Battle Elves

[AndrewTall]

Well, a simple game mechanics adjustment for elves is required then, we'll say an Elf realm can cast ward, at half the GB and RP costs, and anyone trying to counter it would have a negative penalty involved due to elves having a stronger bond to their world and to magic.

Unnecessary. Elves tend to have at least one mage high enough level to make a warding cover a large number of provinces and last for seasons. Warding makes the realm immune to armies, stops virtually all regents, and as a result removes any real need to defend ones holdings. More than most other spells warding gets truly gruesome for a high level caster.

The book of magecraft also happily talks about potions of doubling (and redoubling) working on realm spells - if Llaeddra of Lluabraight casts a warding spell after drinking two (fairly cheap) potions then 4 provinces vanish for 7 years - well worth an action. For 2 actions, 4 Gb and 40 RP (less than a season's income from source holdings alone) Llaeddra's realm is immune to pretty much anything that might head her way in terms of armies or domain actions both.

Add a metamagic feat (if you let them to act on domain spells) or a stronger magical artifact and the position is even worse. Since 2 GB and 20 RP equals the income of roughly 3 elven provinces for a single season the spell is cheap even if the duration is not extended. And as noted this is one spell in particular that elves are likely to research improvements on - most spell casters in BR would see little use for a L6 spell that needs a L5 source, the elves could easily make a L8 version that needs a L9 source and either costs less or last longer.

In war warded provinces are ridiculous - warded provinces cannot be scouted or invaded, allowing the elves to leave their realm undefended and send their massed forces to strike at whim retreating to safety anytime they find serious opposition.

Yes adventuring parties may be able to get in but what then? The elves have very few logistical centres to attack, are very good at detecting spies - or adapting plans if discovered, and anyone who wants to attack the elven commanders in a classic PC-party decapitation strategy is going to need to be more than just 'pretty good' to have a chance of surviving. The typical human/goblin tactic of 'overwhelm by numbers' really doesn't work well when the elves outnumber the attackers 100 to 1...

Tuarheviel is more vulnerable than most elven realms simply because Fhileraene is such a low level (by elven standards) as a mage but other elven realms with their L14-18 court mage would do exactly as Cwmb Bhein and Innishiere (amongst others) are said to have done in the sourcebooks - lay down a ward and simply vanish from the map as far as everyone else is concerned.

As a GM the spell makes elven realms a complete pain, you want them to interact but they turtle better than anyone else...

[rugor]

Excellent clarification.

I still say give them some extra benifits tho, after all, they are the race that mastered magic, first, and have it flowing thru their being/realms.

[geeman]

At 02:55 PM 2/20/2008, Airgedok wrote:

>I do not agree with this assessment of Elves. First it concludes as
>a basis of elven nature that decay and fire are not vital to the
>health and welfare of the land. Science is begining to understand
>just how vital fire is. Fire is not a destructive influence but a
>regenerative influence. It is why most forest services now engage in
>controlled burns. Elves would know this and view fire and decay as vital.

I think it`s safe to say that the elven concept of nature isn`t that
of modern forestry services. Elves want a seemingly (in fact, a
factually) magical realm that is often described as "sylvan" or
"idyllic." Fire is not rejuvenation in such a mythical
construct. The elven ideal of a forest is the kind of thing that
teams with life and most forestry services fear will result in a
blackened wasteland when the inevitable fire sweeps through the area
because the "overgrowth" will burn so hot as to destroy
everything. However, in truly sylvan lands the inevitability of the
fire sweeping through the land isn`t actually inevitable, and what
modern humans would view as "overgrowth" is to elves the very
point. It`s what makes the lands magical. And as part of their
magical nature, under elven influence and control, they burn down no
more often than dryads wear blue jeans....

>The reason elves are writen the way they are is that they were
>written by humans with a flaud understanding of nature.

Fire does have a role in the modern HUMAN understanding of nature,
but I`d counter that this understanding of nature is essentially
mundane and, therefore, does not apply to how elves think.

>I put forth that an elf would see the benifits of detroying the
>crops of human farmers and thus starving the humans forcing them to leave.

Starving humans is a human tactic. Elves want them driven away and
their lands returned.

Elves favor modification and alteration to destruction. To elves the
processes of nature is magical. In that context, the destruction of
human farms and crops by fire would act as a kind of counter process
to simply leaving them as they are and "treating" the region with
their own magical influences.

From the elven POV, which would be easier to turn into a faerie
wonderland? Would one take living things as they are and "husband"
them into forms more suited to elven magical esthetics, or burn large
sections of real estate to ash? Elves _like_ to modify living
things, and it would make more sense to an elf to take a flower grown
in a greenhouse into a more natural setting (by taking down the
structure) to let it grow wild. They`d prefer that to burning the
flower and then starting over with something new entirely.

