The impact optimization has on your playstyle?

[Typewriter]

The correct answer is that it is RAW for combatants to notice when they are doing less damage. DR is explicitly mentioned with regard to this.

So, the rulebook says people can fairly accurately measure the amount of damage they can do. There is no need of more complicated explanation.

All your examples can be summarized as uncontrolled variables. These are remarkably easy to eliminate by parties interested in evaluating an effect.

I couldn't find that anywhere in the SRD, and my 3.5 material is all boxed up, so if you could provide a link I'd appreciate it.

I did find this:
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/glossary&term=Glossary_dnd_damagereduction&alpha=D

And it doesn't say anything about being able to detect that you're doing less damage.

Again, telling me that people could just somehow figure it out doesn't tell me how they figured it out. Here's an idea!

Take turns lifting different amount of weight. Everyone that can lift exactly 230 pounds, no more no less, is allowed into our test group.

Now take those guys and poke them with a needle repeatedly. Have the weakest guy in town do it, so that if he accidentally crits it doesn't throw things off. After all 1d2-2(x2)(min 1) is never going to do above 1 damage. Now, if you pass out after.... let's say 6 pokes you move on to the next group.

So now you have the group of people who can lift 230 pounds (no more, no less) and can also stand being poked by a midget with a needle 5 times (6 times and they're unconscious). Wait until this group is fully healed.

Take turns swinging weapons at each other with no equipment on the defender. If you get hit about 45% of the time, you move on to the next control group.

So there you go, you've evened out the variables. You now know these people can all lift 230 pounds (16 STR), they can all be poked with a needle the same amount of times (5 HP), and they all have the exact same capability to avoid blows (AC 11).

You finally have the test group that you're going to be able to derive your data from, and all you had to do was decide that the amount someone could lift was the truest indicator of their physical prowess, decide that the amount of times they can be stabbed with a needle by a midget is the truest indicator of their ability to withstand pain, and decide that your ability to avoid right now while we're testing you is how you're always going to be able to avoid blows.

Oh hell, we forgot a few things didn't we? Weapon focus - I guess you're going to have to whittle your group down even further after that. Ah well, I guess something like that wont' throw your numbers off at all. I mean, that'll just mean that when using him to evaluate peoples abilities to dodge your numbers were all off, and moving forward into testing his +1 isn't going to throw things off at all as you go through evaluations of the different weapons...


So instead of telling me "You could just figure it out", or "you could just eliminate random variables", how about you actually tell me how you're doing that without deciding things like HP and STR scores exist?

[Gnaeus]

How about this?

Take 30 soldiers. Equip them the same. Have them all duel each other. Remove the 5 who won the most, and the 5 who won the least.

You now have 20, relatively average soldiers. Divide them into 2 roughly even teams, based on their dueling scores. Have them melee each other a couple of times, to determine that the teams are fairly evenly matched. Adjust teams as necessary until teams are fairly evenly matched.

Take team A, vary weapons as desired. Leave team B weapons alone. Run some melees. Record results. Swap weapons. Run some melees. Record results. If both teams experience superior results with the new weapon load out, that is probably a better weapon for your average soldiers.

A typical city guard could do this. If you are training an army, you can do it much better, by starting with 300 soldiers. The statistical variation would be much lower.

[Greenish]

Again, telling me that people could just somehow figure it out doesn't tell me how they figured it out.Have a bunch of people fight a few bouts and they'll have an idea on how good they are relative to each others.

It's not really rocket science.

[Edit]: Or, you know, just look into what actually works in the field, since the sample is large enough that anything significant can be seen even without the perfect knowledge of all the conditions.

[Amphetryon]

How about this?

Take 30 soldiers. Equip them the same. Have them all duel each other. Remove the 5 who won the most, and the 5 who won the least.

You now have 20, relatively average soldiers. Divide them into 2 roughly even teams, based on their dueling scores. Have them melee each other a couple of times, to determine that the teams are fairly evenly matched. Adjust teams as necessary until teams are fairly evenly matched.

Take team A, vary weapons as desired. Leave team B weapons alone. Run some melees. Record results. Swap weapons. Run some melees. Record results. If both teams experience superior results with the new weapon load out, that is probably a better weapon for your average soldiers.

A typical city guard could do this. If you are training an army, you can do it much better, by starting with 300 soldiers. The statistical variation would be much lower.

This process is fairly similar to war, it seems to me. The winners generally have better equipment, better tactics, better soldiers, better luck, or some combination of the preceding that can be roughly quantified after the fact, if not before.

[Typewriter]

Have a bunch of people fight a few bouts and they'll have an idea on how good they are relative to each others.

It's not really rocket science.

And the high level ones regardless of equipment. Spoons are now the weapon of choice for all of our nation, because a group of adventurers decided to screw around with our statistics.


How about this?

Take 30 soldiers. Equip them the same. Have them all duel each other. Remove the 5 who won the most, and the 5 who won the least.

You now have 20, relatively average soldiers. Divide them into 2 roughly even teams, based on their dueling scores. Have them melee each other a couple of times, to determine that the teams are fairly evenly matched. Adjust teams as necessary until teams are fairly evenly matched.

Take team A, vary weapons as desired. Leave team B weapons alone. Run some melees. Record results. Swap weapons. Run some melees. Record results. If both teams experience superior results with the new weapon load out, that is probably a better weapon for your average soldiers.

I could see this working to a certain degree but things like weapon focus, toughness, etc. could still skew the numbers some. You'll still have some abnormality (hooray for random rolls and feat/stat differentials).

Let's say you have 75% of people reliably do better with one weapon type, while the other 25% do reliably better with shields. Are you going to decide that means that everyone should use weapon type one, or does that prove that some people simply do better with one weapon type than another?

[Greenish]

And the high level ones regardless of equipment.Yes, that would soon become apparent, and could thus be discarded.

Because if someone is winning all the time, regardless of weapons, effortlessly, we can in fact tell that she's better than the others without knowing her level.

That's not metagaming, that's common sense.

I could see this working to a certain degree but things like weapon focus, toughness, etc. could still skew the numbers some. You'll still have some abnormality (hooray for random rolls and feat/stat differentials).So increase the sample size. You've got armies, after all.
Let's say you have 75% of people reliably do better with one weapon type, while the other 25% do reliably better with shields. Are you going to decide that means that everyone should use weapon type one, or does that prove that some people simply do better with one weapon type than another?That quite clearly proves that the the former weapon type is better in general, provided your sample size is large enough.

[Typewriter]

This process is fairly similar to war, it seems to me. The winners generally have better equipment, better tactics, better soldiers, better luck, or some combination of the preceding that can be roughly quantified after the fact, if not before.

True, but D&D does not reflect real life well. A group of level 5 fighters using shields and swords being attacked by a horde of level 1 barbarians using adamantine greataxes aren't necessarily going to be in any danger. When the fight is lost they're likely to melt the adamantine weapons down to make adamantine shields for themselves.

I've said several times that there are scenarios in which a reality where sword/board is looked down upon, and one of the ones I mentioned is an army of heavy users stomping an army of shield users. That requires one side to first say, "Hey everyone, let's try throwing down our shields and running at the other guys with bigger weapons" first.

[Aldizog]

Let's say you have 75% of people reliably do better with one weapon type, while the other 25% do reliably better with shields. Are you going to decide that means that everyone should use weapon type one, or does that prove that some people simply do better with one weapon type than another?
3E was designed for this variation to come into play. 1.5*Str, and the 13 Str required for Power Attack, means that strong people will show a larger incremental improvement when switching from S&B to THF. Max Dex means that very agile people may choose to stick to lighter armor in some cases, or not use Tower Shields. The mechanics may not go far enough in making a variety of tactics suitable to different PCs (and point-buy means that this variation is rarely seen in play, as PCs choose their strengths to fit their intended tactics, rather than choosing tactics that fit their strengths).

[Typewriter]

Yes, that would soon become apparent, and could thus be discarded.

Because if someone is winning all the time, regardless of weapons, effortlessly, we can in fact tell that she's better than the others without knowing her level.

That's not metagaming, that's common sense.

So instead of aspiring to be the best, you aspire to be very good at stomping out people of equal skill to yourselves? Obviously the spoon is a joke, but just having people fight each other (unless you do it in a more controlled manner like Gnaeus was saying).....

Someone beats the snot out of you regardless of what they're using, but they prefer the sword/shield combo (and that's where all their feats go). They shine with a sword/board compared to a two hander, even though they can still stomp you with it.

But you can beat up Steve with a bigger sword. Screw being like the most skilled warrior I've ever seen in my life I'm going to keep going with this heavy thing!

EDIT:
Typos!

[Greenish]

So instead of aspiring to be the best, you aspire to be very good at stomping out people of equal skill to yourselves? Obviously the spoon is a joke, but just having people fight each other (unless you do it in a more controlled manner like Gnaeus was saying).That works too, but increasing the sample size will weed out the statistical outliers, which has been repeatedly explained to you.


But you can beat up Steve with a bigger sword. Screw being like the most skilled warrior I've ever seen in my life I'm going to keep going with this heavy thing!We're not talking about individual sunday warriors who pick whatever fits their fancy.

Professional soldier will go for what works, and two-handers demonstrably work better than sword'n'board. Someone will have tried it. People will have noticed how well it works. People who want to fight well will take note when a successful tactic surfaces.

[Gnaeus]

I could see this working to a certain degree but things like weapon focus, toughness, etc. could still skew the numbers some. You'll still have some abnormality (hooray for random rolls and feat/stat differentials).

A little bit. The bigger the sample, the more outliers you can weed out, and the less abnormality you will have. And you don't need to have a 0 margin of error. Once you are sure that weapon A is roughly as good as or better than weapon B, you can start introducing it for field trials and see how it works.


Let's say you have 75% of people reliably do better with one weapon type, while the other 25% do reliably better with shields. Are you going to decide that means that everyone should use weapon type one, or does that prove that some people simply do better with one weapon type than another?

Well, first off, I think a 75/25 split is pretty unlikely. Your typical warrior 1 won't be likely to have really specific feats like weapon focus in a weapon he hasn't used. Feats do represent training after all. And the big bulk of level 1 mooks will have feat/stat choices that are essentially weapon neutral (Track, endurance, toughness, skill focus, etc).

This is an area where cost is going to be a factor. Even with simple stuff like swords, it will be generally easier to have all your replacement weapons be the same types. If you are fortunate enough to be able to identify all the people who are better with shields, you could assign them to the kobold frontier, or some other area where their weapon selection is an advantage. For the most part, however, after you have determined that a halberd (or whatever) is the most effective weapon for your typical city guardsmen out of the weapons in the correct price range, you hand them each a halberd and they can suck it up, or buy their own weapons if they can afford to.

[Sucrose]

So instead of aspiring to be the best, you aspire to be very good at stomping out people of equal skill to yourselves? Obviously the spoon is a joke, but just having people fight each other (unless you do it in a more controlled manner like Gnaeus was saying).....

Someone beats the snot out of you regardless of what they're using, but they prefer the sword/shield combo (and that's where all their feats go). They shine with a sword/board compared to a two hander, even though they can still stomp you with it.

But you can beat up Steve with a bigger sword. Screw being like the most skilled warrior I've ever seen in my life I'm going to keep going with this heavy thing!

EDIT:
Typos!

First, you keep assuming that it'd be a sword-and-boarder who would be the highest level. However, those who reach the pinnacle of their power the quickest are just about invariably adventurers. Ergo, the tactic that works best for adventurers would be the one that would be most represented in the absurdly powerful sorts department. As such, as we discussed before, the most powerful guy in the room would, more often than not, be a two-hander specialist, whether of the raw damage or the reach variety, since shields are not a sensible choice when dealing commonly with enemies who are of absurd physical power, or enemies that specialize in magic, or....

Second, it isn't a matter of what the recruits might want to do, it's a matter of what the commander wants to do. And since the commander would see that people of middling skill do better with two-hand weapons in this example, the commander would decide that it's better to make those his standard weapon of choice, and use the two-hand weapons for standardized training, since you can't expect everybody to be Lord Stabby the Kickass Warrior.

[Amphetryon]

Remember that, historically, we also had gladiator arenas as testing grounds. I can envision something like this conversation between to arena spectators, in an arena where some sort of merciful healing magic was done to keep the fighters from dying off at the same rate as in real life:


A: The gladiators are really so much more with the trident than they are with the cestus. I think it might be a better weapon.

B: What about Rufus? Rufus wins almost all his matches, whether trident, cestus, gladius, pointed stick...

A: Yes, but Rufus was on campaign for two years before he betrayed the emperor. Most of the gladiators here didn't show up with as much polish as he has. Rufus is just better.

B: There's Horatius, too. Can't ignore Horatius. He favors that gladius and shield arrangement; nobody seems to beat him when he's got those.

A: True enough, but he's proven quite vulnerable to defeat if they give him any other weapons at all. I think he's just trained a lot with gladius and shield. That seems logical. All in all, I'd say the trident is still the best choice for the gladiators we see in the arena.

[Typewriter]

That works too, but increasing the sample size will weed out the statistical outliers, which has been repeatedly explained to you.
We're not talking about individual sunday warriors who pick whatever fits their fancy.

Professional soldier will go for what works, and two-handers demonstrably work better than sword'n'board. Someone will have tried it. People will have noticed how well it works. People who want to fight well will take note when a successful tactic surfaces.

Just because heavy weapons regularly work better for one person doesn't mean they're going to work better for everyone though. I've already said that if you're raising your army from birth (ala Rome) then yes, you can control the army to the point where they have the same stats and feats, and yes they all have the same capability with the same equipment. Not everyone has the same capabilities, and not everyone has the same drive to be the best. Sometimes you're going to go with what you think will protect you. Maybe that's a friend with a two-hander while you providing a flanking buddy, hiding behind your shield and combat expertise.


A little bit. The bigger the sample, the more outliers you can weed out, and the less abnormality you will have. And you don't need to have a 0 margin of error. Once you are sure that weapon A is roughly as good as or better than weapon B, you can start introducing it for field trials and see how it works.

True, I suppose. I still find it a bit sketchy that any one weapon would be 'decided' as the best. You're still going to have people using other fighting styles because of personal preference, personal experience, etc. etc. Obviously if you're training an army from the ground up, this won't be as big of an issue.



Well, first off, I think a 75/25 split is pretty unlikely. Your typical warrior 1 won't be likely to have really specific feats like weapon focus in a weapon he hasn't used. Feats do represent training after all. And the big bulk of level 1 mooks will have feat/stat choices that are essentially weapon neutral (Track, endurance, toughness, skill focus, etc).

Well, yes and no. Obviously they're going to have a racial feat that is going to be something generic, but if they're a warrior they're probably going to have their level 1 feat be something combat related. If they're a fighter they'll have two level 1 combat feats.



This is an area where cost is going to be a factor. Even with simple stuff like swords, it will be generally easier to have all your replacement weapons be the same types. If you are fortunate enough to be able to identify all the people who are better with shields, you could assign them to the kobold frontier, or some other area where their weapon selection is an advantage. For the most part, however, after you have determined that a halberd (or whatever) is the most effective weapon for your typical city guardsmen out of the weapons in the correct price range, you hand them each a halberd and they can suck it up, or buy their own weapons if they can afford to.

Also agreed, I believe. Town guards don't necessarily need to be optimized builds to handle the townsfolk. It's probably better to keep your troops protected while they subdue people than it is for them to be able to cut them in half. On the other hand you're going to have other scenarios where more damage might be better.

That being said, I agree (mostly) with your breakdown of a good way to determine weapon efficiency. I could see an army wanting to refocus themselves towards a different style with this kind of data, but I think shields would still have a place (hold the line, etc.). As for people outside of armies, you would still have people with suboptimal builds because people have a trend of not always doing 'the best'.

The only other I would say is that in order for an army to have decided to run these numbers would be if they had something driving them to do it. Whether that's the threat of another kingdom, ogres replacing the goblins that used to bother them, or what have you.

At that point you have a reason to evolve your kingdoms combat (threat or desire to attack), and you have attempted to learn a bit more about your weapons, and planned strategies around their efficiency and the cost to you (not simply said, "Hey this is best, everyone use it").

[Typewriter]

First, you keep assuming that it'd be a sword-and-boarder who would be the highest level. However, those who reach the pinnacle of their power the quickest are just about invariably adventurers. Ergo, the tactic that works best for adventurers would be the one that would be most represented in the absurdly powerful sorts department. As such, as we discussed before, the most powerful guy in the room would, more often than not, be a two-hander specialist, whether of the raw damage or the reach variety, since shields are not a sensible choice when dealing commonly with enemies who are of absurd physical power, or enemies that specialize in magic, or....

Second, it isn't a matter of what the recruits might want to do, it's a matter of what the commander wants to do. And since the commander would see that people of middling skill do better with two-hand weapons in this example, the commander would decide that it's better to make those his standard weapon of choice, and use the two-hand weapons for standardized training, since you can't expect everybody to be Lord Stabby the Kickass Warrior.

Apologies, I wasn't trying to imply this was automatically the case, I was just trying to explain how random variables (such as a high level fighter specialized in something horribly inefficient) could jack up the perception of how weapons work.

That's why I keep saying people wouldn't necessarily go for what appears the best, but instead they would go for what works for them (when given the choice).

[Greenish]

Just because heavy weapons regularly work better for one person doesn't mean they're going to work better for everyone though.They don't have to be the best option for everyone to be the best option for equipping your army with.

That being said, I agree (mostly) with your breakdown of a good way to determine weapon efficiency. I could see an army wanting to refocus themselves towards a different style with this kind of data, but I think shields would still have a place (hold the line, etc.).Holding the line is what reach weapons do best. Both in D&D and real world.

The only other I would say is that in order for an army to have decided to run these numbers would be if they had something driving them to do it.Like, say, a war?

That's what everyone has been trying to tell you. Tactics and strategies evolve out of necessity.

[Aldizog]

Holding the line is what reach weapons do best. Both in D&D and real world.

Yes. If an NPC thinks of equipping his troops with longspears so they can hold off the axe-wielding orcs, it's a good idea that would reasonably occur to them. The advantage of reach is grounded in the real-world advantage that longspears and pikes had. Longspears are also cheap, and you can bring a lot of them to bear on a single point. There's a lot of good reasons to have such an army.

On the other hand, the rather insufficient protection afforded by shields is something I see as a flaw in the game mechanics, rather than accurately reflecting a real and measurable difference between the physics of the game world and ours. I assume that shields work just fine within the game world, and maybe a better way to model them for the PCs would be some sort of opposed attack roll to deflect blows... but that might slow down the game and add complexity, so unless I come up with some good house rules, I'll just assume they work better "off-screen" and look at the game rules as an incomplete approximation of the game world.

Though, even with the existing rules for shields, Shield Specialization and Phalanx Fighting would make for a pretty solid infantry force, perhaps forming a front rank of AC 20 or higher, with the longspears in the back.

[Sucrose]

Apologies, I wasn't trying to imply this was automatically the case, I was just trying to explain how random variables (such as a high level fighter specialized in something horribly inefficient) could jack up the perception of how weapons work.

That's why I keep saying people wouldn't necessarily go for what appears the best, but instead they would go for what works for them (when given the choice).

I do agree that the general principles outlined here would not invariably lead to everyone fighting with optimized weaponry.

However, the most successful armies would generally make use of two handed weapons (preferably reach), archery, and calvary, with shields being used in niche situations, rather than the core, at least once battle was joined (I could see them being used against arrow volleys by the non-archers). Basic survival of the fittest would lead to suboptimal fighting techniques becoming less popular.

This would be slowed down, but not very much, by those random variables, particularly given that the most significant, high level characters, would actually be causing the shift toward two-handed weapons, rather than away from them.

As such, two-handed weapons would be very much the default, rather than the exception, when it came to what armies would make use of, as well as what adventurers made use of. The only people I'd really expect to use shields in melee combat (when closing with archers is another matter entirely) would be the commanders, and that's because they generally wouldn't be aiming to be personally effective, but just survive long enough to lead their armies to victory.

[Typewriter]

They don't have to be the best option for everyone to be the best option for equipping your army with.


And, as I said, if you're training the army like the romans did (from birth) you have control over what feats/proficiencies they're going to have. If you're recruiting from around the country, not so much. You can still equip them with whatever you like, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it's what would be the best for them



Holding the line is what reach weapons do best. Both in D&D and real world.
Like, say, a war?

And I believe someone said earlier that having a line of pikemen behind other troops would work well. I never said that there was anything that had a place, I said there is nothing that has no place.



That's what everyone has been trying to tell you. Tactics and strategies evolve out of necessity.

No. People have been trying to tell me that everyone simply optimizes out of some indescribable understanding of the world they live in. I've said this entire time that you still wouldn't train your entire army in a single weapon or strategy, and I still believe that.

I agree with this scenario, and I believe I even said in this thread (several pages ago) that there are scenarios in which Greatswords becoming the normal are entirely possible.



I'm not saying it can't be done, I'm saying that the way people have rationalized it so far hasn't made any sense from a non-metagame viewpoint.


The arguments I've received thus far have literally involved arguments about NPCs understanding levels.

Truth be told I don't agree with the scenario Gnaeus put forth 100% (mainly that the evolution of warfare would be trying out things you already have instead of creating something new, because otherwise why wouldn't everyone have just used heavy weapons in the first place), but at least it's a reason. It's an in-game rationale as to why something is the way it is other than "Because the DM said so".

[Typewriter]

I do agree that the general principles outlined here would not invariably lead to everyone fighting with optimized weaponry.

However, the most successful armies would generally make use of two handed weapons (preferably reach), archery, and calvary, with shields being used in niche situations, rather than the core, at least once battle was joined (I could see them being used against arrow volleys by the non-archers). Basic survival of the fittest would lead to suboptimal fighting techniques becoming less popular.

This would be slowed down, but not very much, by those random variables, particularly given that the most significant, high level characters, would actually be causing the shift toward two-handed weapons, rather than away from them.

As such, two-handed weapons would be very much the default, rather than the exception, when it came to what armies would make use of, as well as what adventurers made use of. The only people I'd really expect to use shields in melee combat (when closing with archers is another matter entirely) would be the commanders, and that's because they generally wouldn't be aiming to be personally effective, but just survive long enough to lead their armies to victory.

I actually said at one point(very early in this conversation) that I would probably use shield bearers to draw an enemy out while the heavy weapon wielders would approach and flank the opposing army. Obviously this particular strategy wouldn't work repeatedly as your opponents would figure it out.

Basically, I've agreed this entire time that greatswords have a place in the army. I have disagreed with using 'mechanical superiority' as an argument as to why NPCs would prefer them.

[Sucrose]

When it comes to recruiting people from around the countryside, you're dealing with peasants, who don't have the cash to have their own shields, generally. They'd be specialized in noncombat abilities (in which case you're better off with training them all with the statistically most efficient weapon), or possibly hunting, in which case they'll be either archers or spear users, not shield fighters.

There might be a few rich citizen-soldier types, who would be wealthy enough to have shields, and interested in fighting on your behalf, but they'd be the exception, rather than the rule.

Edit: Nobody posted between my posts? That's a little surprising.


I actually said at one point(very early in this conversation) that I would probably use shield bearers to draw an enemy out while the heavy weapon wielders would approach and flank the opposing army. Obviously this particular strategy wouldn't work repeatedly as your opponents would figure it out.

Basically, I've agreed this entire time that greatswords have a place in the army. I have disagreed with using 'mechanical superiority' as an argument as to why NPCs would prefer them.

It's not so much that they have a place, but that they have a dominant place, in my opinion. But that's more a matter of degree.

I suppose that putting it directly as 'mechanical superiority' is indeed a metagame argument.

However, what I believe is meant by that is that two-handed weapons are simply more effective in the D&D worlds than swords and shields, and, consequently, the decision to use two-handed weaponry to equip your fighters is justified in-character by the commanders simply observing, over the course of centuries of warfare, that two-handers fare better, and making adjustments to their army makeup accordingly. If someone were to not be able to explain that when pressed, or at least that they'd generally found that two-handed weapons are more effective in the hands of the army than alternative armaments, however, then yes, it's a metagaming decision, and should be considered appropriately.

[Aldizog]

When it comes to recruiting people from around the countryside, you're dealing with peasants, who don't have the cash to have their own shields, generally. They'd be specialized in noncombat abilities (in which case you're better off with training them all with the statistically most efficient weapon), or possibly hunting, in which case they'll be either archers or spear users, not shield fighters.

There might be a few rich citizen-soldier types, who would be wealthy enough to have shields, and interested in fighting on your behalf, but they'd be the exception, rather than the rule.
If you're conscripting commoners for a brief campaign, they have proficiency in one simple weapon, right? If you assume they have that "slot" unfilled, and therefore the ability to be trained in one simple weapon, you might pick a mix of longspears and slings. If you had some money to equip them with, you might train the ranged guys to use crossbows rather than slings. The peasants won't be any good with armor or shields, nor with greatswords. This is one area where I think 3.5 was nodding towards simulationism, making longbows quite effective but more difficult to learn, whereas a peasant could be trained to use a crossbow.

[Sucrose]

If you're conscripting commoners for a brief campaign, they have proficiency in one simple weapon, right? If you assume they have that "slot" unfilled, and therefore the ability to be trained in one simple weapon, you might pick a mix of longspears and slings. If you had some money to equip them with, you might train the ranged guys to use crossbows rather than slings. The peasants won't be any good with armor or shields, nor with greatswords. This is one area where I think 3.5 was nodding towards simulationism, making longbows quite effective but more difficult to learn, whereas a peasant could be trained to use a crossbow.

Well, I was referring to the social class rather than the game class (I'd imagine there would be a few Experts and even Warriors in there), but yeah. That is about the approach that I would take, as well. Whether I'd go with crossbows or slingers would depend on how much cash I had at hand, just as you suggest.

Of course, slings are much harder to use (and much more effective) than they are presented to be in D&D, but that's another discussion.

[Greenish]

And, as I said, if you're training the army like the romans did (from birth) you have control over what feats/proficiencies they're going to have. If you're recruiting from around the country, not so much. You can still equip them with whatever you like, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it's what would be the best for themNot best for every single individual, no, but as a rule better than other options for the army.

