Goblin Squad Member
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This may not be practical, but it would be really nice if the realities of war between kingdoms in PFO were close enough to the realities of war between kingdoms in the real world that the teachings of Sun Tzu would still be meaningful.
Ideally, I'd love to see slow-moving (relative to player characters) armies of mostly NPCs with supply lines, etc. maneuvering for advantage.
"The worst policy of all is to besiege walled cities."
I would love this.
This line of thinking totally caught me off guard, but if you could pull
that off... I'm getting excited just thinking about it.
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Goblin Squad Member
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As a practiced armchair general for the last 3 decades, I can say that Sun Tzu, Ssu-ma, Wei Lia-Tzu, Toyatomi, Tokugawa, Musashi, as well as Napoleon and Carl von Clausewitz, Julius Caesar, Alexander, Rommel, Genghis Khan, Lord Nelson, Hannibal Barca, and still apply in a role playing game war scenario.
Without having to restort to use of table top war-game size units, I'm a big fan of Heroes of Battle, which has excellent rules for role-playing armies. I used the Heroes of Battle with the Pathfinder mass combat rules (with some Conan RPG mass combat rules thrown in for fun)when my players and I played King Maker AP. Even after the dust settled and the last fire started by multiple fireball assaults died out, the guidelines of Sun Tzu persisted in ruling the Kingdom, especially when our neighbors decided we were too much of a threat to the stability of the River Kingdoms to be allowed to live...
The key to using Sun Tzu, etc., is to avoid the rampant meta-gaming that tends to go on. I tend to focus on the role-playing aspect since the players are in charge and they are given reports by NPCs and they formulate tactics based on those reports - which makes spies - Sun Tzu's most important component of any military campaign - a very important role.
I think the general confusion about warfare comes from people's lack of distinction between strategy and tactics. Strategy is the overall big picture of warfare and tactics change with circumstances of battle. Napoleon's strategies will win a war in the River Kingdoms, but his tactics of using large numbers of troops to form firing lines won't - it would make a very attactive target... heh.
Thanks for bearing with me. In the end, I think you can make Sun Tzu very meaningful at your game table!
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Nihimon, why NPC's instead of PC armies? As a supplement? Replacement? I am curious as to your reasoning.
So that it makes sense for it to take days for them to move significant distances. It's not practical to make it take days of real time for players to move around the map.
... you can make Sun Tzu very meaningful at your game table!
This may be a case where I wasn't clear that I was talking about the Pathfinder Online MMO.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Nihimon, why NPC's instead of PC armies? As a supplement? Replacement? I am curious as to your reasoning.So that it makes sense for it to take days for them to move significant distances. It's not practical to make it take days of real time for players to move around the map.
I think I will get little agreement, but in my opinion this is exactly the problem. The best solution is to avoid the problem...make the world that big and remove "instant travel".
Impractical? Maybe...at least until someone figures out how to make it not so. Just sayin...
But, to address Skwizik's question, NPCs are necessary because warfare of this style requires cannon fodder and the ability to win via attrition. PCs reduce the ability to utilize either (PCs respawn and they like to be the "Champions"). I would use this rationale for all aspects of the game.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Nihimon, why NPC's instead of PC armies? As a supplement? Replacement? I am curious as to your reasoning.
I wrote an entire topic concerning this awhile back.
Like earlier stated, having massive NPC armies allows for certain dynamics to take place that are not fun with PC armies.
One of the biggest reason I favor the ability to have large NPC armies is because I think it should take weeks or months to siege and take very old and established settlements. And for those weeks or months there should be a huge army blocking all incoming and outgoing traffic and siege weapons firing at the walls.
The only practical way to do this is to have massive NPC armies were players function as officers. That way the players don't sit there staring at the walls the whole time or cranking back a siege weapon to hurl stones at stationary objects. When they are at the siege they can take a part actively fighting the enemy. Trying to disrupt supply lines, thin enemy numbers, sabotage things etc. Things that will decrease the time until the enemy city falls, or weaken the besieging army to the point it can be defeated or is too expensive to maintain. Stuff that is fun to do.
Whatever the case I think almost tournament style sieges where you set a time that both sides show up and a city you may have held for years falls in a couple hours is a HORRIBLE siege system. If you dig into to a position and build thick walls and moats and anti-siege weapon siege weaponry and hire a large well equipped guard... your towns should not fall in a couple hours.
It's not realistic, its not fun, and it hands way too huge of an advantage to barely active clans that can bring on a ton of members during the weekend, or even worse during the weekdays when most people are at work.
