Some thoughts on D&D warfare

[Hejdun]

I think there are several reasons not to use hordes of low-level armies for armies.

1) They can't kill much. They are severely underclassed against even moderately high CR monsters or leveled NPCs. They are virtually useless against anything with flight, fear effects, area attacks, or damage reduction.

2) They are hideously expensive. Ok, let's assume that you have a professional army of 10,000 people. In just one year, it will cost 1,825,000gp to feed them all. If you want to actually go on the offensive, it will take quite a bit of logistical support to sustain those 10,000 troops. We're talking about needing to haul 10,000 lbs of food to your army every day. The farther you wish to go (i.e. the longer the supply line is), the more wagons you'll need. And then you need to worry about clean water, which could be handled with several decanters of endless water.

You also need to equip those soldiers. Say something like each soldier is equipped with scale mail, large wooden shield, longsword, possibly some javelins. Call it 75gp per soldier. That's another 750,000gp just to equip those 10,000 soldiers with mediocre equipment. Archers are more expensive (bows are quite expensive), and cavalry even more so (even light warhorses are 150gp, then there's the saddle, bit and briddle, feed...)

And THEN, those 10,000 soldiers could be doing something productive instead of going off to war. Farming, blacksmithing, etc.

3) They are incredibly vulnerable. Disease, area attacks, "dreadnaught" units, fear, poor morale, starvation etc. are all ways to easily knock out mass amounts of low-level warriors at little risk. And then, you know, you only have so many people in your kingdom. The people won't like it for very long if you keep losing tens of thousands of soldiers in your campaigns. Even then, you'll eventually either run out of a) people willing to go to war or b) people physically able to go to war.


It seems to me that low-level warriors are good for one thing: controlling the peasants. In which case those soldiers would be an occupying force, and not an invading force, to be used only when you have taken out your enemy's major combatants (high level PCs, golems, summoned creatures, basically anything with CR > 6 or 7).

In such a case, I would think that "wars" would really consist of opposing strike forces, consisting of high level characters and high CR monsters, well-equipped with magic items, duking it out. In the same way that air forces can battle for air superiority, high level NPCs would seek to battle for magic superiority. When one side is sufficiently beat down, a treaty could be signed or the winning side could actually invade with their modest army of low-level warriors (after, of course, the enemy's low-level army is ground into dust by your remaining high-quality troops).

I would imagine that in each major city/region, one would have a major "safehouse" for all of the powerful army elements in the city. These safehouses would be chook full of magical wards and defenses, to protect against incorporeal creatures, teleporting enemies, etc. Likely, each major city would be (probably through portals) connected to each other, allowing instantaneous reinforcing if one comes under attack.

Attacks would likely consist of one side teleporting to an enemy city to achieve some goal (attacking an enemy safehouse, destroying city infrastructure, killing enemy garrisons, assassinating the governor/nobles, stealing precious diamonds, etc.) There would be losses on both sides, but both sides could also reasonably raise their dead. So, in reality, the war of attrition becomes 'how many enemy levels can I take out' rather than 'how many War1s can I take out'. Connected to that, when an enemy dies, it presents an excellent opportunity to steal his magic items for your own use, so that even if the enemy is raised, he won't have any of his gear and will thus be quite a bit weaker. Or, hey, just steal your enemy's stockpile of diamonds to reduce his ability to raise his fallen soldiers.

Of course, all of this is limited by how many real quality NPCs/monsters there are in the employ of each kingdom. I'd imagine in a medium size kingdom (say 1-2 million inhabitants) you'd have a few dozen on each size, with a mundane army of low-level Warriors numbering maybe 10,000-20,000.

One advantage of this system is that it is directly useful from a PC's perspective. Squads of high-level, well equipped soldiers/monsters running around killing other high-level, well equipped soldiers? That's PC material if I ever saw it. In this case, your wars are centered around squad-sized, short, viscious engagements with tons of magic on each side.

Who needs boring rules for how many War1s you killed with your fireball, or how many wagons and horses it will take to supply 26,529 soldiers with food and water daily, or why those War1s would even bother staying in the fight when they've just seen 3,000 soldiers be incinerated/eaten by terrible monsters/run away from dragon fear/be crushed by an iron golem's mighty fist/be hewn down by a 15th level fighter with a spiked chain, great cleave, and combat reflexes.