No. People have been trying to tell me that everyone simply optimizes out of some indescribable understanding of the world they live in.There is nothing "indescribable" about looking for what works and then going with it.

I've said this entire time that you still wouldn't train your entire army in a single weapon or strategy, and I still believe that.Of course you wouldn't, but sword'n'board wouldn't make the main part of the army, or even necessarily feature.

The arguments I've received thus far have literally involved arguments about NPCs understanding levels.Yes, we've argued that NPCs aren't retarded morons, and you've argued they can't figure out whether someone is a good fighter or whether something is a good tactic without "metagaming".

[Typewriter]

Yes, we've argued that NPCs aren't retarded morons, and you've argued they can't figure out whether someone is a good fighter or whether something is a good tactic without "metagaming".

Don't put words into my mouth.

I said that without running analysis you wouldn't be able to tell whether or not someone was beating you because of weapons, feats, or level.

Gnaeus tactic was to simply cut out the good people, and not care about why they're better than you, and go for the simplest easy way to optimize your army immediately. In the world of the average man, the two hander is king.

You're comments are getting somewhat insulting.

[Yukitsu]

And if a high level warrior gets attacked by a low level warrior with a more optimal build the high level warrior is still going to win. You're argument falls apart in assuming everything always goes the way you want it to(identical stats/feats/levels). Disparities in those are undetectable, which means your results are going to vary.

Because for every fight between a high and low, you have 5000000000 fights between two level 1 mooks in a bunch. Exceptional, well known fighters that no one can beat like Zorro are known as being more skilled, regardless of optimization of gear. (I mean, what kind of a guy runs around with a fencing foil instead of a gun, or at least a proper rapier?) In the converse, army scales, the best weapons win out because everyone is level 1.


I'm talking about having mixed gear because when I said have an army of sword/shield fighters against an army of heavy users you didn't like that. So now you don't like mixed gear.

Your logic has finally circled around.


That's not how armies work. You don't know much about pre-1900s army organization do you?


A.You would use the best because you could tell it's the best.
B.How could you tell it's the best?
A.Fights
B.What about the variables?
A. Big fights in which the numbers work out over time
B. How are you deriving the results? Unless it's an army of heavies vs. an army of shields you wouldn't be able to derive anything
A. It wouldn't have to be an army of 1 vs. the other
B. Okay, then in a mixed gear environment where are you getting your data
A. You wouldn't have mixed gear

Armies don't work in the manner you're assuming. Going again to Byzantium, you have heavy infantry with shields and longswords, skirmishers with slings and spears, heavy cavalry with every weapon under the sun, and varangians with heavy axes. Assuming you're in a Turkish army in a big battle against the Greeks, you, in the infantry, don't pick between targets. You get shoved against a block of a single troop type. Mixed formations didn't exist until later.

Even with a mixed formation, you can only attack 1 type of troop. Guys with big, two handed weapons. You can't attack the crossbowmen, or the spear-men, because there are guys with halberds and greatswords are the people who have stepped forward.

And assuming you did somehow come to the conclusion that shield and sword armed troops are superior, these would be the front screening troops blocking the formation. You still don't get to pick between pike, crossbow or shield troop, because there's only 2-3 guys in front of you that you can feasibly hit, and all of them will be identically armed.


I can only assume your argument is that people would just be using the best gear, which leads to the question: How did they determine that's the best?

Historically, by losing battles.


So do you want to protect yourself and try to kill or do you want to be unprotected and killing faster?

The latter. Offense tended to be the best defence, unless there was a castle somewhere. Defeating the guys standing in front of you is the only guaranteed means of insuring one's safety, not losing the initiative by standing there cowaring behind a piece of wood.


Again, has nothing to do with the question I asked. I could post it a third time, but why bother?

Because you're not giving any sort of reasonable question. It's a bit like asking "have you stopped beating your wife yet" and expecting a yes or no answer. The question itself is invalid.


So your saying to strategize based off the situation, which means that sometimes something is better than the other? Have I said otherwise?

You extend it to imply that you can just use whatever, and be close enough to approximately equivalent. The reality is, there are multiple optimal builds (none of which rely on shields in melee) and the disparity is great enough to be notable. That's where you're going wrong.


Strategy: Thinking of a plan that works. Sometimes this involves equipment
Metagame: Knowing everything that is available and being able to pick and choose the options you would want with disregard to reason or rationale.

Strategy: :smallsmile:
Metagame: :smallconfused:

That's RPG context assumptions. Strategy in real life relies thoroughly on "metagame", or more commonly the OODA loop.


I don't think I'm smart enough to have been able to create that level of strategy on my own. So I probably wouldn't do that.

That may be why you can't quite understand how to optimize within an army, or to find the optimal weapons, and why despite that being optimal, it may not be possible. (the first question one should ask when optimizing is, is it possible?)


Ah, you meant longspear.

Well, the other is also better thrown.


I wasn't talking about in a party. I was talking about as an army.

They work the same way, just in a different scale.


That's.... that's exactly the opposite of what I've been saying. I'm not saying there's 1 optimal build, I'm been saying that everyone picking a single build and having that is unrealistic, especially if they don't have in-game justification for it.

The in game justification is, D&D can't handle large scale battles, so the DM makes an "army" 100 dudes or so, within close visual range (about 60 feet) without a combined arms mentality, because things like flank and unit organization are a touch beyond the scope of what 90% of DMs care to think about in detail. At that scale, the greatsword is the only truly feasible weapon. A military historian DM will be using optimization, but will optimize 6 different "characters". The tank (weak troops in mass numbers with shields, designed to hold enemies in place) the rogue (cavalry, sneaking around the flank for massive damage, fast, mobile) the wizard (archery/artillery), the damage dealer (great weapon wielders), skirmishers (well, skirmishers) and the cleric (logistic and support). However, each person in each regiment (~3000 people) should be trained to be exactly the same.

[Coidzor]

^: Spears are more dangerous to approach as well. Since they can dig in and have anyone who charges them risk taking a very nasty hit. The whole 2x damage against a charge thing. This forces a decision between a slower advance, which is more vulnerable to skirmishers/ranged, and taking the risk of getting skewered before getting a chance to attack.



Really, if we're just going to ignore the rules of the game there's no reason to assume they'd go about it significantly differently from humans IRL. Which means they have exactly the weapons that their technology and society allows for. So, basically, whatever earth culture they're ripping off.

And if we're not going to ignore the rules of the game, then the combat system of D&D 3.5 = the combat system of D&D 3.5, not Warmachine or Riddle of Steel or any other system. You wanna discuss those systems, then don't mix 'em in with D&D 3.5.

edit: Ignoring the rules and then coming back and saying "but this part of the rules we're not ignoring because it allows for us to create a scenario in which there's no possible right decision," is just weird... :smallconfused:

I mean, what real purpose does this serve? If one is looking for a way to criticize a DM into either becoming cowed or ejecting oneself from the game, there's more straightforward ways of doing it.

[Typewriter]

Because for every fight between a high and low, you have 5000000000 fights between two level 1 mooks in a bunch.


You do? What?



Exceptional, well known fighters that no one can beat like Zorro are known as being more skilled, regardless of optimization of gear. (I mean, what kind of a guy runs around with a fencing foil instead of a gun, or at least a proper rapier?) In the converse, army scales, the best weapons win out because everyone is level 1.

Zorro is probably a player character, and I doubt that any player character is going to be as lame as your average common warrior.

That being said, what is the 'best weapon' that's winning the fight you're talking about? According to you you have a mix of different weapons and strategies, yet one side universally wins if the other side has a 'better weapon'. I honestly have no idea if you're talking about real life or D&D at this point because your arguments keep bouncing around so much.



That's not how armies work. You don't know much about pre-1900s army organization do you?


Here's how the conversation has looked to me so far, please correct if wrong:

Me: The only way to get definitive stats is if the war was 1 weapon vs. a different weapon.
You: No, it doesn't have to be the same weapon
Me: Then you have two armies using a mix of weapons. How are you deriving your data about individual weapons in a war?
You: It wouldn't be a mixed army.
Me: Then what are you using? I've said both mixed and opposed?
You: That's not how armies work.

I have zero idea what you're even talking about even more. How about you make an actual argument instead of telling me mine don't make sense, and then not backing that up?



Armies don't work in the manner you're assuming. Going again to Byzantium, you have heavy infantry with shields and longswords, skirmishers with slings and spears, heavy cavalry with every weapon under the sun, and varangians with heavy axes. Assuming you're in a Turkish army in a big battle against the Greeks, you, in the infantry, don't pick between targets. You get shoved against a block of a single troop type. Mixed formations didn't exist until later.

What? So now you're saying that we have a large scale war, that is in fact mixed, grouped by equipment type? What is the scenario? I don't understand, and I don't think I can make it any clearer. Every time you make a post I tell you that it's not making any sense to me, and you continue to just keep not making sense to me. Referencing real life battles and not telling me how it pertains to the conversation we're having doesn't tell me anything.



Even with a mixed formation, you can only attack 1 type of troop. Guys with big, two handed weapons. You can't attack the crossbowmen, or the spear-men, because there are guys with halberds and greatswords are the people who have stepped forward.

And don't you have the same thing behind you? Didn't we decide the two armies were balanced? Where does the variation come into play between the two armies that shows you one weapon style is superior to the other?



And assuming you did somehow come to the conclusion that shield and sword armed troops are superior, these would be the front screening troops blocking the formation. You still don't get to pick between pike, crossbow or shield troop, because there's only 2-3 guys in front of you that you can feasibly hit, and all of them will be identically armed.


So am I using the same gear as them or different? If it's the same then you won't learn anything, and if it's different you will have greatswords vs. shield users and that will be the data I first brought up.

In that case you don't have even armies, you have one army that is 75% identical to the other army, with the 25% difference being that you use heavy weapons where they're using shields.



Historically, by losing battles.


Ah yes, our armies were nearly identical, but I lost. Now I know that greatswords are superior. Of course.



The latter. Offense tended to be the best defence, unless there was a castle somewhere. Defeating the guys standing in front of you is the only guaranteed means of insuring one's safety, not losing the initiative by standing there cowaring behind a piece of wood.


Initiative? What? And how does leaving yourself open to attack protect yourself? Sure you may kill the guy in front of you faster than he can kill you, but as you keep pointing out there's more than just one guy. I'd think a shield would be pretty nice in that kind of situation.



Because you're not giving any sort of reasonable question. It's a bit like asking "have you stopped beating your wife yet" and expecting a yes or no answer. The question itself is invalid.


I asked you whether or not knights watching their troops get smashed by barbarians would be more likely to lead to the knights adopting the fighting style of the barbarians, or whether or not they would mock the barbarians as savages who didn't even know to protect themselves. If you think there's a third option, by all means answer it, but giving cute answers doesn't actually inform me as to your opinion on the subject.



You extend it to imply that you can just use whatever, and be close enough to approximately equivalent. The reality is, there are multiple optimal builds (none of which rely on shields in melee) and the disparity is great enough to be notable. That's where you're going wrong.


I'm saying that limiting yourself to the optimum is not the way anyone works. I don't care if there's 100 optimum builds, those 100 builds are not the only builds in the world.



That's RPG context assumptions. Strategy in real life relies thoroughly on "metagame", or more commonly the OODA loop.


I assume that not every NPC in the world knows about every feat, and knows how to 'train' in that feat. In real life there's no feat I can take that is going to suddenly make me kill more efficiently. Optimizing in a game requires knowledge of such tactics, which I'm saying not every NPC should have access to.



That may be why you can't quite understand how to optimize within an army, or to find the optimal weapons, and why despite that being optimal, it may not be possible. (the first question one should ask when optimizing is, is it possible?)

Or you could take it for what it meant. In my RPG world nobody has gone through and created these high level strategies. Chances are in worlds that are vastly different they would have vastly different evolutions of combat strategy from what we know as standard. Dropping into a fantasy world and saying, "These troops train like this, because I know from having read about in real life" is metagaming.



Well, the other is also better thrown.


Yes, fair enough. I just hadn't realized you were referencing the reach capabilities of the weapons superiority when you originally mentioned 'spear vs. club'.



They work the same way, just in a different scale.


They work the same way, but you can't really talk about them in the same way.



The in game justification is, D&D can't handle large scale battles, so the DM makes an "army" 100 dudes or so, within close visual range (about 60 feet) without a combined arms mentality, because things like flank and unit organization are a touch beyond the scope of what 90% of DMs care to think about in detail. At that scale, the greatsword is the only truly feasible weapon. A military historian DM will be using optimization, but will optimize 6 different "characters". The tank (weak troops in mass numbers with shields, designed to hold enemies in place) the rogue (cavalry, sneaking around the flank for massive damage, fast, mobile) the wizard (archery/artillery), the damage dealer (great weapon wielders), skirmishers (well, skirmishers) and the cleric (logistic and support). However, each person in each regiment (~3000 people) should be trained to be exactly the same.

Agree completely. This is closer to what I do when I run wars between campaigns to determine effects. You don't train every single person in your army to be identical, you train them each to do their job, and that's going to be different depending on what their function in the army is.

[Typewriter]

Really, if we're just going to ignore the rules of the game there's no reason to assume they'd go about it significantly differently from humans IRL. Which means they have exactly the weapons that their technology and society allows for. So, basically, whatever earth culture they're ripping off.

And if we're not going to ignore the rules of the game, then the combat system of D&D 3.5 = the combat system of D&D 3.5, not Warmachine or Riddle of Steel or any other system. You wanna discuss those systems, then don't mix 'em in with D&D 3.5.

edit: Ignoring the rules and then coming back and saying "but this part of the rules we're not ignoring because it allows for us to create a scenario in which there's no possible right decision," is just weird... :smallconfused:

I mean, what real purpose does this serve? If one is looking for a way to criticize a DM into either becoming cowed or ejecting oneself from the game, there's more straightforward ways of doing it.


In D&D, I generally treat the game as if it was real life. Things like spells are capable of breaking the rules that govern real life, but until magic is involved, you're in real life. Since the alternative is larping we are going to use the mechanics of the game to determine the outcome of combat and other in-game actions that require a system to govern them. The mechanics are not indicitive of the physics that govern this world, they are simply our system for determining in game affects.


I don't use the combat rules to govern my worlds wars because I don't think they make sense on a large scale. I've said several times I think mimicking war after these mechanics is faulty, and that logic from a more 'real world' perspective makes more sense.

The problem with that argument is that not everyone agrees, so we wind up arguing over rules. That's why I try to point out that the rules are capable of trapping you in bad situations, and that it makes more sense to just do what you think makes sense.

If I have a kingdom run by a paladin everyone in his army is going to have a shield, because the defense of his people is most important to him. If I have a kingdom whose god uses two-handers and prefers strength above all else, his people are going to use two-handers.

[Yukitsu]

You do? What?

Army scale is generally >10,000 people. Tactics prior to the invention of the shortwave radio were simple enough that most battles for 2000 years were nearly identical in terms of strategy on each side. In fact, generally, the same tactics were used over and over again for over a millenia. That's a real long time to realize that the guys with the big two handed weapons were doing better than the guys with weapons that couldn't pierce mail.


Zorro is probably a player character, and I doubt that any player character is going to be as lame as your average common warrior.

There's no difference between a highly skilled NPC and a player character, sans the focus of the story. They are mechanically identical.


That being said, what is the 'best weapon' that's winning the fight you're talking about? According to you you have a mix of different weapons and strategies, yet one side universally wins if the other side has a 'better weapon'. I honestly have no idea if you're talking about real life or D&D at this point because your arguments keep bouncing around so much.

A mundane army at level 5 or lower has 6 optimal builds. Everyone in the army should fall into one of those 6 builds. There's a "mix" of weapons because an army is a party, and should be discussed in the same terms.


Here's how the conversation has looked to me so far, please correct if wrong:

Me: The only way to get definitive stats is if the war was 1 weapon vs. a different weapon.
You: No, it doesn't have to be the same weapon

Answer should be "They don't have to be paired off against one another in opposition. They both merely must be present on the field of battle."


Me: Then you have two armies using a mix of weapons. How are you deriving your data about individual weapons in a war?
You: It wouldn't be a mixed army.

Answer should be "You as an individual soldier type don't get to fight a mix of enemies, you fight 1 type of enemy."


Me: Then what are you using? I've said both mixed and opposed?
You: That's not how armies work.

Answer should read "Armies are mixed, regiments are not."


What? So now you're saying that we have a large scale war, that is in fact mixed, grouped by equipment type? What is the scenario? I don't understand, and I don't think I can make it any clearer. Every time you make a post I tell you that it's not making any sense to me, and you continue to just keep not making sense to me. Referencing real life battles and not telling me how it pertains to the conversation we're having doesn't tell me anything.

Yes, armies are organized by weapon type. If I have 5000 spear men, 2000 swordsmen, 500 heavy cavalry, 1500 archers, I will organize the spear into two groups of 2500 spearmen in solid formation along each flank, the 200 swordsmen as the center, the archers in screen out front (with orders to move to the back when under threat) and the cavalry to 1 or both flanks as an example. I don't mix 1000 swordsmen into each spear formation. (Assuming I'm talking about the medieval era).

In later armies, mixed formations existed, but they are organized like this:

G=Greatsword
P=Pike

GGGGGGGGGGG
GPPPPPPPPPPG
GPPPPPPPPPPG
GPPPPPPPPPPG

Etc. The only troop you can choose to engage is the greatswordsman, as the pike men are being blocked.


And don't you have the same thing behind you? Didn't we decide the two armies were balanced? Where does the variation come into play between the two armies that shows you one weapon style is superior to the other?

I didn't comment at all on balance. I'm saying that whether or not a weapon is good in general, will not be dictated by the type of infantry being used by the other guy. A mixed formation mostly works by layering, not by checkerboarding formations.


So am I using the same gear as them or different? If it's the same then you won't learn anything, and if it's different you will have greatswords vs. shield users and that will be the data I first brought up.

I'm assuming there are other options that will be distilled down (and you will end up getting greatswords and long halberds, not greatswords and sword and boarders.)


In that case you don't have even armies, you have one army that is 75% identical to the other army, with the 25% difference being that you use heavy weapons where they're using shields.

It doesn't really matter. There's thousands of battles over hundreds of wars in a well made setting, and the respecting military strategists will have distilled the relevant information from those data points no matter how skewed the information is due to other considerations.


Ah yes, our armies were nearly identical, but I lost. Now I know that greatswords are superior. Of course.

Every time Rome lost a war, they immediately took whatever weapon killed the most of their troops, and adopted that weapon under their own design. Their ships are Carthaginian in design after the Cathaginians beat their navy, they adopted the Celtic sword replacing their own sword, and they took their spear from the greeks. Their formations are distinctly greek for the era as well, even if they weren't using the hoplon or pike.


Initiative? What? And how does leaving yourself open to attack protect yourself? Sure you may kill the guy in front of you faster than he can kill you, but as you keep pointing out there's more than just one guy. I'd think a shield would be pretty nice in that kind of situation.

People stepping forward from their formation are more likely to break. In pure D&D terms, where morale isn't a factor... Well, it sucks to stand in the front no matter the armament, but you're not truly less likely to die using a shield unintuitive as that is. The deciding factor will be in tallying up the survivors from each match-up, from which they can conclude, unless one side vastly outnumbered the other, that the greatsword is a superior weapon for one's survival. In real life, it was superior defensively because it provided better reach, and was a more agile weapon when wielded two handed.


I asked you whether or not knights watching their troops get smashed by barbarians would be more likely to lead to the knights adopting the fighting style of the barbarians, or whether or not they would mock the barbarians as savages who didn't even know to protect themselves. If you think there's a third option, by all means answer it, but giving cute answers doesn't actually inform me as to your opinion on the subject.

They'd do the latter. There's no point to using a tactic that fails.

However, knights would dominate barbarians, simply due to cavalry charges smashing through them, or retreating when the terrain is not in your favour.


I'm saying that limiting yourself to the optimum is not the way anyone works. I don't care if there's 100 optimum builds, those 100 builds are not the only builds in the world.

That's a losing mentality in a military or adventuring setting.


I assume that not every NPC in the world knows about every feat, and knows how to 'train' in that feat. In real life there's no feat I can take that is going to suddenly make me kill more efficiently. Optimizing in a game requires knowledge of such tactics, which I'm saying not every NPC should have access to.

Using our modern military as an example, pretty much 100% of troops know the D20 modern feats for rapid reload, advanced weapons proficiency and burst fire. Simply put, if you're in charge of the military, your troops are standardized to such a degree that whether you know what a "feat" is or not, they all have the same ones.


Or you could take it for what it meant. In my RPG world nobody has gone through and created these high level strategies. Chances are in worlds that are vastly different they would have vastly different evolutions of combat strategy from what we know as standard. Dropping into a fantasy world and saying, "These troops train like this, because I know from having read about in real life" is metagaming.

There's no reason a setting with intelligent and reasoned individuals as the characters could not come up with 1200s military tactics.


They work the same way, but you can't really talk about them in the same way.

That depends on whether or not you've read the book of five rings, which references a single man, a band of fighter, an army, and a nation as identical in terms of strategy and tactics.


Agree completely. This is closer to what I do when I run wars between campaigns to determine effects. You don't train every single person in your army to be identical, you train them each to do their job, and that's going to be different depending on what their function in the army is.

That still means you only have 6 builds.

[Gnaeus]

Other people are handling the military end of the discussion quite well, so I will leave them to it. Except for:



Well, yes and no. Obviously they're going to have a racial feat that is going to be something generic, but if they're a warrior they're probably going to have their level 1 feat be something combat related. If they're a fighter they'll have two level 1 combat feats.

Optimization means a lot of different things. If a band of warriors/fighters is actually the city guard in a city, their weapons may be optimized to get the most bang for your buck, but their feats (representing training) may be chosen to help them do their jobs as policemen (which helps you to get the most bang for your buck in a different way). Skill Focus: Spot or Alertness could make sense for a guard. He is likely to spend many more hours at the gate watching for contraband than he is in combat.

Likewise, in an army that sends out regular patrols, feats like track could be more useful than having another guy with Toughness. Long range foot patrols might even see utility in such otherwise pitiful feats as endurance.

Naturally, in a nation involved in an extended war, some of these priorities may change. People tend to be optimized towards the job they do (through laws of economics like relative advantage, through selection (you will hire guards who have traits that you look for in guards, also, warriors who suck at fighting are more likely to die or quit), or through training) but optimization in this context may well not mean "best in combat".

[Tyndmyr]

Don't put words into my mouth.

I said that without running analysis you wouldn't be able to tell whether or not someone was beating you because of weapons, feats, or level.

Aright, since you can't get past the idea of controlling for variables(ie, matching up the village boys against each other, instead of matching one up against a legendary dragonslayer), I can defeat this with RAW.

Urban Savant. You can, in character, know # of hit die, BaB, AC and any feats relevant to combat.

Done deal.

Edit: Also, this requires only a knowledge check. Very easy DC. The existence of a single Urban Savant anywhere makes discovering effective tactics and builds trivial.

[Earthwalker]

Can I turn the OPs question on its head a little and ask.

If you were playing a game and you didn't know the rules at all. Do you think you would find that more or less enjoyable or would it make no difference?

Personally I don't care about knowing the rules and so I would be perfectly happy to play without them.

I don't think I would enjoy it more as there would be times I would want to know if its a good idea trying to jump a 3 foot gap. Like am I going to make it and how much damage will it do if I fall.

I also wouldn't enjoy it any less. Not having to constantly think in game terms and play the little tactical game is fine by me. I don't find DnD tactics all that impressive.

I can say I do want rules and I want them to be consistant. Its just a case of if I need to know them.

[Typewriter]

Can I turn the OPs question on its head a little and ask.

If you were playing a game and you didn't know the rules at all. Do you think you would find that more or less enjoyable or would it make no difference?

Personally I don't care about knowing the rules and so I would be perfectly happy to play without them.

I don't think I would enjoy it more as there would be times I would want to know if its a good idea trying to jump a 3 foot gap. Like am I going to make it and how much damage will it do if I fall.

I also wouldn't enjoy it any less. Not having to constantly think in game terms and play the little tactical game is fine by me. I don't find DnD tactics all that impressive.

I can say I do want rules and I want them to be consistant. Its just a case of if I need to know them.

Actually, I have a few responses to this idea:

1. I had a DM once who built our characters based off of our actions as we played. We'd build level X characters, then if we leveled he would decide the class/feats/skill point allocation based off of our actions. That way we couldn't just take feats without having actually roleplayed into it. We had some leeway, like if we got a feat we hated he'd let us exchange it, but for the most part it was pretty fun and worked well.

2. One of my players always asked what feats he should take from the DM. This way he just kept doing what he wanted to do, and didn't wind up with feats that were functional without reflecting his actions.

3. The way my group starts campaigns involves a lengthy 'grow up' session, in which all the party members are children growing up together. Their actions dictate their starting stats and class skills. They are still free to choose feats and classes themselves, but not knowing the way the DM is measuring the mechanic is fun/interesting.

That being said, in answer to your question I think I would be just fine with not knowing certain things. I would like to have a character sheet that lists my abilities, but if periodically my DM just took it and wrote down a new ability that would be fine.

I think knowing too much of the system is annoying. It's not as interesting to come across a lava pool and think, "Well that will only do 10-60 damage to swim across, so I'm probably fine", as it is to wonder.


Aright, since you can't get past the idea of controlling for variables(ie, matching up the village boys against each other, instead of matching one up against a legendary dragonslayer), I can defeat this with RAW.

Or a level 3 commoner fighting with a club against a level 1 warrior with a sword. It doesn't have to be god vs. crabcake.



Urban Savant. You can, in character, know # of hit die, BaB, AC and any feats relevant to combat.

Done deal.

Edit: Also, this requires only a knowledge check. Very easy DC. The existence of a single Urban Savant anywhere makes discovering effective tactics and builds trivial.

