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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5486226" data-attributes="member: 42582">In my view, D&amp;D has lacked the mechanical capacity to take account of this sort of thing.Traditionally, D&amp;D has only incorporated leadership/armies/hordes at the wargaming level. When players don't want to &quot;graduate&quot; to playing a wargame with their 10th level fighters as generals, however, then D&amp;D has no other mechanical way of taking account of that generalship and those armies.There is a contrast here with a game like HeroWars/Quest, which allows those sorts of relationships and resources to be counted as abilities just like everything else, and then to be used to solve problems, or as augments to other abilities, without suddenly having to switch from playing an RPG to playing a wargame.I think 4e takes another step in the right direction. In principle, at least, a fighter's generalship and &quot;mystical&quot; leadership abilities - which, unlike the obviously supernatural abilities of the Celtic and Classical heroes, do form a part of the D&amp;D tradition (eg via Conan) - can be incorporated into the design and resolution of skill challenges.DMG2 only begins to hint at this, and more worked out guidelines and examples would help, but - roughly speaking - at the same time that a wizard's rituals start to make an important contribution to skill challenges (via the rituals themselves, as well as associated Arcana, Religion etc checks) so a fighter's heroic leadership should start to make an important contribution also (whether by granting automatic successes in certain cases, or bonuses to rolls, or via Athletics or History or Streetwise check, or whatever).</blockquote>

[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 5486226, member: 42582"] In my view, D&D has lacked the mechanical capacity to take account of this sort of thing. Traditionally, D&D has only incorporated leadership/armies/hordes at the wargaming level. When players don't want to "graduate" to playing a wargame with their 10th level fighters as generals, however, then D&D has no other mechanical way of taking account of that generalship and those armies. There is a contrast here with a game like HeroWars/Quest, which allows those sorts of relationships and resources to be counted as abilities just like everything else, and then to be used to solve problems, or as augments to other abilities, without suddenly having to switch from playing an RPG to playing a wargame. I think 4e takes another step in the right direction. In principle, at least, a fighter's generalship and "mystical" leadership abilities - which, unlike the obviously supernatural abilities of the Celtic and Classical heroes, [I]do[/I] form a part of the D&D tradition (eg via Conan) - can be incorporated into the design and resolution of skill challenges. DMG2 only begins to hint at this, and more worked out guidelines and examples would help, but - roughly speaking - at the same time that a wizard's rituals start to make an important contribution to skill challenges (via the rituals themselves, as well as associated Arcana, Religion etc checks) so a fighter's heroic leadership should start to make an important contribution also (whether by granting automatic successes in certain cases, or bonuses to rolls, or via Athletics or History or Streetwise check, or whatever). [/QUOTE]

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