That is why we need large NPC forces.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Impractical? Maybe...at least until someone figures out how to make it not so.
Yeah, I don't know that it will ever be practical for players, but if you need an army with you to conquer another kingdom, then the game can force the players to move the army around, and deal with all those problems as well. What I had in mind most when I referred to NPC Armies was the idea that those armies maneuvering could deceive other kingdom's armies into making counter moves, which might expose their flanks, etc.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Impractical? Maybe...at least until someone figures out how to make it not so.Yeah, I don't know that it will ever be practical for players, but if you need an army with you to conquer another kingdom, then the game can force the players to move the army around, and deal with all those problems as well. What I had in mind most when I referred to NPC Armies was the idea that those armies maneuvering could deceive other kingdom's armies into making counter moves, which might expose their flanks, etc.
I understood and agree with you.
Goblinworks Executive Founder
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@Nihimon, why NPC's instead of PC armies? As a supplement? Replacement? I am curious as to your reasoning.I wrote an entire topic concerning this awhile back.
Like earlier stated, having massive NPC armies allows for certain dynamics to take place that are not fun with PC armies.
One of the biggest reason I favor the ability to have large NPC armies is because I think it should take weeks or months to siege and take very old and established settlements. And for those weeks or months there should be a huge army blocking all incoming and outgoing traffic and siege weapons firing at the walls.
The only practical way to do this is to have massive NPC armies were players function as officers. That way the players don't sit there staring at the walls the whole time or cranking back a siege weapon to hurl stones at stationary objects. When they are at the siege they can take a part actively fighting the enemy. Trying to disrupt supply lines, thin enemy numbers, sabotage things etc. Things that will decrease the time until the enemy city falls, or weaken the besieging army to the point it can be defeated or is too expensive to maintain. Stuff that is fun to do.
Whatever the case I think almost tournament style sieges where you set a time that both sides show up and a city you may have held for years falls in a couple hours is a HORRIBLE siege system. If you dig into to a position and build thick walls and moats and anti-siege weapon siege weaponry and hire a large well equipped guard... your towns should not fall in a couple hours.
It's not realistic, its not fun, and it hands way too huge of an advantage to barely active clans that can bring on a ton of members during the weekend, or even worse during the weekdays when most people are at work.
That is why we need large NPC forces.
Siege and assault are two very different forms of battle. An assault is typically decided in hours or days, while a siege takes as long as it does.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I find myself wary of this idea for reasons I can't quite articulate. Perhaps I'm worried about how NPC armies would change the pacing of the gameplay.
If this were implemented, I would hope that the NPC armies were pulled directly from a hexes "Commoner" pool so that an emphasis on warfare lessened a hexes production power.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Siege and assault are two very different forms of battle. An assault is typically decided in hours or days, while a siege takes as long as it does.
Right but you don't just assault a highly fortified position with a semi-competent defense force.
Also I think assaults should be prettymuch removed from gameplay anyway. People are going to be putting a lot of time into their settlements and structures. Destroying or taking one over should always be an expensive an time consuming process unless the settlement/structure is not actually being used by players. (Not at the moment but overall player activity.)
Nobody is going to play a game where you can live in a place, and invest a ton of time and effort upgrading it for two years and lose it in two hours. Taking over player owned structures needs to be balanced with how difficult it is to build and upgrade them.
In a game where they stated it should take years for the first official player settlements to spring up. It needs to be a long involved process to take them over.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I love the idea of large armies laying waste to each other. My concern is what it does to the playability of the game. If you've got a dozen people on screen for each side, not too bad. Then add spells etc. Ok, so you might get a bit of lag. Now, add say 2-3 NPC's each. The issue with NPC armies is they will consume system resources and cause lag for all involved, and I'm not sure how to solve that problem.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I love the idea of large armies laying waste to each other. My concern is what it does to the playability of the game. If you've got a dozen people on screen for each side, not too bad. Then add spells etc. Ok, so you might get a bit of lag. Now, add say 2-3 NPC's each. The issue with NPC armies is they will consume system resources and cause lag for all involved, and I'm not sure how to solve that problem.
I think the best way is to limit the amount of NPCs on the field at once. While if you sent an army of 5000 it would be epic to see them all out there doing their thing at once it would be simpler to implement if there were 50-150 of them spread around the enemy city and as they died members of that 5000 would take their place. If you wanted size balance to be proportional to army size you would make the smaller army have a lowered limit of units on the field proportional to how badly they are outnumbered.
