I'm having problems understanding exactly how mounts work in the mass combat system as is.
So if I have a hill giant riding a mammoth (advanced elephant) 1 hill giant cavalryman is a CR 16 creature, or otherwise a CR 8 army. Is this right? How does this interact with the idea of the tribe of hill giants with mammoths that is present within War of the River Kings?
Wow, this is an old message. Ah well, on the off chance it helps:
Actually, the hill giants in War of the River King are mounted on mastodons(CR 9), not advanced elephants. If mounts are used in an army, the higher CR of either the mount or the rider is used (in this case, the mastodon, CR 9).
Then, adjust the CR using the chart on page 56. Since the mounted hill giants in question is a small army (CR -2), the resulting CR is 7.
Incidently, if you had an encounter with an advanced elephant (CR 8) and a hill giant (CR 8), then you have a CR 10 encounter, not 16.
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Does anyone know if on any of these forums anyone came up with a system that is similar to the battle system as presented by Paizo but just added a battlefield movement system?
I just posted my heavily revised rules here. On a high level, they're similar to the official system with tactical movement, but you can drill down a lot deeper, since it's much less abstract.
It might be too late to be relevant for you, though, since it's been 10 months since you asked.
Hi Bobson,
Did you ever end up playing them - & if so...how did they work?
I've been wanting a more complex set of rules, but hadn't tried to build
or find any yet...Thanks.
I haven't playtested them yet, but they look good to me. Feel free to download them and see what you think.
...Oh - I have.... :)
But we're a way away from getting to use them in anger, having just
started book 2.
They can come up in book two if you use the Hargulka's Monster Kingdom modifications. I did, which is how I realized I really didn't like the original rules. We're just in book 3 now.
I'd love some feedback on the changes I've made which you can find here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VYxD-k8Qs4EKj_-3HKP9ydJt--H9QScbX1EJhyA GjVA/edit
That link doesn't work - are you sure the permissions are right for anyone who has the link to view it?
Hmm Let me try again.
That link worked.
I like your changes, mostly. If my players decide that the "scaled up regular combat" rules I'm currently using don't work for them, and they prefer the more abstract option, I'd probably switch to your variant.
That being said, here's some specific comments and feedback:
- Maximum horizon when standing on a plain at ground level (eyes around 6 feet off the ground) is around 3 miles. To be able to see 3 hexes away (36 miles), you'd have to be 864 feet in the air. In hills or mountains you could see further, but you'd have more blind spots.
- Obviously, this just refers to one person standing and looking around - scouts travel out in all directions, but I'm not sure it's reasonable to expect the army to have enough scouts to cover a 226 square mile area (a circle with a radius of 36 miles), if each one can only see for 6 around him. Even assuming no overlap, that would take 37 scouts, and they would have no way to know when they could see right up to the edge of what the next scout in line could see.
- Finally, the scouts would have to move significantly faster than the army to be able to be scouting 3 hexes ahead, and then make it back to the army at night to report (6 extra hexes of travel). Individuals and small groups do move faster than a whole army, but not that much faster.
Overall, I definitely like your changes. I think you accomplished all your goals, although there are the few things I would adjust (as mentioned above). I'm certainly going to be borrowing ideas from this!
Hello there!
My PC`s kingdom are about to face an army of Stone Giant but something is not right, in my opinion.
According to the rule, an army stats is calculated according to an individual CR. A Stone Giant CR is 8. So an Large army (200) of fighter lvl 6 is the equivalent of a medium army (100) of Stone giant, wich, in my opinion, make no sense.
So I wonder if any of you would have any idea on how to make an army of monster. I was thinking along the line of using their HD as CR, but that maybe too much.
Also, I don`t want to be that Giant be as populous as human, they are supossed to be rare afterall.
Thx in advance.
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Random feedback on using a more strategic mass combat system (used 2E Battlesystem, converted to Pathfinder): while entertaining at the first two battles, when a tabletop mini strategy battle takes 2+ hours, not everyone is going to participate as fully. During the War of the River Kings, the players (as much as they liked the combat rules) wanted to get on with their characters after the first few battles.
Lesson learned: the combat rules were simplified for a reason. I'd add "missions" for the players (whether it be them, or they assume control over some NPCs in the army who go on a mission that affects the outcome of the battle, such as destroying a bridge) rather than increase the time spent on mass combat.
Hello there!
My PC`s kingdom are about to face an army of Stone Giant but something is not right, in my opinion.
According to the rule, an army stats is calculated according to an individual CR. A Stone Giant CR is 8. So an Large army (200) of fighter lvl 6 is the equivalent of a medium army (100) of Stone giant, wich, in my opinion, make no sense.
