Eden's Fields of Blood

[mattcolville]

Sounds like a lot of the information is ready to be pumped into the book. Is thee a list of prestige classes? Will there be magical siege weapons? Another bone of contention I had with War...

Like I said, we tested realm management and tactical combat resolution. Realm management had some bugs and I went and worked on the Taverns book before I worked them out. Now they're almost worked out and we're ready to begin testing again.

Magical seige weapons? Dunno. Seige weapons and spells, yes. But we're not inventing a whole lot. We're simply taking the races that exist in the MM and PHB, the spells, the items, and turning them into Book of War stuff.

The Prestige classes likely won't be written by me and I won't know what they are until the combat stuff is done. The only reason we *have* prestige classes is to give players levels in things that will give them direct BoW benefits, like better unit morale, the ability to reform broken units, stuff like that.

 

[mattcolville]

Everything sounds cool sofar, something that i've been looking for, for a long time (for use with D&D)...

What i'm curious about, how will your systm handle small groups of powerfull creatures (such as the fire giants)? How about individual monsters (such as dragons)? Will abilities such as 10/+1 be incorporated (Lvl. 1 fighters will probably do no damage to such creatures, but maybe some with a critical)? In short, how true will it stay to the familiar D20 rules we know?

Size

How many actual individuals are in each unit isn't expressly stated. A general rule of 100 1st level warriors in one human regular infantry unit is given, but this is an average and an example. A regular unit of human scouts might only have 12 people in it. A unit of Fire Giants might be one Fire Giant. Basically the game is balanced so One Unit is roughly as useful across the board. Which is not to say 'as powerful.' 1 unit of scouts is roughly as useful as 1 unit of infantry, but because their functions are so different, one has 12 people in it and one has 100.

100 is the baseline for a couple of reasons, 1: it means you can run really large battles, especially when you start fielding Formations, which are large groups of units that move and act together, as one big unit. 2: it gives a good range of scale for the other units. If we presume that each unit is roughly as useful as another, and we have a fire giant standing over here, you'd expect to see 100 1st level warriors standing over there. If I made the base unit 10 guys. . .you wouldn't expect to see 1/10th of a giant opposing them.

I keep saying 'roughly equal' and things like that because these are notional, they're not fungible.

d20ness
I can tell you, this is not D&D combat. It feels and acts like D&D combat, but I monkeyed with certain bits so they'd work in the Book of War. There's one *super* controversial point that people either love or hate, that I won't reveal to you now because even though I should be done with the system this month, our leadtime on books means someone else without a backlog of finished books might be able to beat us to press.

But you'll notice as soon as you look at combat actions that they're the same as D&D combat. The controversial point comes in the resolution mechanic and the unit's stats.

The original version of the rules allowed you to equip your units with any appropriate weapon, and I had every weapon listed. I think that's overkill. I seriously doubt many people are going to want to field units of gnome infantry armed with *picks*. So I might scale down the weapons list to something more manageable.

One thing I'm wrestling with now is levelling up your experiened units.

 

[mattcolville]

Will the tactical version use square grids? Or will the book include rules for using (and moving minis/counter in) square and hex grid battlemaps?

We're currently using hexes although there's nothing, as far as I can tell, that would change if you just replaced them with squares. Hexes are used for the realm management stuff. The combat resolution uses inches and a ruler, no grid of any type a la. . .well, pretty much every miniature wargame.

 

[drnuncheon]

The original version of the rules allowed you to equip your units with any appropriate weapon, and I had every weapon listed. I think that's overkill. I seriously doubt many people are going to want to field units of gnome infantry armed with *picks*. So I might scale down the weapons list to something more manageable.

Please don't! One might not want a unit of gnomish infantry with picks, but a dwarven militia engaged in a desperate defense of their cavern would be almost certain to use them!

Alternately - and perhaps better - go with the most common weapons and then stick in a paragraph telling how to convert regular D&D weapons to whatever format the unit weapons use. That would make it far more useful for those folks who use unusual weapons - people with campaigns set in other than a 'standard D&D setting'. If I can't use the rules to handle musketeers or samurai (or forces from Dragonstar, for that matter) merely because they aren't listed on the 'unit types' then I will be far more likely to turn to a system where I could.