And spread around the enemy city is a big one. The farther spread out they are the less you should have to load at once. If there are some NPCs up blocking incoming trade, some around your siege weapons which fully encircle the city, some guarding the supplies you are bringing in to maintain the siege, some back in camp etc. you can have a lot more NPCs than if the catapults are all in one spot and they are all right next to them.
The other solution is better NPCs as opposed to many NPCs. Rather than having 5 NPCs 1/5th as strong as a player you could have 2 NPCs half as strong as a player or 1 NPC as strong as your average player.
You could do this by making it so that the guards that patrol your city regularly are weaker than NPCs that wage wars. Rather than hired guards they would be NPC knights and champions and such.
I think there are a lot of ways you could make it work.
Historically entire dynasties have been balanced on the edge of assassins' blades. Ideas...
I have an idea too. Respawn!
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Goblin Squad Member
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And spread around the enemy city is a big one. The farther spread out they are the less you should have to load at once. If there are some NPCs up blocking incoming trade, some around your siege weapons which fully encircle the city, some guarding the supplies you are bringing in to maintain the siege, some back in camp etc. you can have a lot more NPCs than if the catapults are all in one spot and they are all right next to them.
The other solution is better NPCs as opposed to many NPCs. Rather than having 5 NPCs 1/5th as strong as a player you could have 2 NPCs half as strong as a player or 1 NPC as strong as your average player.
I hope that would work. The problem with NPC's being equal to players is that your armies become much smaller and less prone to the Art of War concepts. Armies need to be large and bulky for strategy to kick in. Otherwise, all you are doing is altering the tactical situation. Plus, even if you spread NPC's out over a region, it will still place strain on the localized server nodes responsible for that hex.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I hope that would work. The problem with NPC's being equal to players is that your armies become much smaller and less prone to the Art of War concepts. Armies need to be large and bulky for strategy to kick in. Otherwise, all you are doing is altering the tactical situation. Plus, even if you spread NPC's out over a region, it will still place strain on the localized server nodes responsible for that hex.
And spread around the enemy city is a big one. The farther spread out they are the less you should have to load at once. If there are some NPCs up blocking incoming trade, some around your siege weapons which fully encircle the city, some guarding the supplies you are bringing in to maintain the siege, some back in camp etc. you can have a lot more NPCs than if the catapults are all in one spot and they are all right next to them.
The other solution is better NPCs as opposed to many NPCs. Rather than having 5 NPCs 1/5th as strong as a player you could have 2 NPCs half as strong as a player or 1 NPC as strong as your average player.
True... but the internet is only getting faster as time progresses. Ryan has already stated this game will not have FPS style combat and we know in EVE players could have up to 5 NPC allies per player supporting them in the form of drones. (Not counting carriers which could have more drones.) And EVE is an older game at this point.
With this in mind the game just might be able to handle some pretty radical numbers of NPCs.
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Goblin Squad Member
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True... but the internet is only getting faster as time progresses. Ryan has already stated this game will not have FPS style combat and we know in EVE players could have up to 5 NPC allies per player supporting them in the form of drones. (Not counting carriers which could have more drones.) And EVE is an older game at this point.With this in mind the game just might be able to handle some pretty radical numbers of NPCs.
If it can handle 4-5 NPC's per player, I'd be *very* happy. And would probably never stop playing. Favorite class in Pathfinder (PnP) is the Paladin, of tactician variety. If I can make that work in PFO, I'll be a very satisfied customer!
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Goblin Squad Member
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I am a bit wary about NPC armies. It feels like the game is playing itself, NPC army vs NPC army.
Sure, it should take a long time to siege a castle, but that doesn't necessitate NPC armies for me.
I think as long as the NPC armies are driven by player interaction it will be fine. Such as the armies are paid for by taxes. The taxes are paid by the camps gathering resources and businesses within a hex, and those camps and businesses are run by players.
That and there should be a lot of room for players to make an impact both offensive and defensive. Players could smuggle goods past besieging forces to allow the defenders to hold out longer, or cut supplies to the besieging army. Or they could sneak into to the town being besieged and sabotage things like defensive weaponry or supplies to make it so the town can't hold out as long. Or they could just fight on the front lines to thin opposing forces.
As long as there is room for players to make an impact where they can drastically effect the outcome of a siege I think its fine. It may shift some of the focus of war more heavily toward logistics and economics but I think that is a good thing within reason.
If the bar is "Sun Tzu realism" then sieges of fortified positions *should* be one of the most futile things to do in existence and should be highly prone to failure AND give the commander/general a pretty horrible reputation if/when they fail.
