Appropriate Level for a Leader of 3,000 Cavalry
- Thread starter Gregor
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cptg1481
First Post
My Thoughts
I think I am of a different camp than most of you (not unusual BTW) on this one. Just so you understand where I’m coming from here I’m an Army Officer, a Captain in Military Intelligence…made the hard way after 10 years of enlisted service in the infantry and Special Forces branches getting my commission at 30 after making Sergeant First Class. I consider myself somewhat knowledgeable on military doctrine.
First off I don’t think that most high level commanders, even in a fantasy army would strictly be fighters. Now I will concede that they may have a few levels of fighter say 3-4 which they would have developed while they were serving at the junior officer level say platoon leader and company commanders. I refer to these as fighting leaders. After that they begin to take levels of expert with a concentration on military knowledge skills like logistics, planning, tactics, strategy and training. (This assumes that you use a large scale combat resolution system that actually REWARDS commanders for these skills. I use AEG’s War and their Mercenary books to play out mine, they have a system of opposed checks in these areas that give the winners advantages on the battlefield)
These are the skills that would be important to high level military commanders and that is the level we are talking about here. In modern terms you are looking a full Colonel since you have about a Brigade of troops, however, in times past you would have a General, sometimes called a Brigadier in charge of the 3000 troops you mentioned.
Once officers rise out of the junior ranks they do mist of their fighting with a radio and a map. Now the fantasy equivalent would be say drums, horns, pennants or other signal devices that control the movements of their combat or maneuver elements. The maneuver elements of a brigade are its companies. He’d have about 9-12 of them depending on their size divided into two battalions with commanders of their own. The maneuver elements of the Battalions are platoons. The maneuver elements are the ones that fight the battles not the staffs of the brigade or battalions who are mostly officers and way past their prime of swinging a sword. The expert levels here are a must. Sure there may be exceptions perhaps an 8th level fighter who is a company commander who will never make more rank due to his family status or even his desire to do so. Likewise there will be some of higher rank and station who have less skill but are well placed to be given their positions on a staff etc. These privileged few will be given advisors of their own who for the most part do have the appropriate skills to accomplish their missions for them.
Now this also assumes you use a large scale combat system that rewards military leaders for having said skills. If you are assuming that all leaders are fighters and earn their way right to lead by skill at arms and that fits in with your world I think the highest level fighter would work out just fine. You could make him what ever level you want. Not for me and mine but there is absolutely nothing wrong with that method
I think I am of a different camp than most of you (not unusual BTW) on this one. Just so you understand where I’m coming from here I’m an Army Officer, a Captain in Military Intelligence…made the hard way after 10 years of enlisted service in the infantry and Special Forces branches getting my commission at 30 after making Sergeant First Class. I consider myself somewhat knowledgeable on military doctrine.
First off I don’t think that most high level commanders, even in a fantasy army would strictly be fighters. Now I will concede that they may have a few levels of fighter say 3-4 which they would have developed while they were serving at the junior officer level say platoon leader and company commanders. I refer to these as fighting leaders. After that they begin to take levels of expert with a concentration on military knowledge skills like logistics, planning, tactics, strategy and training. (This assumes that you use a large scale combat resolution system that actually REWARDS commanders for these skills. I use AEG’s War and their Mercenary books to play out mine, they have a system of opposed checks in these areas that give the winners advantages on the battlefield)
These are the skills that would be important to high level military commanders and that is the level we are talking about here. In modern terms you are looking a full Colonel since you have about a Brigade of troops, however, in times past you would have a General, sometimes called a Brigadier in charge of the 3000 troops you mentioned.
Once officers rise out of the junior ranks they do mist of their fighting with a radio and a map. Now the fantasy equivalent would be say drums, horns, pennants or other signal devices that control the movements of their combat or maneuver elements. The maneuver elements of a brigade are its companies. He’d have about 9-12 of them depending on their size divided into two battalions with commanders of their own. The maneuver elements of the Battalions are platoons. The maneuver elements are the ones that fight the battles not the staffs of the brigade or battalions who are mostly officers and way past their prime of swinging a sword. The expert levels here are a must. Sure there may be exceptions perhaps an 8th level fighter who is a company commander who will never make more rank due to his family status or even his desire to do so. Likewise there will be some of higher rank and station who have less skill but are well placed to be given their positions on a staff etc. These privileged few will be given advisors of their own who for the most part do have the appropriate skills to accomplish their missions for them.