J

 

[mattcolville]

Please don't! One might not want a unit of gnomish infantry with picks, but a dwarven militia engaged in a desperate defense of their cavern would be almost certain to use them!

Alternately - and perhaps better - go with the most common weapons and then stick in a paragraph telling how to convert regular D&D weapons to whatever format the unit weapons use. That would make it far more useful for those folks who use unusual weapons - people with campaigns set in other than a 'standard D&D setting'. If I can't use the rules to handle musketeers or samurai (or forces from Dragonstar, for that matter) merely because they aren't listed on the 'unit types' then I will be far more likely to turn to a system where I could.

J

Well, I think by that logic, you'll be dissapointed since I'd need to cover plasma rifles and cats. "Hey, in my campaign warriors swing cats by the tail and hurl them at their opponents! Talk about Claw, Claw, Bite!"

There are a *lot* of weapons in the PHB. . .not all of them relevant to war. Many of them have differences that don't manifest in the Book of War. That doesn't mean they won't on be there, I'm merely considering it.

 

[bolen]

you know I should read before I post.

 

[drnuncheon]

Well, I think by that logic, you'll be dissapointed since I'd need to cover plasma rifles and cats. "Hey, in my campaign warriors swing cats by the tail and hurl them at their opponents! Talk about Claw, Claw, Bite!"

Well, that was why I suggested putting in the formula or guidelines for converting a d20 weapon to a Book of War weapon. Presumably the weapons have some relation to their d20 stats, so if it's a matter of (say) different scales for range and damage, then it should be relatively easy to just say "weapons that do 1d6 damage do 2 'troop points'" or whatever, and then "divide all ranges by 25 to get the battlefield-scale ranges"...right?

J

 

[mattcolville]

Well, that was why I suggested putting in the formula or guidelines for converting a d20 weapon to a Book of War weapon. Presumably the weapons have some relation to their d20 stats, so if it's a matter of (say) different scales for range and damage, then it should be relatively easy to just say "weapons that do 1d6 damage do 2 'troop points'" or whatever, and then "divide all ranges by 25 to get the battlefield-scale ranges"...right?

J

I really don't think you'll need it. The Book of War uses the normal stats, including cost and ranges of weapons, it just doesn't use all of them. So you'll be able to take any weapon from anything and use it without needing rules.

 

[drnuncheon]

I really don't think you'll need it. The Book of War uses the normal stats, including cost and ranges of weapons, it just doesn't use all of them. So you'll be able to take any weapon from anything and use it without needing rules.

Ohhhh....when you said this:

The original version of the rules allowed you to equip your units with any appropriate weapon, and I had every weapon listed. I think that's overkill. I seriously doubt many people are going to want to field units of gnome infantry armed with *picks*. So I might scale down the weapons list to something more manageable.

...I took it to mean that there was some kind of conversion going on, such that you would need to have a weapon listed in 'the Book of War format' to be able to use it.

If there's no conversion necessary, forget listing them (except for whatever examples you have) - give us more cool stuff!

J

 

[mattcolville]

...I took it to mean that there was some kind of conversion going on, such that you would need to have a weapon listed in 'the Book of War format' to be able to use it.

If there's no conversion necessary, forget listing them (except for whatever examples you have) - give us more cool stuff!

J

Sorry. No, I meant that. . .hang on, let me get my PHB...here's a good example. Battleaxe vs light flail. The book of war isn't interested in bludgeoning vs slashing weapons, weight isn't a consideration and neither is the critical range (crits work differently) all we care about is; can you use it and a shield, how much damage does it do, how much does it cost, what's its range (if any) and does it have any special effects.

We *use* that data, we don't do anything with it. Once you throw out everything that's *not* that stuff, you have little reason to pick this weapon over that one. Actually, in real D&D there's often little reason to pick this one over that one.