From the human POV land that has been burned is highly
productive. However, from the elven POV such lands are dead. They
might still be brought back to life, but there are aesthetic,
practical as well as "magically real" reasons for elves to avoid a
scorched earth policy.

Gary

[rugor]

Most games do not undertand logistics, communication and intelligence, thus most players also do not understand them. They minimise their importance and quite frankly they are the lesss fun parts of a military simulation yet they are by far the most important. Elves "win" in all these areas. The fact the Elves are not hindered by terrian mean their loggistics trains need not be confined to exposed routes thus their logistic trains will be better protected and move faster than any human army.

This is true, "the battle is won before it is ever fought" is a very true statement.

The army with the better intelligence, better weapons, and faster communications will win EVERY battle unless it is a suicide mission along the lines of the 300 Spartans.

The more elite the unit in todays army, or in Roman times, has the better equipment, the best trained/fit/intelligent men, and usually the best intelligence.

In todays world, give me a small squad of men, a radio, choice of terrain (that I position myself in before the enemy enters the area), and the ability to call in fire (Artillery, Air strikes, etc.) and I will decimate a fighting force of thousands and make them combat ineffective.

When you watch/read stories like the Lord of the Rings, the elves KNOW exactly when the Company of the Ring Bearer enters into their forest, they KNOW that Orcs are tracking them, even tho those Orcs are outside of the Elven domain... no way you are sneaking into or near the borders of an Elven realm with any type of fighting unit.

Imagine an army unit entering into the elven woods, and having arrows rain down on them from the tree tops. Don't even need magic, the typical elf can probably fire off three arrows per round, without any serious negatives, their best archers are probably deadly from a click away.

The human unit would be cut down as easily as if they were standing in front of a line of machine guns on full auto.

[kgauck]

We have a game to explain how these things work. In a movie explanations of how things work are ignored unless they advance the plot. I would imagine that scrying is the best way to watch out for and track intruders. But scrying can be anticipated, countered, tricked, and ultimatly defeated. The game provides mechanics for telling us how.

The fact the Elves are not hindered by terrian mean their loggistics trains need not be confined to exposed routes.

For example, elves have a racial ability that allows them to move thorugh challenging terrain, Nature Stride, but this doesn't extend to their objects, such as wagons or carts, or to their animals. Animals, and vehicles as well, can be enhanced by spells, but this isn't a free ride. Elves can also, one imagines, use other kinds of magic, from bags of holding and extra-dimentional spaces, but I think there are serious questions about how much permenant magic exists in the setting.

Rather than adding a very large amount of magic to make fantastic logistics possible, I would prefer that elves try and do without any logistic baggage. I don't think elves really eat, pace Ryan, so for short missions, some gear could be reduced. If missions are short raids, the logistical needs of the raiders are small, some amount of gear (perhaps extra arrows) can be reduced, and all seems well.

Humans eat 2 lbs per day, so a 250 man company would eat a ton of food every four days. Moving a ton of food requires animals, and those animals need a quarter of the humans they accompany. Humans will, under the best conditions, be like the Romans, slow, well provisioned, and decisive in battle.

Elves, I think, lack supply trains altogether.

Imagine an army unit entering into the elven woods, and having arrows rain down on them from the tree tops. Don't even need magic, the typical elf can probably fire off three arrows per round, without any serious negatives, their best archers are probably deadly from a click away.

Many elven soldiers are presumed to be rangers, and at 2nd level they can select archery as a combat style and get the Rapid Shot feat. At 6th level such archers could get their 3rd shot per round. 6th level characters are really a bit high, I think for regular archers. Common enough as leaders, though. Elf ranger 3's, 4's, and 5's can certainly be pretty formidable, especially if they take humans as their Favored Enemy, but they're hardly invincable. As a rough guide, two human CR 1's are a match for a single CR 3, 4 CR 1's can be a technical match for CR 5, but if the CR 5's get surprise and cover, their probabaly need to be 8 CR 1's.

I think that human armies are about 40% full of warrior 1's and 2's, and 40% full of fighter 1's and 2's. Each represents about a fifth of the total numbers. The remaining fifth is elite troops and leaders. The bulk of the army are CR 1's. and the warrior 1's and fighter 2's kind of average out to be CR 1's.

If elves are levels 3, 4, and 5 in roughly equal portions, the'll average out to be CR 4's, since the elves themselves need not be NPC classes. I'll grant them that advantage. Not counting the elite forces and leaders, the bulk of a human army needs to be 4 times as large.