Concerning economics of war:
Sun Tzu said: In the operations of war, where there are in the field a thousand swift chariots, as many heavy chariots, and a hundred thousand mail-clad soldiers, with provisions enough to carry them a thousand LI, the expenditure at home and at the front, including entertainment of guests, small items such as glue and paint, and sums spent on chariots and armor, will reach the total of a thousand ounces of silver per day. Such is the cost of raising an army of 100,000 men.
Conducting a full scale war of these magnitudes should be a thing that occurs after several growth cycles of the game. It would drain any individual hex within a day or two otherwise.
Also it should take a while: "Ponder and deliberate before you make a move."
But I don't think that we're exchanging random quotes here, as much as I would love to.
Okay, so I had an idea here, that is totally impossible, but even still:
Has anyone played the Total War games? For battles, it switches to a battle screen, and PCs become commanders, in charge of 3-4 units, which is portrayed as 100 men, and then armies nuke it out for either side.
Screen shots of gameplay:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/db/Medieval-_Total_War_Sieges.jp g
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-vv1wAo5XDyc/Tm7cAOGYFiI/AAAAAAAAMDQ/wxbs4xFoF7M/s 1600/medieval+total+war1.jpg
Again, logistically hard to do, but that would be an awesome way to do massive battles.
True Pathfinder is more akin to modern combat then medieval combat. Siege combat is unlikely in a magical universe for the smae reason it is in ours...there are far too many ways to get around it, go through it, or bring it down, and far too many ways to concentrate force in one section that the defender cannot react to in time to bring it down.
Consider that PF has no city-wide way to stop teleportation, or ethereal shifting to get inside defenses.
It can't stop summoned/called monsters, some of whom can teleport at will.
One fire elemental in the poor section of town is better then modern incendiaries. Just have it burn everything and avoid combat.
An Umber hulk can tear right through a standard city wall.
Mass Flight is an attack option. FLying creatures all over the place.
There's plenty of ways to generate food on the go, from clerics to magic items. This reduces the amount of food that needs to be transported and/or gathered immensely...which hugely speeds up troop movement and ability to stay in the field.
Just consider what unlimited cantrips can do for maintaining an army in the field. What magical healing does for keeping men fit and healthy for battle, and not burdening the army with care of wounded men for the long term. AoE healing effects, set up properly, can heal a hundred men at a time.
There is no Siege warfare in modern times because it's stupid to assault a useless fixed point. Either you'll get in and kill them quickly, or you won't and the position isn't worth taking. Ravage the countryside and if they haven't taken steps for supplies, they'll have to come out.
Too, Pathfinder doesn't have broad-scale effects which simply must exist in a magical society for there to be any form of law and control. City-wide Interdictions to stop any form of dimensional shenanigans. Wards to reveal magical effects, to dispel illusions and invisiblity, etc. If Mythals didn't exist, something very similar should. Being able to fly over a city and drop Itemized boulders with True Strike to devastating effect is a major hazard. Summoned creatures running amok can tear apart a town easily.
None of the reality of magic existing is actually much addressed in Pathfinder. It's just hand-waved away that that kind of fighting doesn't exist, and problems are just solved with sword and steel and skullduggery, not by forces which can intelligently leverage magic.
==Aelryinth
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Goblin Squad Member
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I love the idea of warfare in this game, and I two would love for it to be realistic. By realistic I don't mean that is simulates details, but rather in the sense that gameplay in PO captures the essence of war.
The essence of war is a violent struggle between two hostile, independent, and irreconcilable wills, each trying to impose itself on the other. War is fundamentally an interactive social process. Clausewitz called it a Zweikampf (literally a "two-struggle") and suggested the image of a pair of wrestlers locked in a hold, each exerting force and counterforce to try to throw the other.4 War is thus a process of continuous mutual adaptation, of give and take, move and countermove. It is critical to keep in mind that the enemy is not an inanimate object to be acted upon but an independent and animate force with its own objectives and plans. While we try to impose our will on the enemy, he resists us and seeks to impose his own will on us. Appreciating this dynamic interplay between opposing human wills is essential to understanding the fundamental nature of war.
-MCDP 1: Warfighting
I think we might best get this essence by not trying to over design it. The Marine Corps has drawn on thinkers like Sun Tzu, Jomini, Clausewitz, Lind, etc, as well as it's own institutional experience to articulate war's essence: the struggle of wills. Whether the instantiation is states actors fielding large professional armies, or non-state actors making small, strategic moves like blowing up a building is not important. War instantiates contextually, however the terrain lies, including human terrain.
So the less you try and design a warfare system, and the more you let actors exert their will on each other, the more it will feel like war, and the more individual's choices will fuel content (i.e. away from theme-parking).
