Questions on medieval armies!

[med stud]

Just a couple of comments on Voobaha's reply.

Peasants would rarely if ever wield crossbows, to my knowledge - the crossbow was a specialised military weapon without a day-to-day application, so even though it was easy to use, it was typically only used by professionals, most famously the Genoese. It could also be used by free yeomen - who would be rich enough to keep their own equipment - eg in the Swiss cantons, I think.
[...]

The only thing I can answer to this is what I know about one instance in Swedish history (14th century) when a resistance fighter won the war against a bad king by arming the people with crossbows. It was cheaper to buy one crossbow to a peasant then it was to buy horse and armor to the knights the king relied on, who got killed by a bolt from that one crossbow.

OTOH, Sweden is a pretty special case in European history, as Swedish peasants enjoyed a much larger freedom then the mainland peasants.

 

[Victim]

I'm not talking about tactical employment of magic. Once you bring thousands of guys onto the field, a fireball won't have that much impact.

I think that magic used to perform continuous raids on enemy forces would have significant strategic impact. While that fireball against 1000s of guys doesn't have much of an impact, getting fireballed every day on a long march would probably have a significant negative effect on the army's fighting ability.

Also, it may be easier to attack the supplies and equipment of a large fighting force than to attack it directly. Fireballing a supply wagon probably has a bigger impact than fireballing some guys.

 

[Xeriar]

Fireball in battle is not the army slayer. Lengthened Lightning bolt againt the army on the march is.

 

[pawned79]

In my experience, many people don't use it, but D&D does allow for the caster classes to be just as common as fighter classes. Standard infanty would probably be made up of non-classes warriors, but if you had a well trained army, you would first think to make them out of trained fighters. But if you are playing in a game world where wizards are as common a class as fighters (and some people do play that way), then I could see entire armies filled with finger-wagglers. Imagine just lines and lines of just level 1 clerics and wizards and whatever you want. Imagine how many magic missiles there would be? Cure light wounds? If you had a strong religious kingdom, you might have a large percentage of paladins. Lay hands? In general, if you are expecting to win a war with numbers, and you are hoping that each man kills at least one other man, then common low level magic users might become a dominate feature in a D&D army.

Of course, if you play in a game world where caster schools are specialties compared with fighter schools just nevermind.

Patrick

 

[Wippit Guud]

There's another couple of good battles in some book by the good Colonel...

Saga of Old City has a front-line skirmish between woodman and the Aerdi army, fairly low in magic, based many on ambush and such.

Artifact of Evil starts out with a very magic-heavy seige on a castle in the Pomarj...

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

Peasants might not wield crossbows regularly, but burghers did. The armories of the German and Swiss imperial cities (and probably the princely cities too) were full of crossbows. I'd have to review my research from last term but I seem to recall that in the fifteenth century, Nuremberg (and probably a number of other German cities too--Nuremberg was influential) required its citizens to own a certain number and quality of weapons.

So, while you may be right that peasants didn't ordinarily use crossbows, it doesn't necessarily follow that they weren't common weapons in conflicts.

(Also note that the peasants in the revolution of 1525 organized their rebel armies in essentially the same way and with the same offices as German Landsknecht mercenary armies. (Indeed, many of their leaders were current or former mercenaries). So the dichotomy between "peasant" and mercenary may not be as black and white as you make it appear--or maybe it is and the breakdown of the differentiation was a late development).

Just a couple of comments on Voobaha's reply.

Peasants would rarely if ever wield crossbows, to my knowledge - the crossbow was a specialised military weapon without a day-to-day application, so even though it was easy to use, it was typically only used by professionals, most famously the Genoese. It could also be used by free yeomen - who would be rich enough to keep their own equipment - eg in the Swiss cantons, I think.

 

[Victim]

If WotC or some other company manages to bring to market a game that supports the type of warfare/combat rules that we're discussing, perhaps you and I will get a chance to put into practice some of the theories we are bandying about here in this thread. Would you be game to playing out some of these scenarios should some rule set come along that allows us to do so?

Sure.

However, the only way I'd lose is if the system doesn't properly extrapolate DnD rules onto the mass combat level.

 

[Greybar]

Quick note on army sizes. While some particularly well documented battles have armies with well known sizes, be very skeptical about claims from pre-printing press (much less illiterate) societies. If we go back to Greek, Hebrew, or early Roman sources one should assume that poetic license has greatly multiplied the numbers.