Now this also assumes you use a large scale combat system that rewards military leaders for having said skills. If you are assuming that all leaders are fighters and earn their way right to lead by skill at arms and that fits in with your world I think the highest level fighter would work out just fine. You could make him what ever level you want. Not for me and mine but there is absolutely nothing wrong with that method
dcollins
Explorer
Olive said:
It's still working for me (as it has all week).
I wonder if there's some wierd filtering being performed by your ISP or in your goeographical location? For whatever it's worth, superdan.net is currently a redirection from yahoo domains (Network Solutions) -> Comcast home pages. If you get that, you actually wind up at http://home.comcast.net/~superdan.net/demogrph.html -- you might try that directly to narrow down where your problem is (or try pinging it).
Last edited:
blargney the second
blargney the minute's son
For what it's worth, I don't think that the convention of "most people are first level" makes any sense. You can't *do* anything at first level!
The assumption I follow is that children, initiates, and apprentices are 1st level. Journeymen, adolescents, and mediocre businessmen are 2nd level. Fully-trained adults, including guards, artisans, farmers, etc are 3rd level. Leaders and exceptional people are 4th level or higher. (By consequence, humanoids have similar class levels up to 3 hit die or more. I like using this class levels aspect of D&D3!)
Depending on the context of your army, you will have many different options:
Conscripts: Commoner/Expert 3, or 2-3 if they are drafting teenagers.
Civil Militia and Guards: Mixture of Commoner/Expert/Warrior 3
Standing Army Soldiers: Warrior 3
Non-com leaders: Warrior/Fighter 3-4
Officers: Warrior/Fighter/Aristocrat 3-4+ depending on number of ranks in army and size of army
Commander: Warrior/Fighter/Aristocrat/Prestige Classes/Whatever 4-6+ depending on number of officers and size of army
Then there are all the different roles within the army:
Scouts: Warrior/Expert/Ranger 3
Healers: Expert/Adept/Cleric 3
Arctillery (Mages!): Adept/Wizard/Sorceror 3
Support personnel: Commoner/Expert 2-3
Hope this helps!
-blarg
The assumption I follow is that children, initiates, and apprentices are 1st level. Journeymen, adolescents, and mediocre businessmen are 2nd level. Fully-trained adults, including guards, artisans, farmers, etc are 3rd level. Leaders and exceptional people are 4th level or higher. (By consequence, humanoids have similar class levels up to 3 hit die or more. I like using this class levels aspect of D&D3!)
Depending on the context of your army, you will have many different options:
Conscripts: Commoner/Expert 3, or 2-3 if they are drafting teenagers.
Civil Militia and Guards: Mixture of Commoner/Expert/Warrior 3
Standing Army Soldiers: Warrior 3
Non-com leaders: Warrior/Fighter 3-4
Officers: Warrior/Fighter/Aristocrat 3-4+ depending on number of ranks in army and size of army
Commander: Warrior/Fighter/Aristocrat/Prestige Classes/Whatever 4-6+ depending on number of officers and size of army
Then there are all the different roles within the army:
Scouts: Warrior/Expert/Ranger 3
Healers: Expert/Adept/Cleric 3
Arctillery (Mages!): Adept/Wizard/Sorceror 3
Support personnel: Commoner/Expert 2-3
Hope this helps!
-blarg
dcollins
Explorer
Well, several posts at this point have wandered pretty far into house-rule territory. One does need to come to grips that normal D&D has long-standing standards for common demographics. Namely:
- Conscripts are typically Com1 (3.0 DMG p. 158)
- Soldiers are typically War1 (3.0 DMG p. 158)
- Commanders are typically Ftrs (3.0 DMG p. 158, and class definition in PHB).
- Civil leaders are 20th level at most (3.0 DMG p. 139).
So you've got to understand that you're playing pretty nonstandard D&D if you're doing something radically different with class demographics.
If anything, the disagreeable change that 3rd Ed. made was the "everyone is at least 1st-level" idea, along with the Commoner class that came with it. Previous rulesets had most humans without any class at all, being 0-level. This would be a lot more sensible (common humans as classless Humanoids) in being consistent with most other creature types being typically classless, getting rid of the oddball Commoner class, handling children statistics, and so forth.
- Conscripts are typically Com1 (3.0 DMG p. 158)
- Soldiers are typically War1 (3.0 DMG p. 158)
- Commanders are typically Ftrs (3.0 DMG p. 158, and class definition in PHB).