So two companies of elves would require five companies of humans for an even match. One human company (20%) would comprise the human elite, the other four companies (80%) would comprise the rank and file CR 1's.

However, the human elite company costs significantly more to raise and maintain than the other companies. I think that elf units are by and large all elite, so they too are expensive.
One way to monitor these costs is to change how many people are in a company. But that's not my point here. Rather to observe that the human costs may be only 50% more than the elf (4 GB for the 4 rank and file, 2 GB for the elite, compared to 4GB for 2 elites).

This is, I think why elf units had higher muster costs in the rulebook. I think that if elves had guild and temple incomes, (and BRCS rightly gives guilds twice the income of temples, so they're twice as important for this point) elf units would have double maintenance. The reduced maintenance is an adjustment to the loss of those holdings.

So humans need about 50% more money to go to war with the elves. That seems about right.

In terms of skirmishing, a single elite human unit can match a single elf unit (which is by its nature elite) but humans can't find enough elite soldiers to wage war with only elite units. No Rjurik realm has the all-housecarl army. Anuireans don't raise all-knight armies.

[rugor]

kgauck,

I give you that if humans fully mobilized, bringing with them catapults, a powerful wizard or two, Priests... the whole works... then they could assault the edges of a Elf domain, slowly cutting into it, and put up the good fight.

But lacking that type of massive assault and use of magics, if a couple of units were sent into an Elven domain looking for trouble, game mechanics aside, they'd get their arses handed to them without so much as putting a dent of damage into the elfs IMO.

[kgauck]

But lacking that type of massive assault and use of magics, if a couple of units were sent into an Elven domain looking for trouble, game mechanics aside, they'd get their arses handed to them without so much as putting a dent of damage into the elfs IMO.

Re: lacking a an assault in mass and use of magic:
I think anyone who attacks with only a part of their power is asking to be defeated. Check out Machiavelli's chapter on defending mountain passes. Sending out a part of your capacity to face what is likely to be the whole of the enemy is rather silly.

Re: a couple of units looking for trouble:
This kind of mission should be restricted to elite units. If Dhoesone were to raise a unit of Anuirean knights and Rjurik huskarls, these are some pretty powerful units, elite as well. Supported by paladins and priests of Haelyn among the knights and rangers and druids among the huskarls. They would be pretty formidable on a trouble seeking mission. However, both are close combat charge units. But if the mission was to seize a place, they could do fine.

re: game mechanics aside:
I started with what I thought was a reasonable description of elf and human forces, then I attempted to describe them mechanically. I do not start with rules and mechanics and then make the game world match those. If you think the elves are on balance more powerful, that's fine, but at some point if you're gonna play out an encounter, you need to start using mechanics of some kind. If you wanted elves to be levels 6-8, instead of 3-5, as I suggested, its still possible to go to the drawing board and assess how many and what kind of human forces you need to face them. Since I think that 4th-5th levels are where normal people top off (routine challenges in the life of a normal person) and BR has a lot of 4th and 5th level folks in the published materials, I am hesitant to go higher. YMMV. BR has fewer and fewer characters who get into the 6-9th levels, and very few who are 10-12th. Elves are an exception to this, but more, as Rowan suggested, by shifting the curve +3, rather than re-drawing the whole curve. As such, assuming that armies could be formed with units of 6-8th level characters is just too high for me. But the DM should do what seems right to them.

[rugor]

Re: lacking a an assault in mass and use of magic:
I think anyone who attacks with only a part of their power is asking to be defeated. Check out Machiavelli's chapter on defending mountain passes. Sending out a part of your capacity to face what is likely to be the whole of the enemy is rather silly.

Re: a couple of units looking for trouble:
a unit of Anuirean knights and Rjurik huskarls, these are some pretty powerful units, elite as well. Supported by paladins and priests of Haelyn among the knights and rangers and druids among the huskarls. They would be pretty formidable on a trouble seeking mission. However, both are close combat charge units. But if the mission was to seize a place, they could do fine.

Its not so much about levels, my mistake for not making that clearer earlier.

IMO it doesn't matter if the elves are 2nd, 3rd, 4th levels...

What point I'm attempting to make, has more to do with terrain and tactics.

The elves are never going to meet the Knights and Huskarls in mass formation. They would stay spread out, attacking them from the front and sides, above and below... small groups with arrows and spells. Staying up in the tree tops, using cover and concealment, using small unit tactics.

Its a matter of how they fight, Gorilla style, shoot and retreat, attack and draw them into a trap, killing off one man here, two there, etc.

