Clayton F. Hinton wrote:

> >The same general thing comes into effect when you have a general with the
> >"Battlewise" blood ability: some of the time, the modifier which the
> >general gets actually makes the result WORSE. To resolve this we've used
> >the simple addition to the rules: the general gets the BETTER OF THE TWO
> >OPTIONS, either the modified or unmodified score, whichever he chooses
> >(and he may choose to take the hit, if he's setting up some kind of
> >gambit, but that hasn't happened in any of our games). I suspect that you
> >could use something similar in the case of a Modified Unit.
>
> Wait, are we all remembering that the Battle cards are designed for
> randomness? A +1 shift will result in a better overall average, if you
> take ALL the battle cards into account. By allowing a commander to pick
> and choose for himself which bonuses he gets to use, you are giving him
> more of an advantage than he should get. It's not a dice system we're
> using for the battles, it's a Card system. In the end, if you fiddle with
> it you are fiddling with the randomness, which is just like using weighted
> dice. This is the equivalent of allowing both a +1 to a d6 roll, AND
> allowing all 1's to be re-rolled, when the only bonus called for is the +1.

I'm going to go out on a limb here, so let me preface these remarks with a
disclaimer that this is only my opinion and that this opinion and a quarter
won't even get you a pack of bubblegum nowadays. In addition, I should
appologize for the following rant in advance. But....

I don't like the card system for birthright battles. There. I said it. I feel
better already.

I think it's a stupid, half-assed nod to the popularity of card games that have
inexplicably sprung onto the RPG scene in recent years. As a result we are
stuck with a simplistic method to determine large scale conflicts that is about
as sophisticated as a game of Go Fish.

Now, I must admit that a large part of my objection comes from the fact that I
am an "old-timer" who started playing D&D back when the rulebooks were little
tan pamphlets and every time Gygax cleared his throat it was considered an
"official" rule change, so my chagrine at the influence of card games might very
well be based on some traditionalist rigidity. But there are a bunch of things
I don't like about it.

Battle cards. Back in the days when I started playing RPGs you couldn't get
dice. Oh, you could snag six-siders from the family Monopoly game, but anything
other than the traditional cubes were as elusive as a unicorn. There were like
two stores in Southern California that sold the things and they were far outside
the reasonable travel radius of my Schwinn. Instead we had chits. Chits were
just a page of glossy, card stock paper with the various numbers printed on them
to represent dice. You cut them out, put them in a cup and drew them like
lottery numbers in order to determine hits and damage, etc. So inevitably a few
of the little things would get bent, fall onto the floor and get vacuumed up or
Mom would reclaim her cups and the whole set would get washed down the drain
with the rest of the dishes like Charybdis sucking down Argonauts.

My point is that drawing Battle Cards is no different than using chits. I mean,
I've got dice RIGHT THERE ON THE TABLE, man! Just gimme a chart and a
twenty-sider. Keep the lousy card stock (that aren't even glossy, thank you
very much) cards.

Plus, I really don't like the idea of using cards in a pen & paper game.
Suddenly we have to stop one method of play and start a card game? What if the
NBA suddenly required players to stop and play out a couple of hands of
Blackjack to determine the winner? It just makes more sense to me to play
things out using dice and charts like the rest of the game rather than to
suddenly switch.

So anyway, I avoid using the card system as much as possible. I like them only
as a reference. It makes more sense to me to modify the rules to accompany
dice.

- -Gary