In Place of Chainmail?
- Thread starter mmadsen
- Start date
Someone recently posted a link to a 3E conversion:
http://www.d20reviews.com/Eric/conversions/Battlesystem3e.rtf
Rune
Once A Fool
Just for fun, I thought it would be fun to build on mmadsen's combat idea. I wouldn't use the d20 matrix, though. I'd keep it with a simple d20 attack roll against the defending unit's AC. If it's a hit, the attacker rolls one damage die and the defender rolls one (or more) die representative of the average Hit Die.
If the attacker rolls equal to or higher than the defender, the defending unit is wiped out. Otherwise, the defender is not destroyed.
If the attack roll is a miss, damage is still rolled against the defender's hit die (or dice), but the defender gets to roll twice as many. This is to help dispell the illusion of having a whole unit rush up against another unit and nobody can get a hit in.
Of course, the more correct way to look at it is the abstract way. The attack roll represtents the average hit, so, on average, a miss represents no chance of totally wiping out the defending unit. If you prefer the latter view, simply don't roll damage on a miss.
If the attacker rolls equal to or higher than the defender, the defending unit is wiped out. Otherwise, the defender is not destroyed.
If the attack roll is a miss, damage is still rolled against the defender's hit die (or dice), but the defender gets to roll twice as many. This is to help dispell the illusion of having a whole unit rush up against another unit and nobody can get a hit in.
Of course, the more correct way to look at it is the abstract way. The attack roll represtents the average hit, so, on average, a miss represents no chance of totally wiping out the defending unit. If you prefer the latter view, simply don't roll damage on a miss.
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So it doesn't matter how many Hit Points or Hit Dice the defender has?
I'm not sure what you're going for, but I assume you want to avoid the table look-up. I can understand that. Frankly, it's only there because you can't always roll an N-sided die (easily).
For instance, instead of looking up a value on a table, you could easily compare the attacker's damage (or average damage) to the roll of a die with as many sides as the defender has Hit Points. A 4-in-39 chance is easily represented by rolling 1, 2, 3, or 4 on a 39-sided die. I doubt you have a 39-sided die though, so you end up rolling a 4-sided die for tens and a 10-sided die for units, rerolling any 40s that come up. Yuck.
I didn't think the table look-up would be so bad, because you'll have 100s of the same type of unit attacking 100s of the same type of enemy unit, so you'd just keep using the same target number and the same easy die roll (1d20).
Rune
Once A Fool
Actually, I was going more for having the defending unit roll defense with Hit Dice, not hit points. For example, if the defending unit has an average Hit Dice of 3d8+3 (Con bonus +1) and an AC of 15 and the attackers all have heavy picks and a Str bonus +4 and a +7 to hit, the attack would look something like this:
Attacker rolls to hit: If it's 15 or higher, see option a, 14 or lower, see option c.
Option a: If it's a critical hit, see option b, otherwise, attacker rolls 1d6+4, defender rolls 3d8+3. If the attacking unit has rolled equal to or higher than the defending unit, the defending unit is wiped out. In this example, the attacking unit rolls a 7 and the defending unit rolls a 15. The defending unit in this example is not wiped out. Play proceeds as normal.
Option b: If the attack roll resulted in a critical threat and the follow-up critical was confirmed, the attacker rolls extra dice, as a critical would normally indicate and follow the directions in Option a in all other respects. In our example, the attacker rolls 4d6+16 (the heavy pick has a crit multiplier of x4) and results in a 28. The defender rolls 15, again. In this case, the defending unit is wiped out and play proceeds as normal.
Option c: If the attack roll is not a hit, the attacker still rolls 1d6+4 damage, but the defender rolls 6d8+6 defense (double the defending unit's average Hit Dice). In this example, the attacker rolls a 7 and the defender rolls 30. The defender is not wiped out and play proceeds as normal.
The reason that I've kept the crits is because I recognize that, while it's not likely the whole unit is going to crit all at once, it is quite possible for the unit to cohesively make a more ferocious attack than normal. Furthermore, lumping all of the critical hits within a unit together is no more of an abstract than lumping everyone's Hit Dice, attack rolls, or damage rolls together.
Obviously, this kind of seems to break down at higher levels, but that shouldn't really be a problem in most mass combat games. What I would do to combat it, if you are pitting high-level units against each other, is to port over the multiple attacks, but lump all of the damage dice from the multiple attacks into one single opposed damage vs. Hit Dice check.
For instance, a unit of 10th level fighters with Str bonus +6 attack with flaming burst longswords at +16/+11, this means potentially, 2d8+2d6+12 damage dice against, say 10d10+10 Hit Dice (Con bonus +1). If there are also rules for ganging up on units (as simple as delaying and attacking on the same initiative), three such fighter units should easily wipe out the defending unit in one turn.
