D&D 5E Legends & Lore 28.04: Battlesystem! (mass battles rules)

[mhensley]

I found a nitpick! Why squares and not hexes? for skirmish combats hexes are superior.

Warder

Because everyone already owns square battle mats. Also, armies look better set up in straight lines.

 

[Sage Genesis]

I like the quickness of it but there's too many questions about the abstract nature of it.

Copy-pasting from RPGnet:

1. Stands? Wow. The Jojo's Bizarre Adventure jokes practically write themselves.

2. So two hill giants take only a single attack from a group of archers, whereas one roc bird would take 10 attacks? There's a certain limit to how much abstraction I'm comfortable with and this is kind of near the edge. The whole solo/stand thing forms a strange breaking point both in terms of actions taken and attacks taken. It looks weird to me.

3. If stands and solos (usually) make only one attack per round, how does this interact with creatures that can make multiple attacks per round normally? An owlbear normally makes three attacks for 7 damage each. Ogres make only a single attack for 13 damage. Under normal circumstances this means a group of owlbears would defeat a group of ogres in a fight... but if we switch to the Battlesystem it's the other way around? Is this how it works?

4. How do spells interact with these rules? What does a Fireball do to a stand? Does healing magic affect a stand? If I summon 9 critters, can they act like a stand or are they disregarded? Or are they each their own solo? For that matter, what does dragonbreath do to stands? Medusa petrification? Or heck, what about Sleep and other such spells that go by hit points? Since the stand is one abstract block of hp does that mean I can Sleep an entire group of 10 orcs all at once when its hp are low enough in some weird all-or-nothing effect that is completely unlike what would normally happen against 10 orcs?

5. The morale rules are weird. So let's say I have two units. One consists of two stands of archers (a skirmisher unit), and the other of 12 stands of heavy infantry (a regiment unit). So when even one stand of archers dies, the other might turn and run. But if every single stand of infantry dies, it's all cool and the archers won't need to make a save. Am I reading this right? I mean, I can handwave it but I was kind of hoping your system wouldn't need me to.

6. So if two solos duke it out amongst themselves they basically go in "normal time", yeah? Which is ten times faster than Battlesystem-time. Right. So, how does this interact with spellcasting? If I fight a solo, I can cast 10 spells during one Battlesystem-round? But if I fight a stand, I can cast only one spell?

In other words...
... if there's a stand, then in one Battlesystem-round I can cast one Lightning Bolt on them.
... if there's a stand with a solo dwelling amongst them, then in one Battlesystem-round I can cast one Lightning Bolt on them.
... but if there's a stand and there's a solo about 100 feet behind them then I can cast 10 Lightning Bolts, each of them catching both the solo and the stand in the paths.
(Or the stand is behind the solo, the details of positioning are not the issue here.)

Is this how it works? Please tell me this is not how it works?



All this is not a comment on the Battlesystem rules. The article is obviously not the complete rules so I expect that many of these issues might be addressed. I look forward to seeing the final form.

 

[fjw70]

Instead of varying the number of creatures per mini I would rather vary the size of the mini. So instead of 5 ogres being in one square I would rather one ogre mini (2x2) represent 20 ogres.

i wonder if the number of attack each stand makes equal to the ratio of creatures per mini so a stand of 10 mediums would make 2 attacks against a stand of 5 ogres or 5attacks against a stand of 2huge creatures.

i am glad to see mass combat rules in the core.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Part of me wonders if, for spells, they would crib rules for swarms.

That is, area attacks that hit a stand hit everything in the stand (so they do normal damage) Targeted attacks that hit a stand hit one member of that stand (so they aren't as effective -- damage resistance if not outright immunity).

 

[synthapse]

I think I need to see an example with PC's in play before I decide if there is any point to this or not. The last time my PC was involved in mass combat, we flew over the army while invisible and cast Blade Barrier, Ewards Black Tentacles, Fireball, Acid Fog and so on, obliterating the army in very short order. (We had four full spellcasters, two clerics and two wizards).

I don't know if this example tracks with 5E. Under the last playtest rules, Fly, Evard's Black Tentacles, and Blade Barrier are all concentration spells, and won't be effective in the same way as 3E/Pathfinder. You could still do a lot of damage with 4 casters, but not as much as before. 5E spellcasting seems to be designed to limit the nova play of casters.

In addition, in the live Q&A from Friday, the mass combat example given was a 5th-lvl party and 60 guards versus an 8th-lvl fighter and 200 bandits. The mass combat rules seem to be designed to be usable an earlier levels than previous editions, which I consider a good thing. There are still serious questions about higher-level scaling, but those questions are linked to how you feel about 5E's level scaling in general. After the playtest, I'm cautiously optimistic.

 

[Plaguescarred]

These looks streamlined and simple enought, but then again i'm not well placed to pass a judgement on them, mass-combat rules is not my cup of tea.

I like that they re-use the BATTLESYSTEM name though.

 

[Li Shenron]

Is this how it works? Please tell me this is not how it works?

Yes, this is how (I think) it works. It represents the idea that when you are engaged inside a unit in a large battle, you can't focus on single targets and cast a spell every 6 seconds. Both the chaos around you and/or the fact that you need to follow the rest of your unit (or lead it, which is probably what PC will do), significantly restrict your freedom. You may not be able to move around freely, you may be constantly pushed and pulled by foes and friends alike, or you just won't be able to concentrate.

You can choose to go solo, and burn out all your daily spells in ~15-20 rounds, which are basically 2 minutes therefore 2 mass-battle turns, after which you're an out-of-battery wizard in the middle of a giant melee.

But if you don't like the abstraction level and the inconsistencies it necessarily causes, don't use these battlesystem rules. The strength of this system is simplicity, and loss of consistency is the price to pay. At the other end of the spectrum, you can still choose full consistency and run the whole mass battle with normal D&D combat rules, and viceversa the price to pay is loss of simplicity.

I think the designers are simply and clearly following the key design principle of 5e: simplicity comes first, complications (whatever the reason: consistency, simulationism, gamism, tacticalities...) are optional.

 

[Li Shenron]

Part of me wonders if, for spells, they would crib rules for swarms.

That is, area attacks that hit a stand hit everything in the stand (so they do normal damage) Targeted attacks that hit a stand hit one member of that stand (so they aren't as effective -- damage resistance if not outright immunity).

I definitely think they should have done something about reducing the effects of area spells.

Area spells are not normally designed with the assumption that you will catch one creature per "square" covered by the area. I think the designers normally assume that encounters rarely happen against tens of foes at once. They clearly become much better than the average spells if your targets are conveniently 'packed' together.

I hope they decided on a very simple rule to handle AoE spells in this case, be it a max number or targets affected or something similar. A rationale like "50 orcs packed together provide each other cover against a Fireball" is good enough for me at least for Dex-ST spells. A bit more difficult to explain why a poisonous cloud would not affect all of them.

 

[Bluenose]

I would rather see a more narrative style battle system - Legend of Five Rings or Pendragon style - as the base system. They tend to scale better and resolve more rapidly. Or if you're going to go for a proper miniature wargame, get people who write those to do one instead of keeping it in-house with designers who probably aren't as familiar with tabletop wargaming systems. This looks simplistic without being simple, which really isn't a good sign.

 

[TerraDave]

Love it. I also like the Battlesystem name, but of course I still have my original Battlesystem counters.

Devil is in the details on a product like this. Cry Havoc, by Skip Williams and published by Monte Cook, had some real errors in it, including some big problems with scaling and converting spells over, that undermined the whole thing.

Looking forward to it in any case.