Hell, I can honestly say I never knew those existed. Yes, if you have one of those in your campaigns it would be a way to figure things out. That is another scenario in which I agree it can make sense. Hell, once you understand levels you can cause some real mayhem by strategically placing the troops you know have 20x the HP/Damage of everyone else.

@Yukitsu

Thanks for your last post, what you were saying makes a bit more sense to me. I think I agree with you quite a bit, just not universally (some worlds will evolve to where combat is as you describe it, but it's not going to be universal across the board.

[Greenish]

Every time Rome lost a war, they immediately took whatever weapon killed the most of their troops, and adopted that weapon under their own design. Their ships are Carthaginian in design after the Cathaginians beat their navy, they adopted the Celtic sword replacing their own sword, and they took their spear from the greeks. Their formations are distinctly greek for the era as well, even if they weren't using the hoplon or pike.That argument won't fly, since we've already established that the romans were huge metagamers.

[Typewriter]

That argument won't fly, since we've already established that the romans were huge metagamers.

I don't know if you're just making jokes for the lulz, or if you're ignoring the fact that this has been discussed before.

In real life, if someone has better gear/strategy than you they are going to win.

In D&D, this isn't necessarily true. If you go up against someone with better gear/strategy than you, but all your troops have are level 2 and they're level 1, you're not going to get the same results.

If armies in D&D worked that way you could wind up with an army wielding spoons because the first time they lose might have been against an army of level 3 commoner women who use large wooden ladels to beat their opponents into submission.

[Amphetryon]

I don't know if you're just making jokes for the lulz, or if you're ignoring the fact that this has been discussed before.

In real life, if someone has better gear/strategy than you they are going to win.

In D&D, this isn't necessarily true. If you go up against someone with better gear/strategy than you, but all your troops have are level 2 and they're level 1, you're not going to get the same results.

If armies in D&D worked that way you could wind up with an army wielding spoons because the first time they lose might have been against an army of level 3 commoner women who use large wooden ladels to beat their opponents into submission.
In real life, and in D&D, luck sometimes makes it so that the better gear, better strategy, and better trained (thus higher 'level') troops do not perform as expected. This happens in war, in duels, and in sporting events.

As someone said: "That's why they play the games!"

[Greenish]

If armies in D&D worked that way you could wind up with an army wielding spoons because the first time they lose might have been against an army of level 3 commoner women who use large wooden ladels to beat their opponents into submission.So what? If they were to try it, they'd notice pretty fast that it won't work for them.

You keep trying to act like people have to determine the best tactic after one try and then forevermore stick to it, when in reality they would be developed over multiple iterations.

Even the troops are occasionally defeated by enemies wielding wooden ladles, over time the pattern of the relative efficiency of weapons will emerge.

Just because you can't control all variables perfectly doesn't mean you can never reach correct conclusions.

[Tyndmyr]

I don't know if you're just making jokes for the lulz, or if you're ignoring the fact that this has been discussed before.

It was a joke the first time I discussed it. It's still hilarious.

I think the discovery of levels would be pretty easy. It likely wouldn't be thought of quite so discretely, but it's pretty easy to recognize that this hardy band of adventurers are now demigods. The fact that adventuring leads to power couldn't possibly be hard to figure out.

[Gnaeus]

It was a joke the first time I discussed it. It's still hilarious.

I think the discovery of levels would be pretty easy. It likely wouldn't be thought of quite so discretely, but it's pretty easy to recognize that this hardy band of adventurers are now demigods. The fact that adventuring leads to power couldn't possibly be hard to figure out.

Can't you use sense motive to figure out someone's approximate level by watching them in combat? I know there was a rule in OA about that. I don't know if it has been reprinted elsewhere.

[Typewriter]

It was a joke the first time I discussed it. It's still hilarious.

I think the discovery of levels would be pretty easy. It likely wouldn't be thought of quite so discretely, but it's pretty easy to recognize that this hardy band of adventurers are now demigods. The fact that adventuring leads to power couldn't possibly be hard to figure out.

Truth be told the reason I disagree with that is because of the disconnect between levels and ability.

Someone might have skills and feats that indicate they are more 'skilled' than other people, but aren't necessarily going to have the power to back that up.

Yes, I think it would be easy to figure things out like levels, if I thought that levels were representative of the worlds physics. As I said before, I think of the mechanics as the ruleset that people use to interact with the world, where as the world normally operates under 'physics' more akin to reality.

Granted that PrC you mentioned really deflates that viewpoint, so :smallfrown:

EDIT: And I just want to make sure it's solely intended as a joke, and not intended to appear as an argument that I actually made.

[Earthwalker]

This is an old post but only just thought of this, its the right thread.


I'm glad you like. =)

Yer pappy and grandpappy would want you to be alive son. Shields might 'ave been all well and good back in their day, but dya want to block a troll hit wif yer shield? Break yer arm, like as not. You best be sticking him fulla holes afore he does the same ta you.

/in character (clearly a silly character at that)

What do you mean break my arm ? How can you break an arm? My pappy was a doctor and I have a resonable skill with churugery and I can tell you for certain you can't break no demi-humans arms. There indestructable. You hit an arm hard enough you might kill the guy, or knock him out, but you sure can't break an arm.

/end in character.

[Aldizog]

Urban Savant. You can, in character, know # of hit die, BaB, AC and any feats relevant to combat.

How do you imagine your character understands this information? Do you imagine that your character literally understands HD, BAB, and AC the way you do?
I would not do it that way, for Urban Savant, Combat Awareness, or other such abilities. I'd imagine that I'm translating what I as a player understand into what my character can understand. "This enemy is about as tough as a hill giant, although more skilled and with a tougher hide."

As a player, I understand HD, BAB, and AC, although these exist in their discrete quantized states to make the game work. I imagine that the world as my character sees it, and as the NPCs see it, is much more complex. Yes, this requires some imagination and suspension of disbelief, but that is more fun for me than thinking that they live in this world of simplified math, discrete quanta of life energy, and other silliness.

In RAW world, everybody fights at 100% ability until they are at 0 hp. When my PC can do that, it's the admittedly narrativist action movie trope at work - this astonishing heroic character can keep fighting on his last legs. And, it's a simplification to keep the game moving. When playing, I imagine the in-game reality is more complex and that in most cases people are somewhat debilitated by taking a sword through the gut.

In RAW world, the amount of diamond dust a wizard needs for a Stoneskin spell is directly proportional to their haggling ability. In the game world as I imagine it, the reality is more complex, and there is a specific amount of diamond dust needed. To avoid spending time on haggling, the game just specifies a gp amount. This was pointed out in the OOTS; it's a JOKE. It's not saying "this is what a D&D world should be like." It's saying "This is how ridiculous it would be if the world really worked according to RAW."

In RAW world, each athlete lifts his personal best on each attempt, runs the same time in every race, and has his long jumps land in exact 1-ft increments distributed across a 20-ft range. In the game world as I imagine it, the reality is more complex, and the rules are just there as an approximation.

I don't have any problem with PCs and NPCs divining general trends. I think expecting them to experimentally pry into the math of how many HP people have and how much damage weapons do is not the sort of game world I imagine, as the math is there as a gamist mechanic to make the system work. HP are not meant to be a literal quantity in the game world IMO. I would think characters in the world would recognize that greatswords generally do more damage than daggers, but either can be lethal and either can be survivable. Similarly, they would consider that a big strong warrior can likely survive injuries that would kill an elderly peasant, but it is possible that either one might die in a 20' fall, and either one might, if very lucky, survive being stabbed a dozen times with a dagger. They would understand that shields offer protection, perhaps enough to make them worthwhile in some cases, and not in others. Armies may have seen the greatsword users slaughtered by arrows (as happened to the Scots more than once) and decided shields were worthwhile.

The rules don't really support what I said there. If you have enough HP to survive a dozen dagger stabs, then a 20' fall cannot kill you. But I tend to imagine, as I've said, that the rules are a rough approximation of in-game reality, and the math does not map exactly. For what happens "off-screen" I'd imagine a hideously complex system that puts Rolemaster tables to shame. But I don't have to roll things out on it. I can just say "It's kind of like the real world except where magic is concerned" and leave it at that.

So, I also imagine that combat is more complex than represented in the rules. Warfare might have to consider weapon speed, space required to swing, weapon vs. armor, and other modifiers. Heavy weapons might be at a disadvantage on sloped ground, if they unbalance the user. These are not used in the small-scale combats of PCs because it would slow things down. But here's the thing: I am still playing D&D 3.5. D&D 3.5 is a set of mechanics used to resolve actions at the gaming table. Just because I do not imagine that everything that happens everywhere in the world happens exactly according to the mechanics used to resolve PC actions does not mean I'm not playing D&D 3.5. Instead, I just assume that the off-screen actions are resolved by the "true" mechanics and the game mechanics are the approximations we use to speed what we actually do at the table.

Yes, you can imagine that levels are easily measured in-game and people quickly find that adventuring leads to becoming a demigod in a relatively short span of time. Unless a DM is willing to take this into account and build a campaign around it, I suspend disbelief and assume that people do not notice this. That the PCs are very rare exceptions. Because if you do follow that line of logic to its reasonable conclusion, the world looks so crazily different from anything that I've ever read or seen. And frankly, I kind of like the stories I've read or seen, and want my gaming experience to at least vaguely resemble that.

tl;dr: I imagine that the in-game reality is more complex than the rules we play with. I willingly suspend disbelief and accept that many of the game mechanics are meant to achieve narrativist and gamist design principles, not reflect in-world reality. Because that makes the game more fun for me.

[Tyndmyr]

Can't you use sense motive to figure out someone's approximate level by watching them in combat? I know there was a rule in OA about that. I don't know if it has been reprinted elsewhere.

There are a number of such ways. Hit die for instance, can be tracked in a great many ways. There are spells that'll allow you to track exact hp totals, etc. Alignment is terribly easy to discover in most circumstances.

Basically, almost everything about your character is discoverable in character by RAW.

[WarKitty]

Amusing story on the original topic:

I'd been toying with the idea of an anthrobat druid as a theoretical concept. Started thinking of how such a character would be played, how the race would come about, etc. Somewhere in the process, I fell in love with the character. She was the creation of a druid disgusted with the humanoid races, bred for the sole purpose of taking over the guardianship of nature and keeping it from the filthy clutches of civilization. She had the keen senses of an animal, but a deep distrust of humanoid life.

She actually ended up as a character in play. It's been a lot of fun being a bat-person. I even offered to nerf the stats in exchange for having the race. Just a funny story how a TO build ended up being a play build.

[Yukitsu]

I don't know if you're just making jokes for the lulz, or if you're ignoring the fact that this has been discussed before.

In real life, if someone has better gear/strategy than you they are going to win.

In D&D, this isn't necessarily true. If you go up against someone with better gear/strategy than you, but all your troops have are level 2 and they're level 1, you're not going to get the same results.

If armies in D&D worked that way you could wind up with an army wielding spoons because the first time they lose might have been against an army of level 3 commoner women who use large wooden ladels to beat their opponents into submission.

Actually, the analogy is similar in real life to the "level" system of D&D. There are observed differences in skill level between elite regiments, highly trained knights, commoners, men at arms, etc. People know of, and can immediately take into account that certain individuals are more skilled, and when a battle is fought with a clear disparity in skill, that is taken into account.

However, you're assuming "a battle happens with these conditions in D&D, thus null" but that's enforcing a sampling bias. Any fleshed out setting has thousands of battles to draw upon, over which the mean can eliminate outliers.

[Typewriter]

Actually, the analogy is similar in real life to the "level" system of D&D. There are observed differences in skill level between elite regiments, highly trained knights, commoners, men at arms, etc. People know of, and can immediately take into account that certain individuals are more skilled, and when a battle is fought with a clear disparity in skill, that is taken into account.

However, you're assuming "a battle happens with these conditions in D&D, thus null" but that's enforcing a sampling bias. Any fleshed out setting has thousands of battles to draw upon, over which the mean can eliminate outliers.

True, but the assumption that overtime the data will scale towards the mechanical superiority of mechanically superior weapons is not necessarily true either. If the worlds largest army universally uses an inferior weapon, and is continually stomping out their enemies, they're going to be gaining levels and becoming even more specialized in those inferior weapons.

No new army is going to be able to stand against them regardless of the mechanical superiority of their weapons unless they also have the levels to back that up.

And lets say an army does appear using superior weapons, and actually causes them some trouble. Maybe even defeats them a few times. That's still only 1 fight(just like the spoon wielding grannies) as opposed to the last several hundred you've won.

EDIT:
And skill in battle in not necessarily the same as skill in war. If your formation is tight, your strategies are good, and your troops stand their ground and fight as a team you're going to be appear more skilled in warfare, but if a horde of barbarians run around your battlefield chopping heads off with no formation at all, they don't really look skilled.

Especially when levels are close when, class wise, you're mechanically very similar in capabilities.

[Yukitsu]

True, but the assumption that overtime the data will scale towards the mechanical superiority of mechanically superior weapons is not necessarily true either. If the worlds largest army universally uses an inferior weapon, and is continually stomping out their enemies, they're going to be gaining levels and becoming even more specialized in those inferior weapons.

No new army is going to be able to stand against them regardless of the mechanical superiority of their weapons unless they also have the levels to back that up.

And lets say an army does appear using superior weapons, and actually causes them some trouble. Maybe even defeats them a few times. That's still only 1 fight(just like the spoon wielding grannies) as opposed to the last several hundred you've won.

The main reasons this doesn't pan out is that:

A) the army won't get to that position with inferior technology in the first place, even if it did win many fights against local, inferior forces. It takes more than a generation of war for a nation to gain that level of dominance without some sort of technological advantage, so you're assuming a very, very unlikely happenstance as a given. A setting should assume the plausible, that being the better weapons won out, not the bad weapons.

B) attrition dictates that their superior, more experienced troops are not replaceable, but a mook with a good weapon is, and as such, the difference in weapon will erode their power over a protracted war (ala the American Civil war, Rome, many Greek states). In fact, the superior, more experienced, more motivated Greek troops fell to the Romans in my opinion, largely because they were using inferior tactics and equipment for the age.

C) If the nation were to have the largest army in existance, but the worst weapons, it's likely that each individual soldier would have very limited experience in the first place, as they're only winning battles by affording more losses than the enemy, meaning they're actually losing (and thus replacing) soldiers more often than the smaller armies that they are fighting. This isn't a sustainable mentality for most nations, and would result in the loss and breakup of their primary resource pool (their population) due to rebellion of their population.

And even under these circumstances, it would be observed by the general of the winning army, that every victory he gets, he did so by losing 5x as many men as the enemy, at which point he can conclude their tactics, troops or equipment are superior to his own.


And skill in battle in not necessarily the same as skill in war. If your formation is tight, your strategies are good, and your troops stand their ground and fight as a team you're going to be appear more skilled in warfare, but if a horde of barbarians run around your battlefield chopping heads off with no formation at all, they don't really look skilled.

Especially when levels are close when, class wise, you're mechanically very similar in capabilities.

That just further reinforces that individual level isn't as great as tactics, weapon and formations. A Turkish Spahi of the 1800s was considered superior to 1 Frankish Cuirassier, but 100 French Cuirassier were considered superior to 100 Spahi. Individual skill at the scale of a battle was generally less of an impact than the other considerations.

[NichG]

There are a number of such ways. Hit die for instance, can be tracked in a great many ways. There are spells that'll allow you to track exact hp totals, etc. Alignment is terribly easy to discover in most circumstances.

Basically, almost everything about your character is discoverable in character by RAW.

In such a world, I imagine the smartest wizards and the wisest sages would then go on to realize that they are in fact in a game.

[Typewriter]

Historically, you're correct, they wouldn't. In D&D, however, level is going to make a bigger difference than gear. Especially at low levels. If your mook troops have outleveled your opponents mook troops, then you are superior, regardless of gear.

It sounds like you're creating a plausible world using 'reality' as a basis, and not an 'in-game' perspective, but then trying to use 'in-game' mechanics to justify it.

In D&D one nation being higher level than another is entirely plausible, since level doesn't necessarily correlate to training.

If you're using reality as your basis, then combat will evolve in a manner close to what we have in reality (I doubt it would be exact, because some things will simply evolve differently).

It's when you start to go back and say that you're injecting D&D mechanics into history to determine the outcome that I point out that D&D mechanics are not going to give you identical results every time. The person with the highest level is going to decide what his people use. That may be a greatsword like him, or it might be a club. It could be anything. Nobody is going to be able to oppose him because they're not going to be high enough level to oppose him. Doesn't matter if you have the most efficient build for your level or not, if he outlevels you by a few levels he's going to win, and everyone is going to do what he says.

And this is before you start adding in things like undead swarms, monster attacks, mages, clerics, etc. etc. Every 'unrealistic' thing you add in to the mix is going to make it less and less likely that a world is going to have it's martial combats evolve in exactly the same manner.

If you have level 1s fighting level 1s and their damage is 1d4+3, and they have a marshall or some other damage boosting potential with them raising their damage by 2 they're going to kill things that only have 5 HP in one strike no matter what, so at that point shields are going to be sweet again. It doesn't matter if your enemy is doing 20d6+20. You both kill each other in one hit, so something that made you harder to hit would be more efficient that overkilling them.

D&D mechanics do not reflect real world physics, so if you're going to base your history off of real world, then do so, but try to justify it from an in-game mechanical perspective and I'm going to point out that you'll never mirror reality because of the giant differences(level being the most obvious).

[Gnaeus]

In such a world, I imagine the smartest wizards and the wisest sages would then go on to realize that they are in fact in a game.

Maybe, maybe not, but wizards will certainly realize what levels are. Consider Polymorph. It is a 4th level spell. It has a duration measured in minutes per level. In order to make it work, the wizard has to know his caster level, the target's level, and the HD of the form to be assumed. In order to make any sense of this at all, he pretty much has to be aware of levels/hd, not only as a concept, but with at least a pretty good idea of where common creatures and allies fall on the scale. Once he has reached this stage, it isn't much of a step before he starts running practical experiments like "how many headed hydra can I turn my buddy into?" which would be really important to know.

[Jayabalard]

Maybe, maybe not, but wizards will certainly realize what levels are. Consider Polymorph. It is a 4th level spell. It has a duration measured in minutes per level. He might know that he can hold onto the spell for X minutes... minutes is a fairly vague term in a world without sufficient technology for accurate timepieces to be common. More likely he knows that he can hold the spell longer now than he used to be able to.


In order to make it work, the wizard has to know his caster level, the target's level, and the HD of the form to be assumed. In order to make any sense of this at all, he pretty much has to be aware of levels/hd, not only as a concept, but with at least a pretty good idea of where common creatures and allies fall on the scale.None of this requires that he be aware of levels at all.

[Gnaeus]

None of this requires that he be aware of levels at all.

It does if he wants his spell to work. If he tries to polymorph someone too weak, or into a creature too powerful, the spell just fails. He might not call them "levels". He might think of them in terms of degrees of power, life ranks or some arcane term. But if he wants to polymorph people into stuff he pretty much HAS to figure out that His party members or his caster level are as strong as X, but not strong enough for Y. Or that a typical peasant can be a dire rat or an eagle but not a riding dog, because that is too powerful.

Or is a guy with a godlike intelligence just too stupid to want to figure out why his spells, which otherwise always work, don't work in certain specific instances? That is supreme denial.

[Tyndmyr]

In such a world, I imagine the smartest wizards and the wisest sages would then go on to realize that they are in fact in a game.

An interesting premise, but not necessarily the case. Understanding the rules of the universe don't guarantee knowledge of the purpose of the universe. You can make implications, but they are hardly guaranteed to be true.

Consider, a great many people can draw possible theories about the meaning of our universe, based at least in part on natural law. Those possible theories will likely differ wildly. Im not aware of any popular ones currently that have us as pieces in a game, but I've certainly seen the idea in books. There's just no way to know for sure.

[Yukitsu]

Historically, you're correct, they wouldn't. In D&D, however, level is going to make a bigger difference than gear. Especially at low levels. If your mook troops have outleveled your opponents mook troops, then you are superior, regardless of gear.

It sounds like you're creating a plausible world using 'reality' as a basis, and not an 'in-game' perspective, but then trying to use 'in-game' mechanics to justify it.

It works in both cases. D&D, in terms of war at a micro scale fits reality fairly well.

That aside, NPC levels are experience independant. A city will have X level 1 citizens no matter how many wars those citizens get into. And the numbers of level 1s is such that no matter how many champions you get, most battles are going to revolve around a ton of level 1s beating on one another (unless you rolled a very population dense settings, at which point it revolves around level 11+wizards.


In D&D one nation being higher level than another is entirely plausible, since level doesn't necessarily correlate to training.

In D&D, by the rules it correlates 100% to population. The typical setting with pretty much all villages, hamlets and thorpes relies nearly entirely on level 1s, with no advantage in terms of leven going to any village compared to any other village.


If you're using reality as your basis, then combat will evolve in a manner close to what we have in reality (I doubt it would be exact, because some things will simply evolve differently).

Rarely. Distinct phases in the manner in which combat is waged are similar across the globe, with the major differences being the available resources, and stylistic differences.


It's when you start to go back and say that you're injecting D&D mechanics into history to determine the outcome that I point out that D&D mechanics are not going to give you identical results every time. The person with the highest level is going to decide what his people use. That may be a greatsword like him, or it might be a club. It could be anything. Nobody is going to be able to oppose him because they're not going to be high enough level to oppose him. Doesn't matter if you have the most efficient build for your level or not, if he outlevels you by a few levels he's going to win, and everyone is going to do what he says.

If that guy's the leader, his village loses, and he gets taken down in some glorious last stand by the other village with their more efficient weapons, plus their own level whatever leader. No petty tyrant tells his troops to use the weapon he does just because he thinks it's awesome. In fact, officers often wield comparably less efficient "honour" weapons that are reserved for the aristocracy, despite being less practical all around than what the rest make do with.


And this is before you start adding in things like undead swarms, monster attacks, mages, clerics, etc. etc. Every 'unrealistic' thing you add in to the mix is going to make it less and less likely that a world is going to have it's martial combats evolve in exactly the same manner.

The two handed weapons and polearms are still the best melee weapons including those factors. There isn't any match up that favours the shield, hence why people mention that the build is crushingly sub-optimal.


If you have level 1s fighting level 1s and their damage is 1d4+3, and they have a marshall or some other damage boosting potential with them raising their damage by 2 they're going to kill things that only have 5 HP in one strike no matter what, so at that point shields are going to be sweet again. It doesn't matter if your enemy is doing 20d6+20. You both kill each other in one hit, so something that made you harder to hit would be more efficient that overkilling them.

Considering to be doing 20d6+20, you'd probably have to be a level 18 wilder at the very least, overkill is probably not overly relevant to the discussion. The reason we talk about 2d6+3 as being the ideal is precisely because it's the value that commonly defeats a level 1 warrior consistantly (as d4+3 is absurd on a non-orc level 1.) Realistically, a level 1 warrior using a d8 martial weapon is getting d8+2. Even with other low level boosts from some outside source, he's unreliable enough at getting the common 9 (assuming basic, core only warriors, weapon focus and toughness are basically all they can get) that he's going to often fail against other level 1 characters.


D&D mechanics do not reflect real world physics, so if you're going to base your history off of real world, then do so, but try to justify it from an in-game mechanical perspective and I'm going to point out that you'll never mirror reality because of the giant differences(level being the most obvious).

OK. By the rules as written 99% of the population is level 1 with no opportunity to level, and they're all obviously level 1 in game. In this dynamic, the great weapon, or other two handed weapons demonstrate in game, notable superiority against shields.

Funny enough, this reflects real life much more strongly than people give it credit for.

[NichG]

An interesting premise, but not necessarily the case. Understanding the rules of the universe don't guarantee knowledge of the purpose of the universe. You can make implications, but they are hardly guaranteed to be true.

Consider, a great many people can draw possible theories about the meaning of our universe, based at least in part on natural law. Those possible theories will likely differ wildly. Im not aware of any popular ones currently that have us as pieces in a game, but I've certainly seen the idea in books. There's just no way to know for sure.

There are a lot of philosophies, belief systems, etc that think that the real world is just a dream, figment, lower level of reality, etc. And thats in spite of what seems to be an ever-unfolding level of self-consistent detail as we investigate the natural world more and more carefully. And in the modern context we've seen the idea that the world as we know it could all just be simulation (many works of fiction explore this idea at varying levels).

I think in a world where all of that was far closer to the surface, and as you said measurable by any sufficiently experienced practitioner of the magical or even martial arts, such philosophies would be much more common. The idea that its a game, rather than a simulation or something might take a bit more work. However, clever people would notice that the distributions of randomness in many events correspond to combinations of the variations of platonic solids (i.e. they can determine that dice are consistent with the randomizing factors of their universe). They can determine that CR exists (through the Knight class and a handful of other odd abilities), and that xp exists (from item crafting), and that these things are linked. Based on the 'size' of a hitpoint, they can also determine that conflict between beings of their scale is an underlying part of the laws of physics, as something like a termite sits below the quantization boundary.

That means that they can determine empirically that they, or beings like themselves, are the protagonists, and that the very laws of physics are written as it were to model beings on their scale, not things a hundred times bigger or smaller. Similarly, the decorrelation between the complexity of automating the function of a spell and the power of the spell suggests that the universe is run by sentiences. In the case of deities, this would tell the deities that there is unequivocably some sentience greater than themselves that runs the universe, and that information could filter down to their most trusted and wise followers.

And so on...

[Typewriter]

It works in both cases. D&D, in terms of war at a micro scale fits reality fairly well.

That aside, NPC levels are experience independant. A city will have X level 1 citizens no matter how many wars those citizens get into. And the numbers of level 1s is such that no matter how many champions you get, most battles are going to revolve around a ton of level 1s beating on one another (unless you rolled a very population dense settings, at which point it revolves around level 11+wizards.

In D&D, by the rules it correlates 100% to population. The typical setting with pretty much all villages, hamlets and thorpes relies nearly entirely on level 1s, with no advantage in terms of leven going to any village compared to any other village.