Manueverability in a heavily forested region would be slow and ponderous for such heavy units as Knights. A Horse charge would be impossible, strict lines would be impossible.

Thats why I agreed with you, that if a very large and powerful force set up on the edges of the forest, set up camp for a longterm seige, and started cutting and firing up the forest and working their way slowly in, this would have effect IMO... but it would be a slow ponderous campaign, like trying to assail a fortress with Walls a mile thick, taking forever to get to the heart of the Keep.

Many of the advantages that give humans the upper hand in battle against the elves out in the open plains, or on the coastlines, would be a dis-advantage or unavailable to them in the middle of a forest.

[kgauck]

What point I'm attempting to make, has more to do with terrain and tactics. The elves are never going to meet the Knights and Huskarls in mass formation. [...]
Its a matter of how they fight, Gorilla style, shoot and retreat, attack and draw them into a trap, killing off one man here, two there, etc.

Actually, this is a recipe for total elf defeat. Guerrilla war is a weak form of war that pits large number of inferior forces against small numbers of superior forces. If the elves are spread out, they'll get defeated piecemeal. A dozen elves here and a dozen elves there is suddenly two dozen dead elves. Guerrilla war works only when they bring large numbers of (inferior) forces against a small number of (superior) forces. If humans are on a search and destroy mission, they are in a group, and you're putting large numbers of humans into contact with small numbers of elves.

The elves should be using a raid style of warfare. Here, they pick an obstacle they can easily cross, but which will block humans. A revene with overgrowth works nicely. The elves en mass, fire from that position and fall back when the humans charge. If the elves break up into small groups, they will never kill any humans, just annoy them. Plus, a few elves against a few druids with the support of dozens if not hundreds of huskarls, are totally outmatched, because the druids can play in the woods and have heavy fighter support.

Another problem I see is the elves in trees. This is death for the elves in trees. Troops with no retreat are always basically dead. Again the perfect counter are Rjurik. Those huskarls are masters of the axe, and the axe is the foremost weapon for attacking trees. A 4th level huskarl with a bunch of axe related feats and a couple of buddies will have that tree down faster than you can say "sidhelien go deo". If the fall doesn't kill the archer, the axemen will.

The elves need to stick with raid and strike tactics, attack in large numbers, but fall back before the humans get to bring their heavies up to the elves and then use their superior terrain skills to keep the heavies from getting close. The elves must attack in mass or the humans will just heal up from each attack. The elves can never press an attack for long, because even in a forest, heavies can move pretty quickly in a charge. Once the heavies make it up to archers, the archers are food for the wolves. So if the elves don't concentrate their fire and put a lot of arrows in the air in a very short period of time, they may as well be yelling unfriendly greetings and running around. They need to score some criticals and eat up the invaders ability to take arrows to the body. This can only be done in mass.

[Airgedok]

Its not so much about levels, my mistake for not making that clearer earlier.

IMO it doesn't matter if the elves are 2nd, 3rd, 4th levels...

What point I'm attempting to make, has more to do with terrain and tactics.

The elves are never going to meet the Knights and Huskarls in mass formation. They would stay spread out, attacking them from the front and sides, above and below... small groups with arrows and spells. Staying up in the tree tops, using cover and concealment, using small unit tactics.

Its a matter of how they fight, Gorilla style, shoot and retreat, attack and draw them into a trap, killing off one man here, two there, etc.

Manueverability in a heavily forested region would be slow and ponderous for such heavy units as Knights. A Horse charge would be impossible, strict lines would be impossible.

Thats why I agreed with you, that if a very large and powerful force set up on the edges of the forest, set up camp for a longterm seige, and started cutting and firing up the forest and working their way slowly in, this would have effect IMO... but it would be a slow ponderous campaign, like trying to assail a fortress with Walls a mile thick, taking forever to get to the heart of the Keep.

Many of the advantages that give humans the upper hand in battle against the elves out in the open plains, or on the coastlines, would be a dis-advantage or unavailable to them in the middle of a forest.

I would not equate elven small unit tactics as guerilla warfare. Infact it is far more accurate to compare it with WWII squad tactics. Elves would be broken up into small unit squads that have their own set of orders they target a formation unit and strike when the formation unit "charges" they fall back into favourable terrain. Terrain that is either forest or even open rough terrian. No formation unit can maintain its formation in broken/rough terrian or a forest. And infantry of the time period is required to maintain formation to be a fighting force. Without that formation they are nothing but an armed mob easy pickings for a squad with armed missile weapon. The key is they would have both superior intelligence and superior communications. Add in superior mobility and they are near immune to Human forces. Which is again why I do not think Elves should be protrayed realisticly.