Let's face it, even if you have 20,000 Warrior 3s, they're no match for 4 level 20 characters. Even with a few scattered level 7-9s, they'd eventually be worn down in any battle of attrition. The only counter to high quality combatants ("dreadnaughts") is your own, in which case, why even have mooks around in the first place? To kill the other sides' mooks? Maybe, but why bother risking your thousands of well-trained soldiers when you can just wait until your opponents' big combatants are killed by your own? There's a reason Hitler wanted air superiority before he invaded Britain; because otherwise his invading force is vulnerable to that air force and will take serious losses as a result. Unless you want to lose thousands of your soldiers at a time, there's no reason to send them into an incredibly hostile environment unless you absolutely had to. To use another WWII analogy, towards the end of the war, Germany had practically no air force remaining. They kept fighting with their conventional forces, but those forces got pulverized whenever they tried to move anywhere.

I don't know, to be honest, I haven't really thought of this that much. Are there any major flaws in this plan? Anything major that I'm totally forgotting? Of course, this assumes quite a high level of magic, but I think the point stands in any setting which will have even a moderate amount of 'things' out in the world with high CR.

 

[S'mon]

Let's face it, even if you have 20,000 Warrior 3s, they're no match for 4 level 20 characters. Even with a few scattered level 7-9s, they'd eventually be worn down in any battle of attrition. The only counter to high quality combatants ("dreadnaughts") is your own, in which case, why even have mooks around in the first place?

This sounds like it might work in theory but I've GM'd D&D for 20 years and I've never seen PCs single-handedly defeat a sizable army (10,000+). Commando raids against mundane troops always work the first time - maybe you even kill a few hundred. If you keep on doing it, in my experience the enemy adapts and eventually you get killed. In my 1e AD&D game a 20th level NPC Fighter was the last survivor of his group, the Darksword Knights, and went on a teleporting killing spree vs the good guys. He killed a bunch of mid-levellers, until he rolled a '1' on a save vs a 1st level Command spell and was swiftly killed. Smart high level characters do _not_ assume they can't be threatened by LLCs, and they do _not_ give the enemy time to adapt to their tactics or concentrate all efforts on defeating the LLCs. In my experience HLCs are successful when they act as a force multiplier for mundane troops, just like the air power analogy you mention. A Fighter-15 leading 500 War-2s is, in my experience, far far more effective than a Fighter-15 on his own. He might be equally well or better employed bodyguarding the Sorc-15, but once the Sorc is out of spells he still needs to make himself useful.

 

[S'mon]

I should say that while I GM'd AD&D for 14 years and 3e for nearly 6 years now, I have relatively limited experience of ultra-high-level spellcasters in 3e warfare; maybe a Druid can destroy an army now. But I am GMing a Wiz-18 PC currently and while he makes a big difference I haven't noticed him expecting to defeat the 20,000 strong enemy army on his own; he uses his abilities primarily to complement the mundane forces on his side.

 

[S'mon]

Using my demographics, in an experienced army of 20,000 - something like Caeasar's Gallic legions or Alexander's army in Persia - you'd get something like:

10,000 3rd level
5,000 4th
2,500 5th
1,250 6th
625 7th
312 8th
156 9th
78 10th
39 11th
18 12th
9 13th
4 14th
2 15th
1 16th (possibly Caesar or Alexander)

Mostly warriors, with increasing proportion of PC-class NPCs at the higher levels. No 20th level group in their right mind would assume they could destroy this force single-handed IMO, though they might well expect to hold it off long enough to achieve an objective, or successfully hold a particular location like a fortress. That would be much easier if the PCs had some low-levellers on their own side, though.

 

[gizmo33]

There are alot of responces I could make, but I'll start with a short one here. I don't think you understand my position enough to speak for me.

I said hardly anything about your position. I didn't intend much more than to draw S'mon's attention to our earlier posts which referenced the same topic. I thought I understood your position enough to know that we disagreed.

For the record, those are my preferences to. I'd guess we are both old school gamers that have been playing since 1st edition. So, I'm guessing that your completely off base when your trying to in your head explain away some of the differences.

You're right about my background, but what I'm doing in my head is largely unknown, even to me in some cases. I'm spending alot of time giving you written things to object to - so I don't see the need to start dabbling in my thought processes. Since my actual written statements seem to be less interesting than what's going on in my head, I guess it's time for me to start closing up my arguments.

 

[gizmo33]

In their starting frontier village I did mention "most of these villagers have more hit points than you" and the sky didn't collapse.

Ok - I'm not talking about the sky falling either - I'm talking about a 1st level character being capable of the sort of influence in a local setting that, it appears to me from your orc-raiding-village example, you're aiming for 3rd level. Still - IMC it requires a party of 1st level characters to have this sort of influence.