If we're talking about the world building rules in the DMG I'd like to point out that if you have an army with 10,000 warriors in it that means you have 200,000 people in that nation. Not unheard of by any means, but that seems like a pretty big population for a single nation that has been in constant war

Truth be told I didn't realize we were following the world building rules from the DMG, and that we were instead assuming that not every nation would be identical.



Rarely. Distinct phases in the manner in which combat is waged are similar across the globe, with the major differences being the available resources, and stylistic differences.


I'm referring more to the fact that we have had different people in real life from what you would have in another world. Strategies would be different, weapons would be invented at different times, etc.



If that guy's the leader, his village loses, and he gets taken down in some glorious last stand by the other village with their more efficient weapons, plus their own level whatever leader. No petty tyrant tells his troops to use the weapon he does just because he thinks it's awesome. In fact, officers often wield comparably less efficient "honour" weapons that are reserved for the aristocracy, despite being less practical all around than what the rest make do with.


If his army isn't a higher level than the army they're fighting, and if the army that attacks them uses a strategy more effective than what they're using, and if the survivors manage to kill someone who could be 'who knows how high a level'. I think anyone on this board could probably create a level 20 fighter capable of taking out 10,000 level 1 warriors with identical stats. DR high enough to negate most damage and some form of regeneration?

And do you really think that there is no petty tyrant ordering his troops to look cool? In real life you get someone who goes crazy and orders his troops to wield chickens as a weapon and you have a revolt. In D&D revolts against high powered people and you get slaughtered, so instead you wield your chicken.



The two handed weapons and polearms are still the best melee weapons including those factors. There isn't any match up that favours the shield, hence why people mention that the build is crushingly sub-optimal.


I wasn't saying that having additional monsters exist wouldn't change what is mechanically the best weapon, I was saying it might influence the evolution of warfare, creating even more diversification from the reality we know.



Considering to be doing 20d6+20, you'd probably have to be a level 18 wilder at the very least, overkill is probably not overly relevant to the discussion. The reason we talk about 2d6+3 as being the ideal is precisely because it's the value that commonly defeats a level 1 warrior consistantly (as d4+3 is absurd on a non-orc level 1.) Realistically, a level 1 warrior using a d8 martial weapon is getting d8+2. Even with other low level boosts from some outside source, he's unreliable enough at getting the common 9 (assuming basic, core only warriors, weapon focus and toughness are basically all they can get) that he's going to often fail against other level 1 characters.


I think you missed the point of what I was saying. If you're capable of killing your opponent in one hit regardless of what weapon you use (which is attainable without doing a whole lot of buffing) dealing more damage doesn't matter. You and one other person are fighting, both of you kill in one successful hit. You can either use a bigger weapon, or you can use a shield to make it harder for him to hit you, or you can use a more efficient weapon and really kill him.

That's what I mean when I say things like magic on the battlefield could influence strategy.



OK. By the rules as written 99% of the population is level 1 with no opportunity to level, and they're all obviously level 1 in game. In this dynamic, the great weapon, or other two handed weapons demonstrate in game, notable superiority against shields.

Funny enough, this reflects real life much more strongly than people give it credit for.

And in the rules as written wouldn't it be optimum to find a way for your troops to do a min 5 damage on every hit, since that would mean that every time they swing their sword against a commoner or expert it would be a guaranteed take down, and against warriors or aristocrats it's guaranteed to take them down to 0, with anything other than a 1 against warriors takes them down to negatives. Why not use a shield instead of a greatsword?

Granted I'm not going to do that, but there's nothing stopping an army from trying (and probably succeeding).

[Yukitsu]

If we're talking about the world building rules in the DMG I'd like to point out that if you have an army with 10,000 warriors in it that means you have 200,000 people in that nation. Not unheard of by any means, but that seems like a pretty big population for a single nation that has been in constant war

Truth be told I didn't realize we were following the world building rules from the DMG, and that we were instead assuming that not every nation would be identical.

Not every nation is identical, but they vary by population percents of each class, not their respective average levels.

Also, a nation of 200,000 is perfectly fine, but the average level is still taken from the municipal level populations, not the total nation.


I'm referring more to the fact that we have had different people in real life from what you would have in another world. Strategies would be different, weapons would be invented at different times, etc.

Right, however I disagree with that general premise. I think that D&D models real life fairly well to lower levels. At higher levels, it's real life that doesn't have the analogue, but even then high levels are the exception, not the rule. Enough so that the average world will look to a degree the same as earth, sans very high magic settings, such as Eberron where the standard armament is basically the equivalent to a modern day rifle (the eternal wands which were mass produced during their "WW1").


If his army isn't a higher level than the army they're fighting, and if the army that attacks them uses a strategy more effective than what they're using, and if the survivors manage to kill someone who could be 'who knows how high a level'. I think anyone on this board could probably create a level 20 fighter capable of taking out 10,000 level 1 warriors with identical stats. DR high enough to negate most damage and some form of regeneration?

That's a PC or plot villain trashing a setting, not an "optimized" NPC dominating the countryside. A standard setting doesn't have one of those, save for plot guys who don't do dat due to plot.


And do you really think that there is no petty tyrant ordering his troops to look cool?

Not for long.


In real life you get someone who goes crazy and orders his troops to wield chickens as a weapon and you have a revolt. In D&D revolts against high powered people and you get slaughtered, so instead you wield your chicken.

All I have to say about this is; you only need an int of 10 to run Tucker's kobolds.


I wasn't saying that having additional monsters exist wouldn't change what is mechanically the best weapon, I was saying it might influence the evolution of warfare, creating even more diversification from the reality we know.

Not likely. Extreme danger forced either extremely fast adaptation (Japan after the black ships of Commodore Perry, Rome after Hannibal) or near eradication (The Brits vs. the Zulus.) The more danger there is in the world, the more optimal the weapons to fight them, and the sad truth of the monster's manuals is, 99% of everything in there is more likely to get killed by a big stick than a small one. The remaining 1% ignore both sticks and shields.


I think you missed the point of what I was saying. If you're capable of killing your opponent in one hit regardless of what weapon you use (which is attainable without doing a whole lot of buffing) dealing more damage doesn't matter. You and one other person are fighting, both of you kill in one successful hit. You can either use a bigger weapon, or you can use a shield to make it harder for him to hit you, or you can use a more efficient weapon and really kill him.

The reason I'm saying what I'm saying is, you don't kill people in one hit that often at level 1 with a one handed weapon, sans non-combatants. And that's what trained war cats are for.


That's what I mean when I say things like magic on the battlefield could influence strategy.

I'm ignoring magic mostly, because the same weapons in game are optimal, but the dominant nation's use almost nothing but casters in their armies, and they fight using at the very least, WW1 tactics, and very much more likely WW2 tactics.


And in the rules as written wouldn't it be optimum to find a way for your troops to do a min 5 damage on every hit, since that would mean that every time they swing their sword against a commoner or expert it would be a guaranteed take down, and against warriors or aristocrats it's guaranteed to take them down to 0, with anything other than a 1 against warriors takes them down to negatives. Why not use a shield instead of a greatsword?

Granted I'm not going to do that, but there's nothing stopping an army from trying (and probably succeeding).

Most warriors have 6 HP, not 5. Most non-warriors below level 3 are stated as not generally fighting. Most warriors using core at level 1 will take toughness, again, because there's not much else to take. You need to do 9 on average to really be one shotting actual warriors that you would find as cannon fodder in a typical army. The reason you're assuming 5 is sufficient is that you expect the enemy army will consist entirely of individuals who were not trained to be warriors (who you just tell to break and run while skirmishing with slings anyway) where the reality is most soldiers will have endured some physical training to toughen them up.

[Typewriter]

Not every nation is identical, but they vary by population percents of each class, not their respective average levels.

Also, a nation of 200,000 is perfectly fine, but the average level is still taken from the municipal level populations, not the total nation.


I estimated at 200,000 because you mentioned armies of 10,000 and in an earlier post mentioned the majority of those 10,000 being warriors that for the army. Now if you're saying the average level of your normal fighter is 3, then you have either a much bigger population overall, or a much larger population of warriors than the book says(5%). As I said, I think going by the books rules for world building is kind of goofy.



Right, however I disagree with that general premise. I think that D&D models real life fairly well to lower levels. At higher levels, it's real life that doesn't have the analogue, but even then high levels are the exception, not the rule. Enough so that the average world will look to a degree the same as earth, sans very high magic settings, such as Eberron where the standard armament is basically the equivalent to a modern day rifle (the eternal wands which were mass produced during their "WW1").


So you think that across every world there is going to be someone with the exact same mindset of Sun Tzu for example? Of the roman empire? Even in a world without magic I think it's unlikely, add in magic, and I sincerely doubt our civilizations would evolve identically.



That's a PC or plot villain trashing a setting, not an "optimized" NPC dominating the countryside. A standard setting doesn't have one of those, save for plot guys who don't do dat due to plot.


You said earlier there was no difference between PCs and NPCs.

And not to mention the fact that PCs and NPCs have the potential to affect your world. Unless you have a BBEG suddenly appear right as the heroes do, he's been around causing trouble for years, which means he might rule such a kingdom, or people might have had to adapt to something from him.



Not for long.

All I have to say about this is; you only need an int of 10 to run Tucker's kobolds.


Could I have just used that as an argument against your 10,000 man army of perfect military strategy and builds? Every world can be Tippys universe as well, but not all of them are. Some worlds just evolve differently than others.



Not likely. Extreme danger forced either extremely fast adaptation (Japan after the black ships of Commodore Perry, Rome after Hannibal) or near eradication (The Brits vs. the Zulus.) The more danger there is in the world, the more optimal the weapons to fight them, and the sad truth of the monster's manuals is, 99% of everything in there is more likely to get killed by a big stick than a small one. The remaining 1% ignore both sticks and shields.


If you assume that, like our world, people can simply pick up and adapt to other locations. When the forests are run by the elves, the dwarves are in the mountains, and the orcs are in the desert you may not have as many options as you normally would. Saying "move" isn't always going to work just because in our history it has.



The reason I'm saying what I'm saying is, you don't kill people in one hit that often at level 1 with a one handed weapon, sans non-combatants. And that's what trained war cats are for.


And what I'm saying is that you can probably get to that level of damage as your minimum fairly easily with just a minor amount of magic applied. Depends on what stats you're using for both STR and CON, but it should be doable. 1(min on any roll) + STR(3?) + PA(-1 to hit, +2 to AC from shield = net gain), and you're at 5 damage, which is enough to down or bring to zero most level 1 opponents unless they have toughness and/or 14+ CON. Without adding any form of magical buffing, which could be as little as a battle chanter in each formation of 30 (a level 1 bard gives all allies within 30 +1 hit/damage).

And what stats are we using for these guys? The book says that most non-special NPCs would have 3d6 in everything which averages to 10(10.5, I assume you'd round down) in everything. Even moving towards an array you're not going to get 16 STR/14 CON without something above and beyond the elite array. And these numbers do matter quite a bit because one damage, or one HP could completely change the outcome of a fight between two level 1 opponents.



I'm ignoring magic mostly, because the same weapons in game are optimal, but the dominant nation's use almost nothing but casters in their armies, and they fight using at the very least, WW1 tactics, and very much more likely WW2 tactics.


That's like saying you're either going to ban casters or set everything in tippyverse. I have just as much problem saying that every world is going to handle magic the same as I do with saying every world is going to decide that weapon style X is the best. Different worlds are going to evolve in different ways, and they're going to decide different things based upon that.



Most warriors have 6 HP, not 5. Most non-warriors below level 3 are stated as not generally fighting. Most warriors using core at level 1 will take toughness, again, because there's not much else to take. You need to do 9 on average to really be one shotting actual warriors that you would find as cannon fodder in a typical army. The reason you're assuming 5 is sufficient is that you expect the enemy army will consist entirely of individuals who were not trained to be warriors (who you just tell to break and run while skirmishing with slings anyway) where the reality is most soldiers will have endured some physical training to toughen them up.

For standard warriors, giving even 5 is a bit much in all honesty isn't it? The average NPC stats are all 10s which means half a d8(for warriors) is actually average. If you have toughness that would bring you up to 7. I assume that means that high level warriors all have toughness as well then? Since they all received the same training? And there's also the fact that no one in the army is going to have PA until level 12(when they get their third stat point).

Of course if you're using all 10s then that means damage is going to drop as well, which completely throws off all the numbers we've been talking about.




The assumptions you make about your people are going to define the arguments. If you're making magic low impact, and giving everyone incredibly powerful stats for average people, then things are going to wind up the way you say because you've set the stage for them to get that way. Not every stage is going to be set in exactly the same way.

EDIT: Typos

[Yukitsu]

I estimated at 200,000 because you mentioned armies of 10,000 and in an earlier post mentioned the majority of those 10,000 being warriors that for the army. Now if you're saying the average level of your normal fighter is 3, then you have either a much bigger population overall, or a much larger population of warriors than the book says(5%). As I said, I think going by the books rules for world building is kind of goofy.

200,000 is correct, but you still roll villages of 1000 200 times instead of one giant city of 200,000. That's how you get a nation's typical population.


So you think that across every world there is going to be someone with the exact same mindset of Sun Tzu for example? Of the roman empire? Even in a world without magic I think it's unlikely, add in magic, and I sincerely doubt our civilizations would evolve identically.

Sun Tzu is a strategist, and I'm mostly talking tactics. Note that there aren't that many famous tacticians. This is because most tactical doctrine (which weapons to use, and how) are fairly standard, and readily observable up until about WW1, and even then, tactics and doctrine of 200 years of experience were wiped out in 2 years to be replaced with tactics of trench warfare and its counters.


You said earlier there was no difference between PCs and NPCs.

Mechanically, and that's still true. The difference is the story focuses on one, and not the other, and even then, the story focuses on the villains too. The problem is, generating an NPC sans one of those plot characters limits you to generally lower levels or complete fiat.


And not to mention the fact that PCs and NPCs have the potential to affect your world. Unless you have a BBEG suddenly appear right as the heroes do, he's been around causing trouble for years, which means he might rule such a kingdom, or people might have had to adapt to something from him.

Well, most stories introduce the BBEG as a means to disrupt the status quo forcing the hero into action, but yes, a villain is an NPC that is relevant to the plot, but to be honest I don't want to delve too deeply into narrative and how it influences mechanics.


Could I have just used that as an argument against your 10,000 man army of perfect military strategy and builds? Every world can be Tippys universe as well, but not all of them are. Some worlds just evolve differently than others.

Tippyverse is the reasonable conclusion if magic is endemic. This isn't true in all settings. I am however a proponent of its reasonable existance. However, entering into a tippyverse isn't "standard" in that the setting still dictates the starting status of other cities and nations not having so many or such powerful wizards.


If you assume that, like our world, people can simply pick up and adapt to other locations. When the forests are run by the elves, the dwarves are in the mountains, and the orcs are in the desert you may not have as many options as you normally would. Saying "move" isn't always going to work just because in our history it has.

None of those people moved. The Romans and the Japanese simply immediately adopted the optimal weapon or tactic, discarding the inferior one. Adaptation in this context, means optimizing the army to match technology.


And what I'm saying is that you can probably get to that level of damage as your minimum fairly easily with just a minor amount of magic applied. Depends on what stats you're using for both STR and CON, but it should be doable. 1(min on any roll) + STR(3?) + PA(-1 to hit, +2 to AC from shield = net gain), and you're at 5 damage, which is enough to down or bring to zero most level 1 opponents unless they have toughness and/or 14+ CON. Without adding any form of magical buffing, which could be as little as a battle chanter in each formation of 30 (a level 1 bard gives all allies within 30 +1 hit/damage).

Getting a 9 often enough that the +30% to damage from a greatsword to make the 10% defense boost worth it is mathematically close relies on more than just a little support and optimization. Even assuming a pretty darn good helper bard, you're getting d8+2 from yourself, +1 from competence, +2 morale. At absolute best. You have a 50% chance of a kill hit, compared to the 2d6+6 from a similar two hander, getting a 1/18 chance of not one shotting people. That's about a 6% chance of failure to kill compared to 50%. Ergo, a lazy sum advantage of 36%. That's pretty darn significant. The disparity stays about the same without buffs mind you.


And what stats are we using for these guys? The book says that most non-special NPCs would have 3d6 in everything which averages to 10(10.5, I assume you'd round down) in everything. Even moving towards an array you're not going to get 16 STR/14 CON without something above and beyond the elite array. And these numbers do matter quite a bit because one damage, or one HP could completely change the outcome of a fight between two level 1 opponents.

Actually rolling 3d6 6 times should produce a range. A good estimation is running the lesser array, which has at the very least a +1. Trained warriors however, should have stats within the plausible range, but have superior physical stats, but inferior mental ones. In game, the people who are dumb and tough should join the army, so that's what should be concentrated there.

Yes, 3d6 averages to 10, but most people get irritated when everyone has straight 10s and you claim "realism." I'll generally do so for expediency I do admit, but only for functional non-combatants. I'll ad-hoc stats for individuals who have to fulfill a specific niche.


That's like saying you're either going to ban casters or set everything in tippyverse. I have just as much problem saying that every world is going to handle magic the same as I do with saying every world is going to decide that weapon style X is the best. Different worlds are going to evolve in different ways, and they're going to decide different things based upon that.

I'm saying you have to ban it, or the conversation becomes to complex that mundane tactics like "shield or no shield" become irrelevant, because it will invariably come down to in game justifications for the Tippyverse not existing, most of which are BS.


For standard warriors, giving even 5 is a bit much in all honesty isn't it? The average NPC stats are all 10s which means half a d8(for warriors) is actually average. If you have toughness that would bring you up to 7. I assume that means that high level warriors all have toughness as well then? Since they all received the same training? And there's also the fact that no one in the army is going to have PA until level 12(when they get their third stat point).

High level warriors, yes, I'd generally say they have actual toughness. There's not much they can do to make them offensively on par with a PC class. As for 5 being much, only if you assume a completely homogenous population, as opposed to the in game logical response, which is the strong, tough and dumb joining the grunts, and the less physically capable not.


Of course if you're using all 10s then that means damage is going to drop as well, which completely throws off all the numbers we've been talking about.

Flat 10 commoners are beaten by beastmasters herding cats into battle. Whatever they're doing is utterly irrelevant to optimization or anything else.


The assumptions you make about your people are going to define the arguments. If you're making magic low impact, and giving everyone incredibly powerful stats for average people, then things are going to wind up the way you say because you've set the stage for them to get that way. Not every stage is going to be set in exactly the same way.

EDIT: Typos

It's not realistic internally, for the military to be filled with the completely average, as opposed to the strong, tough and dumb. You aren't going to find int 10 alchemists and wizards in town. You aren't going to find charisma 10 bards. You aren't going to find wisdom 10 adepts.

[Typewriter]

200,000 is correct, but you still roll villages of 1000 200 times instead of one giant city of 200,000. That's how you get a nation's typical population.

Yeah, but the book also says that the average # of warriors is 5%. If you're making the majority of your warriors higher level then you are also increasing the number of low level warriors(by the book) which means if your army is 5%(10,000) and they're level 3, then the level 2 and 1 warriors are going to account for another 10-15% of your population. That's what I was saying seems high.



Sun Tzu is a strategist, and I'm mostly talking tactics. Note that there aren't that many famous tacticians. This is because most tactical doctrine (which weapons to use, and how) are fairly standard, and readily observable up until about WW1, and even then, tactics and doctrine of 200 years of experience were wiped out in 2 years to be replaced with tactics of trench warfare and its counters.


Observation isn't necessarily going to be universal. Different nations evolved differently, but because they were all in the same vicinity they could adapt to each other. Take a different world and start over, and there is no reason they're going to do the same things we did. You're saying that everyone, ever, no matter what, is eventually going to decide the same things as optimal, and I just disagree with that.



Mechanically, and that's still true. The difference is the story focuses on one, and not the other, and even then, the story focuses on the villains too. The problem is, generating an NPC sans one of those plot characters limits you to generally lower levels or complete fiat.

I actually disagree completely to be honest. I think a worlds history should be full of people who have done and tried different things and created all sort of mayhem. If you're just assuming its earth until the campaign starts, why not just make the campaign on earth?

A 20 Sorceror Lich could very well be the king of a nation somewhere but that doesn't necessarily mean he pops into existence at the start of the campaign, or even that he's a part of the campaign.

That's what I mean when I say you set the stage. If you're history is identical to earth history then you're essentially on earth.



Well, most stories introduce the BBEG as a means to disrupt the status quo forcing the hero into action, but yes, a villain is an NPC that is relevant to the plot, but to be honest I don't want to delve too deeply into narrative and how it influences mechanics.


But it does. You're in a fantasy world. If you set the stage with dragons as regular combatants people are going to adapt to dragon fighting tactics. If you have an evil dragon who raises an army to defend him, but doesn't want to let them get powerful enough to oppose him he could outfit them all with daggers and slings.

How you set your stage is going to determine the way people adapt, because the stage is not identical to earths.



Tippyverse is the reasonable conclusion if magic is endemic. This isn't true in all settings. I am however a proponent of its reasonable existance. However, entering into a tippyverse isn't "standard" in that the setting still dictates the starting status of other cities and nations not having so many or such powerful wizards.


From what I've read of tippyverse it only takes a single high-int, moderately leveled wizard to set things into motion. Of course you decide whether or not any wizard goes for that and whether or not they succeed based off the world you've created.



None of those people moved. The Romans and the Japanese simply immediately adopted the optimal weapon or tactic, discarding the inferior one. Adaptation in this context, means optimizing the army to match technology.


My bad, I misread you there. My point was that we've been talking about figuring out optimal weapons based off of level 1 warriors fighting each other. Now you start talking about level 1 warriors trying to fight ogres, trolls, giants, etc. and you're not necessarily going to evolve the same way. Creatures with reach, for instance, are going to change the dynamics of how you use reach weapons.

Fighting different things is going to change the way you evolve, deciding what your armies are fighting that sets them into the styles they use is setting the stage.



Getting a 9 often enough that the +30% to damage from a greatsword to make the 10% defense boost worth it is mathematically close relies on more than just a little support and optimization. Even assuming a pretty darn good helper bard, you're getting d8+2 from yourself, +1 from competence, +2 morale. At absolute best. You have a 50% chance of a kill hit, compared to the 2d6+6 from a similar two hander, getting a 1/18 chance of not one shotting people. That's about a 6% chance of failure to kill compared to 50%. Ergo, a lazy sum advantage of 36%. That's pretty darn significant. The disparity stays about the same without buffs mind you.

The non-elite array is going to give you 1 13, which if you put it into STR, would barely allow you to get Power Attack. So now your only two feats are two combat feats (toughness and power attack).

Greatsword = 2d6 = average 7+1(STR)+1(PA) = 9 damage with a -1 to-hit
Sword/Shield= 1d8 = average 4.5+1(STR)

Of course I could say that since you have two combat feats, the sword/shield users also have two combat feats, both of which are toughness. Now your average damage isn't enough(9) isn't enough to down me in one hit, so on average you're going to have to hit me twice. You, meanwhile I need to do 9 damage to, and seeing as how my average damage is 5.5 I'm also only going to need to hit you twice, on average. And I have 2 higher AC.

Or we could use non-monster arrays, or not take 2 combat feats each, or any number of other things. In fact all of these other things are perfectly valid options, because different worlds are going to trend towards different things.

[QUOTE=Yukitsu;10384773]
Actually rolling 3d6 6 times should produce a range. A good estimation is running the lesser array, which has at the very least a +1. Trained warriors however, should have stats within the plausible range, but have superior physical stats, but inferior mental ones. In game, the people who are dumb and tough should join the army, so that's what should be concentrated there.

Yes, 3d6 averages to 10, but most people get irritated when everyone has straight 10s and you claim "realism." I'll generally do so for expediency I do admit, but only for functional non-combatants. I'll ad-hoc stats for individuals who have to fulfill a specific niche.


But the way you build your army is as if an entire platoon has identical stats. That's setting your build the way you want it in disregard to rolls. If you're going to say that you'll it's unlikely to ever have a level 1 army vs. a level 2 army because of RAW determining army sizes, I'm going to point out that it's equally unlikely for an entire 10,000 man army to have identical stats. Or even have their stats broken down into 6 individual categories.



I'm saying you have to ban it, or the conversation becomes to complex that mundane tactics like "shield or no shield" become irrelevant, because it will invariably come down to in game justifications for the Tippyverse not existing, most of which are BS.


Depends on your world. In my current world the majority of the gods have a disdain for arcane magic so they'll often send people to kill those mages whom they think are trying to allow it to spread.

Not every world is going to be like this one, just like not every world is going to be Eberron, just like not every world is going to be just like earth.



High level warriors, yes, I'd generally say they have actual toughness. There's not much they can do to make them offensively on par with a PC class. As for 5 being much, only if you assume a completely homogenous population, as opposed to the in game logical response, which is the strong, tough and dumb joining the grunts, and the less physically capable not.


Depends on how you build your armies. I generally assume everyone who isn't leading a group of 20 or more probably has flat 10s, with maybe a 12 in STR, CON, or DEX depending on the focus of their training. Leaders will get increasingly better stats all the way up the rank structure.



Flat 10 commoners are beaten by beastmasters herding cats into battle. Whatever they're doing is utterly irrelevant to optimization or anything else.


And like I said the stats you assume for your NPCs (army or otherwise) is going to cause a big shift in how your world history plays out.



It's not realistic internally, for the military to be filled with the completely average, as opposed to the strong, tough and dumb. You aren't going to find int 10 alchemists and wizards in town. You aren't going to find charisma 10 bards. You aren't going to find wisdom 10 adepts.

NPC classes get 3d6, which averages to 10. Once you start deciding that your NPCs don't necessarily have those you're setting the stage. You are setting the stage for the game to match what you want, and not all worlds are going to be the same way.

