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View Full Version : Mass Combat Rules [PEACH]



Keinnicht
2011-01-07, 01:07 PM
So, I recently came up with this idea. It's still kind of developing, and right now it's written in a manner so complicated and roundabout that it's pointless to post it here, since I wrote it for me to read, meaning you have to know what I meant in the first place to understand it.

So, let me boil down my ideas here:


-Armies are treated somewhat like swarms. As in, these rules are for designing a group of uniform creatures acting as one. Obviously, most armies have more than one type of class or unit. This can be handled by simply creating statistics for the different divisions individually.

- Armies have hit points equal to one-half the hit points of the composing creatures' hit points, times the number of composing creatures. For example, an army of 500 1st level warriors with 9 hit points each has 2,250 hit points as an army. The reasons I chose to make it half were these:
1. Not making it half could get ridiculous
2. I figured it more accurately represents how mass combat generally works. You don't have to kill every single member of an army to defeat it.

-Armies have one attack, similar to a swarm attack. This deals 4x the amount of damage a single member of the army would deal with an attack. Let's say our Warriors have 14 strength and are armed with longswords. They would deal 4D8+8 points of damage upon a successful group attack. Armies cannot score critical hits. Armies do not receive flanking bonuses.

-Armies suffer morale penalties to attack, damage, and saves as they lose hit points.

-Armies have the same base attack bonus and fortitude saves as their composing creatures. They suffer a -4 penalty on reflex saves and a +2 morale bonus on will saves.

-Armies can never take more damage from a single target attack (Like a melee attack or a magic missile) than one member's total hit points. For example, the 9 HP Warrior army could not take more than 9 damage from a single target attack.

-Armies are not immune to death attacks. Each soldier killed with a death effect removes that soldier's total hit points from the army's present total. I.E. A finger of death that nailed one of our 1st level human warriors would deal 9 damage to the army.

-Armies are destroyed at 0 HP. Every single member of the army isn't dead, but it can no longer function as an even slightly effective military unit.


So...It seems like it must look excessively complicated, but I feel like it's the best way to take care of mass-combat situations without just declaring one side to have won.

Gandariel
2011-01-07, 01:56 PM
Armies do get flanking bonuses, but only when the flankers are other armies

and anyway, that works for melee.
500 archers could easily kill half of your 500 fighters in 3 or 4 rounds of arrows
the point is, in melee only the front row fights, while ALL archers shoot
so how to do it? if you make ranged armies deal damagexnumber of people, everyone would just stop using infantry and only use archers..

And.. you have to kill only half of the army?? Make it 3/4...