We certainly want to think about the mechanics of how wills are enacted--how do I materially affect the world (can I make a siege weapon that affects a city wall?, can I "drop" a delayed blast fireball off in a marketplace?, etc). But I don't think we want to come up with a schema of what war looks like, and then try and code that schema in the game.
For anyone interested in war and how we might make war a fun, challenging part of this game, the Corps' very readable, very concise foundational doctrine pub Warfighting is essential reading:
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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Another thing to note is that massive armies don't inhabit the landscape- they ARE the landscape. A camp that supports as little as few as 500 soldiers needs to support not just the soldiers, but the supply lines and people supporting those soldiers. An army marching to battle needs a baggage train to carry all the equipment that a soldier needs, but doesn't need to fight: Tents, cooking supplies, bedding, and rations for the soldiers as well as the support.
Assaults against fortified positions require overwhelming superiority in terms of open field battle, or some way of bypassing the fortifications. Such an assault could easily be defeated by striking at the supply lines or baggage train. Similarly, cutting off a siege from its supply lines would also defeat it.
Thus, for large NPC armies, one way to model attacks them isn't by having PCs attack the army, it's requiring PCs to deliver wagons of supplies to the army. If a couple of payroll or food shipments in a row are diverted or destroyed, the army begins mass desertions and the battle is over. One could also fight them by fielding a superior army, with the same requirement for supply.
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Goblin Squad Member
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True Pathfinder is more akin to modern combat then medieval combat. Siege combat is unlikely in a magical universe for the smae reason it is in ours...there are far too many ways to get around it, go through it, or bring it down, and far too many ways to concentrate force in one section that the defender cannot react to in time to bring it down.
Consider that PF has no city-wide way to stop teleportation, or ethereal shifting to get inside defenses.
It can't stop summoned/called monsters, some of whom can teleport at will.
One fire elemental in the poor section of town is better then modern incendiaries. Just have it burn everything and avoid combat.
An Umber hulk can tear right through a standard city wall.
Mass Flight is an attack option. FLying creatures all over the place.
There's plenty of ways to generate food on the go, from clerics to magic items. This reduces the amount of food that needs to be transported and/or gathered immensely...which hugely speeds up troop movement and ability to stay in the field.
Just consider what unlimited cantrips can do for maintaining an army in the field. What magical healing does for keeping men fit and healthy for battle, and not burdening the army with care of wounded men for the long term. AoE healing effects, set up properly, can heal a hundred men at a time.There is no Siege warfare in modern times because it's stupid to assault a useless fixed point. Either you'll get in and kill them quickly, or you won't and the position isn't worth taking. Ravage the countryside and if they haven't taken steps for supplies, they'll have to come out.
Too, Pathfinder doesn't have broad-scale effects which simply must exist in a magical society for there to be any form of law and control. City-wide Interdictions to stop any form of dimensional shenanigans. Wards to reveal magical effects, to dispel illusions and invisiblity, etc. If Mythals didn't exist, something very similar should. Being able to fly over a city and drop Itemized boulders with True Strike to...
Well that really depends on just how common high level magic users and creatures are in a campaign world. I'm not really familiar with the standard campaign world setting for Pathfinder, so I can't really speak to it. In the campaigns I ran for my PnP campaigns, I always addressed that issue by having high level magic use be an incredibly RARE thing. Doesn't alter dynamics too much when the number of people in the world who are higher then 3rd Level Wizards/Sorcerors/Clerics are fewer then the total number of people who have been to outer space in our world.
But you are correct, in settings where high level magic use is relatively common, things start to get whacky real quick. It's one of the reasons I always avoided that situation by saying that it exists, but is so rare as to hardly be a factor. Of course, that's easy to do in a PnP campaign where you have 5 or 6 players who are the "stars of the show". I'm not sure how you approach that in a MMORPG setting.
In my homebrews, intelligent defenses exist against all this kind of thing.
Citywide Wards are standard parts of defenses, just like walls.
Non-natural flight is impossible above a city, which means nothing bigger then a normal bird can fly. This includes most magical creatures, who simply wouldn't be able to fly in a non-magical world.
Flight threat, removed.
Interdiction effects extend over cities, barring abuse of the fifth dimension. No blinking, ddooring, teleporting, rope tricking, bag of holding, portable holing, ethereal jaunting, gating, summoning, calling inside a city. This shuts down smugglers, invaders, people trying to escape the law by moving halfway across the world, those summoning dangerous creatures, and the like.