So I wonder if any of you would have any idea on how to make an army of monster. I was thinking along the line of using their HD as CR, but that maybe too much.
Also, I don`t want to be that Giant be as populous as human, they are supossed to be rare afterall.
Thx in advance.
So long as army stats are tied directly to CR, there's nothing you can do to make two armies significantly different. Using HD as CR for the formulas might make a stone giant army stronger or weaker, but it's still just as strong/weak as anything else of equivalent CR.
The only way to make the distinction you're looking for is to tie some aspect of the army to the monster's actual stats. You can try doing something like "+1 offence for every +3 to attack, +1 defense for every 3 AC above 10" as a very simple take on it - that will make offensive monsters make more offensive armies, and defensive monsters make more defensive armies. You do need to apply it equally to everything (including the fighter army), though. Expansions on that idea could add +1 to offense for each special ability the monster has, or +2 to defense for each good save, or something along those lines - this is all off the top of mny head.
This problem is exactly why I developed my own set of army rules, based on the Warpath rules. It makes mass combat much closer to the tactical combat which everyone is familier with. Most stats, special abilities, and the like are preserved as the scale goes up to army size. The link is a couple of posts above.
Just ran a practice Mass Combat with my group (we're moving into Blood for Blood and I plan on using Mass Combat for the Battle of Tatzlford). How does one deal with an unbalanced combat in terms of # of armies (not CRs)? In this case, it was 2 armies vs. 3 (In KM5, it seems likely that at least one battle, if not most, will be unbalanced one way or another.)
Does one of the armies on side A get to attack 2 of side B's?
If (when) 2 of side B's attack 1 of side A's, does that change matters?
Does comparative army size come into play?
Any help would be appreciated.
And that is by design. The PFRPG is built to support and run small conflicts on a much more personal level. We wanted to support and encourage a continuation of that style of play, so the method of filtering your character into an army statblock is intended to be kind of disappointing. This is to encourage games to NOT do one man versus armies... mostly because from a story viewpoint that's kind of unbelievable.If/when we do Epic rules, though, I suspect that is EXACTLY the type of thing we'll cover in more detail, since one man against an army feels perfectly at home in such a game.
Out of curiosity, were such rules included in Mythic Adventures?
I was reading through WotRK in preperation for running it soon and couldnt find any rules for attacking a city with no army in it.
I know it's been a long time, but if anyone has this problem, you could stat up an army of commoners to represent the inhabitants of the city.
If the city is completely deserted (due to evacuation perhaps) then the attacker should just be able to walk in.
+4 is the max base moral bonus of an army. You add the commanders Cha Modifier to that. So against a poorly lead, inexperienced army, that's a great tactic. Oh course, it begs the question of where you managed to find 100 bards willing to fight for you.
I think at that point its less 'fight' and more 'prelude to Burning Man'
I was reading through WotRK in preperation for running it soon and couldnt find any rules for attacking a city with no army in it.I know it's been a long time, but if anyone has this problem, you could stat up an army of commoners to represent the inhabitants of the city.
If the city is completely deserted (due to evacuation perhaps) then the attacker should just be able to walk in.
I would allow the use of emergency conscripts (Ultimate Rulership), an army of 1st level commoners with the shaken condition, out of whatever population is in the settlement.
How would you explain to players the upkeep their PC costs as a fine-sized army? A 13th level PC is a CR5 Army, with a consumption score of 2, making it the equivalent of 1000 GP/week. The system looks doable, but I'm just curious how you'd explain this feature to a player.
Scrolls etc. Explain to them based regeneration taking place every hour in rest, for simplicity explain that a full round of battle takes one hour. These costs include things such as wands, staves, scrolls, etc as well as material components. for melee characters they are things such as weapons and armor. It's too easy to sunder a weapon in 6 seconds (1 round). This cost is upkeep for their gear.
Our campaign treated each full round as 1 hour and they decided to do a Stolen Lands Convention to allow 8 hours of battle, 8 hours of rest, 2 hours for food, and 4 hours to collect the dead, and 2 hours of spell preparation (just in case of mystic theurges). Moving from one hex to the next took a day. These were their laws of war that their grand diplomat and the enemy agreed to. This also allowed for one of the character's "Army of Necromancer's" to animate the fallen soldiers to create a secondary army of half the size of skeletons.
Just wondering if anyone had New Armies that they made, I'm setting my Kingmaker in the Land of the Linnorm Kings, so I'm looking for a variety of different armies to fit in. Thought I would ask before I go and start making a bunch myself.
