“This Means War!”: Making huge armies practical (Part 6 of 6)
This is the final installment of this 6-part series. Parts 1 and 2 discussed the fundamental concepts needed to simulate a unit of 100 soldiers. Parts 3 and 4 described a step-by-step procedure for conducting battles between two armies, and Part 5 described how to integrate the PCs into the war action. This final part looks at unusual and exotic abilities, such as are found in the most unusual and dramatic creatures wihtin the D&D game, and how to integrate those abilities into a unit’s capabilities.
Part 6: Unusual Unit Abilities and Miscellenious Notes
Feats
If all troops in a unit have the same feat, the GM should look for a way to translate that into a tactical advantage for the unit. Some feats – those that improve a chance to hit, or increase the critical range – already have inherant means of expression within the system. Others, such as Mobility, may need further thought.
Where some members of a unit have a particular feat and others do not, they lose the benefits of that feat while operating as part of a unit. They have to, in order for the system to preserve any semblance of playability; that’s the unfortunate reality. It follows that the closer the similarities between members of a unit, the more effective that unit will be in battle. It can sometimes be worth splitting a full unit into two half-units, seperating the troops along the lines of whether or not they have a given feat that provides a clear tactical advantage.
Doing so comes at a cost; not only is the unit itself weaker, effectively starting with 50% casualties (out of the theoretical 100 troops that should be part of it), but there is an increased burdon on both the GM and commander in terms of administration from round to round. It is always the GMs decision whether or not to permit a unit to be split in this way; the commander of the unit’s army can request it, but cannot count on the request being approved. Above all else, the GM has to maintain playability of the war.
Army Feat Exchange [optional rule]
One notion that was floated during the one and only (to date) use of this system was the possibility of swapping out uncommon feats for a feat that applied only when the soldiers were gathered as a unit. While at first this seemed counter-intuitive and likely to add additional work for the GM and commanders, on further consideration it began to seem a better and better idea.
If each member of a unit has one feat that provides no advantage in war (as opposed to individual combat) purely because of the level of abstraction required for practicality, having all of those advantages translate into a single benefit common to all is not all that unreasonable. Each member of the unit is losing an advantage that the system cannot express, and gaining one that it can; the fact that the first set of advantages were actually several different abilities is neither here nor there.
Because these rules have never been actually tried in play, they are presented here as an optional rule; they should work, but you never know until they are actually tried out.
In order to take advantage of this possibility, it is reccomended that the GM require the unit to have at least trained together in some fashion for a reasonable length of time, or to have fought at least one battle together as a unit. This prevents commanders from simply tossing their odds and ends together to form a new unit without careful consideration. The untrained local militia will not be as effective as veteran troops, even if they are at the same number of hit dice, and you can’t just pad your units out with nobodies.
It is suggested that feats to be ‘exchanged’ under this system, they have to be characterised by the GM as one of the following:
- Movement Feats
- Defensive Feats
- Offensive Feats
It is still preferable for the GM to find some way to express a shared advantage in keeping with the specifics of that advantage, if all members of the troop have the feat that confers it. For example, ‘Cleave’ has been mentioned several times. Since the number of enemy troops killed in a round of battle is known, the number of troops in the attacking unti who killed them is also known. It is thus relatively simple to calculate an extra ‘hit’ for those who have done so to reflect the benefits of this feat.
Movement Feats
These are feats that add to a characters ability to move in some respect, usually under a given circumstance. These should be substituted for a feat that lets an army increase its movement during the Initiative Phase by 5″ or reduce it by 5″, with a corrosponding change to movement in the Action Phase. By enabling the two stages of movement to be more flexibly utilised by the commander of the unit, its overall battlefield manouverabilty is enhanced.
Defensive Feats
These add to a soldier’s AC under certain circumstances, or give an advantage to resisting specific types of damage, or something similar. These should express as a feat that confers a 5% reduction in the amount of damage inflicted on the unit during battle.
Offensive Feats
These increase an attack’s chance of success, or the damage that one causes, either all the time or by a greater amount under specific circumstances. These should be replaced (in effect) by a standard War Feat that adds 5% to the damage inflicted by a unit within a round.
These replacement feats are deliberately very simple and generic and can be ‘taken’ multiple times without entailing substantial additional work for anyone involved.
It should be borne in mind that these are a ‘virtual substitution’; the individual soldiers still have the feats that they had and no change has actually taken place. This is an abstraction that permits some of the lost abilities of a soldier to express themselves in a meaningful way during battle as an army.
