requires the deaths of dozens of soldiers.
Still, breaking the Attack and Health into two seperate numbers gives us space to make adjustments to attacks do to things like tactics or terrain that can actually shift the battle, and making the numbers smaller gives the d20 more of a chance to matter.
However, to make the d20 decisive in a fight, you still need a difference of about 10 or less, so shrinking the numbers from 800 to 80 and 600 to 60 gives the smaller group a single opportunity to get lucky, but after that they will never recover unless we have ways to improve their attack mid-battle.
Tangent-> It is immensely amusing to me that we keep trying to put mass combat rules in DnD. DnD started as a variant of wargaming where the players could have special commander-esque units to control instead of massed groups of troops. Now we are trying to go back and make these special single pcs fight on the scale of massed groups of troops. The circle will be complete if we can ever find a system that satisfies us.
