Battlefield Adventures - Andy Collins speaks!

[BryonD]

How can I say no

BUT, does this EL system (and/or the attached spreadsheet) take into account PC capabilities. Can high level PCs take on an army of mooks (or at least sway the battle?)

Yes, it absolutely does.
The core of the system extends from Upper_Krusts EL system, which was originally laid out with ultra high level play in mind.

I can not do justice to the system in a quick blurb. But it is based on establishing a base EL for each side in direct combat. It doesn't matter if the "side" is one Ancient Red Dragon, Godzilla, a 25th level fighter, 10,000 goblins warrior 1, or 3 orc fighters 2.

All other things being equal, the fighter can take the dragon, but would face a serious task to not be worn down by the goblins. And Godzilla will destroy them all.

Thats a major oversimplification, but it gets to the heart. The default 25th level fighter would assume serious magic gear which would make him nearly invulnerable to the goblins, thus given him a chance against such an insane number. Throw out the gear and you can recalculate to find that the dude is going in the stewpot. Now you just need to think of a scenario where the fighter can logistically encounter a 10,000 strong army of goblins all at once......

Seriously and all silly examples aside, the system is extremely flexible.

 

[MerricB]

Merric, you certainly deserve your title of optimist....and while I see what they are trying to do, and that it is somewhat original, from A.C.s comments it is missing some major stuff:

Miniatures handbook does not have a mass combat system in the sense that it allows you to resolve battles with hundreds or thousands of participants (anything worth being called a battle).

Tell me about it. I complained about that at the time, and many times since.

Cheers!

 

[MerricB]

OK, so, between the Complete Warrior and the Miniatures Handbook, nobody has any needs for Battlefield Adventures, right? From the thing Merric quoted, it seems it's just an expanded version of the Warrior Campaign chapter of CW...

Heh. I considered that as well. (I really liked that chapter of CW). Then I thought about it.

It's not quite the same thing. CW had some great ideas in it, but left a lot of the realisation of that up to the DM.

CW doesn't really cover the battlefield at all. One of the big features of a battlefield (as opposed to a dungeon) is that there are lots of people fighting throughout it. As you try to get from point A to point B, there are many combatants in the way. How do you deal with that? Do they attack the PCs? Do they just hinder them? Do you need to resolve their combats (which aren't important to the big picture?)

This is a different thing than a mass combat system, btw - mass combat is primarily interested with the entire picture. Dealing with the PCs on the battlefield is only interested in what they encounter.

I still want to see a good mass combat system for D&D, but I don't actually think that this is the book for it - it detracts from the actual PCs. (The book for it was the MHb, and is one of its major failings).

Cheers!

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

BUT, does this EL system (and/or the attached spreadsheet) take into account PC capabilities. Can high level PCs take on an army of mooks (or at least sway the battle?)

Sure.

Mass combat aside, the EL system is a predictor of combats over multiple iterations. When PCs combat something of their own EL, you know that they have a 50/50 chance of survival, using 100% of their resources. Now, that's not necessarily the case every time, but over the average, over multiple iterations, it holds true.

This, at least, is the claim at the heart of the CR/EL system.

Applying that claim to Mass Combat is actually pretty simple if you understand and accept that basic premise.

I'd be happy to discuss it further in another forum, but don't want to hijack this thread.


Wulf

 

[Particle_Man]

When is this Battlefield Adventures supposed to come out?

 

[Davelozzi]

When is this Battlefield Adventures supposed to come out?

It's one of several releases that Wizard's has planned for August.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

This is the first WotC book that I have been interested in for a while - I like Frostburn okay, and may pick it up eventually (I am not running an arctic game right now), but war... That is something I have in nearly every game, sooner or later.

Now if only the mass combat in the Miniatures Handbook didn't stink to high heaven. (I will likely use the Open Mass Combat System 2 from Mongoose.)

The Auld Grump

 

[Olive]

Now if only the mass combat in the Miniatures Handbook didn't stink to high heaven. (I will likely use the Open Mass Combat System 2 from Mongoose.)

Having played one game with the MH system, I thought it worked fine. Simple, fast and not too involved while allowing the charcters room to shine.

It's no full-blown war game, but I don't need that.

 

[TerraDave]

Wulf and BryonD: Thanks! I think I have the general idea and will take a look...

In terms of this product, if they have rules for battlefield from a PC (versus armchair general) perspective that is great, but hopefully they will also have something on how PC actions affect the battle as a whole

 

[Mercule]

Miniatures handbook does not have a mass combat system in the sense that it allows you to resolve battles with hundreds or thousands of participants (anything worth being called a battle).

Well, that answers one question I've had for a while, but hadn't gotten a straight answer to. When I think "mass combat" I think about large, terraformed tables with stands of figures where each figure represents several men. I think about dealing with formations, facing those formations, and that sort of thing.

Skirmishes aren't "massive" enough to sate the wargamer in me, but they're too big to be of interest to the roleplayer.