Charm and illusion magic is severely curtailed, as are divination spells. Many such spells don't work at all except in specific areas, or with Ringmages attuned to the city's wards who can circumvent such restrictions. Magical fire is automatically snuffed out.
A continuous Detect Magic effect at 9th level covers the whole town. So, if you're loaded down with magic or buffs, you glow...and everyone can see it. If you're shapechanged or invisible, you still glow and stand out. This tends to stop a lot of shapechangers and the like in their tracks, and really starts shifting things to the importance of skills over magic.
Powerful cities have Spell Engines (level 8 FR spell) that encapsulate massive areas, and suck away any form of magic use in their AoE, making any use outside of potions practically impossible (and are modified to draw in chi and ki and rage and psionics and whatnot).
This is the kind of stuff that would happen in any world where such stuff is possible. Civilized locations are just waaaaay too vulnerable otherwise.
They had a magic item in Forgotten Realms called a Weirdstone whose main effect was a 5 mile radius Interdiction effect, which I thought would make it pretty mandatory for any city with any common sense. No more random portals and gates tripping over one another...
==Aelryinth
"Spell Engines" wouldn't do jack to exceptional abilities like Rage, which are not magical in any way. You're overreaching there simply to gimp options from your players.
You've also never had any casters with mage's disjunction which would neutralize these engines.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The issue with NPC armies is they will consume system resources and cause lag for all involved, and I'm not sure how to solve that problem.
Actually, I don't think the system needs to really model combat between armies. There's no reason that the system can't utilize the army the same way the crafting system utilizes the commoners. Having a massive NPC army present during your siege gives you bonuses and unlocks certain abilities.
There's a very real chance PFO could actually implement this to some degree by forcing us to move our siege engines from our Settlement, and allowing them to be damaged in-transit.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The idea of RTS game play being introduced into a MMO would be a pretty killer feature. But, let's be honest, that would be a HUGE undertaking and would take away from what needs to be focused upon...core game features and mechanics.
I think BioWare is experiencing that right now with SW:TOR. The character story aspect of that game is an AWESOME game feature, but there is too much of it with all the little zone quest. I think they easily could have dropped a quarter of the solo story line, and spent that time on balance issues, additional Flash Points, end game issues, etc.
Would I like to see something later on like that? Absolutely! Maybe Goblinworks, some third party dev, or a community member equipped with a tool kit could develop it after launch as a type of module add-on game pack.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Well that really depends on just how common high level magic users and creatures are in a campaign world. I'm not really familiar with the standard campaign world setting for Pathfinder, so I can't really speak to it. In the campaigns I ran for my PnP campaigns, I always addressed that issue by having high level magic use be an incredibly RARE thing. Doesn't alter dynamics too much when the number of people in the world who are higher then 3rd Level Wizards/Sorcerors/Clerics are fewer then the total number of people who have been to outer space in our world.
But you are correct, in settings where high level magic use is relatively common, things start to get whacky real quick. It's one of the reasons I always avoided that situation by saying that it exists, but is so rare as to hardly be a factor. Of course, that's easy to do in a PnP campaign where you have 5 or 6 players who are the "stars of the show". I'm not sure how you approach that in a MMORPG setting.
This is also how I play. Cantrips and simple magics can be common, but physics-smashing powerful magics are extremely rare. In fact, I admit in my homebrew campaign, I play so that most places the uneducated masses consider all magic to be evil...at the very least an vanity art for the elite. If you think about the population of Earth, a world of plenty, even here we only have a small percent with PhDs...and that is only 8-10 years of schooling. Powerful wizardry requires study for a lifetime...and Golarion is not necessarily a world of plenty. For each Mage, there are towns full of ignorant farmers...and those farmers elected to "protect" the others.
I admit I have not yet played a game in Golarion. It seems, if world shattering mages are dime a dozen and every warrior has a STR of 20+, there is not much reason for any walls, doors, or any other non-magical constructs. Castles and forts would be absurd pointless constructs...in fact they would be worse than useless because it would trap you inside when the magic starts destroying everything, better to be outside in the open so you can run.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Still I can not picture how this should work. Classic RTS games limit themselves to 8 player maximum and mostly only 2 players. How should that work within a game where 100vs100 player conflicts will happen?
If you limit the amount of NPCs that each player can command, then you make a pet class out of everyone in every conflict, meaning it isn't important if he is a Wizrad or a Rogue.
If you allow only a few people to command an army then you create a sort of endgame that is highly exclusive to a very small amount of your players - not a good idea.
