D&D 5E Military Units as Monsters - A New Take

[RangerWickett]

So if we go back to our fireball example. The juicy x3 fireball does 84 damage. Sounds impressive, but in terms of context of what the damage means it actually hits about 8. To get such low kill numbers, the unit would have to be spread out in a single file line (no doubling up).

Your mechanic is not wrong by any means, as I said in the OP everyone has a line between simplicity and exactness. Your system is extremely easy to use and will work for many groups. I tried to add in a bit more complexity to gain more exactness. If I had 50 people in any kind of formation on the board, and a fireball only hit 8 of them when it was cast smack in the middle of them....that would be a very weak fireball. So my system tries to model that more accurately, but with a payment in complexity. Neither is wrong, its just do people think I accomplished my goal?


Again if we go back to the 50 people example. If I wanted to model a military platoon using standard dnd combat, I would need 50 minis on the board. And though dnd combat always assume an "attack" is not just a single stab, for mechanics purposes it is. You target 1 creature and deal X damage. In this scenario, a fighter could probably easily kill 1 person per hit....but he still only gets maybe 1-2 attacks, he's not killing 10 guys a round or anything.

Except a big fireball wouldn't kill the whole squad. They'd see the ball coming, some folks would scatter out of the area, others would take cover, etc etc.

If anything, treating a big crowd of people as static individuals who all die simultaneously is unrealistic. The game doesn't handle reactions that well.

All that said, I set up a squad of 10 police officers as a large unit with 50 hp, and a troop of 25 soldiers as a huge unit with 125 hp. A fireball is still plenty devastating. It just might not kill everyone, simply cause the unit cohesion to break and survivors to lose the will to keep fighting.

 

[Stalker0]

Except a big fireball wouldn't kill the whole squad. They'd see the ball coming, some folks would scatter out of the area, others would take cover, etc etc.

So I actually tried to highlight this through the "Scattered Formation" ability. It represents a squad who is more focused on protecting themselves from area attacks. They are more spread out and are more "dodgy", which is represented by resistance to area attack damage. However, they also have disadvantage on all attacks, as effectively they are not as committed to offense and some of its members are "readying to dodge or take cover" as opposed to attacking.

Let me know if you think this mechanic works for my unit and if mirrors well enough what you are speaking about. Perhaps it would make more sense if we consider area attacks a "default" in dnd war if I made that the standard unit stats, and formations could create tighter by more vulnerable units.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

The reasoning is that melee attacks in D&D don't represent just a single blow but a series of strikes, feints, jabs etc.

I don't remember this being the case in 5e. Do you have a reference?

 

[RangerWickett]

I don't remember this being the case in 5e. Do you have a reference?

Have you ever fenced? Try just making one attack in 6 seconds. It will feel really weird.

 

[Iry]

I don't remember this being the case in 5e. Do you have a reference?

189 has this "A typical combat encounter is a clash between two sides, a flurry of weapon swings, feints, parries, footwork, and spellcasting."
I suppose they could be describing one attack per character as a flurry, and the help action as a feint, missing an attack roll as a parry, etc... but I think the intent is cinematic/realistic combat with the die rolls only representing the mechanical outcome.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

Multiple weapon swings per attacks is one of those things that they like to toss into the fluff, but that breaks down as soon as the rules come into play and don't make a lot of sense anymore. Do dragons try to bite at you multiple times? Do hill giants swing that massive club several times? And there was the ammunition example. I mean, it doesn't break anything to imagine that you are swinging your sword multiple times per attack, but in my opinion it doesn't harmonize well with anything else in the game, and just makes Small and Medium sized creatures fighting in melee be completely different than any other form of actions during rounds.

 

[Iry]

Do dragons try to bite at you multiple times? Do hill giants swing that massive club several times? And there was the ammunition example. I mean, it doesn't break anything to imagine that you are swinging your sword multiple times per attack, but in my opinion it doesn't harmonize well with anything else in the game, and just makes Small and Medium sized creatures fighting in melee be completely different than any other form of actions during rounds.

Yes. Yes. Monster ammunition is arbitrary; they have as much as the DM wants. Howso? (Honest question)

 

[bedir than]

This is basically a Swarms variant. I love it.

 

[Sorcerers Apprentice]

Multiple weapon swings per attacks is one of those things that they like to toss into the fluff, but that breaks down as soon as the rules come into play and don't make a lot of sense anymore. Do dragons try to bite at you multiple times? Do hill giants swing that massive club several times? And there was the ammunition example. I mean, it doesn't break anything to imagine that you are swinging your sword multiple times per attack, but in my opinion it doesn't harmonize well with anything else in the game, and just makes Small and Medium sized creatures fighting in melee be completely different than any other form of actions during rounds.

A lot can happen in six seconds in a real fight. Whatever the rules are, it makes no sense that combatants would be standing around and taking turns making one strike every 6 seconds. The "fluff" is what the combat rules are actually trying to represent, but highly simplified.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

Have you ever fenced? Try just making one attack in 6 seconds. It will feel really weird.

Yes. Yes. Monster ammunition is arbitrary; they have as much as the DM wants. Howso? (Honest question)

A lot can happen in six seconds in a real fight. Whatever the rules are, it makes no sense that combatants would be standing around and taking turns making one strike every 6 seconds. The "fluff" is what the combat rules are actually trying to represent, but highly simplified.

What I'm trying to get at is the "one attack actually means several deployments of your weapon" only works for certain types of attack scenarios. It doesn't work for weapons that require ammunition, because you use 1 piece of ammunition per attack. It doesn't make a lot of sense that a gargantuan dragon is actually attempting to bite you multiple times. It certainly doesn't make sense that you are parrying most of those bites.

It works fine to visualize it like that for typical PC-sized characters wielding melee weapons (or fighting unarmed) against similar opponents...and that's about it. No other situation in the game works that way. Having the default concept of what's going on be something that can only support one subset of the broad range of attack rolls that the game includes seems like a bad way of going about it.

A better way might be to assume those 6-second rounds are really wibbly-wobbly time-wimey 6-second rounds. When you have to track effects, they are mechanically 6 seconds. In the fiction they are relatively brief moments.