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Message: <blockquote data-quote="gizmo33" data-source="post: 2317454" data-attributes="member: 30001">There are probably too many particulars here, but I find your statements overall to be true but one sided.  Light horse and Barbarian1 skirmishers are two of a zillion ways to simply counter some cleric and his expeditious retreat spell or the like.  Ancient armies typically kept a squadron of light horse in reserve to chase down fleeing forces - I don't see the difference here.  Your making no allowance for equipment for your War1 (even simple stuff like horses and crossbows) in any of these hypotheticals.   You're imagining some War1 in leather armor with a spear poking around blindly in the woods or trying to run down a barbarian in a foot race.  There are just too many factors that you're ignoring.  Taking an understandably PC perspective on the issue.  Without knowing your experiences as well as you apparently know mine, I can only tentatively suggest that you're experiences are possibly colored by a DM who has not put thought into his armies/tactics.  No I don't have any idea of how little equipped the force is and neither do you since all we've talked about is War1 and you have yet to consider the possibility of War1s possessing any equipment at all.  I think that's the most serious threat to a group of low-levels IME.  A barbarian who wades into a mob of 500 troops of the composition I suggest is not going to survive if he's facing a leader of his level equivalent.  No - if I give the War1s spears and horses I'm not making the War1 useless.  IMO you need War1s as part of an over-all strategy.  A hellhound by itself can do nothing against 500 War1.  You haven't even seen my price lists for those things!  Really, you don't appear IMO to have any of the facts necessary to make draw of these conclusions.  I only need a few hellhounds, for instance, to *multiply the effectiveness* of a War1 band.  Once I'm able to FIND the ranger that's skulking around in the woods trying to be evasive, then my War1 group can be brought to bear.  A hellhound BTW is only a CR3 creature, so it doesn't take me many War1s to kill it - meaning that a group of 500 War1s is far more significant as a fighthing for as the few hellhounds they bring with them to sniff out the enemy ranger.  Same goes with the L5 Rogue - the L5 Rogue has a specialized purpose in the group - he doesn't stand a chance against a few dozen War1s with bows, but each covers the weaknesses of the other better than either does alone.  A few of these elements IMO can go a long way towards correcting for the weaknesses of the War1 band.  Introducing these elements does not mean "turning the army into" anything.  Just because one hell hound is nice, doesn't mean ten of them is better than a War1 army of equivalent cost.  Bringing along a few tower shields doesn't "turn an army into" a castle and mean that you were better off just buying a castle.  Yes, certaintly the magic that you'd be familiar with as a PC is designed for fairly powerful effects on a few number of creatures.  The core assumption in my campaign world is that spell-using characters are capable of developing spells to counter their problems - which aren't always the problems of a Dungeoncrawlers that the PHB is geared towards.  I would agree with you that the PHB as written does not do the job for the DM - and to field an army of War1s takes some work.  But I could develop a set of spells that would be reasonably balanced against the existing spells that would mitigate some of the problems you're probably thinking of.  Exactly, but Cure Disease is like squashing a fly with a hammer.  Cure diseases affects all diseases and it does so instantly.  You don't need to protect troops vs. mummy rot.  And besides, you earlier referenced the fact that "intangibles" weren't part of DnD combat - I certainly would put dysentary in the same category.  Again, I find this a case of you taking the worst possible scenario and applying it to the War1.     DM fiat!?  I'm not sure what you mean by that.  *I'M" not inventing something to solve the problem, my NPCs are.  It's a time honored tradition amongst armies of all time periods.  That's how you got siege engines - someone saw a really high wall and said "hmmm.  We need something to beat that".  DM fiat?  Part of what you have to assume if you're going to field a War1 army is that the technology will support it.  DnD is not just what's in the core rulebooks.  You would be on much firmer ground if you said "sticking only to what's in the official PHB, a War1 army is in trouble" - but then I could throw out 99% of adventure modules on that premise. Yes, magic bread is going to be worth what it is.  "All that money" is something that we have yet to address.  You haven't said how much it costs to field that L8 Ranger you're talking about - so how are you comparing it against the cost of magic bread?  I maintain my magic bread is cheaper than your L8 Ranger <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />    You're not babying them - you're providing them with the equipment and strategy necessary to make them an effective fighting force that you can bring to bear against your enemy.  If you are standing in a line of troops and you get shot at by a cannon then you and bunches of people around you are going to die.  I don't understand why you think real people are more capable of dealing with this than War1s led by a heroic (L10) commander.  Desertion means they go somewhere else, still get cholera, and be outlawed on top of it.  As I keep saying - you seem to be only applying these hardships to one side of the equation.  Well, again, I'm not sure how you can say all this without getting into the economics involved.  How many fireballs are you imagining would be required to take down a force of 500 War1s, if that's what you mean by "basic attacks"?  Fighters have virtually no stealth capability IMC anyway, so I'm not sure what War1s are ruining.  Your "10th level whatever" doesn't appear to enjoy the special mounts, fast movement, invisibility spells, or any of the other things that you give readily to Team B.   Or perhaps look at this like a pyramid - you're saying that you COULD see the point of bringing along 50 War3s, a few hell hounds, and a flying rogue?  Well in that case I'm on firmer ground bringing my 500 War1s whom I'm pretty sure could beat that force.</blockquote>

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