[Jayabalard]

It does if he wants his spell to work. If he tries to polymorph someone too weak, or into a creature too powerful, the spell just fails.So? All he knows from that is that he tried and failed; there's no reason for him to assume that it because X wasn't powerful enough to be turned into Y. Perhaps elves simply can't be turned into dragons; maybe elves can't be turned into dragons unless they've seen or touched a dragon? Did I just get distracted and miscast the spell somehow? Was there some sort of fluctuation of magic-space-time continuum? Did someone use some sort of counter magic that prevented it from working? Does this particular elf have some sort of resistance to the spell or something in particualr that keeps him from being turned into <creature Y>?


Or is a guy with a godlike intelligence just too stupid to want to figure out why his spells, which otherwise always work, don't work in certain specific instances? That is supreme denial.Stupidity, or lack thereof has nothing to do with it. Sure he may look into it; that doesn't mean that he's necessarily going to ever be aware of levels; he'll know from experience that he can do X or Y transformation, but not Z... that does not require that he know that the world works in discrete levels of power; it just means that he'll come up with a few rules of thumb.

Certainly, if he wants to dedicate years of his life to researching this he might do so. If he spends sufficient time, he'll be able to work something out about it so that he at least has some idea about whether a spell will work... though whether this has any relationship to the D&D level system or is just a collection of general rules is not certain.

But I personally find it highly unlikely that he'd do more than come up with a few rules of thumb; there are far more interesting things for a wizard to research (item creation, meta-magic, creating a hot chicks room, etc), even assuming you are talking about someone who has that kind of time on his hands.

[jseah]

Which is why academic wizards and magic universities are never a good idea to include in a setting like that. They break it.

Which is also why virtually all my spellcaster characters have setting up a magic university / academy as a goal somewhere in their profile. XD

[Tyndmyr]

Or we could use non-monster arrays, or not take 2 combat feats each, or any number of other things. In fact all of these other things are perfectly valid options, because different worlds are going to trend towards different things.

It doesn't matter. None of that matters. So long as you're comparing equally, two handers are generally superior to sword and board.


But the way you build your army is as if an entire platoon has identical stats. That's setting your build the way you want it in disregard to rolls. If you're going to say that you'll it's unlikely to ever have a level 1 army vs. a level 2 army because of RAW determining army sizes, I'm going to point out that it's equally unlikely for an entire 10,000 man army to have identical stats.

It is not relevant if they have identical stats or a distribution of stats. The "all tens" is a shorthand so we don't do basically identical math 10,000 times. You can do this if you wish. However, a normal distribution of stats is not going to affect the relative value of sword and board compared to 2h.


Or even have their stats broken down into 6 individual categories.

Now, if you throw out D&D rules entirely, starting with the stats, then you can come to no useful conclusions whatsoever. This is not a fun game or discussion.


Depends on your world. In my current world the majority of the gods have a disdain for arcane magic so they'll often send people to kill those mages whom they think are trying to allow it to spread.

This works until a mage gets to a decent level, and decides to solve this problem. Killing a number of low level melee mooks is generally not a problem for a full caster. Eventually, when Plan Torches and Pitchforks come to be seen as a death sentence, the popularity of it'll fade.

If anything, it would lead to a greater caster/non-caster antipathy, which would make a tippyverse like world more likely. Not because it's optimal, but because the wizards rule, and would eventually desire such a world.


Depends on how you build your armies. I generally assume everyone who isn't leading a group of 20 or more probably has flat 10s, with maybe a 12 in STR, CON, or DEX depending on the focus of their training. Leaders will get increasingly better stats all the way up the rank structure.

I do not make this assumption, and see little reason for it. We do not determine our president by the outcome of a mixed martial arts tourney, awesome as that would be. I assume leaders are good at leading folks. Other skills vary substantially.

[Jayabalard]

It doesn't matter. None of that matters. So long as you're comparing equally, two handers are generally superior to sword and board.Depends on what is meant by "superior" ... it lets you deal more damage ... but you are less protected vs any particular incoming attack.

Now, you can make the argument that dealing more damage = more enemies killed faster = less blows taken = higher survivability chance. That may be true for small combat, but for really large scale combat, it breaks down: the number of opponents you face is more controlled by your location than how many you kill, so your survival chance doesn't really improve with a 2 handed weapon like it does in a small scale combat ... so for survival (which is the goal of any professional soldier, surviving to get paid), sword and board may indeed be the superior choice.

[Tyndmyr]

Depends on what is meant by "superior" ... it lets you deal more damage ... but you are less protected vs any particular incoming attack.

Yes. However, the tradeoff is unequal. Let us consider greataxe vs longsword & hvy wooden shield. This is near the same price, with the shield being a touch more expensive. Presumably in any realistic world, cost is a reasonable limitation for armies, or you'd be slinging magic gear around by the bucketload.

Greataxe: 6.5 avg dmg/swing.
Sword'n'Board: 4.5 avg dmg/swing. +2 AC(ie, a 10% reduction in incoming damage.

So, when the two meet up, the shieldman takes an average of 5.85 dmg/swing, while the axeman takes an average of 4.5 dmg/swing.

You can shuffle around the stats a lot, but the 1.5x damage bonus of the 2h for strength means you don't actually have any point at which the shield is an advantage.


Now, you can make the argument that dealing more damage = more enemies killed faster = less blows taken = higher survivability chance. That may be true for small combat, but for really large scale combat, it breaks down: the number of opponents you face is more controlled by your location than how many you kill, so your survival chance doesn't really improve with a 2 handed weapon like it does in a small scale combat ... so for survival (which is the goal of any professional soldier, surviving to get paid), sword and board may indeed be the superior choice.

It breaks down for the individual, but it does not break down for the average.

The determinator of weapon choice is generally not the individual(outside of very early historical armies, rebellions, and small scale conflicts). It's generally someone at a slightly higher scale, who has an interest in the overall outcome, not merely in his own personal survival. And even the individual soldier can understand that some risk to his own personal survival is required in order to win. If not...well, nobody would ever be on the front lines.

Note that I still think combined arms would exist. There would merely be a bias toward two-handers due to their exceptionally strong role.

*Fixed minor math error.

[The Big Dice]

You can shuffle around the stats a lot, but the 1.5x damage bonus of the 2h for strength means you don't actually have any point at which the shield is an advantage.

It breaks down for the individual, but it does not break down for the average.
That's a major problem with D&D and realism.

In the real world, you need room to swing that two handed weapon. Space on the front line is an issue. You need five or six feet all around you to swing a big axe, but in the space it takes you to stand and swing, you can fit three men with spears and sheilds. All of which have equal reach, with the added ability to bring multiple weapons to bear on a single target.

In the real world, that's why you see variations on sheild wall and spearmen all across the world. It's a simple numbers game. 3 vs 1. Even if you drop one of the spearmen, the other two will finish you off.

But in D&D, eveyone and their weapon fits into the same 5 foot space. Regardless of forming ranks and locking sheilds. Regardless of how much room they need to swing their weapon.

Taking that a step further, if you wanted to equip your forces based on what actually works in the game world, rather than what works in the real world, I could easily see armies armed with two handed weapons almost exclusively.

They'd be smaller. It's still cheaper to issue wooden sheilds and spears than it is to issue greatswords. But in terms of how many kills each weapon can deliver, the greatsword is way ahead of the curve. Enough so that it would be worth considering equipping special units with them.

In fact, in purely objective terms, one of the best weapons to issue is probably the scythe. Moderate damage with a slightly higher average, plus massive critical damage and the ability to do two types of damage.

Logically, for the army on a budget, the scythe is a serious consideration for a standard issue weapon.

[Tyndmyr]

That's a major problem with D&D and realism.

I wouldn't call it a major problem. D&D is mostly designed around small conflicts. This only really arises with larger conflicts, and is a side effect of the loss of detail inherent in rounding things off into 5 ft chunks.


In the real world, you need room to swing that two handed weapon. Space on the front line is an issue. You need five or six feet all around you to swing a big axe, but in the space it takes you to stand and swing, you can fit three men with spears and sheilds. All of which have equal reach, with the added ability to bring multiple weapons to bear on a single target.

Well, in real life shields were usually fairly destructible and flimsy, too. And spears were used in part because they were cheap. While reach was part of it(and in fact, utilizing reach would be a good part of combined arms army design), economy was absolutely huge in terms of determining what armies were equipped with.


In the real world, that's why you see variations on sheild wall and spearmen all across the world. It's a simple numbers game. 3 vs 1. Even if you drop one of the spearmen, the other two will finish you off.

Well, that and they're cheap. Which allows you to have more spearmen. Quantity is awesome.


But in D&D, eveyone and their weapon fits into the same 5 foot space. Regardless of forming ranks and locking sheilds. Regardless of how much room they need to swing their weapon.

Well, heroes of battle does have a shield wall formation. Just sayin'.


Taking that a step further, if you wanted to equip your forces based on what actually works in the game world, rather than what works in the real world, I could easily see armies armed with two handed weapons almost exclusively.

They'd be smaller. It's still cheaper to issue wooden sheilds and spears than it is to issue greatswords. But in terms of how many kills each weapon can deliver, the greatsword is way ahead of the curve. Enough so that it would be worth considering equipping special units with them.

Actually, price is the only reason I used a greataxe instead of a greatsword. The sword is a better weapon, both in game terms and historically. However, the extra 30g a troop is an issue, and I wanted to compare against sword and board on a fairly level ground.


In fact, in purely objective terms, one of the best weapons to issue is probably the scythe. Moderate damage with a slightly higher average, plus massive critical damage and the ability to do two types of damage.

Logically, for the army on a budget, the scythe is a serious consideration for a standard issue weapon.

Im not certain why. It's the most expensive of the 2d4 weapons. Yes, the x4 crit is nice, but when you consider a greataxe is only 2g more, gets a much better standard damage, and still has a x3 crit, it's pretty potent.

This really is begging for a challenge. I would love to see one where everyone has x gold, and gets to hire and outfit a bunch of level 1s.

[Typewriter]

Yes. However, the tradeoff is unequal. Let us consider greataxe vs longsword & hvy wooden shield. This is near the same price, with the shield being a touch more expensive. Presumably in any realistic world, cost is a reasonable limitation for armies, or you'd be slinging magic gear around by the bucketload.

Greataxe: 6.5 avg dmg/swing.
Sword'n'Board: 4.5 avg dmg/swing. +2 AC(ie, a 10% reduction in incoming damage.

So, when the two meet up, the shieldman takes an average of 5.2 dmg/swing, while the axeman takes an average of 4.5 dmg/swing.

You can shuffle around the stats a lot, but the 1.5x damage bonus of the 2h for strength means you don't actually have any point at which the shield is an advantage.



It breaks down for the individual, but it does not break down for the average.

The determinator of weapon choice is generally not the individual(outside of very early historical armies, rebellions, and small scale conflicts). It's generally someone at a slightly higher scale, who has an interest in the overall outcome, not merely in his own personal survival. And even the individual soldier can understand that some risk to his own personal survival is required in order to win. If not...well, nobody would ever be on the front lines.

Note that I still think combined arms would exist. There would merely be a bias toward two-handers due to their exceptionally strong role.

If you're assuming that your army has at least 14 STR they're getting STR + 1/2, and that's only granting them a +1 bonus.

Depending on the # of HP you're up against if your 'average' damage isn't enough to take down an opponent in one hit, on average you'll be hitting them twice. If your opponents average damage over two turns is enough to kill you, and it's harder to hit him, where does the superiority lie?

Doing more damage doesn't matter unless it's reliable or necessary for your opponent. If you're talking about someone with 14 HP, and a greatsword user does 7.5, his average over 2 turns will be 15, where as the shield user is only going to do an average of 11. Advantage returns to the two hander.

The numbers really do matter, especially at this low a level.

And a distribution of stats is going to change your dynamic completely. You're no longer training everyone to have the same feats, because not everyone has the same feats, which means in any given formation you're going to have mixed results. Or are you averaging the stats to all 10s, then dropping the mental stats by 1 each and raising STR to 13 to get PA?



Now, if you throw out D&D rules entirely, starting with the stats, then you can come to no useful conclusions whatsoever. This is not a fun game or discussion.


I'm not talking about getting rid of the stats, Yukitsu has been talking about having 6 different groups in his perfect army, and each group has identical stats. I was saying that you're not going to have 6 identical groups to set to one of six specific locations in your army.

How am I throwing the rules out entirely?

[Tyndmyr]

If you're assuming that your army has at least 14 STR they're getting STR + 1/2, and that's only granting them a +1 bonus.

Two hander: 9.5
s&b: 6.5 +2 AC.

Two hander after AC reduction: 8.55 average damage.

Nope, two hander still is outperforming the shield guy.


Depending on the # of HP you're up against if your 'average' damage isn't enough to take down an opponent in one hit, on average you'll be hitting them twice. If your opponents average damage over two turns is enough to kill you, and it's harder to hit him, where does the superiority lie?

With the two hander. You cannot assume average damage on every hit. The point is that the larger average gives you much better odds of downing your opponent in any given length of time.


Doing more damage doesn't matter unless it's reliable or necessary for your opponent. If you're talking about someone with 14 HP, and a greatsword user does 7.5, his average over 2 turns will be 15, where as the shield user is only going to do an average of 11. Advantage returns to the two hander.

It does not return. It never left.


And a distribution of stats is going to change your dynamic completely. You're no longer training everyone to have the same feats, because not everyone has the same feats, which means in any given formation you're going to have mixed results. Or are you averaging the stats to all 10s, then dropping the mental stats by 1 each and raising STR to 13 to get PA?

When considering large, standard distributions, you will find a strong correlation between average damage and success. There is roughly an equal chance of overkill on any given matchup, so it's mostly irrelevant. Whichever group does more damage on average, after defenses are taken into account will be favored to win.


I'm not talking about getting rid of the stats, Yukitsu has been talking about having 6 different groups in his perfect army, and each group has identical stats. I was saying that you're not going to have 6 identical groups to set to one of six specific locations in your army.

How am I throwing the rules out entirely?

It sounded like you were tossing out the concept of using the 6 statistics. Again, it doesn't matter if the stats are identical, a spread, or grouped for the superiority of two handers over sword & board.

What WOULD matter is things like rounds of archery fire before closing to melee.


Proposed Challenge

Everyone taking part gets 2000G. You are limited to level 1 characters from core. No flaws, etc. Each mook must be paid a month of wages, as per the DMG & SBG(1 sp/day untrained commoner, 3/sp day for warriors or craftsmen, 1/gp day for PC classes). Your army must consist of a single race. Stats are the non-elite array. You may purchase any mundane equipment from core.

Battles take place on an open field, starting 200 ft apart from the armies nearest points.

[Jayabalard]

Yes. However, the tradeoff is unequal. Let us consider greataxe vs longsword & hvy wooden shield. This is near the same price, with the shield being a touch more expensive. Presumably in any realistic world, cost is a reasonable limitation for armies, or you'd be slinging magic gear around by the bucketload.

Greataxe: 6.5 avg dmg/swing.
Sword'n'Board: 4.5 avg dmg/swing. +2 AC(ie, a 10% reduction in incoming damage.

So, when the two meet up, the shieldman takes an average of 5.2 dmg/swing, while the axeman takes an average of 4.5 dmg/swing.
these average damage per swing numbers, they make no sense. That's not a valid way of representing the advantage of adding AC (nor is average swing damage a good metric, see below).

If you're assuming unarmored except for the shield, no dex bonus, and a total of +2 to hit.

The axeman has a 50% chance to hit (+2 vs opponents 12 ac), so his average damage per swing is 6.5 *.5 = 3.25
The sword guy has a 60% (+2 vs opponents 10 ac) chance to hit, so his average damage per swing is 4.5* .6 = 2.7


with armor (say, studded leather or hide armor, cheap 3ac)

The axeman has a 35% to hit (opponent = 15 ac, he has +2 hit, so needs a 13 or better), so his average damage per swing is 2.275
The sword guy has a 45% to hit, so his average damage per swing is 2.025


with heavy armor (say, splint 6ac)

The axeman has a 20% to hit (18 ac, +2 hit), so his average damage per swing is 1.3
The sword guy has a 30% to hit, so his average damage per swing is 1.35


So at this level, the sword and board does more average damage per unit time than the 2 hander.

Now: as to average damage per swing, and it's validity as a metric of effectiveness. I'm not convinced it's really meaningful; you're looking at a simple average of data that's already been averaged which is generally a bad method. It also discounts losses due to overkill, which is worse for the side that has the higher potential damage.

Really, the way to do this is to run some sort of simulation. For example

Randomly generate N people per side (1000, 10000, whatever).
For each person either set str, dex and con to 10, or randomly generate them with 3d6, or 3d6dl
Randomly generate hp to be 1d8 + con bonus
Add a parameter for the weapon damage and whether the str bonus is increased to 1.5x instead of 1.
Add a parameter for AC (to test at various armor levels)
Assume that each person can always get to an opponent for their attack.
Assume no attacks of opportunity (alternativly: assume a flat chance per attack that you incurred an attack of opportunity.
Assume no flanking or charging or any other special maneuvers.


For each combatant, roll initiative. Then, following the initiative order

for the first round
pick an opponent at random
roll to attack
if a hit - roll damage
if killed opponent - remove opponent


Run multiple battles at each setting. I might wind up bored enought to do this at some point.

[Tyndmyr]

Well, a complete calculator of it would have to factor in crits, always hitting on a 20, etc, etc to get perfect accuracy. Is a 19-20 crit actually as good as x3? Most of the time, sure, but not when you miss on a 19.

Hence the idea of actually pitting armies against each other. Since, basically, that's the most accurate representation of the real thing. It does require a fair bit of attention to model, but by keeping it to relatively small amounts of gold, it should be doable.

[NichG]

(simulation details)

Run multiple battles at each setting. I might wind up bored enought to do this at some point.

Better yet, use a genetic algorithm to change the feat and gear allotments. Optimize individuals, then teams of two, then teams of four...

Probably want to stick with a 1st level Fighter, one 14 in a stat, one 12, and the rest 10s.

I bet you'll find oscillations as certain builds rock-paper-scissors eachother (for instance, Combat Expertise Sword&Board with most of their money sunk into armor will crush the Power Attacking Greatsworder, but then will die against something else like an alchemist fire chucker)

[Tyndmyr]

Better yet, use a genetic algorithm to change the feat and gear allotments. Optimize individuals, then teams of two, then teams of four...

Probably want to stick with a 1st level Fighter, one 14 in a stat, one 12, and the rest 10s.

I bet you'll find oscillations as certain builds rock-paper-scissors eachother (for instance, Combat Expertise Sword&Board with most of their money sunk into armor will crush the Power Attacking Greatsworder, but then will die against something else like an alchemist fire chucker)

Genetic algorithms seem like a lot of effort to get a realistic army. I have no doubt that it would work, mind you, but lots of work.

[Yukitsu]

Yeah, but the book also says that the average # of warriors is 5%. If you're making the majority of your warriors higher level then you are also increasing the number of low level warriors(by the book) which means if your army is 5%(10,000) and they're level 3, then the level 2 and 1 warriors are going to account for another 10-15% of your population. That's what I was saying seems high.

Meh, it is what it is. Aside the fact that barring the sheer HP granted, a level 1 NPC character is about as competent at fighting as your average real life 10 year old anyway, so a higher number of warriors 1-3 being around shouldn't be that unlikely, especially when about half of them are going to be invalids of some sort, or the town watch.


Observation isn't necessarily going to be universal. Different nations evolved differently, but because they were all in the same vicinity they could adapt to each other. Take a different world and start over, and there is no reason they're going to do the same things we did. You're saying that everyone, ever, no matter what, is eventually going to decide the same things as optimal, and I just disagree with that.

I'm saying this is false. The same military inventions were created independantly in many cultures across the world, and the degree to which those same weapons were standard to militarized states indicates that observation of optimization isn't in the eye of the beholder.


I actually disagree completely to be honest. I think a worlds history should be full of people who have done and tried different things and created all sort of mayhem. If you're just assuming its earth until the campaign starts, why not just make the campaign on earth?

It's fine that there be people like that, but the people you're implying are level 20. Level 1 rabble rousers are sufficient to a setting.


A 20 Sorceror Lich could very well be the king of a nation somewhere but that doesn't necessarily mean he pops into existence at the start of the campaign, or even that he's a part of the campaign.

If it's not a part of the story, and has a long history, you're talking in contradictions.


That's what I mean when I say you set the stage. If you're history is identical to earth history then you're essentially on earth.

Almost every canon setting is massively parallel to earth, because most writers drew their references from earth and its development.


But it does. You're in a fantasy world. If you set the stage with dragons as regular combatants people are going to adapt to dragon fighting tactics. If you have an evil dragon who raises an army to defend him, but doesn't want to let them get powerful enough to oppose him he could outfit them all with daggers and slings.

This doesn't change the optimal equipment, and honestly, an army of guys with melee weapons are hopelessly outmatched by any sufficiently problematic dragon that being stingy on their gear will just get your army crushed.

And even here, dragon fighting tactics should not include shields.


How you set your stage is going to determine the way people adapt, because the stage is not identical to earths.

Right, they're just all earth derivatives.


From what I've read of tippyverse it only takes a single high-int, moderately leveled wizard to set things into motion. Of course you decide whether or not any wizard goes for that and whether or not they succeed based off the world you've created.

Let me distill something down here. You can make any BS setting with any non-sense logic you want, and claim it's internally consistent, but the DMG standard setting, as well as the written settings simply don't include that kind of internal consistency until the DM or players add it. Hence it's an out of game consideration until the plot develops.


My bad, I misread you there. My point was that we've been talking about figuring out optimal weapons based off of level 1 warriors fighting each other. Now you start talking about level 1 warriors trying to fight ogres, trolls, giants, etc. and you're not necessarily going to evolve the same way. Creatures with reach, for instance, are going to change the dynamics of how you use reach weapons.

No, you mentioned those. I'm saying it's irrelevant, as them being larger doesn't suddenly entice me to use a shield.


Fighting different things is going to change the way you evolve, deciding what your armies are fighting that sets them into the styles they use is setting the stage.

It rather shouldn't. Almost everything you can pull, in terms of melee infantry, are best countered by great weapons, not shields.


The non-elite array is going to give you 1 13, which if you put it into STR, would barely allow you to get Power Attack. So now your only two feats are two combat feats (toughness and power attack).

Greatsword = 2d6 = average 7+1(STR)+1(PA) = 9 damage with a -1 to-hit
Sword/Shield= 1d8 = average 4.5+1(STR)

I've mentioned, you should in general assume these ones are dumber, and tougher, but less intelligent. Even assuming these as their general stat distribution, if you are going with this array, the threshold value is only 8, so you wouldn't need power attack. That aside, power attack would grant him 2 bonus damage, not 1.


Of course I could say that since you have two combat feats, the sword/shield users also have two combat feats, both of which are toughness. Now your average damage isn't enough(9) isn't enough to down me in one hit, so on average you're going to have to hit me twice. You, meanwhile I need to do 9 damage to, and seeing as how my average damage is 5.5 I'm also only going to need to hit you twice, on average. And I have 2 higher AC.

You don't need power attack, but assuming you're using the lesser array, and took toughness twice, if he did power attack, he'd be spot on to your hit point total. More generally, I'd assume they take relatively identical feats, but whatever, the ones you picked still don't favour the sword and boarder.


Or we could use non-monster arrays, or not take 2 combat feats each, or any number of other things. In fact all of these other things are perfectly valid options, because different worlds are going to trend towards different things.

I'm still of the opinion that you pick what makes sense. For example, what strength score is required for someone to carry one of those 120 pound sacks on an 8 hour march all day? Apparantly, you'd need an 18 to carry that and then fight a battle, which I honestly think is high, but you still have to admit, 10 is freaking low for any kind of combatant. Even assuming it's a medium load, you're going to need a 14 to not be a slug who can't defend himself.


But the way you build your army is as if an entire platoon has identical stats. That's setting your build the way you want it in disregard to rolls. If you're going to say that you'll it's unlikely to ever have a level 1 army vs. a level 2 army because of RAW determining army sizes, I'm going to point out that it's equally unlikely for an entire 10,000 man army to have identical stats. Or even have their stats broken down into 6 individual categories.

It is, and if I had infinite time, I'd actually roll them all up. Keep in mind however, that people who couldn't pass certain physical requirements where basically doomed to get killed by a cat.


Depends on your world. In my current world the majority of the gods have a disdain for arcane magic so they'll often send people to kill those mages whom they think are trying to allow it to spread.

Not every world is going to be like this one, just like not every world is going to be Eberron, just like not every world is going to be just like earth.

I don't really care about the internal logic of your world. Invariably, established setting and norms have massive plot holes that make the illusion shatter when observed. I'm more interesting in discussing a generic D&D world, not a "it developed this way because I say it did" world.


Depends on how you build your armies. I generally assume everyone who isn't leading a group of 20 or more probably has flat 10s, with maybe a 12 in STR, CON, or DEX depending on the focus of their training. Leaders will get increasingly better stats all the way up the rank structure.

You should probably look up the context of just what a 10 really means. An average guy grazed by a knife goes unconcious at 10, you can only carry a 33 pound back pack, you are incapable of figuring out basic information about an elephant, even if you're a biologist etc etc. Alchemists are screwed, as they can't even make alchemic items 50% of the time.


And like I said the stats you assume for your NPCs (army or otherwise) is going to cause a big shift in how your world history plays out.

We're talking about an internally consistent world so the stats should be internally consistent.


NPC classes get 3d6, which averages to 10. Once you start deciding that your NPCs don't necessarily have those you're setting the stage. You are setting the stage for the game to match what you want, and not all worlds are going to be the same way.

The world's average IQ is by definition 100. Ergo, everyone in the world has a 100 IQ.

[Typewriter]

On the damage numbers:

Having a higher average doesn't mean anything if that average doesn't down opponents in one hit. That's why I brought up looking at averages over 2 rounds. The two hander does more damage but it's hitting less often, so if the average of the other guy is enough to down in 2 rounds he has the advantage. That's why the number of HP and feats and level all comes into play.

On the simulation:

There is one very large reason that I, personally, don't want to run this simulation.