Special Abilities and Attacks
These essentially come in two varieties: those that can be used in addition to a full attack, and those that can be used as, or instead of, a full attack (or any attack at all). They are treated in exactly the same way as the normal vs full attack example calculated early in the article. However, they provide an additional variety of option for the DM & Unit Commander to take into account, as they give a choice of attacks. Where a special attack or ability can be used only a restricted number of times per day (or week or whatever), it vastly simplifies bookkeeping and administration if it can be ruled that either everyone in the unit uses the special ability or attack simultaniously, or no-one does, no matter how unrealistic that might be.
The next best choice is to pick a few simple ratios – none, 1/4, 1/2, 3/4, all – to express how many soldiers within the unit are making use of the special ability or attack in any given turn. This requires keeping track of subunits. The GM should assume that if, within a unit, 75% have used their special attack once out of “n” times that it is permitted, a given attack on the unit will not disciminate, ie 75% of the dead will have used their special ability once, unless there is a clear arguement to the contrary (a special attack that requires the attacker to touch the target, for example).
Extra Dice Of Damage
Some creature types or alignments receive extra damage from certain types of weapons or ordinary weapons under certain conditions. This is simple to accommodate, if applicable: Assuming an average result on any additional dice of damage to be rolled, determine the new damage amounts per attack that will (on average) be inflicted. Divide by the standard damage per attack that was previously calculated and multiply by the total damage that the unit inflicts.
This methodology assumes that the extra dice are also increased on a critical hit. That is actually not normally the case. So what? The gain in playability more than outweighs the problem.
Those that don’t translate
Special abilities or attacks that don’t translate directly into damage should be handled in the same way as offensive feats that don’t translate.
Exception: Death Spells & other quick-kills
The GM should determine what the targets need to roll (on d20) in order to make any saving throw involved. Multiplying one less than this number by the % of survivors within the unit and dividing by 20 gives the number of targets who have failed (and are affected), maximum (assuming they are all within range, etc). Adjust the number of survivors and continue.
Exception: Mind-altering spells and Illusions
These are handled in a similar manner to Death Spells – determine what is needed to save, and work out how many have failed. Then adjudicate accordingly – presumably, the affected soldiers will attack comrades within their own unit or something. This effectively diverts part of the damage normally done by the unit to affect its own hit points, ie number of survivors. It breaks the unit into two subunits – one which has failed, and one which has not (but which might have to defend itself against those affected). In effect, twice the number affected are taken out of the picture for however long the effect lasts, making this a very effective strategem if it can be brought to bear.
Of course, some creatures are naturally immune, and (what’s more), two sides can play that game…
Special Defences
Most of these come in one of four specific forms: Regeneration, Damage Resistance (by Type), Immunity to Criticals (Partial or complete), and Damage Reduction. Anything else applies only to a specific type of non-damaging attack, and as such are handled in the same way as defensive feats that don’t translate.
Regeneration
At first glance, this is straightfoward – simply multiply the regeneration result by the number of surviving soldiers and restore that many HP to the unit, right? Wrong. You can’t assume that everyone in the unit has been damaged, and regeneration isn’t something you can loan out like an old jacket.
To determine this correctly, you have to subtract the number of kills in the current round from the number of attackers who hit the required AC, then multiply by the regeneration amount. That will work – for the first round that the unit is damaged. After that, you run into the problems of keeping track of the people who were injured in a previous round but not in the most recent round, but have not yet fully healed; and then there are those who were injured in a previous round and have now fully regenerated; and the whole thing becomes a nightmare.
It’s utterly unrealistic, but here once again a sacrifice must be made on the altar of playability. Use the straightforward answer given at the start of this discussion:
- Amount Regenerated = #Survivors x Regeneration Amount.
The small error that results is miniscule in comparison to the simplicity that results.
Damage Resistance (by type)
This is actually straightforward, unlike the discussion on regeneration.
- This defence is irrellevant unless the attackers are actually inlficting that type of attack, so the defence can be ignored most of the time.
- When it does apply, it simply reduces the amount of damage that is actually inflicted by a successful attack.
- Divide by the normal amount and multiply by the usual amount of damage inflicted by the unit.
- The result is the new damage inflicted.
This result also has an inherant error, in that it increases the effectiveness of damage resistance against critical hits by the same proportion as the critical multiplier. So what? Playability rules.
Immunity To Criticals
This is a little more complicated unless the calculations used to determine the unit’s attributes have been brought to the gaming table, so that criticals can be excluded and the damage per attack recalculated.
