Celebrim
Legend
Regards the link, I don't want to insult anyone but I have to say that although the person has probably put alot of work into the system, the intuitive conversion he is doing isn't going to work well in the end. I know. I designed a system for 1st edition very very similar to it quite a long time ago before I had actually been exposed to war game mechanics. I won't say how old I was, but suffice to say that I was young enough that by saying so I'd embarass some people. If you haven't played war games, do so. It will save you the trouble of learning for yourself what you are doing wrong.
If I was assigned the job of creating a fantasy wargame for D&D in a hurry, the first things I'd do would probably be:
1) Fix the CR system. Right now, it is ok as a method of assigning xp, but as a tangible, it is fairly broken. Without a working CR system, its not going to be really possible to quickly convert a group of 'monsters' over to a mass scale, which is the most critical element of any mass combat RPG companion.
There are two basic problems that you have to deal with. One, the CR system is not linear. A CR 2 monster is twice as tough as a CR 1 monster (generally speaking) but a CR 20 monster is not twice as tough as a CR 18 monster. You are going to have to create a table that shows the curve in some fashion.
Armed with that, you can approach the problem of how the CR increases as you increase the number of individuals. At a very basic level, any mass combat system designed to work with D&D has to be able to answer this sort of problem almost immediately (well within less than a minute) and without resorting to a calculator once combat begins.
"50 Gnolls attack an adult dragon. How many Gnolls are dead at the end of the fight?"
2) With a CR system fixed, take an existing simple war gaming system like DBM and broaden the mechanic (probably by converting it to a bell curve system with 2d6 or 2d10) to deal with the greater range of unit types and strengths that an RPG system proposes. Figure out how each CR and monster type (humanoid, giant, dragon, etc.) converts into the new system.
3) Add to the mechanic so that combat can result in a range of degradation of combat ability of the attacked unit. This becomes the second level of complexity for players that want to spend more time on the combats.
4) Adopt D20 mechanics like AoO when conveinent so that feats have a fairly straightforward conversion to the new system.
After refining that basic system for a while, I'd probably start adding rules for scalability to deal with unit cohesion, frontage, and other problems that larger and larger units have to deal with.
If I was assigned the job of creating a fantasy wargame for D&D in a hurry, the first things I'd do would probably be:
1) Fix the CR system. Right now, it is ok as a method of assigning xp, but as a tangible, it is fairly broken. Without a working CR system, its not going to be really possible to quickly convert a group of 'monsters' over to a mass scale, which is the most critical element of any mass combat RPG companion.
There are two basic problems that you have to deal with. One, the CR system is not linear. A CR 2 monster is twice as tough as a CR 1 monster (generally speaking) but a CR 20 monster is not twice as tough as a CR 18 monster. You are going to have to create a table that shows the curve in some fashion.
Armed with that, you can approach the problem of how the CR increases as you increase the number of individuals. At a very basic level, any mass combat system designed to work with D&D has to be able to answer this sort of problem almost immediately (well within less than a minute) and without resorting to a calculator once combat begins.
"50 Gnolls attack an adult dragon. How many Gnolls are dead at the end of the fight?"
2) With a CR system fixed, take an existing simple war gaming system like DBM and broaden the mechanic (probably by converting it to a bell curve system with 2d6 or 2d10) to deal with the greater range of unit types and strengths that an RPG system proposes. Figure out how each CR and monster type (humanoid, giant, dragon, etc.) converts into the new system.
3) Add to the mechanic so that combat can result in a range of degradation of combat ability of the attacked unit. This becomes the second level of complexity for players that want to spend more time on the combats.
4) Adopt D20 mechanics like AoO when conveinent so that feats have a fairly straightforward conversion to the new system.
After refining that basic system for a while, I'd probably start adding rules for scalability to deal with unit cohesion, frontage, and other problems that larger and larger units have to deal with.
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