It will never end. Literally. That's what this entire conversation has been. People switching back and forth their tactics to match the opposition. Making a single army now isn't going to prove anything decidedly, especially when we can't settle on a single definitive number of troops or stat system to use. I don't like the idea that I can find as many troops of identical stats as I want, let alone all of the preferred race or class.

Assuming you're always going to be able to find exactly what you want is why you're going to get the same exact results every time.

That's why I'm saying different worlds are going to go in different ways. It shouldn't just be a given that everyone is always going to wind up using PA and greatswords because not every world is going to have people with above average stats fighting against the same opponents.

Even making the decision to say you're trapped in a 200 ft. cube is going to affect builds.

[Typewriter]

We're talking about an internally consistent world so the stats should be internally consistent.


No, you're talking about following RAW when it suits your argument in world building, ignoring RAW when you don't follow it, changing your armies size and level to match your argument, and then ignoring RAW to determine the stats of the NPCs in your army, apparently in an attempt to import your own personal army into pre-built campaign worlds (why were you talking about the world building rules earlier?) that match your opinions on optimization.

I'm not arguing that a single world shouldn't be consistent within itself, I'm saying you should not assume that every world is consistent when compared to every other world because that's only going to happen if you create every single world in an identical manner.

[Tyndmyr]

On the damage numbers:

Having a higher average doesn't mean anything if that average doesn't down opponents in one hit. That's why I brought up looking at averages over 2 rounds. The two hander does more damage but it's hitting less often, so if the average of the other guy is enough to down in 2 rounds he has the advantage. That's why the number of HP and feats and level all comes into play.

It absolutely does. Because you don't always get average. Sometimes you down the dude in one hit. Sometimes the dice hate you. But the average is a useful metric for determining what you can expect to see from a large sample, such as in a battle.

The two hander is much more likely to one shot overall, in any situation, for instance. Even with ridiculously con-biased scores, a x3 critical means a substantial portion of crits will result in a downed person.

Will the majority of swings one shot the opponent? Not except in very unusual starting conditions. Still, just because the average hit isn't a fight ender doesn't invalidate higher damage.


On the simulation:

There is one very large reason that I, personally, don't want to run this simulation.

It will never end. Literally. That's what this entire conversation has been. People switching back and forth their tactics to match the opposition. Making a single army now isn't going to prove anything decidedly, especially when we can't settle on a single definitive number of troops or stat system to use. I don't like the idea that I can find as many troops of identical stats as I want, let alone all of the preferred race or class.

It makes the math a ton easier if I assume that you can recruit what you want. It also removes a possible source of bias.

The reason you don't have a definitive number of troops is because almost no armies in real life did either. The number of troops you had depend on how many you can afford. If you prefer to try fewer, better equipped troops, great. Some historical armies did this. Many did masses of poorly equipped ones. Many combined them somehow.

As for race all being the same, you have something that's fairly well supported. While adventurer's are funky groups consisting of wild mixes, most societies in most settings tend to be heavily one race or another. The monster manual almost invariably describes members of a race in a warband or similar consisting of x number of that race.


Assuming you're always going to be able to find exactly what you want is why you're going to get the same exact results every time.

You don't find what you want. You make what you want. In real life, weapons are built to what is desired, and people are trained to use that weapon. The army that favors shields will train their men to use them, and the same is true for the two hander army.


That's why I'm saying different worlds are going to go in different ways. It shouldn't just be a given that everyone is always going to wind up using PA and greatswords because not every world is going to have people with above average stats fighting against the same opponents.

Wait, because you believe the test will end the same way every time(which I doubt), you believe that worlds are different? This doesn't follow.


Even making the decision to say you're trapped in a 200 ft. cube is going to affect builds.

It probably would, if I had actually said that.

[Grim Reader]

I suspect a lot of people here forget that if you put real peoples psyches into the people that work under these rules

"Not dying" as a priority will trumph "Kills more opponents" by a very long mile.

[Typewriter]

It absolutely does. Because you don't always get average. Sometimes you down the dude in one hit. Sometimes the dice hate you. But the average is a useful metric for determining what you can expect to see from a large sample, such as in a battle.

The two hander is much more likely to one shot overall, in any situation, for instance. Even with ridiculously con-biased scores, a x3 critical means a substantial portion of crits will result in a downed person.

Will the majority of swings one shot the opponent? Not except in very unusual starting conditions. Still, just because the average hit isn't a fight ender doesn't invalidate higher damage.


Well if you have a crit multiplier of x3 I assume you're using a greataxe instead of sword, which means you'd go down slightly on your average damage.

Either way I don't see what's wrong with average. Depends on the exact stats and HP. What's so nice about having the potential for bigger numbers? If you deal 36 damage to an opponent with 10 HP you haven't outperformed the guy dealing 11 damage to someone with 10 HP.



It makes the math a ton easier if I assume that you can recruit what you want. It also removes a possible source of bias.


But no army has ever consisted fully of what the leader wanted, unless you're raising them from birth with full control over their stats.



The reason you don't have a definitive number of troops is because almost no armies in real life did either. The number of troops you had depend on how many you can afford. If you prefer to try fewer, better equipped troops, great. Some historical armies did this. Many did masses of poorly equipped ones. Many combined them somehow.


Yeah, but unless we plan on doing a crapton of different scenarios, all we're going to prove is the winner in this one scenario, and the point I'm trying to make is that under different scenarios different things will do better/worse.



As for race all being the same, you have something that's fairly well supported. While adventurer's are funky groups consisting of wild mixes, most societies in most settings tend to be heavily one race or another. The monster manual almost invariably describes members of a race in a warband or similar consisting of x number of that race.


My problem wasn't so much the race as the idea that I can just put out a notice for 10 humans with XYZ stats and ABC feats, 8 with XYZ stats and ABC feats, etc. etc.



You don't find what you want. You make what you want. In real life, weapons are built to what is desired, and people are trained to use that weapon. The army that favors shields will train their men to use them, and the same is true for the two hander army.


True, and this is one of those times where I would ask, are we following RAW or are we using real life as a model? The arguments people have been made have drifted back and forth between the two so much that I'm unable to keep track of the rules we using.

When are stats assigned? At birth, or between the ages of X and Y when you're training occurs? Or are we all roman, and we train from birth?



Wait, because you believe the test will end the same way every time(which I doubt), you believe that worlds are different? This doesn't follow.


No, I'm saying that if I win with an army in the scenario you created that doesn't mean the army is going to be good. It means that it's going to be good in this scenario.



It probably would, if I had actually said that.

Fair enough, but I can only assume that my tactic of giving everyone of my troops the run feat and improved initiative and running away until we can get to a more defensive position isn't really going to mesh well. Note: Not actually what I was thinking, but even still the area around, between, and behind us is going to have drastic implications

[NichG]

Genetic algorithms seem like a lot of effort to get a realistic army. I have no doubt that it would work, mind you, but lots of work.

Its actually quicker than it seems. Its more work to build the program to evaluate the mechanics of a pair of characters with specific feat loadouts/etc fighting than it is to search the space.

Since other people have said they're uninterested in doing the simulation, I'll probably end up giving it a shot and post the results when its done.

[Jayabalard]

After work I stuck around and fiddle with this (20 minutes-ish). Simple simulation as mentioned above.


Str/Dex/Con generated by 4d6dl;
HP = 1d8 + con
0 BAB
Doesn't account for crits



roll initiative for everyone (modified by dex)
each warrior picks a random opponent from the other side, tries to hit him. deals damage if he does.
warriors reduced to 0 hp are removed from the fight


No armor

Team sword and board

size 1000
base AC = 12 (shield)
damage dice 1d8, 1 hander


Team 2 hander

size 1000
base AC = 10
damage dice 1d12, 2 hander


Team sword and board won 51 battles
Team 2 hander won 49 battles


No armor (greatsword)

Team sword and board

size 1000
base AC = 12 (shield)
damage dice 1d8, 1 hander


Team Greatsword

size 1000
base AC = 10
damage dice 2d6, 2 hander


Team sword and board won 62 battles
Team greatsword won 38 battles

2nd run
Team sword and board won 63 battles
Team greatsword won 37 battles

I was surpised at how much of a difference that made. I'm guessing that 2hander really depends a lot on 1 shotting people and the more average dice of a greatsword actually hurt it rather than helping.


Studded leather

Team sword and board

size 1000
base AC = 15 (studded leather + shield)
damage dice 1d8, 1 hander


Team 2 hander

size 1000
base AC = 13 (studded leather)
damage dice 1d12, 2 hander


Team sword and board won 82 battles
Team 2 hander won 18 battles


Splint mail

Team sword and board

size 1000
base AC = 18 (studded leather + shield)
damage dice 1d8, 1 hander


Team 2 hander

size 1000
base AC = 16 (studded leather)
damage dice 1d12, 2 hander


Team sword and board won 99 battles; most of these were with at least half of their forces still alive.
Team 2 hander won 1 battle


Edit: these numbers are bad; they weren't accounting for 20 being an auto hit (so sometimes team sword and board had an invincible squad). I'm headed out so I'll re-run them tomorrow.


Its actually quicker than it seems. Its more work to build the program to evaluate the mechanics of a pair of characters with specific feat loadouts/etc fighting than it is to search the space.I'm not sure why you'd want specific feat load outs... that's just going to muddy up the issue.

[jseah]

Jaya:
What happens if you take max hp at 1st level? Say 8 + con?

Oh, and perhaps have other weapons too! =P

[NichG]

(results)


Nice! I'm actually pretty surprised that S&B is doing so well. I figured they would when the ACs got sufficiently high that +2 would push them into only hit on a 20, but it kicks in a lot earlier than I expected.

Edit: I bet part of the reason for the advantage was that you couldn't guarantee good strength bonuses for the 2handers, so a good portion of them were not significantly helped by the 1.5 (Str < 14) and some were even hurt by it if you didn't do the math carefully (Str < 8). The switch to greataxe beyond a certain point of gear expense probably also made a big difference.



I'm not sure why you'd want specific feat load outs... that's just going to muddy up the issue.

The concept of martial training as specific feat choices has been touched on in this thread, so its a viable degree of freedom. Also, feat choices can make certain builds become feasible that wouldn't otherwise be, and so there might be some interesting non-trivial tricks to discover in the fine-tuning.

[Yukitsu]

On the damage numbers:

Having a higher average doesn't mean anything if that average doesn't down opponents in one hit. That's why I brought up looking at averages over 2 rounds. The two hander does more damage but it's hitting less often, so if the average of the other guy is enough to down in 2 rounds he has the advantage. That's why the number of HP and feats and level all comes into play.

Only when he's twice as likely to hit.


No, you're talking about following RAW when it suits your argument in world building, ignoring RAW when you don't follow it, changing your armies size and level to match your argument, and then ignoring RAW to determine the stats of the NPCs in your army, apparently in an attempt to import your own personal army into pre-built campaign worlds (why were you talking about the world building rules earlier?) that match your opinions on optimization.

I'm not arguing that a single world shouldn't be consistent within itself, I'm saying you should not assume that every world is consistent when compared to every other world because that's only going to happen if you create every single world in an identical manner.

The generation of NPC stats isn't explicit in any portion of the DMG, and it's barely even recommended that one use one set or another. Saying that "the average is 10, ergo all 10s" is a false solution to the problem, albiet a convenient one. Since there is no rules to what their stats are, it makes the most sense to say, in theory, a well developed, internally consistent world has rolled stats, and those will not be pure 10s. It's also generally more reasonable to say those with int 18 became wizards or something, while those with strength 18 (one in 36 people will have an 18 in strength, one in 36 will have 18 in int etc) become fighters.


After work I stuck around and fiddle with this (20 minutes-ish). Simple simulation as mentioned above.

Show your work please? Repeatability and what not.

Also, consider common feats, and justify how they have d8 hit dice, but BAB 0.

[Typewriter]

Only when he's twice as likely to hit.


How's that work? If we both take two hits to hit each other then the first person to hit the other person twice wins.



The generation of NPC stats isn't explicit in any portion of the DMG, and it's barely even recommended that one use one set or another. Saying that "the average is 10, ergo all 10s" is a false solution to the problem, albiet a convenient one. Since there is no rules to what their stats are, it makes the most sense to say, in theory, a well developed, internally consistent world has rolled stats, and those will not be pure 10s. It's also generally more reasonable to say those with int 18 became wizards or something, while those with strength 18 (one in 36 people will have an 18 in strength, one in 36 will have 18 in int etc) become fighters.


It's also reasonable to say that in an army where you haven't trained them from birth your recruits are going to have a mix of stats.

I'm not trying to say every single person ever has all 10s. I'm saying that you're going to wind up with some 16s, some 8s, and everything in between. The average will wind up being about 10, but that means you can't train them to be identical because they have mixed prerequisites for feats, and you're going to have inconsistency with their performance.

And even if you got the ideal army that worked exactly the way you want it to, the likelihood of another world having the exact same army is unlikely, unless of course you're simply deciding the stats of your army based off of what you want it to have in it.

[Yukitsu]

How's that work? If we both take two hits to hit each other then the first person to hit the other person twice wins.

Except they don't. Unless it's double toughness vs. skill focus: underwater basket weaving, the greatweapon causes a 1 hit kill at any value above strength 11. At the very worst, you both took double toughness, and GS guy takes two swings, but hand weapon guy takes 3.


It's also reasonable to say that in an army where you haven't trained them from birth your recruits are going to have a mix of stats.

That's not how this works, you find the guys that are strong and give them swords. You don't make them strong so you can give them swords, that would be inane.


I'm not trying to say every single person ever has all 10s. I'm saying that you're going to wind up with some 16s, some 8s, and everything in between. The average will wind up being about 10, but that means you can't train them to be identical because they have mixed prerequisites for feats, and you're going to have inconsistency with their performance.

8 strength guy isn't going to join the army.


And even if you got the ideal army that worked exactly the way you want it to, the likelihood of another world having the exact same army is unlikely, unless of course you're simply deciding the stats of your army based off of what you want it to have in it.

No, but they will be similar. Population's most physically fit end up the elite warriors, trickle down etc. etc.

[Typewriter]

Except they don't. Unless it's double toughness vs. skill focus: underwater basket weaving, the greatweapon causes a 1 hit kill at any value above strength 11. At the very worst, you both took double toughness, and GS guy takes two swings, but hand weapon guy takes 3.


And if your army is exactly who you want, and you're fighting who you want you'll get the results you want every time.



That's not how this works, you find the guys that are strong and give them swords. You don't make them strong so you can give them swords, that would be inane.


You try to. Doesn't always work that way.



8 strength guy isn't going to join the army.


Because having 8 STR means he just doesn't want to join the army? Stats dictate personality? Or is it because the army won't take him? What's the DC for the strength test you use at recruiting?



No, but they will be similar. Population's most physically fit end up the elite warriors, trickle down etc. etc.

If you always make them similar then that is completely true.




Unrelated:
I made an excel spreadsheet that calculates your average hit over all possible rolls, based off of the AC of your target, your to-hit, your average damage, and your critical multiplier, but right now it assumes that critical threat is only ever a natural 20. It takes all the potential confirmation rolls(average damage from non confirming rolls, average damage times crit multiplier on confirmations), combines them and averages them for the averaging of a natural 20. I'll get to fixing that momentarily. Some different results I'm getting are:

+2 to-hit, 7.5 average damage, vs. 12 AC will do an overall average damage of: 4.706

+2/7.5/14 is 3.54
+4/9.5/12 is 6.9
+3/9.5/10 is 7.45
+4/9.5/20 is 2.49
+2/4.5/10 is 3.29
+3/5.5/12 is 4.02

I can post the spreadsheet in a bit if you'd like so you can check out different things and/or check my math.

EDIT:
Corrections to my original numbers on the completed spreadsheet after factoring in criticals.
+2/7.5/12 is 4.5375
+2/7.5/14 is 3.7125
+4/9.5/12 is 6.79
+3/9.5/10 is 7.315
+4/9.5/20 is 2.61
+2/4.5/10 is 3.21
+3/5.5/12 is 3.63

[Typewriter]

The critical calculator appears to be working now.

I'm going to run a few feat builds against each other just to get some comparative data.
STR 13
CON 12
DEX 11
Power Attack
Toughness
Greataxe
AC 10
To hit +1(BAB 1, PA -1, STR 1)
Average Damage 9.5(6.5 weapon, 1 STR, 2 PA)
HP 8

VS.

STR 13
CON 11
DEX 12
Toughness
Weapon Focus(Longsword)
Heavy Wooden Shield
Longsword
AC 13
To hit +3(+1 Weapon Focus, +1 BAB, +1 STR)
Average Damage 5.5(4.5 weapon, 1 STR)
HP 7

Results show that with these feats against each other each the PA will do about 4.7025 points of damage on average as opposed by the 4.235 damage the shield user will do on average.

That's if the two fight each other though. Let's take a look at a standard monster:
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/orc.htm

Against the PA build he'll be dealing about 7.7625 damage on average, and the PA will be dealing around 4.7025 points of damage. If you round up(to the nearest whole number) PA takes him to 0 in one blow, but is at -1 now if he was attacked first. If you round down then whoever goes first will win the fight.

Against the shield user he'll be dealing about 6.21 damage on average, and the shield will be dealing around 3.3275. If you round down (to the nearest whole number) then the shield user is at 1 HP after one attack from the orc, and it still takes him two blows to down the orc. If the orc goes first then he'll lose, but if he goes first(and he has +1 initiative on the orc) he will win, and walk away with 1 HP.

If you round down the numbers across the board, then whoever goes first in the second round is going to be the winner. Both the PA user and the shield user are going to walk away with 1 HP if they go first, but the shield user has the +1 initiative so this fight is in his favor.


http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/goblin.htm

PA takes 2.205 damage per turn
PA deals 3.491 damage per turn
Shield takes 1.653 damage per turn
Shield deals 2.598 damage per turn

It'll take both builds 2 rounds of 'average' damage to kill a goblin, and in this scenario the shield user actually is in a worse position. His average damage only takes the goblin down to 0 HP after two turns, which means the goblin gets to attack the shield user a third time (which will knock him out). So the PA user has only taken 4.41 damage, and the shield user has taken around 4.8



Who cares. When it gets right down to it you're comparing fractional numbers over a prolonged period of time. A single point of AC or to-hit or damage could make a world of difference at this point. Hell, I switch you to a greataxe, and I have another 30 gold to buy armor with to catch up to you. 3 AC is going to flip these numbers upside down.

And those were two common monsters I compared the builds to. In one of them I would favor the shield user, and in another the PA user. Both by just a fraction over the other.

But you're saying that every single world is going to come up with identical builds and strategies? When they're literally fractions away from each other?

[Yukitsu]

And if your army is exactly who you want, and you're fighting who you want you'll get the results you want every time.

Right, so one guy gets exactly the feats he wants, but not the other guy. The literally only combination where this favours sword and boarder is he takes double toughness, and the other guy takes 2 feats unrelated to combat, or significantly weaker.


You try to. Doesn't always work that way.

It is for everyone above cat fodder.


Because having 8 STR means he just doesn't want to join the army? Stats dictate personality? Or is it because the army won't take him? What's the DC for the strength test you use at recruiting?

In general, it's "can you go 4 hours at a hustle with this 120 pound backpack". That aside, strength 8 is so weak, he'd die in training.


If you always make them similar then that is completely true.

When it comes to war, cultures are always more similar than they are different. Strength, stamina, training are all key aspects of a warrior, no matter what kind of inane logic you try to conjure to state otherwise. Even after we abandoned physical, melee based weaponry that relies on strength, recruits are above average in physical fitness.


Unrelated:
I made an excel spreadsheet that calculates your average hit over all possible rolls, based off of the AC of your target, your to-hit, your average damage, and your critical multiplier, but right now it assumes that critical threat is only ever a natural 20. It takes all the potential confirmation rolls(average damage from non confirming rolls, average damage times crit multiplier on confirmations), combines them and averages them for the averaging of a natural 20. I'll get to fixing that momentarily. Some different results I'm getting are:

+2 to-hit, 7.5 average damage, vs. 12 AC will do an overall average damage of: 4.706

+2/7.5/14 is 3.54
+4/9.5/12 is 6.9
+3/9.5/10 is 7.45
+4/9.5/20 is 2.49
+2/4.5/10 is 3.29
+3/5.5/12 is 4.02

I can post the spreadsheet in a bit if you'd like so you can check out different things and/or check my math.

I disagree with Jaya's assumption that accuracy comes from damage per round. All that matters is how many dudes are coming off the table round per round in my opinion.

[Typewriter]

Right, so one guy gets exactly the feats he wants, but not the other guy. The literally only combination where this favours sword and boarder is he takes double toughness, and the other guy takes 2 feats unrelated to combat, or significantly weaker.




It is for everyone above cat fodder.


Ah, I didn't realize we were using 'because the DM said so" as an argument.



In general, it's "can you go 4 hours at a hustle with this 120 pound backpack". That aside, strength 8 is so weak, he'd die in training.


Why is he carrying 120 pounds around on his back? In training? Just to kill off those weak enough to join.

So not only do you already have an excessively high level of warriors, you also kill off all the ones who you don't like the stats of. You got like a 40% warrior population going on?



When it comes to war, cultures are always more similar than they are different. Strength, stamina, training are all key aspects of a warrior, no matter what kind of inane logic you try to conjure to state otherwise. Even after we abandoned physical, melee based weaponry that relies on strength, recruits are above average in physical fitness.


You say this as someone who has grown up in a world without magic or fantasy races. And you're saying they'd all wind up the same. I disagree. Completely and totally.



I disagree with Jaya's assumption that accuracy comes from damage per round. All that matters is how many dudes are coming off the table round per round in my opinion.

If you miss in combat you're not taking anyone off the board, or even moving them closer to being removed from the board. Hitting more often, and surviving longer can help you out. Obviously you do care about accuracy to a certain degree otherwise you'd have people out there using oversized weapons just for bigger numbers.

If you're average damage is enough to remove people in one round, then you are doing good. If it's not, and both you and your opponent need 2 hits of average damage to down each other, the person who goes first is going to be in the better situation.

[Yukitsu]

Ah, I didn't realize we were using 'because the DM said so" as an argument.

I'm not. I'm saying you're giving one side certain things, but not the other.


Why is he carrying 120 pounds around on his back? In training? Just to kill off those weak enough to join.

I unno, ask the army. In modern days, I'd assume it has something to do with the 900 bullets they keep on them during combat, and in ancient times, the food and water required to not die.


So not only do you already have an excessively high level of warriors, you also kill off all the ones who you don't like the stats of. You got like a 40% warrior population going on?

No, standard village numbers, assisted by PC classes, higher level commoners and cannon fodder.


You say this as someone who has grown up in a world without magic or fantasy races. And you're saying they'd all wind up the same. I disagree. Completely and totally.

Sure, because the inclusion of magic restricted to less than a percent of the population suddenly makes the better weapons weaker. Doubly so when magic ignores shields.


If you miss in combat you're not taking anyone off the board, or even moving them closer to being removed from the board. Hitting more often, and surviving longer can help you out. Obviously you do care about accuracy to a certain degree otherwise you'd have people out there using oversized weapons just for bigger numbers.

Right, however the side that one shots people with a 20% hit rate, is doing better than the guys who hit 30% of the time, but require 2 hits, especially since of the 30% who got hit the first time, only 30% will get hit that second time and die. That means, 10% of the sword and board enemies die over 2 turns (discounting their casualties) while the two handers kill off 40% over 2 turns, (again, discounting their own casualties. Discounting casualties, as this changes based on what each side is facing.)


If you're average damage is enough to remove people in one round, then you are doing good. If it's not, and both you and your opponent need 2 hits of average damage to down each other, the person who goes first is going to be in the better situation.

I don't get why you think the sword shield combination has a particular initiative advantage. In war distances, it's both sides charging eachother at the same time as readied actions, or one side charging into the defense of the other, they don't start with a surprise round to charge in and get an advantage.

[Coidzor]

120 pounds is greater than the heavy load of any medium-sized humanoid with less than 12 strength. (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/carryingCapacity.htm)

[absolmorph]

Do the rules of optimization and RAW determine your actual playstyle?
Short answer: Yes.

Long answer: Yes. They help me find ways to do things that don't place the focus of the game on myself because of my combat ability. I'm the de facto party face in one campaign simply because I'm the most comfortable with the role; the fact that I'm a paladin just makes it more logical in-character.
None of my characters have been incredibly optimized. I made sure my sorcerer could do his favorite thing (hurling fire) well enough for it to be effective. I made sure my paladin is a big enough threat that his mark isn't the only thing that keeps enemies attacking him.
But I make sure that I note the contributions the other party members make; the cleric has kept me alive multiple times, the hunter has helped debuff enemies, etc. I don't say "you did this" but I do mention that it helps me, or I'll ask them to do it.
I use optimization to help the other players be more effective (for example, the campaign I play in most has 3 PCs, so we need to be tougher to take on an equal challenge), but I avoid making a character who can do everything, and there's no chance a character I might make who could do everything would do it all.

EDIT: Also, I've actually become a better roleplayer since I started optimizing.

[Typewriter]

I'm not. I'm saying you're giving one side certain things, but not the other.


You're saying you're deciding cetain things based off of what you want, and ignoring any potential arguments to the contrary on account of it's not what you want = DM Fiat



I unno, ask the army. In modern days, I'd assume it has something to do with the 900 bullets they keep on them during combat, and in ancient times, the food and water required to not die.

The modern day military doesn't care about anything nearly as much as run speed. They're finally starting to focus a small amount more towards strength, but it's still not nearly as important. In D&D stats I'm probably at about a 10 on STR, and an 8 on CON, and I spent 6 years in the military with no problem until my last year in when my knee gave out.

And carrying 120 pounds probably isn't necessary since there are likely carts carrying suppplies, and/or magical replacements(low level clerics for water, a single spoon (the one that creates food, can't remember the name) for every 50 or so troops.



No, standard village numbers, assisted by PC classes, higher level commoners and cannon fodder.

About 5% of each location are warriors, and you're treating them like you have an infinite supply to pick and choose your builds/stats from. Every one you kill in training adds more to your population of warriors and, statistically, increases your population.

