BTW I did a bit of calculation yesterday with Spd 50' cavalry using Ride By Attack & Spirited Charge against a lone hero. I could easily get 40 cavalry/round attacking a lone PC, using lances, no AoOs, start and end charge at least 15' away from him, without getting in each others' way. Assuming hit on a 20 & full power attack, with the average cavalryman being a Fighter-4 knight, spirited charge > ATT +6 3d8+21 dmg/hit, without crits that averaged 69 damage/round...
D&D and war
- Thread starter NimrodvanHall
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S'mon said:
Well if you want to insist on really being sensible most real world populations have active military forces of around 1% of thier population. Figure retiree's who are still trained and able bodies push it up to around 5%. We can reasonably figure that D&D worlds are more dangerous then the real world is and double that number. For 10% of people having a class. Probably 75% of them being NPC classes. Then you just have to look at the how common magic is in your world and what culture your dealing with. Some cultures will have mainly fighters and others will have mainly barbarians or rangers for instance. That should give you a good idea of how many people there are of each class. Then I would keep the community modifier to determine the highest class NPC and divide the remaining NPC's of each class down to an even number per 1/4 of the highest NPC level. With any remainder as first level trainees.
For instance a town of 1,000 would have 100 people with class levels. That small of a town would have a community modifier of +2 for fighters of 3-10 level. We can say its an orderly martial culture so 50 of the 100 classed people are fighters. Give the highest guy the max of 9th level for this example and you would have 16 6th level fighters, 16 3rd level fighters and 17 1st level fighters.
I think this system would give a reasonable approximation of classed characters while still giving DM's plenty of room to customize just what classes exactly are present and in what percentages depending on the culture he is dealing with. Lol in fact i think i am gonna use this myself from now on.
S'mon said:I think I've covered this conversation.
Actually its still an extremely stupid rule. A vitality/ wound point system keeps critical hits dangerous much better without making them an instant kill on lower level characters. In the system you like a level one orc with a greataxe and +2 strength (1d12+3) can do 3d12+9 damage with a critical. For an average of 27 damage. Pretty much garaunteeing a kill on even a 3rd level warrior. That kinda sucks. This system still doesnt scale well and it doesnt plausibly account for the idea of DR that well either.
I mean the bad guy is basically invulnerable to non magical (or whatever) weapons unless you stab him just right? A critical hit is supposed to a more accurate shot, not a harder one. At least a basic shot doing more damage then the DR can instantly heal is halfway believable. Being invulnerable except in your armpit (or wherever) is goofy. I am getting mental flashes of Achilles getting shot in the ankle interspersed with a giant block of cheese just thinking about it.
boredgremlin said:
You might find my own Demographics system helpful:
http://www.geocities.com/s.t.newman/demographics.htm
Hussar
Legend
The other thing to remember, is that wizzies need a LOS for most of their spells. There are very few spells, other than summonings I suppose, which can turn corners or climb over the crest of a hill. Entrenchments could make most area of effect spells very difficult to use, as could fighting in any sort of area with cover - forests, underground, cities, etc. Sure the flying mage is good to go, but then again, he's also just painted a great big bullseye on himself. He'd better stay pretty high in order to stay out of reach.
Ok, perhaps my example of stone giants was off, but, then again, there are hordes of other critters that a nation could use to great effect. The fliers obviously, but also:
Animated objects for troop transports
Blink dog scout units
Any of the dire animals
Ooze or jelly siege weapon ammunition
Rust monsters!!!
Treants
Any of the above critters could be either bred and raised or enticed to join an army.
BTW, I read your demographics S'mon. 20 MILLION??? Touch on the large size don't you think? Considering even real world modern cities don't have that many people. How would you ever feed that many mouths. IIRC, at around the 11th century, there were two or three cities in the world over ONE million people. That's a whole lot of people.
Ok, perhaps my example of stone giants was off, but, then again, there are hordes of other critters that a nation could use to great effect. The fliers obviously, but also:
Animated objects for troop transports
Blink dog scout units
Any of the dire animals
Ooze or jelly siege weapon ammunition
Rust monsters!!!
Treants
Any of the above critters could be either bred and raised or enticed to join an army.
BTW, I read your demographics S'mon. 20 MILLION??? Touch on the large size don't you think? Considering even real world modern cities don't have that many people. How would you ever feed that many mouths. IIRC, at around the 11th century, there were two or three cities in the world over ONE million people. That's a whole lot of people.
Dr. Strangemonkey
First Post
S'mon said:
I would not argue that America is a warrior/warlike culture in any real sense of the word. What America is, however, is very good at exploiting the warrior/warlike traits that its culture does posess and emphasizing them to an extreme degree where needed. Our troops require a huge amount of support to exist and not mutiny, let alone be effective, but the culture is more than willing to invest the material and brilliance necessary to provide that support.
What this thread has really failed to look at, I think, is how the wide variety of cultural types and technological sets within DnD would affect warfare. The level of cultural adaptation required in DnD strikes me as far higher than what we need in the RW.
Dr. Strangemonkey said:
In Keegan's terms Britain and America are both highly warlike, much moreso than China, say. I recall before the last Iraq war Tony Blair came on TV saying "We are a peace-loving people..." and my (American) wife and I just burst out laughing.
Note that I'm talking about the mindset of the man on the street or in the trenches, not the national leadership. In fact often the least warlike nations have the most jingoistic militaristic-sounding rulers, Italy under Mussolini would be a good example. Taking my homeland of Ulster as an example, the people of Ulster don't go out attacking random passers by (unless for good sectarian reasons), but they are highly warlike - ready to fight, expect to win, confident of victory. They make superb combat troops; culturally only the Israelis would be comparable that I know of, though American Southerners share the same culture and are very similar (plus have much better rifle skills due to upbringing). I think most Europeans who know America would agree that Americans are extremely warlike, far moreso than most Europeans*. And most European cultures are still more warlike than most of the rest of the world, though that may be changing. I remember an Argentinian being interviewed after the UK-Argentine Falklands War saying "How could we expect to win against these people? It was crazy..." - and Argentines don't exactly have a reputation as craven or pacifists.*Being at the pub yesterday with 3 women - 2 Texans & a Tennessean, plus 3 male Brits (me & 2 nice civilised Southern English chaps) impressed this upon me freshly, especially when the talk turned to the best kind of ammunition for home defense - not FMJ as it will kill the neighbours, fragmentation rounds are better... my wife, who's been in Britain a long time, suggested to the Texan tourist that perhaps she should leave her FMJ rounds off the nightstand where she kept her Glock-40 and fragmentation rounds, in case she grabbed the wrong magazine when the home invaders broke in, but this was regarded as unnecessary.
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