- Civil leaders are 20th level at most (3.0 DMG p. 139).
So you've got to understand that you're playing pretty nonstandard D&D if you're doing something radically different with class demographics.
If anything, the disagreeable change that 3rd Ed. made was the "everyone is at least 1st-level" idea, along with the Commoner class that came with it. Previous rulesets had most humans without any class at all, being 0-level. This would be a lot more sensible (common humans as classless Humanoids) in being consistent with most other creature types being typically classless, getting rid of the oddball Commoner class, handling children statistics, and so forth.
cptg1481 said:
This sounds appropriate for modern armies, from 18th century onwards, or perhaps for the Roman army, but medieval leadership was largely of the 'heroic' type and tended to emphasise personal bravery and fighting prowess over tactical ability. In a feudal D&D kingdom I think the military commanders will tend to be high-level Fighter types. In a professional army, Fighter/Expert, Warrior/Expert, Fighter/Marshall (PrC or Core) etc make more sense.
dcollins said:
That's true. A mistake people often make is thinking that there is any official way of deriving numbers of higher-levellers from the general population of an area. Monte's Town Generator is designed simply to find the highest level characters _within a settlement_, so it assumes a heavy concentration of high-levellers (and wealth) in the larger cities, which are intended to be rare. As a way of working out the total numbers in a country, say, it's pretty useless. IMO it's prett poor in general (too few low-level NPCs over 1st level, way too many 20th level Commoners), but YMMV.
I find that 'half number at +2 levels' while commonly used, gives what to me look like ridiculous results, like a typical regimental commander of 3000 being a 22nd level Epic Fighter. I use the 1e DMG rule that 1 in 100 of the population are 'PC class', and a half number at each higher level rule, which to me gives intuitively satisfying results, like the commander of 3000 being 12th level, which apparently is actually the case for Mistledale!
Hmmm...the breakdown of a division in the Imperial Legion IMC is more or less:
8000 troopers (War1)
1000 corporals (War2)
1000 sergeants (War3)
(most ordinary troops have a squad size of ten, with one corporal and one sergeant per squad).
Above that, a company (ten squads, 100 men) is led by a lieutenant aided by a sub-lieutenant (Ftr4/5, Ftr3/4). A cohort (ten companies, 1000 men) is commanded by a major (Ftr7/8) and captain (Ftr6/7) and a division (ten cohorts, 10000 men) by a commander (Ftr12ish) and colonel (Ftr10ish).
Now, you are using fighters are a base type instead of warriors, so the unit strength is quite a bit higher- it's probably a fairly elite army with formal training. As such, your leader, which would normally fall somewhere between a colonel and major, is probably closer to a colonel, so I guess around level 10ish. Having said that, the Empire has some twenty-odd divisions, so most of its high command (levels 15+) have supra-divisionary jurisdictions. Given that this guy is commanding the armed forces of a nation, therefore, it's probably reasonable to bump him up to about 14/15.
PS I assumed one soldier/20 population in a typical feudal, militaristic nation. I'm not one to argue with the FRCS, but 1 in 9 seems awfully high...IIRC, the German army had about that ratio in the World Wars, and they were the most heavily militarised per head of population.
8000 troopers (War1)
1000 corporals (War2)
1000 sergeants (War3)
(most ordinary troops have a squad size of ten, with one corporal and one sergeant per squad).
Above that, a company (ten squads, 100 men) is led by a lieutenant aided by a sub-lieutenant (Ftr4/5, Ftr3/4). A cohort (ten companies, 1000 men) is commanded by a major (Ftr7/8) and captain (Ftr6/7) and a division (ten cohorts, 10000 men) by a commander (Ftr12ish) and colonel (Ftr10ish).
Now, you are using fighters are a base type instead of warriors, so the unit strength is quite a bit higher- it's probably a fairly elite army with formal training. As such, your leader, which would normally fall somewhere between a colonel and major, is probably closer to a colonel, so I guess around level 10ish. Having said that, the Empire has some twenty-odd divisions, so most of its high command (levels 15+) have supra-divisionary jurisdictions. Given that this guy is commanding the armed forces of a nation, therefore, it's probably reasonable to bump him up to about 14/15.
PS I assumed one soldier/20 population in a typical feudal, militaristic nation. I'm not one to argue with the FRCS, but 1 in 9 seems awfully high...IIRC, the German army had about that ratio in the World Wars, and they were the most heavily militarised per head of population.