I am all for NPCs who protect your camp/castle/whatnot while you and your guildies are away to give you time to react. But if the attacker has the same option, then this would go away. Your castle would be overrun with you being logged out by the 100+ NPCs of the megalomaniac guild who can afford this kind of warfare.
So no, I can not see that working in an MMO PvP context.
Following the eve model, anyone can group up with anyone. Skill training gives you various buffs depending on the role you're in (fleet commander, squad commander, etc) and also let's you have larger numbers of men under your control. Granted, these are individual pilots, but the bottleneck is the game, not the client as eve hosts 100v100 space battles currently so it is possible.
A Magical Medieval Society has two really pertinent books: Europe and the Spice Road. The Europe book takes the 3e DMG information on NPC populations, then extrapolates what this means in a feudal society (medieval Europe). This is hands down the best product of that line. The Spice Road book discusses the land route through the Gobi desert that imported spices and silks from the Orient into Europe until navigation by ship brought to bear the economies of scale that shipping by sea instead of by overland caravans . Both are recommended reads for this kind of thing.
Silk Road, not spice road.
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Goblin Squad Member
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If you limit the amount of NPCs that each player can command, then you make a pet class out of everyone in every conflict, meaning it isn't important if he is a Wizrad or a Rogue.
Actually, what I was trying to say is that the NPCs don't even really have to fight. Their presence works to power the Siege Engines, blockade the defenders, etc.
Yes, but this is 100 players vs 100 players if I read this right.
So does Eve. Keep in mind any pilot can have any number of effects on them as well and of course the processing server side is immense but the bottleneck here is the game and not the client.
Now what if each of these players will control an army of 100 NPCs?
Certainly that does carry some interesting scalability twists. However, as long as the game has the juice server side, and Ryan has mentioned they want to purchase the most beefy servers they can for their single world instance so it may be possible, then it won't be an issue. Skill training would dictate how many you can have under your command, then you can join players to form armies.
So, if my training lets me have control over 50 men and you have training that let's you do 100, combined we have a 152 man army including ourselves. Assuming a max training cap of 1000, a 20 player v 20 player battle could have 40,040 combatants. This is huge and I don't want it to look like I'm discounting it. But, 100v100 player battles happen now and people used to scoff at even these numbers nary a decade ago. It's simply a matter of the hardware scalability on the game server end to do thousands versus thousands. Of course, you need a client computer to handle rendering as well, but my 3 year old laptop can participate in those massive Eve battles now easily so I wouldn't really expect it to be *that* huge of a concern considering field of view and occlusion culling (i.e. you can only see so much at once and actors will block other actors so they won't be rendered if they would otherwise be in your field of view).
At minimum, I'm excited at the possibilities.
"Spell Engines" wouldn't do jack to exceptional abilities like Rage, which are not magical in any way. You're overreaching there simply to gimp options from your players.
You've also never had any casters with mage's disjunction which would neutralize these engines.
The AOE of a Spell Engine was 10'/level, IIRC. And Disjunction existed back then...you could never cast it on a Spell Engine, because you'd have to be inside the magic-sucking field to affect it, and so you'd never get a spell off.
Rage is both an extraordinary ability and a supernatural one, as the later abilities indicate. If you call it SU, then it's magical, and you can certainly line-rule that spending rage points is as magical as spending psionic power points.
And it's not overreaching to gimp options from the players. It's reflecting what would happen in any magical world whose citizens wanted to be safe from random magical annihilation. I'd certainly feel a lot safer knowing some insane wizard couldn't pop in out of nowhere, start summoning up monsters and killing everything in sight. It's called 'realism'.
Seriously, go ask some military guy who plays the game what kind of defenses he'd put on a hardpoint in a magical universe. Shutting down magic of all kinds is going to be the very first thing that happens. It's a whole lot easier to defend stuff if you don't have to worry about magic.
And guess what? It gives the skill and BAB based classes a real chance to shine, and spellcasters a chance to feel impotent and useless, and not rely on their spells to solve everything.
===Aelryinth
If this (http://lombagreyhawk.wikidot.com/spell-engine) is an accurate depiction of the device, then a caster slinging 9th level spells could still defeat it range wise. Also, it doesn't affect supernatural abilities.
You're right in that anyone with both intelligence and magic (i.e. most magic users) would put up defenses and these could be part of those defenses. But, nothing is impervious and there are no "fool proof" plans.
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Goblin Squad Member
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There is a big difference between EvE and PFO when it comes to graphics.
In EvE all you see is a black space with a few dots because combat happens over great distances and not much has to be actually drawn.
