Let's make a mass combat system!

[JimAde]

I have put up a revised version of the rules. Changes and additions include:

More details on magic use
Rules for flying units
Morale and Rallying rules
Tweaks and clarifications throughout

I haven't changed the core mechanic. After some more review, I think the division by 100 is right. It's simply the way the system works. If you had, for example, two 6th-level fighters in good armor hacking away at each other with short swords, and NO additional damage (no power attack, no magic weapons, no enhanced strength, etc.) it really would take them a while to knock each other down. I think the "fix" is to find a reasonable way for non-monster elite units to do more damage.

 

[The Great Bear King]

Spoiler

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Why not allow your units to have Military style ranks or make rules for naval and aerial warfare. In fact why not have rules for naval, aerial, or land based bombardment or rules for guerrilla raids, hit and run attacks (and their effects on the opposing force), and sabotage.

 

[Fieari]

Question...

In regular D&D, just because you can't kill a monster in a single round doesn't mean you can't kill the monster, ever... it just means that it takes more than one round to take it down. Here, it seems to me that if you deal too little damage in one round, it's the same thing as dealing NO damage at all. Anything other than casualties isn't recorded at all.

I know that vast numbers of archers going against an elder dragon really would deal no damage, since the dragon's AC is so high, but HYPOTHETICALLY, what about large numbers of units against a single low AC, tremendously large HP creature?

 

[JimAde]

Sorry for not responding. I've been away.


Bear King: Those all sound like fine ideas, but we haven't even hammered out the basic mechanic yet. Those would be additions and/or supplements. If you have any concrete suggestions for how those things should work, feel free to post them here or send me an e-mail at sluggybunbun(at)hotmail(dot)com. Thanks.

Fieari: You're right and it's a problem. The rules Tonguez contributed track the unit's total HP at all times and therefore solve this problem. I was already considering adding them in and now I think I really have to. Excellent example with the dragon, by the way. It reminds me that I need to allow for the "20 always hits" factor. If 100 1st-level archers attack a dragon, 5 of them will hit! It's important because I want that intimidation factor if a whole military unit is bearing down on a PC. Thanks a lot for your input.

I'm still getting caught up from my vacation, but look for a revised rule set with HP tracked later this week.

 

[Aust Diamondew]

Great thread I'm glad somebody is taking initiative and working on a mass combat system. As for cavalry here is my suggestion:
Treat the horses and the riders as two seperate units who just happen to be occupying the same area.

 

[JimAde]

Aust: an interesting idea. Tonguez had originally suggested giving them separate attacks, etc. but I hadn't considered actually making them separate units. There are problems, though. How would you attack the cavalry? Would you have to declare you were going for the mounts or the riders? Would your damage be divided? What about AC? What happens when their numbers don't match any more?

There is now a new version with the Total Hit Points tracked. I walked through the example combat and changed it over to the new method. The numbers all came out almost exactly the same (good thing).

Still on the to-do list:

1) Siege Engines!!! (I just like 'em so much! And I watched Return of the King again last night...)

2) Do something more with Leadership. It's kind of flavorless right now, but has a huge effect.

3) Playtest. This is probably going to be the hardest part for me as I have limited time and very limited interest from my group. *sigh* Anybody else care to have a bash?

 

[Fieari]

Well, we could always do a playtest here on the board. I started running a wargame on the boards here last spring, and I still feel really bad that I was forced to drop it midgame...

Well, I looked at the new HP rules, and they cover all the bases, I think... only problem is that it requires a bit more math, which is kinda unavoidable when forced to deal with large numbers of things attacking I'll admit. I'm sitting here trying to come up with a simpler way, or even a method of making it so you have to do math LESS often, but I'm coming up with blanks, unfortunatly. My first thought was to ditch the casualties thing entirely and run everything off of current HP, but that means more complex attack rolls, which doesn't really solve the problem, and as soon as you did a split or whatever, you'd have to calculate casualties anyway.

Hrm.

 

[Aust Diamondew]

Aust: an interesting idea. Tonguez had originally suggested giving them separate attacks, etc. but I hadn't considered actually making them separate units. There are problems, though. How would you attack the cavalry? Would you have to declare you were going for the mounts or the riders? Would your damage be divided? What about AC? What happens when their numbers don't match any more?

You would declare if the unit was going for mounts or riders (I'd make PC commanders instruct there soldiers what to do against cavalry before the battle begins). Damage would not be divided mounts and riders would have seperate AC. Riders could use mounted combat in place of there mounts AC for the round. Any mounts with out riders are treated as out of the battle I suppose but I can't think of an overly complex mechanic of how to handle mountless riders.

 

[JimAde]

Well, we could always do a playtest here on the board. I started running a wargame on the boards here last spring, and I still feel really bad that I was forced to drop it midgame...

I'm not sure how that would work. We'd need some kind of shared board. How did you do it? I know there are various freeware/shareware utilities for doing this.

Well, I looked at the new HP rules, and they cover all the bases, I think... only problem is that it requires a bit more math, which is kinda unavoidable when forced to deal with large numbers of things attacking I'll admit. I'm sitting here trying to come up with a simpler way, or even a method of making it so you have to do math LESS often, but I'm coming up with blanks, unfortunatly. My first thought was to ditch the casualties thing entirely and run everything off of current HP, but that means more complex attack rolls, which doesn't really solve the problem, and as soon as you did a split or whatever, you'd have to calculate casualties anyway.

Hrm.

The problem with NOT tracking casualties is that the unit doesn't get any less effective. So it keeps its full attack value until it is destroyed. That's obviously simpler but seems weird.

What we could do is give the unit damage levels of some kind and print them right in the stat block. Say we give HP and Number values for certain standard percentages, like:
100%
75%
50%
25%
10%

So, for example, you could have this for the archer unit in the example combat:
Starting Number: 50
Base HP: 6

.	Total HP   Number
.	--------   --------
100%	 300		50
75%	  225		35
50%	  150		25
25%	   75		10
10%	   30		 5

I've rounded the Number values to the nearest 5 to make the math easier. When the total HP drop below each threshhold, the effective number becomes what's listed. It's slightly chunky but there's no calculation on the fly and if we want it smoother we just print more gradations on the stat block (every 10%, say).

 

[JimAde]

You would declare if the unit was going for mounts or riders (I'd make PC commanders instruct there soldiers what to do against cavalry before the battle begins). Damage would not be divided mounts and riders would have seperate AC. Riders could use mounted combat in place of there mounts AC for the round. Any mounts with out riders are treated as out of the battle I suppose but I can't think of an overly complex mechanic of how to handle mountless riders.

Mountless riders might be considered a separate infantry unit with a leadership 0, automatically in a Shaken state (or something like that). They could be rallied by a leader who shows up (like a PC).

This idea seems like a good one mechanically but I don't know how it will work in play. It seems like you would always go for the mount or rider depending on AC, but that may not be a bad thing. I guess it depends on the mount type, too. In the Warg/Goblin example earlier, the Wargs are clearly the more dangerous portion. But for standard cavalry you might not waste attacks on the horses, since they generally won't fight without riders. On the other hand, if the riders are high-level and heavily armored you could kill the horses and run away, effectively removing the big bad knights from the fight.

I'm liking this because it gives you several different options when fighting cavalry that are all valid in different situations. Tactical goodness! Hmm.