WAR, HUH GOOD GOD Y'ALL!

[alaric]

A mass combat system would be nice, but what i'm looking for is someone with a decent concept of military history to attempt to determine how a fantasy world would fundamentally change the way warfare is fought. There have been quite a few discussions about flying, improved-invisible, fireball chucking sorcerers make armies and castles obsolete. Obviously if there are enough mages to make a difference then military thinkers would have come up with ways to nullify or at least lessen the destructive power of mages. The same could be said for involving giants, trolls and dragons in combat. I'd like to see a book that doesn't detail how to model medieval warfare, i want a system that acts like it's modeling warfare in a fantasy realm.

 

[Crothian]

A mass combat system would be nice, but what i'm looking for is someone with a decent concept of military history to attempt to determine how a fantasy world would fundamentally change the way warfare is fought. There have been quite a few discussions about flying, improved-invisible, fireball chucking sorcerers make armies and castles obsolete. Obviously if there are enough mages to make a difference then military thinkers would have come up with ways to nullify or at least lessen the destructive power of mages. The same could be said for involving giants, trolls and dragons in combat. I'd like to see a book that doesn't detail how to model medieval warfare, i want a system that acts like it's modeling warfare in a fantasy realm.

The problem with this is numbers. Spellcasters have very limited spells. Battles can go on for hours and many spells don't last that long. Also, on the batlle field many of the spells are nothing more then a new type of Artillary strike. Unless you have spellcasters in large numbers, I don't see it being that big of differnence on the battlefield.

However, as Special Forces they would rock. Espionage, Assassination, destroying key defensises, location of troops, Hiding troops, scdrying, anti scrying, protecdting key indivuduals.

SCrying I think will have the biggest effect. Wizards can scry the battle and have a real time eagle eye view of what is going on. A few simple communication spells and you can be in doirect communication with the captains and other officiers on the battlefield.

Anyone want to spearhead a project on this? I'd be interested in helping and I can talk to my roommate (WW2 buff and degree in History with a speciality in Military History). I think this would be a really cool on line project.

 

[Vacuum Elemental]

Just wanted to address how Timeline deals with some of the issues alaric brought up.

In Timeline each nation has several different ACs (Land, Sea, Air, Subterranean, Aquatic, Planar, Space). Units with a flight attack (either from combat mages, denizen units or military technology) roll against their opponent's Air AC.

Each military unit has a damage type and most medieval units deal "earth", "organic" and/or "corporeal" type damage. Fire damage really isn't seen in traditional units until bombs are introduced in the Industrial Era of the game. If you have mages and allocate them for traditional combat instead of mass cataclysms then you'll have access to other types of damage and DR earlier on.

Invisible units receive an attack bonus.

Dragons, Giants and Trolls are denizens adding bonuses depending on which unit you allocate them to. For example, Trolls make EXCELLENT combat units due to their high DR and strength but if you wanted to integrate them into your society as say alchemists or lawyers, well...

All of this information pertains to version 1.5, which will be available tomorrow. If you try it I think you'll be surprised. The game is designed more for epic history building though, spanning hundreds of generations rather than just a few years of an adventurer's life. The time is scalable though and future versions will address handling micro turns.

VEG
http://www.d20timeline.com

 

[Eben]

I think you're right to say that a fantasy setting would change the way wars are waged. But the problem with designing a system to simulate large scale fantasy battles is that no tow settings are the same. High magic worlds might have units of spellcasters running around on the battle field. Low magic settings would probably field none.
Large monsters would most likely be countered by all types of war machines or units of verry mobile troops. In antiquity elephants were rather easily countered by light infantry: most of them had some sort of ranged weapon and their loose formation allowed them to evade the elephants rather than face them.
You would need quite a flexible system. Quite a challenge, I'll certainly give it some more thought.

 

[Psion]

I read war last night; I should have a decent (ahem) review up by the weekend.

 

[alaric]

I think you're right to say that a fantasy setting would change the way wars are waged. But the problem with designing a system to simulate large scale fantasy battles is that no tow settings are the same. High magic worlds might have units of spellcasters running around on the battle field. Low magic settings would probably field none.

Well low magic worlds wouldn't be all that different than standard warfare, so lets talk about the default "d&d" level of magic. Even talking in the most general terms one would think it is conceivable that there are a decent number of mages of 5th level or higher, and out of these one could image that at least a few would be willing to sell there services to a kingdom for a large amount of money. If this hypothetical mage makes a wand of fireballs he now becomes an army slayer in and of himself. You could think of him as artillery, but he can decimate a 20ft radius, with perfect accuracy at a range of 600ft, and can launch one every six seconds. With 50 charges i doubt that battles will be lasting hours and hours anymore, the mage will end it in the first 3 minutes. Even if he doesn't completely annihilate the opposing force, or crush it's moral, he will of at least given his forces an overwhelming advantage. That's why i think at the very least you need someone to look into some very basic new tactics.

Of course a high magic system would also be nice, one that deals with whole units of elven fighter/mages and trollish berserkers. Potentially a whole different book in and of itself. Either way i'd like to see some work done in this area.

 

[Eben]

Point well taken. But I don't believe this would happen. If this were a reality, I don't believe you would find many soldiers to go to war. Wars would be waged between mages and heroes. (Whic is in and of itself an interesting concept to introduce in a fantasy world.)
But if you look at the fantasy literaturel, you see that mages tend to set themselves appart from the machinations between the nations.They might take on advisory roles and openly support their king or try to pull the strings of power from the shadows, but you don't see a lot of artillery type wizards.
I can also understand why: you devaluate yourself as a wizard. And you make yourself a prime target for assasination.
While the sceario you describe above, Alaric, might be possible, I don't see it happening all that often.
The wars between the powers of evil and good would be a different matter altogether.

 

[Vacuum Elemental]

In Timeline you have a limit to the number of Technology Units (TU) you have available. Sorcery is considered a "technology" in Timeline, and mages are a TU. Each government has a limit to its number of TUs (excluding peasants) and military units (MUs), depending on its level (era). For example, the average medieval military government has a 40 TU max and an MU max of 15. (The methods of calculation are very simple and are very similar to other d20 methods of character creation.) There is no limit to the number of DUs except for food, which requires land, and in d20 fashion as you increase in size you decrease your AC. The logic behind the TU limit increase is that older civilizations (Rome for example) had a lot of citizens but the vast majority were peasants.

Thus in Timeline the number of mages is limited by a nation's era. They are also limited by the number of spell components a nation has; component availability comes from a nation's trade, colonization or leadership (leadership develops heroes and heroes can do just about anything).

A military unit assigned a mage unit could deal additional fire damage and/or flight. This could effectively introduce low powered bomber planes into a medieval era. Add improved invisibility and you have stealth bombers.

However, you could also have high level clerics in your military units, effectively introducing fusion era (i.e. Star Trek like) medicine into the campaign. Add resurrection, fire resistance, undead armies, summoned monsters and, well, things do tend to look quite different than traditional warfare.

In Timeline you can tweak the level of fantasy by changing the availability of spell components, cleric to population ratio, and high powered denizen frequency for the campaign world you compete in.

http://www.d20timeline.com

 

[Sir Osis of Liver]

well Timeline does sound like an interesting system, i'll have to check it out.

Anyone have any news on Fields of Blood?