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Using the RAW, adding anything higher than 4th level spellcasters to an otherwise even fight means the side with the spellcasters always wins!
See the thread "An analysis of the Kingmaker mass combat system" for more details.
I originally wanted to offer something with a *few* more options, like being able to raise or lower another army's OM, DV, or damage mod as a melee action, but that quickly became more complicated than I wanted. So instead...
If you just make the army's OM and DV bonus the caster's level divided by 4, rounded down (half the current bonus), things work out much better.
Now, in an otherwise evenly-matched fight between 2 armies, where each side has about a 46% chance of winning (the rest goes to ties) :
An army with 4th level casters wins about 67% of the time (21% more often)
An army with 8th level casters wins about 84% of the time (38% more often)
An army with 12th level casters or higher always wins
And if the *other* side has the Spellbreaker Tactic,
An army with 4th level casters wins about 23% of the time (loses 23% more often)
An army with 8th level casters wins about 46% of the time (an "even fight")
An army with 12th level casters wins about 72% of the time (26% more often)
An army with 16th level casters wins about 89% of the time (43% more often)
An army with 20th level casters still always wins
Basically, using Spellbreaker has the effect of bumping the effectiveness of the spellcasters down by 2 steps (8 levels).
The "loses more often with 4th level casters" result should make people think twice about casually saying "I'm throwing in some spellcasters". BTW, that happens in the RAW, as well, it's not an artifact of the proposed change.
If either of the above two results seems odd, just change the Spellbreaker DV bonus to +2. That makes a battle with 4th level casters a even fight, and drops the effectiveness of the casters by only 4 levels across the board.
This seems about right to me - anyone else have an opinion? :)
I think it does - check out
http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/ultimateCampaign/kingdomsAndWar/massComb at.html
Which is (quick glance) the same as the Pathfinder SRD version.
I know this is a bit old, Zen Fox, but I've been reading through your threads on mass combat to try and get a grip on the system for my own campaign. This one gave me pause, and I may be off - but it looks like you are calculating the Spellcasters bonus based on the caster level, and not the spell level. So an army with 4th level casters would be granting a +2 bonus to their army, whereas a 17th level army would be contributing +9 - the maximum.
I am referencing the SRD rules (Ultimate Campaign) for these. Not sure if the other systems used a different metric for Spellcasters.