[QUOTE=Yukitsu;10391932]
Sure, because the inclusion of magic restricted to less than a percent of the population suddenly makes the better weapons weaker. Doubly so when magic ignores shields.


You're arguing mechanics, I'm arguing evolution. The fact of the matter is that D&D worlds are alien to us, and there's no way to know how they would turn out because of the inclusion of magic and the like. We can theorize as much as we want, but if you think it's just going to wind up the same, I disagree.



Right, however the side that one shots people with a 20% hit rate, is doing better than the guys who hit 30% of the time, but require 2 hits, especially since of the 30% who got hit the first time, only 30% will get hit that second time and die. That means, 10% of the sword and board enemies die over 2 turns (discounting their casualties) while the two handers kill off 40% over 2 turns, (again, discounting their own casualties. Discounting casualties, as this changes based on what each side is facing.)


If your minimum damage is enough to take them down in one hit, then yes. However, if you only hit 40% of the time, and half your potential rolls kill in one shot, then you've removed 20% of your opponents troops. If I hit 60% of the time, and only 1/3 of my rolls kill in one shot I've removed 20% of your troops. And I have the higher initiative, so my troops go again.

Your ignoring the fact that any damage > enemy HP is completely worthless.



I don't get why you think the sword shield combination has a particular initiative advantage. In war distances, it's both sides charging eachother at the same time as readied actions, or one side charging into the defense of the other, they don't start with a surprise round to charge in and get an advantage.

So you charge at each other and get to hit each other once. On average you each kill about 20% of the other peoples guys (see above). Now its a new turn, my guys have +1 initiative which means that, on average, they'll go first.

Don't forget that D&D mechanics that somebody is going to get their attack off first, regardless of what real life strategy says.

After dealing with archers and the like you have 100 troops on either side who get into melee range. Who attacks first? Higher initiative!

My 100 attack and kill 20(20%) of your guys, and wound another 40(20%). You go now and you only have 80 guys, so you down 16(20% of your remaining force) and wound another 16(20% of your remaining forces). New turn comes around and our numbers are at 84, yours are at 80. My troops attack again, and remove 16(20%) and finish off most of the 40 they wounded last round. Now its your turn, but your down to around 40 troops, and your getting diminishing returns. Even if all 40 of your troops finish off an opponent your still going to have 40 left, and it's not that likely that every troop of yours will even hit.

Initiative matters. AC matters. HP matters. A single stat point in a different direction matters. Flatlining all these numbers across the board to suit a specific argument makes no sense because those numbers are not going to be universally flatlined. Sometimes the advantage will go to the heavies, sometimes they'll go to the shields. It depends on the stats, initiatives, etc. that you give your opposing forces.

[Typewriter]

So you charge at each other and get to hit each other once. On average you each kill about 20% of the other peoples guys (see above). Now its a new turn, my guys have +1 initiative which means that, on average, they'll go first.

Don't forget that D&D mechanics that somebody is going to get their attack off first, regardless of what real life strategy says.

After dealing with archers and the like you have 100 troops on either side who get into melee range. Who attacks first? Higher initiative!

My 100 attack and kill 20(20%) of your guys, and wound another 40(20%). You go now and you only have 80 guys, so you down 16(20% of your remaining force) and wound another 16(20% of your remaining forces). New turn comes around and our numbers are at 84, yours are at 80. My troops attack again, and remove 16(20%) and finish off most of the 40 they wounded last round. Now its your turn, but your down to around 40 troops, and your getting diminishing returns. Even if all 40 of your troops finish off an opponent your still going to have 40 left, and it's not that likely that every troop of yours will even hit.

Initiative matters. AC matters. HP matters. A single stat point in a different direction matters. Flatlining all these numbers across the board to suit a specific argument makes no sense because those numbers are not going to be universally flatlined. Sometimes the advantage will go to the heavies, sometimes they'll go to the shields. It depends on the stats, initiatives, etc. that you give your opposing forces.

I thought about it some more and the above numbers aren't 100% accurate, so if you want to redo them that's fine, but honestly I don't even care anymore.

This argument goes back to what I originally said you'd have to do and pit one vs. the other with no other interferance. Start to imply any strategy at all and your results are going to change again.

Assume both sides have been under heavy archer fire? My troops have taken less thanks to the higher AC, each of your troops that took average damage from an arrow is likely going to fall against one hit from my troops. Each of my troops that took an arrow is also likely to fall, but keep in mind - you're hitting me less often.

Add spearwielders behind each of our troops and between the two of them average damage is enough to take out each others troops in one turn. So now a combination of my two troops (shield+spear) is going to kill in one turn, and they have a focus on accuracy so they're succeeding more often. Your combination of troops is also killing in one turn, but you're hitting less often, so you're killing fewer.

[jseah]

Typewriter; Yukitsu:
I get the feeling you're talking past each other.

you said:
"About 5% of each location are warriors"

He's saying that those 5% are not picked randomly from the pool of people. Those 5% are the 5% with the feat and stats most suited to be a warrior chosen out of the population.

[mykelyk]

The reason two hand lose against shield at low level is wasted damage.

There is no difference between 6 or 9 damage if the enemy has 5 hp.

So if THF do 35% more damage than S&B but the extra damage matters only less than 10% of the times the S&B is gonna win.

In fact the more hp the enemy has the better THF get.

[Typewriter]

Typewriter; Yukitsu:
I get the feeling you're talking past each other.

you said:
"About 5% of each location are warriors"

He's saying that those 5% are not picked randomly from the pool of people. Those 5% are the 5% with the feat and stats most suited to be a warrior chosen out of the population.

Yeah, I kind of thought that might be what he's saying, but (unless you've been training your army from birth) there's no way to control that aside from DM fiat. Farmers are going to have a higher average STR than the average guy looking to join. Simply deciding the 5% of warriors all have the stats you want is convenient for the argument at hand.


The reason two hand lose against shield at low level is wasted damage.

There is no difference between 6 or 9 damage if the enemy has 5 hp.

So if THF do 35% more damage than S&B but the extra damage matters only less than 10% of the times the S&B is gonna win.

In fact the more hp the enemy has the better THF get.

Read the thread?

It doesn't matter if you do 6 or 9 if the enemy has 5 HP. Yes. That is true. If you use a shield and deal 6 you've won the fight and are less likely to have been hit. If you do 9 damage youv'e really killed him but you're more likely to get hit.

[jseah]

Let's see, assume that the army is a bunch of men-at-arms?
Not a professional army, and not quite random conscripts.

There was a forum post somewhere in the internet about the breakdown of a TL3 (in GURPS) kingdom with semi-realistic and believable numbers. One important number was how many men-at-arms a landed knight was expected to provide his liege. I think it was presented something like: "X men for 4-6 months each year"
I can provide the link once I'm back onto windows, I can't access it from this Linux install.
They're not quite a standing army, but at the same time, not completely untrained.

Thus, there will be SOME selection for military-oriented stats and feats, but not to the extent that soldiers are carbon copies of each other.
At the same time, you cannot say it's totally random (like from a peasant levy). Those men-at-arms that the knight picked in that year are likely to be picked again the next year if they did well. Those that kept being tired (not enough Con) or couldn't lift a sword and armour properly (not enough Str) would have replacements looked at.

I think it would be safe to say that anyone under 10 str or 10 con would be asked to not come back.

[mykelyk]

It doesn't matter if you do 6 or 9 if the enemy has 5 HP. Yes. That is true. If you use a shield and deal 6 you've won the fight and are less likely to have been hit. If you do 9 damage youv'e really killed him but you're more likely to get hit.

Yes I was ninjed because I wrote a program that compute the chance.
In particular using:
str: 3d6 reroll if less than 10
dex: 3d6
con: 3d6 reroll if less than 10
hp: 1d8 + con
hide armor (+3)
bab = 1
no feats.

Using 20 autohit, using the correct critical range and multiplier for each weapon, rolling initiative for the first to play:
longsword+heavy shield vs great axe
518414 vs 481586 over 1000000 battle.

So S&B wins against THF 52% of the time.
Surprising balanced isn't it?

[Typewriter]

Let's see, assume that the army is a bunch of men-at-arms?
Not a professional army, and not quite random conscripts.

There was a forum post somewhere in the internet about the breakdown of a TL3 (in GURPS) kingdom with semi-realistic and believable numbers. One important number was how many men-at-arms a landed knight was expected to provide his liege. I think it was presented something like: "X men for 4-6 months each year"
I can provide the link once I'm back onto windows, I can't access it from this Linux install.
They're not quite a standing army, but at the same time, not completely untrained.

Thus, there will be SOME selection for military-oriented stats and feats, but not to the extent that soldiers are carbon copies of each other.
At the same time, you cannot say it's totally random (like from a peasant levy). Those men-at-arms that the knight picked in that year are likely to be picked again the next year if they did well. Those that kept being tired (not enough Con) or couldn't lift a sword and armour properly (not enough Str) would have replacements looked at.

I think it would be safe to say that anyone under 10 str or 10 con would be asked to not come back.

And I don't necessarily disagree with that, but the conversation wanders back and forth between RAW and opinion. If you're arguing RAW I'm going to argue over stats.

I already said what I do when I build armies (everyone has all 10s, but specific units have 12s depending on what their job is). And if you're assuming your fiding troops whose STR averages out higher, what stat is taking the hit? Are you trying to do advanced tactics with people with reduced INT? Or is it even more ideal, this guy has 18 STR, but only 3 CHA.

It makes much more sense for a DM to simply build his army based off what he thinks makes sense in a given situation than to try and match the stats to world building rules to pre-built worlds to real life scenarios.


Yes I was ninjed because I wrote a program that compute the chance.
In particular using:
str: 3d6 reroll if less than 10
dex: 3d6
con: 3d6 reroll if less than 10
hp: 1d8 + con
hide armor (+3)
bab = 1
no feats.

Using 20 autohit, using the correct critical range and multiplier for each weapon, rolling initiative for the first to play:
longsword+heavy shield vs great axe
518414 vs 481586 over 1000000 battle.

So S&B wins against THF 52% of the time.
Surprising balanced isn't it?

I'm actually finding some things are slightly more balanced than I had realized, and it's pretty surprising. For example, if you assume identical builds against identical ACs your average damage does not change between a greatsword and a greataxe. Not one fraction.

EDIT:
More than anything the closer and closer I see these numbers appearing the less and less likely I am to believe that everyone would universally select one over another. Obviously different scenarios will lead to different decisions, but the numbers are so close that a single good roll anywhere could completely change the outcome.

EDIT EDIT:
Slightly incorrect what I said about the greatsword/greataxe thing. I was assuming the same average damage, and getting the same numbers. Since greataxe has .5 fewer average damage (6.5 greataxe, 7 greatsword) the numbers would have been slightly different, in favor of the greatsword.

[mykelyk]

I'm actually finding some things are slightly more balanced than I had realized, and it's pretty surprising. For example, if you assume identical builds against identical ACs your average damage does not change between a greatsword and a greataxe. Not one fraction.

EDIT:
More than anything the closer and closer I see these numbers appearing the less and less likely I am to believe that everyone would universally select one over another. Obviously different scenarios will lead to different decisions, but the numbers are so close that a single good roll anywhere could completely change the outcome.

I changed the weapon from the axe to the greatsword and the balance tipped.

One against one:
greataxe vs longsword+shield: 48% vs 52%
greatsword vs longsword+shield: 51% vs 49%

It seems that a range 2-12 is a lot better of 1-12, probably because a bad roll on the greataxe means one more round for the enemy.

[Typewriter]

I changed the weapon from the axe to the greatsword and the balance tipped.

One against one:
greataxe vs longsword+shield: 48% vs 52%
greatsword vs longsword+shield: 51% vs 49%

It seems that a range 2-12 is a lot better of 1-12, probably because a bad roll on the greataxe means one more round for the enemy.

Kind of makes sense. Greatswords are about 2.5 times as expensive as greataxes, meaning there should be a reason.

[Denomar]

To answer the original question. Yes and no. I optimize a character to a theme, not necessarily to the mechanics necessary to succeed in a game. It's one of the reasons that I like gestalt so much, because I can basically use one half of my chart for the flavor, and the other half for the meat to make the flavor better.

However, I'm currently in a Pathfinder group that's playing the Council of Thieves adventure path, we're level 3.
The party is:
A human noble cavalier who has dropped a bucket of money into his ac, so he's sitting at ac 24 with a 50% miss chance.
Another human noble Bard, he's a two weapon fighting swashbuckler type, with a lot of talking skills and a few useful spells, though he's mostly used healing and mindlink spells.

A mildly insane human frostmage, who only takes spells that are in some shape or form related to frost magics, and spends most of his time using ray of frost to constantly make a snowball that he nurtures and changes colors.

There's also a Half Elf Inquisitor, who does healing, lie detection and perception. He's optimized his perception check and regularly see's things that the rest of us never would. The guy who plays him is quiet and often outtalked by the stronger personalities at the table but he still is having fun.

Then there's me. I'm a Jotunbrud Human Dungeoncrasher Fighter. This is the Only time where I've gone full out in trying to optimize a character by the numbers. As a result, if I hit something, I'm regularly quadrupling the damage of any other member of the party. Because of this, I find myself spending more time just trying to do things that aren't combat related. Yes, I could totally smash that tiefling into a fine mist, but I'd much rather run straight through the wall. Because doing that is COOL.

[Jayabalard]

I disagree with Jaya's assumption that accuracy comes from damage per round. All that matters is how many dudes are coming off the table round per round in my opinion.Thats... not my assumption.
as to average damage per swing, and it's validity as a metric of effectiveness. I'm not convinced it's really meaningful; you're looking at a simple average of data that's already been averaged which is generally a bad method. It also discounts losses due to overkill, which is worse for the side that has the higher potential damage.

Really, the way to do this is to run some sort of simulation. For example
<snip example of a simulation that focuses on removing combatants from the table>



I changed the weapon from the axe to the greatsword and the balance tipped.

One against one:
greataxe vs longsword+shield: 48% vs 52%
greatsword vs longsword+shield: 51% vs 49%

It seems that a range 2-12 is a lot better of 1-12, probably because a bad roll on the greataxe means one more round for the enemy.That does not match up with the results I've gotten from simulating.

Speaking of simulation; I had 2 bugs in the initial runs.
1. I didn't allow 20 to auto hit, so at high ACs, the sword and board would have unhittable people.
2. I was multiplying strength bonus for 2 handers by 2 instead of 1.5

Those are fixed; I'm re-running to check

[Yukitsu]

Sorry about that, too many concurrent things going on in here.

[Yukitsu]

Yes I was ninjed because I wrote a program that compute the chance.
In particular using:
str: 3d6 reroll if less than 10
dex: 3d6
con: 3d6 reroll if less than 10
hp: 1d8 + con
hide armor (+3)
bab = 1
no feats.

Using 20 autohit, using the correct critical range and multiplier for each weapon, rolling initiative for the first to play:
longsword+heavy shield vs great axe
518414 vs 481586 over 1000000 battle.

So S&B wins against THF 52% of the time.
Surprising balanced isn't it?

The "no feats" thing is the big problem here. It's unreasonable to assume that warriors of either sort took things like skill focus as their feats.

Also, again, can I get a copy of your math used?

Lastly, do the roll 6 times, and put the three highest into the physical stats, dropping the ones that can't get a 10 in strength or con. Classes that require 1-2 high stats, and enjoy a third operate differently when you roll for 6 stats including 3 dump ones, as opposed to just rolling 3 stats.

[mykelyk]

The "no feats" thing is the big problem here. It's unreasonable to assume that warriors of either sort took things like skill focus as their feats.

Yes, I didn't use any feat because there is no consensus over which one each side should choose.


Also, again, can I get a copy of your math used?

If you want the code is in java here (http://pastebin.com/dm4LZHju).


Lastly, do the roll 6 times, and put the three highest into the physical stats, dropping the ones that can't get a 10 in strength or con. Classes that require 1-2 high stats, and enjoy a third operate differently when you roll for 6 stats including 3 dump ones, as opposed to just rolling 3 stats.

As I said I they don't have str >= 10 then I reroll, same thing for con.
I disagree to reorder the stats because the npc stats are 3d6 in order, I simply filter away the ones that aren't fit for the life of a soldier (str or con < 10).

[Jayabalard]

Re-ran the sim.

Assumptions

Army size = 100 (I shrank this for speed)
Team two hander: using 2d6 weapon
Team sword and board: +2 ac, 1d8 weapon.
Disregarding crits
Str/Dex/Con generated with 4d6dl; I don't throw out any low scores.
Max HP (8 + con)


Results

BaseAC: 10;Team Two-Hander wins: 62;Team Sword-And-Board wins: 38;
BaseAC: 11;Team Two-Hander wins: 60;Team Sword-And-Board wins: 40;
BaseAC: 12;Team Two-Hander wins: 48;Team Sword-And-Board wins: 52;
BaseAC: 13;Team Two-Hander wins: 44;Team Sword-And-Board wins: 56;
BaseAC: 14;Team Two-Hander wins: 34;Team Sword-And-Board wins: 66;
BaseAC: 15;Team Two-Hander wins: 32;Team Sword-And-Board wins: 68;
BaseAC: 16;Team Two-Hander wins: 31;Team Sword-And-Board wins: 69;
BaseAC: 17;Team Two-Hander wins: 25;Team Sword-And-Board wins: 75;
BaseAC: 18;Team Two-Hander wins: 26;Team Sword-And-Board wins: 74;


2nd Assumptions

Army size = 100
Team two hander: using 1d12 weapon
Team sword and board: +2 ac, 1d8 weapon.
Disregarding crits
Str/Dex/Con generated with 4d6dl; I don't throw out any low scores.
Max HP (8 + con)


Results

BaseAC: 10;Team Two-Hander wins: 65;Team Sword-And-Board wins: 35;
BaseAC: 11;Team Two-Hander wins: 68;Team Sword-And-Board wins: 32;
BaseAC: 12;Team Two-Hander wins: 52;Team Sword-And-Board wins: 48;
BaseAC: 13;Team Two-Hander wins: 53;Team Sword-And-Board wins: 47;
BaseAC: 14;Team Two-Hander wins: 35;Team Sword-And-Board wins: 65;
BaseAC: 15;Team Two-Hander wins: 33;Team Sword-And-Board wins: 67;
BaseAC: 16;Team Two-Hander wins: 27;Team Sword-And-Board wins: 73;
BaseAC: 17;Team Two-Hander wins: 32;Team Sword-And-Board wins: 68;
BaseAC: 18;Team Two-Hander wins: 19;Team Sword-And-Board wins: 81;



Long conference call = Additional set with new shiny crit support.

Army size = 100
Team two hander: using 2d6 weapon; crit threat on 19+; crit multiplier x2
Team sword and board: +2 ac, 1d8 weapon; crit threat on 19+; crit multiplier x2
Str/Dex/Con generated with 4d6dl; I don't throw out any low scores or re-arrange in any way.
Max HP (8 + con modifier)
BAB = 1

Results

BaseAC: 10;Team Two-Hander wins: 5530;Team Sword-And-Board wins: 4470
BaseAC: 11;Team Two-Hander wins: 5401;Team Sword-And-Board wins: 4599
BaseAC: 12;Team Two-Hander wins: 5259;Team Sword-And-Board wins: 4741
BaseAC: 13;Team Two-Hander wins: 4680;Team Sword-And-Board wins: 5320
BaseAC: 14;Team Two-Hander wins: 4063;Team Sword-And-Board wins: 5937
BaseAC: 15;Team Two-Hander wins: 3269;Team Sword-And-Board wins: 6731
BaseAC: 16;Team Two-Hander wins: 2476;Team Sword-And-Board wins: 7524
BaseAC: 17;Team Two-Hander wins: 1874;Team Sword-And-Board wins: 8126
BaseAC: 18;Team Two-Hander wins: 1293;Team Sword-And-Board wins: 8707

[Yukitsu]

Yes, I didn't use any feat because there is no consensus over which one each side should choose.

It's not so much that as there's no clear concensus as to how the feats are generated for NPCs. I'm a proponent of versimilitude, hence combatants have combat feats. Others seems to be proponents of near random generation indicative of "free will" of the agents making non-beneficial decisions. People who will be stuck at NPC level 1 for their entire lives, fighting wars will probably get toughness for instance, since it dramatically decreases the odds of any weapon, one or two handed from killing them in one hit. After that it's an issue of weapon and character statistics.


If you want the code is in java here (http://pastebin.com/dm4LZHju).

Thanks, I'll comb over that.


As I said I they don't have str >= 10 then I reroll, same thing for con.
I disagree to reorder the stats because the npc stats are 3d6 in order, I simply filter away the ones that aren't fit for the life of a soldier (str or con < 10).

For the versimilitude reason above, I don't really like that method. I'd rather go in the opposite direction of generating a full town's worth of stats, and then cluster them into the occupations rolled based on the stats, with some lower level individuals being in the obviously incorrect occupation. It's unreasonable to demand that you roll 20 stat sets for every 1 soldier, and pick the most soldiery, but I think you can tentatively admit that at the very extreme, 3d6, eschew <10 is unrealistically low.

[Jayabalard]

It's not so much that as there's no clear concensus as to how the feats are generated for NPCs. I'm a proponent of versimilitude, hence combatants have combat feats. Others seems to be proponents of near random generation indicative of "free will" of the agents making non-beneficial decisions. People who will be stuck at NPC level 1 for their entire lives, fighting wars will probably get toughness for instance, since it dramatically decreases the odds of any weapon, one or two handed from killing them in one hit. After that it's an issue of weapon and character statistics.My assumption is that they probably have feats that aren't useful in this particular conflict; for example: team two hander probably has power attack as it's most common feat (anyone who qualifies for it probably took it), but since we're looking at level 1 armies, it's a very poor tactic to power attack, since it means more overkill %, and lower accuracy. I think this almost universally hurts the sword and board team more than the 2 handers team (since sword and board doesn't have as clear cut of a "this is the feat you probably should choose" situation), so I think it's reasonable.

Also... the more you worry about feat selection, the muddier the waters on the 2 hander vs sword and board gets; you also lose realism in some ways, because certain feats mean they should really be using more complicated tactics (which we're almost totally ignoring at the moment for simplicity elsewhere). I think, in the end, it's really best to just keep it simpler, even though that's less realistic in some ways.


For the versimilitude reason above, I don't really like that method. I'd rather go in the opposite direction of generating a full town's worth of stats, and then cluster them into the occupations rolled based on the stats, with some lower level individuals being in the obviously incorrect occupation. It's unreasonable to demand that you roll 20 stat sets for every 1 soldier, and pick the most soldiery, but I think you can tentatively admit that at the very extreme, 3d6, eschew <10 is unrealistically low.Do you have the same sort of objection with 4d6dl?

[Jayabalard]

Results

BaseAC: 10;Team Two-Hander wins: 5530;Team Sword-And-Board wins: 4470
BaseAC: 11;Team Two-Hander wins: 5401;Team Sword-And-Board wins: 4599
BaseAC: 12;Team Two-Hander wins: 5259;Team Sword-And-Board wins: 4741
BaseAC: 13;Team Two-Hander wins: 4680;Team Sword-And-Board wins: 5320
BaseAC: 14;Team Two-Hander wins: 4063;Team Sword-And-Board wins: 5937
BaseAC: 15;Team Two-Hander wins: 3269;Team Sword-And-Board wins: 6731
BaseAC: 16;Team Two-Hander wins: 2476;Team Sword-And-Board wins: 7524
BaseAC: 17;Team Two-Hander wins: 1874;Team Sword-And-Board wins: 8126
BaseAC: 18;Team Two-Hander wins: 1293;Team Sword-And-Board wins: 8707

So, some thoughts on this:

Team two hander does better but doesn't dominate at low AC; they one shot kill people often enough to reduce the other side's numbers quickly.
Team sword and board pulls ahead around AC 13. At that point, the two handers miss often enough to give the shield users an edge.
At around ac 17, team sword 'n' board starts hitting diminishing returns on their shield; at this point the shield only helps low dex members, since the high dex members are only being hit on a 20 without the shield.

[Darth Stabber]

Leaders will get increasingly better stats all the way up the rank structure.


The Authority = buttkicking trope annoys me. Sergeants should be higher lvled and/or better stats, but officers start out as officers. They are the young nobles (or well conected mechant class), out at their first job, and should not be that much stronger than troops (better equipment and maybe CHA).

[Typewriter]

The Authority = buttkicking trope annoys me. Sergeants should be higher lvled and/or better stats, but officers start out as officers. They are the young nobles (or well conected mechant class), out at their first job, and should not be that much stronger than troops (better equipment and maybe CHA).

I don't necessarily mean more STR = more authority. The leader of the fighters might have 12 STR and 12 INT, and his leader might have 12 STR/INT/CHA, etc. etc.

And that depends on the army/culture. Leaders in barbarian tribes, or cultures that value STR above all else, will simply have higher STR. Sure you might have a smarter barbarian that could do a better job leading, if he can't win against the current chief it's just going to happen.

As for nobles and the like I agree with that to a certain degree but, again, it depends on the culture. And a culture that favors blood over skill might be in an even worse position. You could wind up with some nobility with 8s across the board leading because of who his father is, and his troops are going to do even worse.

That being said, keep in mind that I said this is what I was doing, which means it doesn't follow RAW at all.

[Tyndmyr]

At level 1, ranged is still pretty relevant, btw.

Consider your elvish warrior, with a lovely +4 to hit(weapon focus, +2 from dex in non-elite array, and bab) with his longbow. At 1d8 a pop, a single crit is a kill, and a coupla hits is also a kill. With a shoot/move back pattern, you can get off a fairly good number of shots before the melee team closes with you. It only gets worse if there's difficult terrain, obstacles, etc. Even against sword and board, he's pretty favored to get a kill before the melee guy has a real chance to even the odds.

Even then, there's the issue of ranged folks taking a five foot step back and blasting them. If there's room to maneuver, ranged is killer.