Assuming that this (accurate) system is not available, it’s too much work to calculate the chances of a critical (again) during the battle. Simply accord the unit one defensive bonus (just like a defensive feat that doesn’t translate) for each critical multiplier above 1 of the attacker. So a unit which is immune to criticals, when attacked by a unit with x2 critical multiplier, takes 5% less damage, and when attacked by a unit with a x3 critical multiplier, they take 10% less damage.
It’s not even close to accurate, but it’s good enough.
Damage Reduction
Damage reduction is a rules subsystem that changed substantially when 3.5 took over from 3.0. In the 3.0 rules, you needed a weapon with a certain magical “+” in order to inflict damage; in the 3.5 rules, this was changed to weapons of a certain type (silver, adamantine, whatever) and instead of all or nothing, a weapon not of that type had the damage that it inflicted reduced. Personally, I run a hybrid system somewhere in between the two, but that’s neither here nor there.
Either system is equally easy or difficult to implement – it’s just a case of redetermining how much damage a unit will inflict under the circumstances. If they are equipped approriately, then it will be full damage, if not then the damage will be reduced, possibly to zero. It’s important to note that any reduction cannot drop the damage inflicted on an attack to less than zero, so it’s often not enough simply to reduce the total damage inflicted by two (or whatever) per successful attack; you actually have to look at the damage inflicted on an attack and all the possible outcomes of the damage die rolls.
For example, a DR of 3/something would result in a d6+1 becoming a d6-2 – but with a minimum result of zero. One in six times, a “1” would result on the die roll, which would (theoretically) give a total result of “minus 1” – but this stays zero, because that’s the minimum. The possible results thus read 0, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4 – which gives an average of one-and-two-thirds. If you had simply used the normal average of a d6 +1 (ie 4½) and subtracted three, you would have achieved a result of 1.5 average damage. By itself, the difference might not seem much, but by the time you factor in multiple attacks from 100 attackers, and critical hits, it can add up to a substantial difference. Fortunately, the more likely it is to be significant, the more likely it is that the attackers will either have the requisite weaponry, or will have damage adjustments that prevent this from being a problem.
Special Vulnerabilities
Some creature types suffer extra damage from certain attack types – mummies and fire, for example. If appliccable, these can be handled in the same way as described under “Extra Dice Of Damage”, above.
Concluding Thoughts / Other Game Systems
So that’s it. The rules that were created at the time, and the reasoning behind them, as best as I can recreate it, both updated to D&D 3.5 rules. This should be everything you need to be able to referee a massive conflict – a full-scale war – when events in your campaign justify it.
But there should be a word or two said about other rules systems. The general principles described should be applicable to ANY game system – determine the percentage of 100 attackers that will hit, multiply by the average damage that would result, deduct any reductions or resistance, and inflict casualties. Above all else, playability over reality or even the standard rules.
This concludes this six-part article. Thanks for sticking with it, and I hope it’s been a worthwhile and enjoyable ride.
- “This Means War!”: Making huge armies practical (Part 1 of 6)
- “This Means War!”: Making huge armies practical (Part 2 of 6)
- “This Means War!”: Making huge armies practical (Part 3 of 6)
- “This Means War!”: Making huge armies practical (Part 4 of 6)
- “This Means War!”: Making huge armies practical (Part 5 of 6)
- “This Means War!”: Making huge armies practical (Part 6 of 6)
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April 1st, 2009 at 2:00 pm
Interesting and ambitious take on the subject. I’m afraid that most people are going to get scared off by the math, though, despite all the assurances that it’s easy.
Leonard Wilson’s last blog post..Playing It Old School
April 1st, 2009 at 3:22 pm
Thanks, Leonard. You may be right about the math, but I hope that anyone who sticks with it will find it worthwhile. I could probably have written the series as 3.x only and without giving most of the math, posting the systems without explaining the analysis behind them, but I was mindful of wanting to give the general principles so that the systems could be applied to just about any RPG desired. Personally, I’ve always liked looking behind the curtain and understanding why things work the way they do; I find that understanding general principles helps apply them to other situations. I just hope it’s “some people” and not “most people” as you forecast.
August 5th, 2009 at 4:03 am
[…] Campaign Mastery This Mean War – Part 1 This Mean War – Part 2 This Mean War – Part 3 This Mean War – Part 4 This Mean War – Part 5 This Mean War – Part 6 […]
November 13th, 2013 at 11:10 am
[…] concepts in play. Part 5 describes how to integrate PC-scale one-on-one combat with a war; and Part 6 concludes the series with miscellaneous notes on how to implement unusual abilities and exotic […]