My PCs will soon be in a position to command a small army of dwarves.
To introduce my players to the mass combat rules (from Ultimate Campaign with some tweaks from Legendary Games Ultimate Battle) I would like to throw a horde of Orcs at them.
Armies in the mass combat rules have a challenge rating and corresponding xp values and I assume one should be able to use these just like when building regular encounters. I'm a little lost at this point though.
Given an army for the players of ACR X what would be an average, challenging or hard encounter?
In case that helps, this is what I have so far:
- Battalion(100) Veterans of the Orc Wars (Fighter 3) = ACR 8
- Battalion(100) Dwarven Mercenaries (Fighter 2) = ACR 7
- Company(50) Assorted Sorcerers and Wizards (modelled as Sorcerer 2) = ACR 5
- Company(50) Dwarven Scouts (Ranger 2) = ACR 5
- Company(50) Dwarven Berserkers (Barbarian 2) = ACR 5
Adding up to an ACR 11 army overall.
Note: This uses the alternate army sizes from Ultimate Battle, that should not change anything but the number of soldiers though.
If I go by the usual "determine APL, take APL+1 for a 'challenging' encounter" I end up with an ACR 7 Army (3,200xp) against the ACR 11 Army of the players. If I wanted to use a similar amount of armies on both sides of the battle (not unreasonable I think) I would have 4 ACR 3 armies. But that would only add up to four companies of orc warriors 1 which seems kind of weak.
I don't have either Kingmaker or Wrath of the Righteous, both of which feature mass combat I think. How are the CRs of the armies between PCs and their enemies in those cases?
Any help would be appreciated.
I stumbled on this blog post about encounter design, APL and XP rewards.
The assumption that the PCs side has exactly four armies is even less likely to be true for mass combat than for regular encounters. The method suggested by the blog post above probably makes a lot more sense for armies.
Using the XP value of the dwarven army (12800xp) I would end up with an ACR 8 army for a 'challenging' encounter or an ACR 9 army for a 'hard' encounter. That could be four companies of 50 orcs with one or two levels in PC classes (that or a bigger horde). Thats looking better already, but I'm still not sure how well this would work in practice. Its also missing resources and command boons for the armies and I'm not sure how big their influence is.
I stumbled on this blog post about encounter design, APL and XP rewards.
The assumption that the PCs side has exactly four armies is even less likely to be true for mass combat than for regular encounters. The method suggested by the blog post above probably makes a lot more sense for armies.
Using the XP value of the dwarven army (12800xp) I would end up with an ACR 8 army for a 'challenging' encounter or an ACR 9 army for a 'hard' encounter. That could be four companies of 50 orcs with one or two levels in PC classes (that or a bigger horde). Thats looking better already, but I'm still not sure how well this would work in practice. Its also missing resources and command boons for the armies and I'm not sure how big their influence is.
Huzzah! I love when people link my blog! :-)
Personally, I wouldn't use my math for army combats for a few reasons.
— One, I haven't done the number crunching to figure out whether the math is sound for armies.
— Two, bigger chance to fail. "Harder" encounters with armies simply mean more numbers. Without much tactical input to affect the outcome, it'll mostly come down to luck whether you win or loose, especially if you go to ACR +4.
What I would do, personally, is slowly scale up the encounter difficulty. See what your players can handle and give them ways to escape from army combat (aka retreat) without having their entire army decimated simply because you were experimenting.
I will see if I can do some math / mock combats / number crunching and figure out if my APL +4 method is a sound one for army combat, but you won't see my results for a few weeks.
I stumbled on this blog post about encounter design, APL and XP rewards.
The assumption that the PCs side has exactly four armies is even less likely to be true for mass combat than for regular encounters. The method suggested by the blog post above probably makes a lot more sense for armies.
Using the XP value of the dwarven army (12800xp) I would end up with an ACR 8 army for a 'challenging' encounter or an ACR 9 army for a 'hard' encounter. That could be four companies of 50 orcs with one or two levels in PC classes (that or a bigger horde). Thats looking better already, but I'm still not sure how well this would work in practice. Its also missing resources and command boons for the armies and I'm not sure how big their influence is.
Huzzah! I love when people link my blog! :-)
Personally, I wouldn't use my math for army combats for a few reasons.
— One, I haven't done the number crunching to figure out whether the math is sound for armies.
— Two, bigger chance to fail. "Harder" encounters with armies simply mean more numbers. Without much tactical input to affect the outcome, it'll mostly come down to luck whether you win or loose, especially if you go to ACR +4.What I would do, personally, is slowly scale up the encounter difficulty. See what your players can handle and give them ways to escape from army combat (aka retreat) without having their entire army decimated simply because you were experimenting.