Anyway, just a few thougts off the top of my head.
Attacker rolls to hit: If it's 15 or higher, see option a, 14 or lower, see option c.
Option a: If it's a critical hit, see option b, otherwise, attacker rolls 1d6+4, defender rolls 3d8+3. If the attacking unit has rolled equal to or higher than the defending unit, the defending unit is wiped out. In this example, the attacking unit rolls a 7 and the defending unit rolls a 15. The defending unit in this example is not wiped out. Play proceeds as normal.
Option b: If the attack roll resulted in a critical threat and the follow-up critical was confirmed, the attacker rolls extra dice, as a critical would normally indicate and follow the directions in Option a in all other respects. In our example, the attacker rolls 4d6+16 (the heavy pick has a crit multiplier of x4) and results in a 28. The defender rolls 15, again. In this case, the defending unit is wiped out and play proceeds as normal.
Option c: If the attack roll is not a hit, the attacker still rolls 1d6+4 damage, but the defender rolls 6d8+6 defense (double the defending unit's average Hit Dice). In this example, the attacker rolls a 7 and the defender rolls 30. The defender is not wiped out and play proceeds as normal.
The reason that I've kept the crits is because I recognize that, while it's not likely the whole unit is going to crit all at once, it is quite possible for the unit to cohesively make a more ferocious attack than normal. Furthermore, lumping all of the critical hits within a unit together is no more of an abstract than lumping everyone's Hit Dice, attack rolls, or damage rolls together.
Obviously, this kind of seems to break down at higher levels, but that shouldn't really be a problem in most mass combat games. What I would do to combat it, if you are pitting high-level units against each other, is to port over the multiple attacks, but lump all of the damage dice from the multiple attacks into one single opposed damage vs. Hit Dice check.
For instance, a unit of 10th level fighters with Str bonus +6 attack with flaming burst longswords at +16/+11, this means potentially, 2d8+2d6+12 damage dice against, say 10d10+10 Hit Dice (Con bonus +1). If there are also rules for ganging up on units (as simple as delaying and attacking on the same initiative), three such fighter units should easily wipe out the defending unit in one turn.
Anyway, just a few thougts off the top of my head.
Rune
Once A Fool
mmadsen said:
Well, that's why I said that it kind of breaks down at higher levels (and in a mass combat game, I would consider whole units at 3rd level to be high level--pretty much elites).
However, there are two balancing factors.
1: Strength bonuses applied to damage rolls. They don't scale well with the con bonuses, but they do get massive, on crits.
2: I suggested a system of teaming up. If I were running a mass combat, I'd do it that way. To restate: If one (or more) unit(s) delays on initiative until another unit moves, both (or all) units attack a single target. Each unit that successfully hits gets to add their average damage die to the damage pool, which is rolled together against the Hit Dice of the defending unit.
For example, three units armed with shortswords have an attack of +2 (Str bonus +1, BAB+1) wish to team up and attack a single unit of 3rd level elite barbarians with AC 15, HD 3d12+12 (Con bonus +4).
The first two units have a higher initiative than the third, so they delay until the third's initiative (which, fortunately, comes before the barbarrians'). As one, they move in and assault (probably flanking; I'd allow 3-way flanking, personally) and each rolls to hit against AC 15. Assuming that all of them hit (and none of them critted), the combined attacking force rolls 3d6+3, with a result ranging between 6 to 21. The defending barbarians still have the advantage (they're elites, remember), and roll 3d12+12, with results of 15 to 48. If they were regular fighters with a Con bonus +2, they would have had HD 3d10+6, which would result in 9 to 36. Still an advantage, but not that much of one.
The only problem here is that if one of the group misses, I don't know how I'd simulate the added dice to defense. It would work out well, here (it's a 3:3 ratio), but what if it was four attackers (with one miss) against a 5 HD group? My initial thought would be to round up in favor of the defender, or in the case of multiple attacker groups, don't add the damage die at all (that would probably work best, come to think of it).
Anyway, hope I cleared that up a little. I think I'll give these rules a little bit of playtesting and see how they turn out.
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Since mass combat consists of many, many iterations of the same basic combat -- there are only a few different kinds of units, but there may be hundreds of each -- it makes sense to precalculate as much as possible to simplify the actual gameplay.
I'm not sure if I'd do this, but you could easily combine the odds of one unit hitting and then killing another unit into one number, which you could then round to the nearest 5% and turn into a d20 roll.
I'm not sure if I'd do this, but you could easily combine the odds of one unit hitting and then killing another unit into one number, which you could then round to the nearest 5% and turn into a d20 roll.
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