[Yukitsu]

My assumption is that they probably have feats that aren't useful in this particular conflict; for example: team two hander probably has power attack as it's most common feat (anyone who qualifies for it probably took it), but since we're looking at level 1 armies, it's a very poor tactic to power attack, since it means more overkill %, and lower accuracy. I think this almost universally hurts the sword and board team more than the 2 handers team (since sword and board doesn't have as clear cut of a "this is the feat you probably should choose" situation), so I think it's reasonable.

Statistical overkill is fine so long as it is also increasing your chance of a guaranteed second round kill, or a first round kill by a margin overcoming the 5% reduction in accuracy. IIRC, a 2 point damage increase does increase their 1 round kill rate by a margin greater than a 5% reduction in accuracy.


Also... the more you worry about feat selection, the muddier the waters on the 2 hander vs sword and board gets; you also lose realism in some ways, because certain feats mean they should really be using more complicated tactics (which we're almost totally ignoring at the moment for simplicity elsewhere). I think, in the end, it's really best to just keep it simpler, even though that's less realistic in some ways.

If you reduce it down to the absolute simplest forms maybe, but then it's no longer really a question of "in world optimization" as it is, "is this item combination in isolation of the rest of the world better than this one?" which is, in my opinion a different question. I find the more inclusive things are, the better great weapons become in contrast to shields, while shields are fine on strength 10, con 10 level 1 commoners poking at one another, but honestly that's not the context of what you're optimizing in an army. Cannon fodder doesn't require much thought or optimization, they're just there to get in the way.


Do you have the same sort of objection with 4d6dl?

Less so, since it averages higher, but you're still going to get that 1 per army guy with a 3 in strength, which honestly makes no sense to me.

[Typewriter]

At level 1, ranged is still pretty relevant, btw.

Consider your elvish warrior, with a lovely +4 to hit(weapon focus, +2 from dex in non-elite array, and bab) with his longbow. At 1d8 a pop, a single crit is a kill, and a coupla hits is also a kill. With a shoot/move back pattern, you can get off a fairly good number of shots before the melee team closes with you. It only gets worse if there's difficult terrain, obstacles, etc. Even against sword and board, he's pretty favored to get a kill before the melee guy has a real chance to even the odds.

Even then, there's the issue of ranged folks taking a five foot step back and blasting them. If there's room to maneuver, ranged is killer.

I would agree. Ranged attacks at this level are fully capable of stomping on low leveled characters.

I've recently purchased around 500 dollars worth of heroscape tiles, and my group has been finding itself in combats where terrain becomes a serious issue. Archers on hills that are considered rough terrain to advance up or down suck at low levels.

I just bought them all a few months ago, and other people have been taking turns DMing(about once every 2 years we spend a few months with other people taking over so I can play) so I haven't gotten much of a chance yet, but I'm looking forward to it.

I'm going to try and write a campaign journal that will include pictures of the set up of encounters and things like that, so it should be a bit of fun :P

[NichG]

Statistical overkill is fine so long as it is also increasing your chance of a guaranteed second round kill, or a first round kill by a margin overcoming the 5% reduction in accuracy. IIRC, a 2 point damage increase does increase their 1 round kill rate by a margin greater than a 5% reduction in accuracy.


We've proven that the actual optimum loadout is very sensitive to a lot of factors like base AC, a few points in Strength or Dex, etc. I don't think its clear that Power Attack will always be good or bad at these levels.



If you reduce it down to the absolute simplest forms maybe, but then it's no longer really a question of "in world optimization" as it is, "is this item combination in isolation of the rest of the world better than this one?" which is, in my opinion a different question. I find the more inclusive things are, the better great weapons become in contrast to shields, while shields are fine on strength 10, con 10 level 1 commoners poking at one another, but honestly that's not the context of what you're optimizing in an army. Cannon fodder doesn't require much thought or optimization, they're just there to get in the way.


The thing is, armies are not made of PCs. It may be (and seems to be) that the intuition developed building characters intended to play at level 5, level 10, etc does not apply at level 1. This is ironic given that the discussion began with people arguing that those whose lives depend on it would know what the optimum loadouts are, when their own intuition gives what the numbers suggest are the strongly sub-optimal loadouts in this situation.

Given this thread, I'd say that people in a D&D world may be better optimizers than all of us at low level (where they have a lot more data on army-vs-army encounters, training, etc), but much much worse than us at high level (where there's only 20 people in the world who ever got there, and they each have very unique circumstances and options available).



Less so, since it averages higher, but you're still going to get that 1 per army guy with a 3 in strength, which honestly makes no sense to me.

He'd have a 0.1% affect on the results though, so this shouldn't matter.

[Tyndmyr]

Yeah, the guy with a 3 str is atypical...and almost certainly wouldn't be on the field of battle, but he's a footnote, and statistically irrelevant.

Now, people with 6, 7 str are still fairly unlikely choices for melee combatants, but they're a bit more common. At some point, you have to make a decision about the acceptable floor for stats for someone to be in the military.

Assuming a 10 is average, and going by the historical guideline of about 1 combatant out of every 10 people, I would assume that any combatant is going to have 10 or higher in all his primary stats. After all, you send out the capable folks, not the cripples.

Now granted, you might not care what the strength is on a crossbow user, or the dex on a sword and board user, but you'll at least select for average or better in what it is they are supposed to do.

Presumably with a normal distribution of stats, you'll get certain people that are more apt for certain roles as well. This would tend to promote a diversified army. Perhaps it won't answer sword and board vs two hander, but it certainly explains why an army isn't all archery or all melee. Even among the elves, you'll get the odd low dex, high str type who ends up better off with something stabby.

[Typewriter]

Yeah, the guy with a 3 str is atypical...and almost certainly wouldn't be on the field of battle, but he's a footnote, and statistically irrelevant.

Now, people with 6, 7 str are still fairly unlikely choices for melee combatants, but they're a bit more common. At some point, you have to make a decision about the acceptable floor for stats for someone to be in the military.

Assuming a 10 is average, and going by the historical guideline of about 1 combatant out of every 10 people, I would assume that any combatant is going to have 10 or higher in all his primary stats. After all, you send out the capable folks, not the cripples.

Now granted, you might not care what the strength is on a crossbow user, or the dex on a sword and board user, but you'll at least select for average or better in what it is they are supposed to do.

Presumably with a normal distribution of stats, you'll get certain people that are more apt for certain roles as well. This would tend to promote a diversified army. Perhaps it won't answer sword and board vs two hander, but it certainly explains why an army isn't all archery or all melee. Even among the elves, you'll get the odd low dex, high str type who ends up better off with something stabby.

I agree with this concept, but disagree that, even if you sort out the higher STR people into squad "Stab", they'll all have the same stats and be able to master the same feats. I'm OK with the idea of each person having one feat(racial feat) that reflects their life(Skill focus: Profession-Farmer) and another feat that they get from being trained for in the army(level 1 feat).

And if you try to train them all in the same feat, and some only have STR 12? Do they get another feat to reflect their life like Skill Focus: Profession - Soldier or are you giving them something equally advantageous that they haven't actually been trained in?

Regardless of what you choose your winding up with an army of mixmatched abilities, not identical ones.

The only thing that is fair, by RAW, would be to give everyone 10s across the board.

[Tyndmyr]

I agree with this concept, but disagree that, even if you sort out the higher STR people into squad "Stab", they'll all have the same stats and be able to master the same feats. I'm OK with the idea of each person having one feat(racial feat) that reflects their life(Skill focus: Profession-Farmer) and another feat that they get from being trained for in the army(level 1 feat).

Most likely not identical stats, no. It's more of a "people that have stats sorta like this end up doing these jobs".

Training will likely end up at least somewhat standardized. Historical soldiers typically didn't get much in the way of individualized training...lots and lots of mass drilling. Your higher level folks probably would, nobility and what not, but the bog standard folks that make up the rank and file would be unlikely to be treated as unique.

Being unable to master basic skills probably just meant you were gonna die a lot faster.

[Jayabalard]

Statistical overkill is fine so long as it is also increasing your chance of a guaranteed second round kill, or a first round kill by a margin overcoming the 5% reduction in accuracy. No, it's not fine; it means that you're wasting damage, which reduces the value of having a higher damage potential.


IIRC, a 2 point damage increase does increase their 1 round kill rate by a margin greater than a 5% reduction in accuracy.The effect of accuracy is non-linear; so it really depends on what AC level you're talking about as to whether it's worth it. As AC increases, so does how much you lose by taking that -1 to hit... up until the point where you only hit on a 20... then the -1 to hit doesn't really hurt you anymore.

Example:

case 1: If you hit on a 5, then taking a -2 to hit means that you hit 87% as often as if you would if you didn't take that -2. You need to deal at least 114% as much damage to justify taking that -2.
case 2: If you hit on a 11, then taking a -2 to hit means that you hit 80% as often as if you would if you didn't take that -2. You need to deal at least 125% as much damage to justify taking that -2.
case 3: If you need a 17 to hit, then taking that same -2 means that you hit 50% as often as if you would if you didn't take that -2. Your damage increase for taking that -2 need to at least double your damage output for it to be worth it.



quick run about power attack


battles: 9000 (1000 at each AC from 10 to 18 inclusive)
Combattants per army in each battle: 100
attacks: 620636 (by team two hander)
overkills: 67244 (power attacking would have resulted in killing someone already dead)
underkills: 367 (power attacking would have resulted in killing someone who would have lived through that attack)
powermiss: 9991 (power attacking would have caused a missed attack that would have otherwise hit)
powercritmiss: 2931 (power attacking would have caused a missed confirming a crit)


From that run, just at Base AC = 10, which is where I'd expect power attack 1 to perform the best.

battles: 1000
attacks: 30579
overkills: 8512
underkills: 142
powermiss: 1032
powercritmiss: 0


So power attacking seems like an almost universally poor choice in these circumstances. You lose too much for almost no gain.


If you reduce it down to the absolute simplest forms maybe, but then it's no longer really a question of "in world optimization" as it is, "is this item combination in isolation of the rest of the world better than this one?" which is, in my opinion a different question. I find the more inclusive things are, the better great weapons become in contrast to shields, while shields are fine on strength 10, con 10 level 1 commoners poking at one another, but honestly that's not the context of what you're optimizing in an army. Cannon fodder doesn't require much thought or optimization, they're just there to get in the way.You might of missed it... but the piece that I was initially disagreeing with is the notion that "at no point is sword and board better than a big two hander." I think that I've thrown out enough numbers to show that to be false, but I'm still looking for what in specific makes one or the other the better choice.

The broader point is that simplicity gives you an idea of why one style is better than another (if it is). It helps narrow down the questions you need to be asking, and is useful for figuring out which cubbyholes you actually want to spend time looking at.

[NichG]

I agree with this concept, but disagree that, even if you sort out the higher STR people into squad "Stab", they'll all have the same stats and be able to master the same feats. I'm OK with the idea of each person having one feat(racial feat) that reflects their life(Skill focus: Profession-Farmer) and another feat that they get from being trained for in the army(level 1 feat).

And if you try to train them all in the same feat, and some only have STR 12? Do they get another feat to reflect their life like Skill Focus: Profession - Soldier or are you giving them something equally advantageous that they haven't actually been trained in?

Regardless of what you choose your winding up with an army of mixmatched abilities, not identical ones.

The only thing that is fair, by RAW, would be to give everyone 10s across the board.

I was going to go with a set of level 1 human warriors with both feats dedicated to their training and stats: one 14, one 12, four 8s, placement of the two good stats is part of the optimization routine. And maybe 300gp to spend each.

[Typewriter]

I was going to go with a set of level 1 human warriors with both feats dedicated to their training and stats: one 14, one 12, four 8s, placement of the two good stats is part of the optimization routine. And maybe 300gp to spend each.

That makes sense, but keep in mind, for ever 100 troops like that you have you have 100 who are the exact opposite... and 100 of every other potential variation.

Honestly I think using RAW examples of stats doesn't make any sense in how a world is going to evolve. That includes army size, stats, etc.

But I'm not the one who decided this conversation was about RAW, I just said that choosing RAW for one thing(army size and level) and not another(stats) is purposefully skewing numbers.

[Yukitsu]

We've proven that the actual optimum loadout is very sensitive to a lot of factors like base AC, a few points in Strength or Dex, etc. I don't think its clear that Power Attack will always be good or bad at these levels.

Assuming you aren't going with 5 HP warriors with no feats (I generally view toughness as optimal, since otherwise you're fairly likely to get one shot by a strength 10 guy with a bow) the difference between one shotting an individual leans more towards higher damage scaling.

I'm also starting to question why all these people can afford splint mail. The average wealth is 75 GP, and the max is 120 for a level 1 NPC warrior. Splint is 266% of their average wealth, and splint and a sword/shield combo is almost twice the maximum.


The thing is, armies are not made of PCs. It may be (and seems to be) that the intuition developed building characters intended to play at level 5, level 10, etc does not apply at level 1. This is ironic given that the discussion began with people arguing that those whose lives depend on it would know what the optimum loadouts are, when their own intuition gives what the numbers suggest are the strongly sub-optimal loadouts in this situation.

Only because the numbers are being artificially stacked against it. Peculiar, low average statistics, and impossibly high AC are being used as though it were assumed, with a simultaneous attempt to use the minimum to hit and HP values.


He'd have a 0.1% affect on the results though, so this shouldn't matter.

I've mentioned before that real armies have a well above average fitness requirement. I view letting in a statistical glut of <12 strength characters as obtuse, especially since that implies you have strength 18, int 3 wizards wizards or something running around just as often as strength 18, int 3 fighters.

[Typewriter]

I've mentioned before that real armies have a well above average fitness requirement. I view letting in a statistical glut of <12 strength characters as obtuse, especially since that implies you have strength 18, int 3 wizards wizards or something running around just as often as strength 18, int 3 fighters.

And I've mentioned that I don't think its realistic to use the world building guide to determine the number of warriors you have in your world, let alone anything else. Those rules make no sense in my opinion. Especially when you're talking about pre-built campaign worlds that don't necessarily follow their own rules. And especially not when you could probably look through a few books from these pre-existing worlds and simply find out what kind of equipment the average foot-soldier/town guard has.

I agree with you that it's not realistic, but neither is simply saying "5% of my population is warriors and they are all identical".

And wizards are PC classes, which means they get the elite array even if they're not a PC.

EDIT:
What you could do would be to build NPCs like player characters, which means that stats dictate class. I don't necessarily agree with this as an NPC should be trying to do what he wants with what he has regardless of his skill.

Then simply take the top 5% STR and say "These are warriors". Of course, at that point you're likely to have huge drop offs in other stats to account for having the highest STR fighters you could find.

Or you could simply say that your nation has 10 million people in it(500,000 are warriors), and you only wanted a specific 10,000 for your army.

[NichG]

So, the promised genetic algorithm run. First, the simulation parameters.


The genetic algorithm uses a population of 200 character archetypes that undergo mutation. Every iteration, the 200 characters are pitted against random opponents, where the loser of the fight is deleted and the winner reproduces into their slot.

Each army is composed of 1000 identical Warriors. The armies fight until one is entirely defeated.
Weapons, armor, and shields are chosen from non-masterwork PHB items. I have not implemented 2-weapon fighting, shield bashing, special combat actions (trip, grapple, bullrush, overrun, aid another), though I have implemented fighting defensively as a possible choice.

Reach weapons are implemented in the following way: initially, all characters are 'not engaged' with the enemy. They assumedly move up to the enemy ranks. If the enemy is using a reach weapon but they are not, they draw an AoO from three random draws from the opposing army. If dead enemies are drawn, no AoO occurs. Similarly, if enemies that have already taken an AoO are drawn (and don't have sufficient Combat Reflexes) no AoO occurs. The attacker and its target are then considered 'engaged' and no longer draw AoOs for the rest of the battle.

I assume available space and terrain for reach weapon wielders to 5ft back in order to be able to attack - the assumptions would naturally change drastically in rough terrain, in which the only reach weapon that would be feasible would be a spiked chain.

Each character has 2 feats chosen from the following list: Dodge, Weapon Focus, Power Attack, Combat Expertise, Shield Specialization, Combat Reflexes, Cleave, Power Attack, Endurance, Diehard, Toughness, Improved Initiative, Mobility, Weapon Finesse

Each character has one stat at 14, one stat at 12, and the rest at 8, and has average hitpoints for 1st level.

A given character is fully described by the string: Stat1-Stat2-Feat1-Feat2-Weapon-Armor-Shield-Fights Defensively?



Now, the results:



In order to check convergence I output the average number of survivors after the battle and the average number of rounds the battle lasts. These variables reach a point after about 8 generations where the average number of survivors has converged to about 190 and the average number of combat rounds is 10.5.

Here are the builds in the population at different times:

20 generations:
- Str-Dex-Toughness-Diehard-Guisarme-Breastplate-No Shield-No Def: 190
- 10 misc mutations

30 generations:
- Str-Dex-Toughness-Diehard-Guisarme-Breastplate-No Shield-No Def: 183
- 17 misc mutations

40 generations:
- Str-Dex-Toughness-Diehard-Guisarme-Breastplate-No Shield-No Def: 182
- 18 misc mutations

This population is basically 'optimal' in the sense of being a game theoretic stable equilibrium. This is a strange sort of optimality, since in things like Prisoner's Dilemma it can imply that everyone loses, but it is stable in the sense that there is no other set of builds that you can field that would beat it on average.


Edit: Of course, after I post, a longer run shows the generation of a new optimum at 70 generations. For this one, combat lasts 24 rounds and about 140 survive on average: Str-Dex-Toughness-Diehard-Longsword-Chainmail-Towershield-No Full Defense.

At 110 generations, the average battle duration becomes about 29 and the number of survivors is 120, replacing Toughness with Shield Specialization but leaving all else the same.

Edit #2: Looks like I have a bug in the feat prereq system, since these guys have been taking Diehard without Endurance. I'm re-running the results and we'll see what it does if Diehard costs 2 feats rather than 1.

So, things to do next:

- Add more feats available to lv1 guys and see if it makes a difference. Phalanx Fighting from Complete Warrior would probably make the shields a slam dunk: since these guys are taking Shield Specialization for an additional +1, the +3 from Phalanx Fighting would end up being gross.
- Figure out the optimal build as a function of available gold/warrior and stat distributions
- Mixed armies comprised of two types of soldier
- Ranged weapons? I think they'll just win...

It looks like the Diehard feat is pretty good at this level, since it more than doubles their hitpoints (effectively). Of course, half the army ends up bleeding out...

Can you 5ft step and attack when disabled? I might have done that bit wrong.

[Yukitsu]

They have 190 out of max 120 GP in gear. Again. Can you not give them an amount of gear that they're legally in theory allowed to have. :smallannoyed: A warrior, who isn't proficient in tower shields (-14 to hit) can only afford hide armour on average, and scale mail if he rolled max wealth. I doubt you took that in to consideration. :smallannoyed:

[Typewriter]

They have 190 out of max 120 GP in gear. Again. Can you not give them an amount of gear that they're legally in theory allowed to have. :smallannoyed: A warrior, who isn't proficient in tower shields (-14 to hit) can only afford hide armour on average, and scale mail if he rolled max wealth. I doubt you took that in to consideration. :smallannoyed:

Warriors are simply listed as being proficient with shields. There is no "Except Tower Shields" disclaimer that many classes have.

The average wealth would be 75 (3d4, 1d4 = 2.5 average * 3)
Tower shield = 30
Longsword = 15
Hide = 15

Total 60

OR
Heavy Wooden Shield = 7
Longsword = 15
Scale Mail = 50

Total 72

Option 1 would have +1 AC over option 2, but -2 to hit (tower shield). Different sets would be better against different targets.

[Yukitsu]

Warriors are simply listed as being proficient with shields. There is no "Except Tower Shields" disclaimer that many classes have.

They're distinct feats.

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/feats.htm#towerShieldProficiency

You would also need 14 strength to really function with all that. You can't, for instance, have a strength of 10 and expect to do well.

[Typewriter]

They're distinct feats.

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/feats.htm#towerShieldProficiency

You would also need 14 strength to really function with all that. You can't, for instance, have a strength of 10 and expect to do well.

True, but class features don't give feats. They give proficiencies. Considering the fact that every other class says either (Including tower shields) or (excluding tower shields) it could go either way.

And the heavier load is:

Longsword = 4 pounds
Hide = 25 pounds
Tower Shield = 45 pounds

total of 74 pounds means that a 10 STR unit would be a heavy load for STR 10, which means they're not different than a level 20 PC in full plate. STR 11 or higher, and its a medium load which the armor already puts it to.

EDIT:
I know you were pointing out that the feat says that fighters get it automatically but keep in mind that shield proficiency doesn't include warriors as automatically having it either.

Same with individual weapon proficiencies. If you're going by what the feat says then nobody has any proficiencies because the feats do not mention them.

As I said it could really go either way.

[Yukitsu]

True, but class features don't give feats. They give proficiencies. Considering the fact that every other class says either (Including tower shields) or (excluding tower shields) it could go either way.

And the heavier load is:

Longsword = 4 pounds
Hide = 25 pounds
Tower Shield = 45 pounds

total of 74 pounds means that a 10 STR unit would be a heavy load for STR 10, which means they're not different than a level 20 PC in full plate. STR 11 or higher, and its a medium load which the armor already puts it to.

EDIT:
I know you were pointing out that the feat says that fighters get it automatically but keep in mind that shield proficiency doesn't include warriors as automatically having it either.

Same with individual weapon proficiencies. If you're going by what the feat says then nobody has any proficiencies because the feats do not mention them.

As I said it could really go either way.

I don't see how it's "It goes either way" when there's literally one shield proficient class that can also use tower shields, when there is an explicit seperate feats for only tower shields that the warrior class doesn't get. Doubt that warriors get bigger shields as a class feature than knights and paladins.

[Eldariel]

I don't see how it's "It goes either way" when there's literally one shield proficient class that can also use tower shields...

Doesn't really impact the point here, but Crusaders get it too. So two.

[Typewriter]

I don't see how it's "It goes either way" when there's literally one shield proficient class that can also use tower shields, when there is an explicit seperate feats for only tower shields that the warrior class doesn't get. Doubt that warriors get bigger shields as a class feature than knights and paladins.

Three categories:

Proficient with shields (including tower shields)
Proficient with shields (not including tower shields)
Proficient with shields

To my knowledge there are two categories of shields, those being 'shields' and 'exotic shields' (and tower shields aren't exotic), so wouldn't "proficient with shields" mean you are proficient with all shields that are non-exotic?

[Yukitsu]

Three categories:

Proficient with shields (including tower shields)
Proficient with shields (not including tower shields)
Proficient with shields

To my knowledge there are two categories of shields, those being 'shields' and 'exotic shields' (and tower shields aren't exotic), so wouldn't "proficient with shields" mean you are proficient with all shields that are non-exotic?

If that were the case, then "shield proficiency" would include tower shields, since it's not discluded. It only comes when specifically included, not the other way around.

[Typewriter]

If that were the case, then "shield proficiency" would include tower shields, since it's not discluded. It only comes when specifically included, not the other way around.

And your basis for that is? It's always either specifically included or excluded except for this one instance. I already said I think it could go either way. I, personally, would say they have the proficiency because there's nothing saying they don't, only that they do.

[NichG]

I set the gp value to 250 in the previously listed results. Since then, I have re-run things at the following gp/soldier values:

20,25,50,75,100,150,200,250,300

There are a series of build transitions. Diehard+Endurance remains popular at any gold value. At the low end, Hide armor + Guisarme + No Shield seems to be the cheap optimal solution. As gold becomes available, the armor is increased first up to chainmail, at which point shields start appearing and the weapon changes to a longsword.

I don't have the data with me where I am right now, but basically there are a series of special gp values at which things change. The armies with builds above these thresholds basically win nearly 100% of battles against armies with builds below the threshold, which is kind of neat. One point of AC worth of gear change creates a 100% win or loss rate when you're dealing with forces this big.

Edit: On the tower shield thing, SRD writes "The warrior is proficient in the use of all simple and martial weapons and all armor and shields." A tower shield is a shield, so all shields includes tower shields.

[Gnoman]

Class features =/= equal proficiency feats. Elves are automatically proficiency with longswords, despite there being no feat that only gives that proficiency. While the argument that warriors are not proficient with tower shields because it makes no sense for them to and not the fighter is a very strong one, the argument that they are not because the feat does not work that way holds no water.

[The Dark Fiddler]

Elves are automatically proficiency with longswords, despite there being no feat that only gives that proficiency.

What happened to Martial Weapon Proficiency?

[Gnoman]

Unless I am very much mistaken, I don't believe that MWP allows one individual weapon.

[Amphetryon]

Unless I am very much mistaken, I don't believe that MWP allows one individual weapon.

That's precisely what it allows.

EDIT:As indicated in the SRD (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/feats.htm#martialWeaponProficiency).

[Gnoman]

Interesting. My PHB must ahve a misprint.

[Yukitsu]

Edit: On the tower shield thing, SRD writes "The warrior is proficient in the use of all simple and martial weapons and all armor and shields." A tower shield is a shield, so all shields includes tower shields.

As noted, having shield proficiency doesn't grant tower shield proficiency. If you think otherwise, ask around.

[NichG]

Here are the optimal builds I get at various wealth levels:

8gp-17gp: Str-Dex-Endurance-Diehard-Glaive-No Armor-No Shield-No Def
18gp-22gp: Str-Dex-Endurance-Diehard-Glaive-Leather-No Shield-No Def
23gp-94gp: Str-Dex-Endurance-Glaive-Hide-No Shield-No Def
95gp-194gp: Str-Dex-Endurance-Diehard-Longsword-Scale-Tower-No Def
195gp-294gp: Str-Dex-Endurance-Diehard-Longsword-Chainmail-Tower-No Def

295gp+:

Here there seem to be three coexisting strategies that undergo oscillations. They're close enough in optimality that the system jumps back and forth between them with some regularity.

Str-Dex-Toughness-Shield_Specialization-Longsword-Banded-Tower-No Def

Str-Dex-Toughness-Weapon_Focus-Longsword-Banded-Tower-No Def

Str-Dex-Toughness-Shield_Specialization-Longsword-Banded-Tower-Fight Defensively