----- Original Message -----

From: "bulletmagnet" <brnetboard@BIRTHRIGHT.NET>

Sent: Saturday, April 03, 2004 6:59 PM

Subject: Re: [BIRTHRIGHT] How have the Humans won against the elves?

[2#2414]





> The fact that a defeated human army can heal up and return

> in a few days spells victory.



This does create interesting changes in how wars are fought. The key ratio

is the number of soldiers to the number of priests, so when PC priests

accompany a single company, their ability to fundamentally alter the balance

of power is huge. Battle oriented priests, who have taken Reach Spell,

might toss off five or six cure lights plus more potent healing. If they

are anything like my players, they get around this limit by creating huge

numbers of healing "potions". [I refer to any spell storage device that

works like a potion in that anyone can use it, it is limited to spell levels

1-3, and uses the cost tables of potions.] Magical healing is even more

profound when you get away from brittle low level characters. A unit of 60

huskarlar (60 @ 3rd level, 2 @ 6th level, 1 8th level captain or jarl in

command) relies more on strategic healing to prevent combatants from

dropping, meaning that one high level priest can fundamentally alter the

odds in combat.



Given this situation, it would almost become standard to include healers in

units: don`t leave camp with it. One might assume that my huskarlar instead

has 50 3rd level warriors, 2 6th level fighters, 1 8th level fighter, 2 2nd

level priests, and 1 5th level priest. Such a unit could effectively ignore

its first hit result. The loss of combat power from exchanging 3 warriors

for the three priests doesn`t really weaken the unit`s combat power. The

sacrfice of 3 incriments of BAB and 9 hps is more than offset by all that

healing magic. Keep in mind we are changing warriors for priests, so the

calculus is different than if we changed fighters for priests, since we

would be lossing two combat feats as well.



Kenneth Gauck

kgauck@mchsi.com