Thay assaults Rashemen! (Updates from the game...)

[ashockney]

Hey folks. I'm running a 3.5 Ed campaign, based in Mulsantir (Rashemen). One of the major plot elements will be the pending assault into Rashemen by Thay. I would like the party to control a number of units, have an impact on the war between Rashemen and Thay, and ultimatley perhaps even help to postpone or decide the outcome of the battle (they're 9th level now). I have a couple of questions, though.

How do you determine a nation's ability to raise an army? For example, Rasehmen has a population of 650,000 people, Mulsantir has a population of 5,000 people. Approximately 11% of the country resides in urban dwellings, with 89% in rural settings. There are roughly 44,000 total residents (urban/rural) in and around Mulsantir. How big is Mulsantir's standing army? How big an army can Mulsantir raise if invaded (including militia)? Anyone want to take a shot at Rashemen? Any thoughts on how long this might take? Any decent books to help support this type of question.

Your feedback is welcomed!

 

[BrooklynKnight]

I suggest you read Unapproachable East.

What you'll learn about the culture of Rashmen is that nearly all men are capable Barbiarn/Beserkers and are oraganized in Lodges. There is no standing army as you might think of one untill the need arises.

The Lodges are usually commanded by a head Berskerer or sort of King (not an actual king, but i forget who the guy is) who's chosen by the Witches of Rashmen.

The Witches actually run the show, but they dont micro manage the fighting, the Barbarian leader does that. Witches come along to command the general war/fight and cast support and attack spells.

Nearly every man adolesence and up is trained to fight. Thats one HUGE army. Consider the ratio about 50% men, and about 20% of THAT male childen, and you 've got 17600 combattants.

Thats Barbiarians, I'm not even counting the Masked Sisters. They would be in the few hundreds.

 

[Silveras]

The ability of a land to raise and support an army is a complex process. If you need the answer REALLY fast, make it up. If approximately 5% of the population is "warrior-class" material, then probably half of that (2.5%) may have some actual training. Of them, a relatively small number will be in a real "army" that is always "on duty" (say 1% of the overall population).

So, Mulsantir (pop 5,000) has about 250 Warriors in it. may have a unit of 50 professional, full-time guardsmen. 100 is more likely, though, for ease of calculations, with the remaining ones being bouncers, personal guards for nobles, etc. Use the DMG rules for developing the highest level NPCs in the city. As Rashemen is a barbarian land, using the higher die roll for the highest Barbarian level is probably appropriate.

As for books on the topic, try this thread: Comparison: Strongholds & Dynasties - Empire - Magical Medieval Society - Birthright
All of the books in there are, to some degree, about running a land. Most cover raising an army with the resources in that land. Fields of Blood was just added to the comparison. There are also individual threads for Fields of Blood, Empire, and Strongholds & Dynasties.

 

[ashockney]

The Iron Lord

I suggest you read Unapproachable East.

What you'll learn about the culture of Rashmen is that nearly all men are capable Barbiarn/Beserkers and are oraganized in Lodges. There is no standing army as you might think of one untill the need arises.

The Lodges are usually commanded by a head Berskerer or sort of King (not an actual king, but i forget who the guy is) who's chosen by the Witches of Rashmen.

The Witches actually run the show, but they dont micro manage the fighting, the Barbarian leader does that. Witches come along to command the general war/fight and cast support and attack spells.

Nearly every man adolesence and up is trained to fight. Thats one HUGE army. Consider the ratio about 50% men, and about 20% of THAT male childen, and you 've got 17600 combattants.

Thats Barbiarians, I'm not even counting the Masked Sisters. They would be in the few hundreds.

The Iron Lord rests upon his throne in Immilmar. He will certainly send a cavalry to support the initial assault upon Mulsantir. What I'm trying to figure out is how big is the initial battle between Mulsantir and Thay?

There's 5,000 in the city. They had some (within 2 days) early warning of the impending armies. They can move people from the rural manors to the city for defense and additional support. If they do so completely, they can have up to 44,000 in the city for it's defense. A significant increase, and challenge to their resource management to maintain during a siege. How many fight for Mulsantir? Using your logic AQ, I've got that we're talking primarly males (50% of 44,000 is 22,000) and mature adults (approximately 80%), which is around 17,600. Wow. That is an enormous army! I was estimating roughly 9,000 of the 44,000 would be a capable group of fighters/militia. (Roughly half your number.) I got to my initial calculation assuming that approximately 100 of 450 population were armed and capable of fighting. The 450 unit comes from MMS: WE, how each manor is broken down in a medieval society. I was guessing that 20 of the 100 could be an armed/mobile cavalry, while roughly 4 times that number could be gathered for militia. This would assume closer to double that! Interesting twist for a more "rugged" environment like Rashemen, and would help to explain why they've so often rebuffed the Thayians in the past.

 

[BrooklynKnight]

The Iron Lord rests upon his throne in Immilmar. He will certainly send a cavalry to support the initial assault upon Mulsantir. What I'm trying to figure out is how big is the initial battle between Mulsantir and Thay?

