Mass Combat: Militray Tactics Old and New!

[Conaill]

Just for pure entertainment purposes, I used Jamis Buck's city generator (which is based off the DMG guidelines) to see what the breakdown of classes would be in a 50,000 population metropolis.

2,500 warriors (99.9% of which are 1st level)
Only 60 fighter class characters, 40 of which were 1st level.

Actually, by my count it's more like 97% of warriors which are 1st level. The remaining 3% are probably veteran sergeants that keep the conscripts in line.

However, (again, according to Jamis Buck's city generator) there will also be something like 900 PC classes, about half of which are higher than 1st level (typically up to 15th-18th level for a Metropolis). Those are your officers corps, your strike teams, you hardened veteran batallions, etc. And out of those 900, there are something like 100 Fighters and 350 clerics, druids, sorcerors and wizards.


So...

For every 50 War1, we have one or two War2+, one Ftr1, one Ftr 2+, and a whopping 7 spellcasters!

 

[Green Knight]

Could you list the phalanx fighting feat...curious to see what the benefits are.

Eh, doubt I'll get in trouble for posting a feat.

PHALANX FIGHTING [FIGHTER, GENERAL]
You are trained in fighting in close formation with your allies.

Benefit: If you are using a large shield and a light weapon, you gain a +1 armor bonus that stacks with the bonus provided by armor and shield.

In addition, if you are within 5 feet of an ally who is also using a large shield and a light weapon and who also knows this feat, you may form a shield wall. A shield wall provides one-quarter cover (+2 to AC and +1 on Reflex saves) to all eligible characters participating in the shield wall.

And there it is.

I think you're getting closer to some semblance of an actual fighting force. I just wanted to add that the average Warrior doesn't start out with 120gp, but rather 75gp.

Yeah, you're right. I'm using the max rather than the average.

That means that scale mail & studded leather are probably the 2 most common armors. Your typical "Legionnaire" would probably be equipped with Scale, Large Shd, Short Sword & Javelin. That would leave him about 8gps for other incidentals. "Marcus the Legionnaire" would have a very respectable AC17 thanks to the Phalanx feat & could go up to 19 if he's fighting with his lads in the shield wall.

Yep. 10 + 4 (scale mail) +2 (large shield) +1 (feat bonus) = 17. 19 when he's within 5 feet of a buddy, and higher if he's got a superior Dex.

For his stats, I think the 25pts is probably best reserved for PC & NPC classes. Dropping down to 22 for a young warrior makes sense (especially for veteran units & trained members of standing armies) & actually that 3 points makes quite a bit of difference (or at least it has IMC). Just assume stats of 14, 13, 13, 12, 10, 8. I would think those seem reasonable. If realism is very important, use those stats for leader types and go with 10, 13, 12, 10, 10, 8 for the standard trooper using the 15pt buy.

Well, IMO, 15 point buy is unrealistic for a trained soldier, but I was going with it as some were saying that I was going a bit to far with 25 point buy. Probably true. That's because whenever I think about starting a new D&D campaign, I want to have monsters with classes with real stats, rather than just 10 and 11 all around. Good suggestion, though, with the 22 point buy. Maybe 20 point buy? Hmm. 8, 10, 10, 12, 14, 14. That looks good. Soooo...

HUMAN WARRIOR
Medium-Size Humanoid (Human)
Hit Dice: 1d8+2 (6 hp)
Initiative: +1
Speed: 20 ft. (scale mail); base 30 ft.
AC: 18 (+1 Dex, +4 scale mail, +2 large shield, +1 Phalanx Fighting)
Attacks: Short sword +3 melee; or javelin +2 ranged
Damage: Short sword 1d6+2; or javelin 1d6+2
Face/Reach: 5 ft. by 5 ft./5 ft.
Saves: Fort +4, Ref +1, Will +0
Abilities: Str 14, Dex 12, Con 14, Int 10, Wis 10, Cha 8
Skills: Climb +4, Jump +4, Listen +2, Spot +2
Feats: Phalanx Fighting, Power Attack
Challenge Rating: 1/2
Treasure: Standard
Alignment: Usually neutral.
Advancement: By character class.

How does that look (BTW: Just realized that I had screwed up the previous stats. I had kept switching the stats around and hadn't adjusted saving throws. What can I say? Oops?)?

Does anyone here remember the card-based mass-combat rules from Birthright? I used those quite a bit in our campaign & really liked them. Top shelf IMO, but of course I like simple abstract rules sets.

I got it. The cards that came in the base set as well as the Blood Enemies supplement. It was OK, but I was never thrilled with it.

 

[mmadsen]

Remember, phalanx fighting isn't some easy thing. You can't just grab farmers off their fields, plump them into a formation, and expect them to perform maneuvers like that. You actually have to TRAIN them.

Unless I'm mistaken, that's exactly what the ancient Greeks did: grab men, stick them in phalanges, and expect them to fight. They'd train for a few weeks, like any militia, then face combat. Certainly the Spartans were professional soldiers, but they weren't the only ones to use a phalanx.

No point in fighting in a phalanx without the feat, true, but you didn't just see anybody fighting in phalanxes back in the day. The barbarians invading Rome didn't fight in phalanxes. Nope. It was Romes highly trained soldiers which did that.