 

[TerraDave]

Overall comment: a lot of hypothesis and anecdote, but I am really wishing for the large scale controlled experiment (i.e. a D20 Battle system)

In terms of troop composition: there are rules for 20th level warriors...in practice, like everything, these things have to scale with the campaign, perhaps from local village militia, to the forces of a local lord, to those of a larger town, to those of the kingdom, to those of a might coalition or empire. Increases in quality and quantity are possible at each step.

Air Power (Hejdun): Yes, Air Power!

 

[Celebrim]

I think you're saying that the default DMG demographics don't work. Does _anyone_ disagree with that proposition?

I don't know. To a certain extent, that's what I'm trying to ascertain. I assumed that pretty much everyone with enough play experience had decided that 'legacy demographics' in the DMG were untenable even before 3rd edition came out. So, I'm rather surprised to be having an arugment with people who claim that the only reason that the default demographics aren't working for me is that I'm tactically inept, or that I'm somehow assuming that armies are equipped with nothing more than sharpened sticks, or that 3rd level warriors are inhumanly capable superheroes.

 

[gizmo33]

So the first thing that gizmo and me seem to really disagree on, is that armies should principally be made of fighters and not warriors.

Oops - I think we agree. I didn't realize that there was a significant difference between War and Ftr, I only use fighters IMC. Replace all my 'War1' with 'Ftr1'. I don't use cleave either (it severely breaks the EL for certain creatures). I didn't think that houserules would make much of a difference here, but maybe they do.

A small team of 8th-10th level characters can wreck havoc in any number of ways.

A team of 8th to 10th level characters that is optimized for the strike-force scenario SHOULD probably wreak havoc on a small army (of the scale described). One of my basic arguments follows from the principles of EL in DnD. I would only expect a group of 500 CR1 to challenge creatures up to their EL.

8-10th level is just at the limits of what can reasonably be expected - a group of them is probably beyond a force of 500. Of course I continue to be confused about just what the stealth capabilities are of an 8th level fighter in your campaign (IMC 8th level human fighters can't see any better in the dark than 1st level ones). IME (of which you appear to not think much) high level wizards often teleport away and leave high level fighters stranded.

This has lead IMC to a certain "composition" of high level teams that has had an influence on the way my NPC demographics are structured. IMC high level fighers and clerics get along, but rogues and wizards tend to be loners. This is true as much of the PCs as NPCs. I suspect that people who habitually start PCs off at levels higher than 1 do not see this kind of stratification in their higher level parties (though I'm not sure) - but this might have a big impact on what our experiences have been.

Heck, even my assumptions about army composition is based on the assumption that groups of 15th level characters simply don't exist, or at least exist so rarely that they are famous throughout large portions of the world and thier deeds are sung in song for centuries.

This is the case IMC for closely-knit strike teams of 8th-10th level, which I'm starting to think is the reason why they have not adversely affected my army compositions. Coincidentally a team of 8th to 10th is equivalent to a 15th level character EL-wise.

If society is producing 8th-10th level characters, or if the countryside contains say a tribe or two of Frost Giants, then 1st level warriors get squashed by those crack combat units and the high level characters just can't afford to baby sit them.

Strange coincidence that you mention frost giants. IME Frost Giants in 1E could get killed by a score or so Lvl 0 mercs (all that damage doesn't seem to go far on a single swing) . Things, of course, have changed with 3E giants, but it's one of the few monster types that I think a very conventionally equipped force of Ftr1 could battle without much thought - AFAIK there aren't much of the hit-and-run issues to deal with.

 

[Celebrim]

I said hardly anything about your position. I didn't intend much more than to draw S'mon's attention to our earlier posts which referenced the same topic. I thought I understood your position enough to know that we disagreed.

Sure, but you didn't state that you and I disagreed. You stated that I agreed with someone else, which you had no clear evidence for, and were in fact in error to claim. As should be obvious by now, S'mons demographics are intended to address a completely different issue than the problems that I have. If I would be so bold as to provide a summary, it seems like S'mon is very much interested in the question, "If the campaign goes for a sufficient length, how can I keep the PC's from being able to take over the world on a whim?" As such, his army has to not just be able to protect the kingdom from a maruading horde of Frost Giants, but also from a maruading band of 20th level characters. He states, "No 20th level group in their right mind would assume they could destroy this force single-handed..." That's well and good, but note that I stated one of my assumptions was: "...groups of 15th level characters simply don't exist..." So you can be pretty sure that when he rolls out a list that contains a 16th level character, 2 15th level characters, and 4 14th level characters that we've got some pretty strong differences in our conceptual preferences.