On the magic/PC front - a lot depends on how much you expect the population to advance in level. Is your standard warrior in a standing army level 1 or level 5? Does the army train magic-users to this same level?

To use the English Agincourt example from one of the early posts: 5000 men at 20% knights, 20% yeomen, 60% levy. If that means 60% 1st level commoner, 20% 3rd-5th level archers (warriors&fighter), and 15% 3rd to 5th level fighter/paladin, plus a 5% "elite" of 5th to 10th level PC-types of all classes.

I'm not a big fan of the warrior NPC class, so:

3000 Com1 (fodder that will break in morale fast)

1000 archers -
500 Ftr3 (Weapon Focus, Point Blank, Rapid Shot, Far Shot, ...)
250 Ftr4 (Weapon Specialization, ...)
250 Ftr5 (etc.)

750 knights -
500 Ftr3
100 Ftr4
100 Ftr5
50 Pal5

250 special ops -
1 Nob4/Ftr6 General, plus a 9 person bodyguard of Ftr5
60 Magic Special Ops (Wiz/Sor of levels 5-10)
60 Healing Core behind the lines (Clr of levels 3-5)
60 Front-line clerics/bards (lots of bless spells prepped)
60 Line-breaker team of mounted Ftr5 thru Ftr7

You can quibble with the numbers, I'm just throwing them out off the top of my head (while drinking wine, no less) so adapt as needed to your world.

Hey forget Fireball. It's flashy and three castings later you're out. It's the Bless spells and Inspire Courage that will motivate the unit's charge into battle and be castable by even the least trained spellcaster.

The high-level spells will be rare just because there is only 1 person in a million that can cast them. Unless in your world you can't go to a bar and get a beer without rubbing shoulders with an arch-mage. I hear such worlds exist, I just don't run or play in any of them (thank the Gods).

John

 

[Hammerhead]

Ummm, fireball isn't exactly a high level spell. And if you were a kingdom fighting a war, what would you rather have? A thousand more guys, or an archmage?

High level combatants would dominate any battle. With spells like teleport and improved invisible, rapid strikes against supply lines or officers are capable of disrupting entire movements. No soldier will fight when dozens of people die each day when marching from unseen, unstoppable forces. High level rogues would murder generals nightly. Scrying spells would allow supreme recconaissance. High level fighers could Great Cleave their way through companies, remaining undamaged. Extra Blesses and Inspire Courages don't make much of a difference in a battle if the other guys have had improved invisible adventurers massacre hundreds of troops and destroyed countless supplies through fireballs, cloudkills, archery, etc.

Sure, the other guy would have them too. But as Victim so astutely pointed out, they wouldn't "balance." Inventions and technology change the face of warfare-they don't balance each other. Likewise for high level D&D characters.

 

[jgbrowning]

The high-level spells will be rare just because there is only 1 person in a million that can cast them. Unless in your world you can't go to a bar and get a beer without rubbing shoulders with an arch-mage. I hear such worlds exist, I just don't run or play in any of them (thank the Gods).

Community Size /Average Number of Spellcasters/
Average % of Spellcasters in Population
Thorp ...3 .....3.75%-15%
Hamlet ...6 .....1.5%-7.4%
Village ...12 .....1.3%-3%
Small Town ...18 ....0.9%-2%
Large Town ...68 ....1.36%-3.4%
Small City ...403 ....3.36%-8%
Large City ...1,787 ....7.1%-14.9%
Metropolis ...6,393 ....6.4%-25.6%

Here's the breakdown of spellcasters in the core rules (Your campaign may vary). They're everywhere. If we do a quick rundown of a kingdom with 2 million adults, you'll end up with something like 60k spellcasters, most of them 1st -3rd level.

You'll have clerics and druids who can get 6th level magic in small cities or larger (5,001 or more), wizards and sorcs you'll get in large cities or metropolises (12,001 or more).

There is much more than 1 person in a million who can cast 6th level spells or greater. One metropolis is likely to have an average of 12 wiz, 12 sorcs, 28 clerics, and 28 druids who can cast 6th level spells. A metropolis is to be expected in a kingdom of 2 or more million. Most kingdoms have more than 2 million people.

****Its amazing the things you learn when you have (trumpets) A Magical Medieval Society: Western Europe! (trumpets)****




joe b.