In PFO this will be very different. Apart from a compelling landscape combat will be a lot more up close and personal and thus take a much heavier toll on your machine than EvE ever will.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Yes, but this is 100 players vs 100 players if I read this right. Now what if each of these players will control an army of 100 NPCs?
Each player shouldn't have access to 100 NPCs to lead. I don't think anyone is suggesting a class called "Huge army leader" where you get up to 100 NPC pets.
What I am talking about at least, its NPCs tied to towns and structures. By having forts, watchtowers, barracks, etc. the company controlling a hex gets access to an army that they can then assign to do things like lay siege to an enemy fort. Not each player but the controlling company/kingdom.
When that happens there would then be NPC groups that would move from that hex to the hex they are attacking and establish a camp. Once enough groups have made it to that camp things in that hex would change. Your NPCs would start intercepting incoming and outgoing trade to the enemies fort / settlement and take control of the structures outside the safety of that hexes walls. Patrols of your NPCs would start popping up and enforcing martial law. Your army would encircle the enemy fort and set-up any siege weapons they brought with them to begin the long process of taking control of your hex.
Members of your company may be able to get a few NPC soldiers to follow them as they do this task or that, but they aren't going to be running around with 100 apiece. All NPCs they lead are going to be subtracted from the ranks of your army, plus players aren't going to be leading an outright assault until the walls come down. They are likely to be doing smaller missions like intercepting supplies, sabotaging defenses or siege engines. Engaging patrols or assassinating captains etc. You don't WANT to pull 100 NPCs away from their duties to carry out small sensitive tasks.
While their army is attacking you, whatever troops they sent would not be available to defend their own hex, and they would have to ship supply convoys to it to keep their soldiers fed, clothed, and stocked with ammo to fire. And of course all soldiers in your army need wages no matter where they are, and those who die will need to be replaced by newly hired soldiers.
This all providing of course that you came in strong enough numbers the defenders don't just repel your initial advances and then over-run your camp.
I think it could easily work. The NPC population is spread out enough. You don't actually need to have every NPC physically represented in-game at once as you can instead use a system where existing NPCs that die are replaced by reinforcements until there are none left (Think Star Wars Battlefront 2 or taking a fort in Skyrim) and there is no reason to give players direct control of their entirety of their massive armies.
Goblinworks Founder
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In the campaigns I ran for my PnP campaigns, I always addressed that issue by having high level magic use be an incredibly RARE thing. Doesn't alter dynamics too much when the number of people in the world who are higher then 3rd Level Wizards/Sorcerors/Clerics are fewer then the total number of people who have been to outer space in our world.I play so that most places the uneducated masses consider all magic to be evil...
...and Golarion is not necessarily a world of plenty. For each Mage, there are towns full of ignorant farmers...and those farmers elected to "protect" the others....
This is how I would like to see magic in PFO, but I'm not very familiar with Golarion either. Powerful magic being a rare thing makes it magical. Saturating a world with it dulls and desensitizes us into thinking magic is just as common as loincloths.
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Magic and technology draw a staggering parallel when it comes to warfare. Assuming the two sides have the same tactical prowess, it would simply boil down to who has the best magic, or the most advanced technology. Typically this isn't the case, so both factors must be considered when comparing two armies in any conflict.
Despite this, magic is a much more significant abstract in the case of warfare than technology is. Fighting a bunch of berserkers who rely on their extraordinary rage ability to cause as much destruction as possible? There's a calming spell which makes enemies forfeit their emotion-based bonuses. Having a difficulty with well-fortified archers shooting your men before they can reach the gate? There's a spell that grants resistance to ranged weaponry, as well as a spell that can make ranged combat completely ineffective. Enemies taking advantage of flat terrain to use mounted cavalry tactics? The ground can be easily altered with a spell to prevent these tactics from being very effective. The point is, for every possible tactical situation, there's a magical effect which can either counter it outright or at least reduce its effectiveness. The key to this though is preparedness. If you know what to expect from your enemy, you can prepare spells for their approach. This is possible either through expert reconnaissance, or by the proper divination spells. The result of this is if you try to commit to warfare without at least as much magical access as your opponent, then the chances of victory decease based on the difference between the magic your side has access to and the magic the enemy has access to. Of course, this isn't considering that you can prepare your spell casters to specifically counter magic threats; although doing so lowers the amount of possible magic they can utilize in support of your own tactics.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Bromton, it took me a few reads to get what you're talking about.
I think your suggestion of placing War Camps (similar to the way we expect to place Harvesting Camps) in order to spawn NPCs that will harass your enemies is very interesting.
I personally really like the idea of having to march large armies around the map, but I can see this being a "budget" approach.