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I've never really liked the mass combat rules as they were released in Kingmaker. The River Nations book helped, but it was still built on what I considered to be a flawed concept, and introduced a new set of flaws as well. I'm not going to bash on specifics here, but my primary complaint is that it's too abstract. Two armies of the same CR are going to be almost the same mechanically, and in-battle tactics consist of matching your opponents changes to their strategy track. It feels like the equivalent of opening the Bestiary to the Average Stats By CR table and saying "There's a monster in front of you. It swings at you and hits. Do you want to swing at it?"
Instead of this, I set about looking for alternatives. Building upon a set of rules created by sirmattdusty and the excellent concepts in Warpath, I assembled a set of Revised Mass Combat Rules. It features combat which is much closer to the tactical combat of a standard Pathfinder game, armies that are as different as any two characters, and the Kingdom-based tie-ins to actually make what you build matter for what you can recruit.
I certainly won't claim that these rules are perfect. In fact, I haven't even playtested them yet. This might end up being a total mess of overcomplexity and fail. By posting the rules here, I'm hoping that some of you will take a look, try it out, and give me feedback. Do the rules make sense? Are there gaping holes? Is it possible to game the system to extremes? Are they fun?
Please let me know what you think!
I'd love to take a look, but filecloud won't work for me. Is there any chance of a Google Docs version?
I'd love to take a look, but filecloud won't work for me. Is there any chance of a Google Docs version?
Sure, I hadn't even considered that as a way to distribute it, actually. Here you go.
I like the download count filecloud gives me, but the point is to share these rules and get feedback, so I don't mind putting it up elsewhere.
Interesting, dotting this thread as I read through. Also, are your kingdom building revisions posted somewhere?
Interesting, dotting this thread as I read through. Also, are your kingdom building revisions posted somewhere?
Not yet. I haven't had the evenings free I was hoping to, due to finally figuring out what was wrong with a piece of YAPFR and starting to make progress again, and the various planning I need to do for the game I'm actually running.
My current ETA on them is to post them on Thursday night, but it may or may not happen.
A very small update to the rules to clarify two bits I was asked about.
1) There was an inconsistency about consumption costs - you add the consumption modifier, not multiply as Step 6 said.
2) The cost to raise an army is multiplied by the Resource Modifier for that army.
New links: Filecloud, Dropbox, and Google Drive.
No progress yet on getting the kingdom rules prepared for release. Life kindof got in the way. I'll try to get that one up soon.