I created a excel sheet a while ago with simple convertions to figure out the base Army Rating, Offense Value and Defense Value, then added bonuses based on abilities.
Here is an adult green dragon army i made for an one-shot:
Army (Tiny)
NE adult green dragon CR 12
hp 26, ACR 4
DV 14, OM +4
special: flight, amphibious, blindsense, breath weapon, fear, significant defense, spell resistance, spellcaster (CL 13)
speed 10, Consumption 2
flight - Cannot be melee attacked on a turn it does not make melee attacks.
blindsense - Half penalties from darkness, invisibility or bad weather.
breath weapon - Can make ranged attacks, causes +1d4 damage on melee ou ranged attacks.
fear - Enemy army that suffers damage must make a morale check (DC 14) or cannot attack on the next round. If they fail a second morale check due to fear, they flee from combat.
significant defense - increased DV by +10 if the attacking army is not equipped with magical weapons.
spell resistance - Increases DV by +6 against enemy armies that use spells.
spellcaster - Increases OM by +1 per spell level available (+3).
I would almost say tell them its their 'worth' as an army, and if they want to forgo it, they can at least get Rich-level upkeep at no personal cost.
NPC's would expect an appropriate wage, perhaps half or quarter that if they're on reserve or on-call
Do armies have no initial cost to create?
Are there no rules for armies damaging settlements/improvements/etc?
I want to introduce armies much earlier (book 2, against the lizards). I'm going to replace the mass combat resolution rules by using the troop subtype and putting them on a normal Pathfinder grid, which also lets the PCs be involved in a more real way: Beyond having to stat up troops for every faction, can anyone see problems with this?
Yes, armies have an initial cost to create. Quite a lot of time this will be the same as their consumption, but army resources are the biggest factor (see improved armour for one example: costs 3 BP to add, increases consumption by 1). Not sure there are actually any rules for when to pay the initial cost (mass combat not my focus right now), so I think it's best to make it cover the recruitment and first weeks' consumption.
Strangely, despite there being rules for the effect of pillaging armies destroying lots, there aren't any rules for armies destroying lots. Ultimate War from Legendary Games is a good idea, since it has rules for sieges.
Using the troop rules is an excellent idea. Not sure how they scale up, and since there isn't (yet) a troop template, it's a bit hard to create troops for every type of creature, but if you're prepared to put in the effort of doing so and running combats at that scale, then go for it!
There's only an initial cost if the army has a resource that adds one.
I have developed some homebrew mass combat rules, using inspiration from a variety of sources, and would like to know if anyone would like to review them.
As we finally got around to getting to War of the River Kings, to DO Mass Combat and the subject of the PCs being away when Irovetti's forces strike one of the PC's towns, I came up with an idea for 'emergency militia'
Sort of a 'The British Are Coming!' idea where a militia is formed almost on the fly, So the idea is 1/10th of the population rounded down is the size of the army, so a 10,000 pop. City can in an emergency make 1000 people armed, be it pitchforks, slings, a thrown pig, etc. These 'militia's aren't trained so we use commoners instead of warriors to represent that it's basically citizenry armed with cutlery and farm tools, with a few law enforcement/town guards thrown into it.
So a large city's "Oh Crap" Army would look like this:
LN Gargantuan army of human commoner 1
hp 21; ACR 5 DV 15; OM +5
Speed 2;
Consumption 2
It's there when the enemy hits the city, consumption kicks in and lasts each week they are holding out. Disbands when a 'professional' army arrives to take their place/or the threat defeated. It may also NOT leave the city. I.E. Farmer Tom may have killed a couple orcs with his shovel but he's still got to get the tomatoes to market tomorrow.
Debating on if it should start out at -1 morale though for the lack of a centralized commander and the 'Annie Get Your Gun' nature of the event though.
As we finally got around to getting to War of the River Kings, to DO Mass Combat and the subject of the PCs being away when Irovetti's forces strike one of the PC's towns, I came up with an idea for 'emergency militia'
Sort of a 'The British Are Coming!' idea where a militia is formed almost on the fly, So the idea is 1/10th of the population rounded down is the size of the army, so a 10,000 pop. City can in an emergency make 1000 people armed, be it pitchforks, slings, a thrown pig, etc. These 'militia's aren't trained so we use commoners instead of warriors to represent that it's basically citizenry armed with cutlery and farm tools, with a few law enforcement/town guards thrown into it.
That's exactly what I did, 10% of the population as 1st level NPCs. Though it came up earlier in the campaign (I ran the attack on Tatzylford in Blood for Blood as a mass combat), and I use 100 pop per plot so the city population, and thus the militia size, was smaller.