I will see if I can do some math / mock combats / number crunching and figure out if my APL +4 method is a sound one for army combat, but you won't see my results for a few weeks.
Well, I'm doing this under the assumption that army combat (specifically the XP values for armies) was designed for building encounters the same way as for regular combat. The problem being that I couldn't find that explicitly stated anywhere, so I have no idea if this is correct. This is also why I asked about armies in Kingmaker or Wrath of the Righteous, since those could show me if my assumption is correct.
The bigger chance to fail is the reason I asked here. I don't really want this combat to end with massive casualties for the PCs, it's really more of a sidequest.
I will build the complete statblocks for the armies involved in the next couple of days and perhaps try them out, I will likely post the results here when I'm done.
I found that part on building army encounters I was looking for: There is a sidebar in Ultimate Campaign (page 237) that basically says you can build armies the same way you build regular encounters, now to see if that actually works out ;) :
I built two armies, the dwarven army listed in my original post and an orc army of ACR 8 (Thats 37.5% of the XP of the dwarven army, should be similiar to an APL+1 encounter).
Veterans of the Orc Wars XP 4800
LG battalion(100) of dwarves (Fighter 3)
hp 45; ACR 8 DV 18 (+2 Armor, +1 Shield)
OM +8 (+1 Sup. Weapons) Morale 0
Tactics Standard + Defensive Wall
Resources Heavy Armor, Shields, Superior Weapons
Special Darkvision, Dwarven Resilience, Ability Mod (CON), Bravery(+1)
Dwarven Mercenaries XP 3200
LN battalion(100) of dwarves (Fighter 2)
hp 39; ACR 7 DV 17 (+1 Armor)
OM +7 Morale 0
Tactics Standard + Feint
Resources Medium Armor, Ranged Weapons
Special Darkvision, Dwarven Resilience, Ability Mod (CON), Bravery(+1)
Dwarven Berserkers XP 1600
N company(50) of dwarves (Barbarian(Armored Hulk) 2)
hp 33; ACR 5 DV 15 (+1 Armor)
OM +5 Morale 0
Tactics Standard + Taunt
Resources Medium Armor
Special Darkvision, Dwarven Resilience, Ability Mod (CON), Armored Swiftness, Rage
Dwarven Scouts XP 1600
LG company(50) of dwarves (Ranger 2)
hp 28; ACR 5 DV 15
OM +5 Morale 0
Tactics Standard + Strafing Skirmishers
Resources Ranged Weapons
Special Darkvision, Dwarven Resilience, Ability Mod (CON), Combat Style, Favored Enemy(Orc), Track
Dwarven Spellcasters XP 1600
LG company(50) of dwarves (Sorceror 2)
hp 18; ACR 5 DV 15 (+1 Spells)
OM +5 (+1 Spells) Morale 0
Tactics Standard
Resources -
Special Darkvision, Dwarven Resilience, Ability Mod (CON), Spellcasting
I gave the dwarven armies an extra tactic each to make them more distinct. I may also end up creating an NPC member of each army as a kind of 'face' instead of or in addition to that.
Felzaks Horde XP 1600
CE company(50) of orcs (Barbarian 2)
hp 32; ACR 5 DV 15 (+1 Armor)
OM +6 Morale 0
Tactics Standard
Resources Medium Armor
Special Darkvision, Orc Ferocity, Light Sensitivity, Ability Mod (STR), Rage
Veteran Raiders XP 1600
NE battalion(200*) of orcs (Fighter 1)
hp 27; ACR 5 DV 15 (+1 Armor)
OM +5 (+1 Sup. Weapons) Morale 0
Tactics Standard
Resources Medium Armor, Superior Weapons
Special Darkvision, Orc Ferocity, Light Sensitivity, Ability Mod (STR)
2 x Orc Raiders XP 800
CE company(150*) of orcs (Warrior 1)
hp 16; ACR 3 DV 13
OM +4 Morale 0
Tactics Standard
Resources -
Special Darkvision, Orc Ferocity, Light Sensitivity, Ability Mod (STR)
* These armies are bigger because their individual creatures have a CR below 1. (This is from Ultimate Battle)
One thing that I'm somewhat sceptical about is the morale values, since they start at 0 a couple of unlucky rolls could end the whole battle after the first round and with either side winning regardless of which army is stronger :/.
I will do a couple of test combats with these armies next.