The Romans didn't fight in the phalanx. They fought in tight formation, but not in a phalanx. A phalanx consists of men with spears and shields. (Interestingly, Alexander's men used 12- to 15-foot pikes with a small shield, and the Spartans used 8-foot spears overhand with a large shield. Neither of those options is legal in D&D.)

The Romans found that they could out-maneuver pikemen in phalanges, and if they lured them into uneven terrain, the phalanx would break up, allowing them to find the cracks and exploit them in close combat -- where their huge shields and short swords beat small shields and useless spears.

The Phalanx Fighting feat, now that I've taken a quick look at Lords of Darkness, should be Legionary Fighting. It offers +1 AC if you use a large shield and a light weapon (e.g. shortsword), and one quarter cover (+2 AC, +1 Ref) if you form a shield wall with an adjacent Phalanx Fighter.

 

[Oracular Vision]

The feat is most likely OGC anywhere, does anyone have the book? It is supposed to clearly indicate if it is or not. Most of the simple game mechanics usually are OGC. Flavor text, unique magical items, etc., usually are product identity and are claimed by the publisher...

 

[Darklance]

Some of the cities may have done that but I know Athens had every male citizen train two years in the army. Spartans of course went way beyond this with training their entire lives.

 

[Green Knight]

Unless I'm mistaken, that's exactly what the ancient Greeks did: grab men, stick them in phalanges, and expect them to fight. They'd train for a few weeks, like any militia, then face combat. Certainly the Spartans were professional soldiers, but they weren't the only ones to use a phalanx.

Ah, I see where I got confused. I was thinking of the way the Romans fought and associated the word Phalanx with them. Nevermind, then.

 

[mmadsen]

I figure at 2nd level they get the Dodge feat, 3rd they get Mobility, and 4th they get Spring Attack.

Your Hobgoblin quasi-Legionaries choose Dodge, Mobility, and Spring Attack as their Feats? Dozens of soliders in multiple lines are supposed to Spring Attack in unison?

That Feat Chain screams "fencer" to me. I have trouble imagining Legions of nimble fighters with locked shields darting to and fro.

 

[mmadsen]

You could have the first rank fighting defensively, the second rank attacing all out with long spears (counting on the shield wall to protect them) and the third rank there to prevent routs and fill in the gaps....I haven't played this out to see if it truly offers an advantage within game mechanics.

Well, that first rank is giving up more (-4 to-hit) than they're getting (+2 AC), so the second rank had better more than make up for it.

If we assume that the first rank is armed with studded leather armor (or something equivalent) and a large shield, they're AC 15. Against similar troops with +1 to-hit, they're normally hit on a natural 14 or higher, 35% of the time. Fighting defensively, they're hit 25% of the time. So they get hit 5/7 as often, giving the second rank 7/5 as many unrequited attacks on the enemy before the first rank falls. Their own attacks go from hitting 35% of the time to hitting 15% of the time, only 3/7 as often.

Eyeballing it, I think that's a loss over straight fighting. Now, if these infantry are a small unit holding off an attack on a large number of archers, or if the second rank is full of some other high-offense force (high-level spearmen, magically-armed spearmen, four-armed spearmen with multiple attacks), then the extra attacks their allies will get if the first rank can hold off the enemy a bit longer can more than make up for the reduced offense of the first rank.

 

[SableWyvern]

Just a thought on all these massed combat posts.

Is this just an exercise in interesting ideas?

If so, it's all fair enough.

If, OTOH, it's really about how armies would actually fight in a d&d gameworld, I think it's missing the point.

The d20 combat system is designed to simulate skirmish level conflict from a roleplayers perspective. If anyone intends to actually fight massed battles using this system - well, IMHO, that's pretty pointless. Trying to develop an army that min/maxes skirmish rules catering to roleplayers will result in some silly combinations and tactics.

If I was running mass battle in my campaign, I would come up with a seperate (and and in some ways derivative) system.

If I was simply designing a miltary force and contemplating their tactics, I would largely ignore the game rules and come up with a realistic mix. I would not take into account such things as: only 1 man per 5'; modifiers for fighting defensively; pike phalanx's lack of ability to balk cavalry etc... etc...

In allocating feats, I would be looking for feats that fit the spirit of a unit's tactics, not altering tactics to fit a feat.

 

[Thanee]

If I remember correctly, the random generation I did had about 100 wizards and sorcerors total, of which only 24 were above level 5.

So, no, in a standard D+D world (standard as in going by the DMG guidelines), it seems it would be unlikely that you would see magic "ruling" the battlefield. Most likely magic would be used in a more supplemental fashion rather than like tanks.

But a single level 5 wizard would drop an entire regiment within seconds with one well-aimed fireball.

A single high-level wizard should be very well able to defeat an entire army made up of low-level types.

This degree of high-level spell power is really hard to cover.

If you exclude high-level casters and probably limit spellcasting to lowscale offensive and mostly fighting and morale buffing, as well as healing spells, then these concepts might actually translate to D&D.

If this kind of thing is run within a D&D campaign, the heroes could be send out on a covert mission to engage the enemy high-level casters meanwhile, so that the armies could clash unhindered, which might work as well.

Bye
Thanee