Celebrim
Legend
I tried to throw some quick rules together, but as I did so, I could just hear all the whining:
"How comes my unit with improved initiative doesn't move first?"
"How comes my unit wearing breastplates doesn't have an advantage over your unit with chainmail?"
"How comes my 17th level fighter is so vunerable to damage when he solo charges your unit of pikeman? He has a 30 AC, your second level fighter pikeman unit shouldn't be able to hit him!!"
"But that unit was invisible! Invisibility ROCKS!"
"CR is broken!"
"Why is my mage's ray of enfeeblement useless?"
"Why haven't you given rules for the spells in this splatbook?"
etc. etc. etc.
The problem is, in order to make it a good fast playable mass combat system, you have to abstract out as many dice rolls as possible. But the more abstract your system is from its D20 basis and the more different it is from D20, the more uncomfortable it makes a person who expects combat to run just like D20. The first time a unit of kobolds takes down a orge unit without injury, there is going to be a fit about how impossible that is. Sure, it's impossible; I know that. But if you don't want to keep track of every ogres hit points you have to assume that the ogre unit will lose some proportion of fights with kobold units that is inversely proportional to the number of kobolds you figure that it takes to take down an ogre. And if someone figures out that that average is 10 kobolds per ogre, and your kobold unit only wins 2% of the time or wins 12% of the time, boy are you going to here it from someone that thinks your system is 'BRROWKEN'.
No, I don't envy anyone doing that for a living.
Ok, that's a lie. I do envy them as I set here writing my C code and PERL scripts, but I do appreciate the skill involved in getting a bunch of fan boys to buy a product.
"How comes my unit with improved initiative doesn't move first?"
"How comes my unit wearing breastplates doesn't have an advantage over your unit with chainmail?"
"How comes my 17th level fighter is so vunerable to damage when he solo charges your unit of pikeman? He has a 30 AC, your second level fighter pikeman unit shouldn't be able to hit him!!"
"But that unit was invisible! Invisibility ROCKS!"
"CR is broken!"
"Why is my mage's ray of enfeeblement useless?"
"Why haven't you given rules for the spells in this splatbook?"
etc. etc. etc.
The problem is, in order to make it a good fast playable mass combat system, you have to abstract out as many dice rolls as possible. But the more abstract your system is from its D20 basis and the more different it is from D20, the more uncomfortable it makes a person who expects combat to run just like D20. The first time a unit of kobolds takes down a orge unit without injury, there is going to be a fit about how impossible that is. Sure, it's impossible; I know that. But if you don't want to keep track of every ogres hit points you have to assume that the ogre unit will lose some proportion of fights with kobold units that is inversely proportional to the number of kobolds you figure that it takes to take down an ogre. And if someone figures out that that average is 10 kobolds per ogre, and your kobold unit only wins 2% of the time or wins 12% of the time, boy are you going to here it from someone that thinks your system is 'BRROWKEN'.
No, I don't envy anyone doing that for a living.
Ok, that's a lie. I do envy them as I set here writing my C code and PERL scripts, but I do appreciate the skill involved in getting a bunch of fan boys to buy a product.
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