Quick & Dirty Battle System for the non wargamer

[The Jew]

Originally posted by irdeggman@Mar 17 2005, 12:21 PM
Sorry, you are both right it is simple. I'll claim that age thing.

But it does break down at times. For instance a group of knights versus a group of pike will win almost all of the time due to the difference in muster costs (knights - 6 GB, pike - 2 GB) when in fact we know the exact opposite should be true. So a player would load up his army with expensive units while in order to maximuize his chance of winning.

Well at least it is a starting point.

With a system this simple either one would go with Tzachareal reasoning and do away with units as anything more than counters for GB value of army, or recognize that DM's will need to use their basic reasoning skills in some situations. If unit types are providing a clear advantage to one side, then give them a bonus. In your example, I would just increase the base GB value by %50-100 of the all pike army.

[tcharazazel]

Demonizer said

-You can have each unit of pikemen lower the enemy army's attack bonus by 1, but have the total malus be no greater than the total attack bonuses of its cavalry troops. In effect, pikemen act to reduce the power of knights and other units on horseback.
-Fortifications and terrain increase the effectiveness of all ranged units by 1, providing a total bonus up to the actual fortification level plus the "terrain level" (the terrain defensive bonus, which should probably be a "+something" rather than a multiplier, I think). Siege equipment drops both a fortifcation's natural bonus and its bonus to the archers, lowering them by a number equal to its muster value. Note that this makes archers more powerful on both sides, as they should be when fighting in mountainous regions.
-Apply regional/racial bonuses, like +1 for each dwarven unit in mountainous regions, at the DM's discretion. The general trend would be that each unit can contribute with only +1, or by reducing the enemy army's effectiveness by -1, in addition to its own muster cost bonus. I quite like it, and it makes things seem less arbitrary about costs and combat values - instead of "recruiting units", you're essentially buying more combat power, which can be inserted freely and removed from any army.

Now, I'm not certain where the attack bonus is being applied in this system. Do you mean adding +1 to the units' GB value? Because I completely did away with defense, attack, and moral with this system. My reasoning for going with a multiplier instead of a + bonus for fortifications is because a fully maned castle by strong units is a much more effective defense than a castle with just 1 green unit. Additionally, don't forget that castles are limited to a certain number of units depending upon the level of the castle (as per the complex rules Osprey posted 2 units per level of castle and 1 unit per holding). As for using the multiplier for terrain, I just used the same logic as a stronger force would be much more difficult to dislodge from the mountains than a weak unit.

If you want to make some new training options to reduce or increase these multipliers it only makes sense as currently the main use of the training options is just for increasing GB value. Using your example of dwarven training it could be something like this:


Mountain Training: Cost 2 GB *Edited*

Benifits: When attacking units in the mountains, an army with mountain training would reduce the terrain bonus by 150%. If 99-50% of the army has mountain training then the defenders terrain bonus is reduced by 100% and if the attacking army has less than 50% with mountain training then the multiplier is reduced by 75%. Thus, it is possible to turn the terrain into a loss for the defender as an all mountian trained army would reduce the GB value of the non trained defender by half from 200%-150% = 50% mulitplier.

When defending in the mountains the units can increase the multiplier to exceptional levels. If all of the army has mountain training then the multiplier becomes 300%. If the army has 99-50% with mountain training then it is increased to 250%. If less than 50% than the bonus is increased to 225%.

Note: Thus an all dwarven army defending against an all dwarven army in the mountains would still have a 150% bonus to their GB cost. This would reflect the fact that dwarves would still be effective against each other in the mountains, as they are defending their home ground.

Dwarven units and Orog units are considered to have mountain training when mustered.

It's equally simple to cheat in this system and bring in 9-unit armies, because 10- or 11-unit armies get a serious penality, more than a few soldiers can account for. I'm assuming, of course, that this system gets applied in PCvsPC or PCvsNPC battles, where the participants are more inclined to cheat. This is why I favor "fluid" and "continous" systems: they ensure you can't manipulate the numbers too much and get inappropriately favorable bonuses as a result.

Actually, I made it 11+ because the regular size army of 10 while more difficult to organize than the 5 or less army is still in the normal size of armies. Its just with those extra large armies, that even though they need to be led by great leaders are beyond what the army is used to organizing. Thus, they would have a penalty. Of course having a 11 unit wrmy wouldnt be worth it, however, having a 14 unit army would likely offset the penalty. Plus, only leaders with +20 lead mod would be able to lead a 14 unit army, so its really just for those higher level games.

Now, I wouldnt really call it cheating by them having a 10 unit army, as my goal was to generally limit the army size to 10 units for easy of use for DMs and players. Heheh, so they can think they are cheating the system all they want, they're just doing what I expect them to do then and this makes it easier for everyone to calculate the totals to add to the WC mod.

I'll end by noting that the battle resolution system I proposed involves less hassle than having to read the hit point values of various units, then determine which of them get killed or wounded. The "one roll, one kill" mechanism would take far less time to work through than anything that considered the units' actual hit points.
It's also less realistic, on the other hand.

That is what I was originally going with, however, after considering the fact that large armies will have plenty of reserves, they will need to fight in waves. Now, if this was meant to be a unit vs unit system then it would make sense to use the 1 roll 1 kill idea, however, as this is an army vs army system it really isn't fair. Thus, to say that the winner takes no casualties is totally unrealistic and very unfair also as they can keep fighting with their army while the other army has to bring in the next one. So, it will be in the players benifit to put all of their best troops together and the winner of that roll will totally dominate the rest of the battle even if the opponent has 100 more units, because those 100 more units will not be as good as the first ones he sent while this player army fights on without a scratch or break... that definitely will piss off players as it means the entire battle will be decided in 1 roll so unless they build large armies of high cost units, they would only have 1 chance to win the battle. The wounding system means that they wouldn't need to have such a large army of crack units but can use mass numbers and attrittion to win the battle.

Hence, my reasoning for including the wounding system and army health. Now, this is fairly simple system and the addition of the rule that only unit exp can effect unit health, so all green have 1 hit, regulars have 2 hits, and vets 3 hits. As armies will likely be 10 units or less, it's very easy to add them up, likely armies will just be regulars or vets so army max health will range from 20-30.

So, even though the concept of army health does complicate it some more, it does maintain some balance, which is important. Now, if you don't want to use army health than just limit total army size to 10 + 1 per +5 lead mod and then you don't have to worry about reserves at all and just state that the winner automatically kills the enemy and his units will need to rest for 0-3 months before fighting again (this simulates the fact that some units were wounded and need to heal), depending on how well the winner defeated the looser. So 3 months for 5 or less, 2 months for 6-10, 1 month for 11-20 and no rest needed for 21+. Real simple and maintains some balance.