Question - Fighter/Warrior Levels to Military Ranks

[SBMC]

Hmm... I just had an idea...

As written, the Warrior is a useless class that only NPCs would take. But what if the Warrior class granted access to particular feats (and skills) which only come into play in mass-scale battlefield combat? What if the warrior is, literally, a WARrior?

Of course, this presumes that your campaign actually uses specific feats (or skills) for mass battlefield combat, since D&D3.0/3.5 has no particular rules for battlefield combat. But there are several third-party supplements which have them, including TESTAMENT (which introduces several battlefield-specific feats) and FIELDS OF BLOOD (which has some battlefield-specific skills, if I'm not mistaken). Maybe warriors get bonus feats and skills chosen from this list? (I'm talking about feats like "Phalanx Fighting".)

Needless to say, this would require a lot of house-rules. (And the TESTAMENT and FIELDS OF BLOOD systems aren't compatible anyway, so you'd have to adapt the Warrior to one or the other, not both.) But I like the idea... perhaps Warriors DON'T completely suck, it's just that Fighters have the advantage over them in the typical D&D campaign where it's all small-scale combat.

Jason

There are rules in "Heroes of the Battle" for mass combat and associated subjects. For military ranks in particular - The "Heroes of the Battle" book details these ideas in a variety of places. I don't agree with all of them - I think many examples are "fighter heavy" and the Dwarf portion is out of whack but that is my opinion.



Modern Army Structure: Page 15

Feudal Military Hierarchy: Page 15

Clan Hierarchy: Page 16

Clan Military Structure: Page 16

Commanders (and commander rating): Page 75

Sample Ranks (table 4-6) Page 76

Examples of armies: Starts on page 137 (Appendix 1)

 

[S'mon]

but then again trained soldiers won't break and run on their own unless things get REAL bad.

That depends on the culture of the military & the society from which they're drawn; most cultures are not warrior cultures and in many cases soldiers will tend to show a much greater sense of self-preservation than you see in eg Anglo-Saxon cultures. Some armies, perhaps even most armies, will rely on charismatic and/or intimidating officers to control masses of soldiers who would otherwise run away or surrender.

 

[smootrk]

I have not been associated with the military for many years (Naval Submarines at that) so I understand that different units will have vastly different skill sets and leadership qualities.

As I see it, to mesh with game rules, Charisma and Leadership feats (and associated feats) determines how many 'troops' the individual can command effectively. I would say that these factors (as they relate to game mechanics) trumphs most of the other factors. If you cannot effectively lead a given number of troops, you are not high enough level (or charismatic enough.

Now, other factors are necessary to factor in. For instance, in Naval Submariners, effectively all Officers have been cross-trained (most enlisted as well) to perform any function on the boat(what they call a submarine). If I were to translate this into game terms, it would mean that many engineering skills would be needed (and the necessary intelligence to learn & perform those skills well).

Every type of command structure would need certain additional skills as prereq's for command, or they just would not be put into command of certain units.

This all assumes a very 'smart' military structure, and we know real life situations where someone completely un-suited for command happens to be in charge in areas that they know nothing about, but the military usually finds and fixes these problems quickly... especially in the olden days where a unit would 'remove' their command for a replacement.

This may all be overkill and overly complex for equating level to ranks (as even I would not necessarily do all this factoring for my campaign) but to accurately do this, these factors would need to be included.