There's 5,000 in the city. They had some (within 2 days) early warning of the impending armies. They can move people from the rural manors to the city for defense and additional support. If they do so completely, they can have up to 44,000 in the city for it's defense. A significant increase, and challenge to their resource management to maintain during a siege. How many fight for Mulsantir? Using your logic AQ, I've got that we're talking primarly males (50% of 44,000 is 22,000) and mature adults (approximately 80%), which is around 17,600. Wow. That is an enormous army! I was estimating roughly 9,000 of the 44,000 would be a capable group of fighters/militia. (Roughly half your number.) I got to my initial calculation assuming that approximately 100 of 450 population were armed and capable of fighting. The 450 unit comes from MMS: WE, how each manor is broken down in a medieval society. I was guessing that 20 of the 100 could be an armed/mobile cavalry, while roughly 4 times that number could be gathered for militia. This would assume closer to double that! Interesting twist for a more "rugged" environment like Rashemen, and would help to explain why they've so often rebuffed the Thayians in the past.

Rashmen doesnt really follow the MMS:WE template, neither does anything in FR IMO. (That doesnt make MMS:WE any less of a great book.)

But The Rashemi are all bred for fighting and war. They are always getting attacked. The tuigian Hoards, the Thayans, And they are right on the borders of an ancient magic kindgom (Narfell) from which demons constantly attack.

I dont envision Rashmen as having many NPC classes. Mostly women have the NPC classes IMO. All men without magical aptitude are taken into the Lodges and trained to fight. Reading Windwalker will give you some insight to this.

Every man fights. And in this case its every male over the age of 14. So those numbers seem about right for this.

So i'll have to disagree with Silvaris. His numbers are right, but not for Forgotten Realms/Rashmen.

Your best two resources for further research is Windwalker by Elaine Cunningham and Unapproachable East.

you can also post at the wizards boards (feel free to repost my comments there) and i'm sure elaine will pop up with an opinion.

 

[Silveras]

I must, in turn, partially disagree with ArthurQ.

He is correct about using Unapproachable East as a guiding resource, and he is correct about my numbers. Being a little conservative, I applied the "standard" pattern to a non-standard place.

However, I disagree with using novels as a source for any gaming information. The needs of an author for a story are different than the needs of a DM for a game, and so I categorically ignore all novels about a game setting.

 

[ashockney]

I must, in turn, partially disagree with ArthurQ.

He is correct about using Unapproachable East as a guiding resource, and he is correct about my numbers. Being a little conservative, I applied the "standard" pattern to a non-standard place.

However, I disagree with using novels as a source for any gaming information. The needs of an author for a story are different than the needs of a DM for a game, and so I categorically ignore all novels about a game setting.

It's interesting, because I started with numbers very similiar to yours Silveras. I used the modern US military as a foundation (1.4mm vs. 226 mm).

I'd love to hear others opinions, as well.

Thoughts on the impact of militia vs. armed force?
Thoughts on the impact of medieval vs. modern times?

 

[BrooklynKnight]

I must, in turn, partially disagree with ArthurQ.

He is correct about using Unapproachable East as a guiding resource, and he is correct about my numbers. Being a little conservative, I applied the "standard" pattern to a non-standard place.

However, I disagree with using novels as a source for any gaming information. The needs of an author for a story are different than the needs of a DM for a game, and so I categorically ignore all novels about a game setting.

Forgotten Realms, especially 3rd edition, is a special case in that the RND and Novel Development deparments work pretty close together and there are not as many discrepencies between rules and novel as before.

Anywho thats not really important. I was pointing him to the novel because its the only one i know of that features the area he's intrested in, and as a DM its a good resource of its culture and warrior sentiment.

He may not need it as a rules resource. But its still a valuable campaign one.

Also I was doing more thinking on the numbers. Mine might be skewed too. The numbers I gave are ones that would fit in perfect conditions. If ALL the inhabitants were Rashemi.

I dont have my book on me but since this is a big city I'm assuming it will have a large population of forigners and traders. Thus we can expect many more npc classes then in a normal rashemi town.

Then we have to count in sick, or old warriors who cannot fight. The numbers are prolly in between yours and mine.

 

[Silveras]

Some other thoughts ...

The DMG rules for populating cities are geared around the "generic" pseudo-medieval setting; you can alter those to re-tune for a different culture / region.

• Adjust dice sizes to raise/lower the maximum level generated for each class, to reflect how common that class is in "this area".
• Remove rolls for classes you don't allow
• Add rolls for new BASE classes in use
• Change the proportion of 1st level NPCs ... instead of .5% Adepts, .5% Aristocrats, 3% Experts, 5% warriors, and 91% commoners, make "this region" 2% Adepts, .1% Aristocrats, 8% Experts, 30% warriors, and 59.9% Commoners (for example)

Fields of Blood, as I mentioned in the comparison thread, is the only one of the domain management books to really incorporate the differences in cultures. However, the established economies of Thay and Rashemen may not fit well within its rules structure.

 

[Dark Jezter]

Page 139 of Unapproachable East talks about Rashemi defense and warcraft. I'll post some of the more interesting points here:

• The standard military leader or elite soldier in Rashemen is a member of the barbarian class, rather than the fighter class.
• The warriors of Rashemen favor light or medium armor so they can stay mobile, and dress in camoflague that allows them to blend into the snow.
• The warriors of Rashemen don't have cavalry. Sometimes they use small mountain ponies to quickly move to the front lines, but they dismount in combat because the ponies are not suitable war mounts.
• The military is divided into "Fangs", which are groups of berserkers who come from the same lodge.
• The berserkers are terrifying foes, but they rarely use group tactics. The berserkers will often charge forward and tear holes in the enemy lines, while the witches will use magic to support them.
• Rashemen's military rarely leaves its own borders. When they do leave, it is mostly to perform retaliatory strikes.