Nonetheless even though I don't agree on the details of the solution, I immediately recognize S'mon is trying to create demographics that deal with very concrete issues that are raised by the rules and trying to create a society that believably functions within those rules, and not trying to explain away very real disonances between what the rules themselves say and what the meta-rules about how you are supposed to apply those rules say.

You're right about my background, but what I'm doing in my head is largely unknown, even to me in some cases. I'm spending alot of time giving you written things to object to - so I don't see the need to start dabbling in my thought processes. Since my actual written statements seem to be less interesting than what's going on in my head, I guess it's time for me to start closing up my arguments.

You'll note please that I quoted one of your written statements rather than one of your thoughts. If I'd wanted to comment on one of your actual thoughts directly, I would have quoted one of those. Nonetheless, I think I'm somewhat justified in saying that your actual written statements may at some level have a relationship to what is going on in your head, and if you yourself don't know what is going on in your head may I suggest that you read your written statements and see what they seem to indicate is going on in your head.

What you said is...

Celebrim supports you on this though - the best way to model elite troops in DnD with the minimal amount of work is to make them higher level. Without mass combat rules, you have nothing else to work with...

Stop there for a moment. I've already talked about the fact that you had no right to speak for me, but if you were going to try to relate to someone what it was that I said, you could at least be accurate in your reporting. In fact, I have many times during this thread refered to the fact that I had used mass combat rules before. So, in fact you have no basis of asserting that I have no other tools to work with, or that I made my choices because they represented 'less work'. Anyway continuing on...

Personally, my campaigns start at Lvl 1, I use my own level progression, and PCs above 9th level are the exception. Given what I see on the internet, this style of DnD is not the norm anymore, so that probably explains some of the differences.

Here we reach your explanation to S'mon for why I disagree with you and with him. As you may note, you are wrong in this assertion. And not just a little wrong, but completely wrong. I in fact agree with you on these particulars, and so your mental process that leads you to say "that probably explains some of the differences" is also wrong. Please reevaluate that mental process.

Because of the Level 1 thing, raising the average level of NPCs in my campaign would make these lower-levels very awkward. One drunken swiss trooper in a bar could kill the whole party.

Average 1st level PC's fighter's are 28 or 32 point buy in my campaign and have say 11-13 h.p. because they start with maximum hit points at first level.

Average NPC professional soldiers are 15 point buy and have say 13 h.p. because they are average. They are also likely to have substandard intelligence, charisma, and wisdom because they were recruited principally for other fine and useful qualities, and as player's have long known - intelligence, charisma, and wisdom are not all that necessary in a guy whose main job it is to close with something and bash it with something sharp and shiny.

To put the problem in modern anachronistic terms, the PC's of the world are like special forces - they are expected to be able to read a book in the dark, hike 20 miles, and compose a book report in a foreign langauge in between coordinating mortar fire. They can do all sorts of things that ordinary armies can't and need not be expected to do because ultimately the problems they solve are of a non-mundane nature. Pound for pound, special forces kick butt. But the ordinary soldiers of the world make up the greater portion of the martial prowess of any nation, because ordinary soldiers are still pretty darn good at facing threats of a more mundane nature. What S'mon seems acutely aware of is that if you run a campaign long enough and use demographics centered at low levels, the fact that capability increases exponentially as level increases linearly means that the PC party itself (or any other similar group of high level characters) would eventually become the greater portion of the martial prowess of any nation capable of single handedly defeating armies in a fashion he apparantly doesn't feel fits the way his world works. What I am acutely aware of is that in D&D, the 'mundane' threats include such things as lions, tigers, dire bears, small dragons, bands of giants, and small mercenary companies with armed with supernatural powers and virtual immunity to anyone whose attack bonus is only +3 or so. I'm very much trying to solve the problem of "How does society defend itself from these things in a way that doesn't require the world to be filled of small mercenary companies of exceptional potential that are armed with supernatural powers." What you seem acutely aware of is that if 'mundane' fantasy societies have solutions to said problems that don't involve needing a small band of mercenaries with supernatural powers, perhaps the PC's aren't so 'special' afterall. My partial answer to that is that it depends greatly on what you mean by special. My demographics allow the PC's to be virtually unique, in that there probably aren't more than a handful of actual 'adventuring companies' anywhere in the world. I don't know how you can get more special than that.

For the record, I solve the problem S'mon is trying to solve in a method which doesn't involve demographics at all. In the unlikely event that the PC's did get to 15th level under my slower (more 1st edition like) progression, they would find that their main problems were more in common with the main problems faced by the heroes of the Illiad and the Oddessey, and hense the fact that they could single handedly face armies would sort of become insignificant.