OK, just had my 1st experience with the Mass Combat Rules.
The PC's had invested a significant amount into fortifying border city with 24 DV pts of Fortifications. They had army of 100 2nd Level Warriors and an army of 10 lev 1 Warriors all with bows defending (IIRC)
The bad guys turned up with 2000 lev 4 Warriors, 100 Trolls, 100 Wyvern and 10 Stone Giants with Fighter Levels and a Siege Engine. The Siege Engine destroys 1d4 pts of fortifications every Melee Phase.
I House ruled and said in a day you are limited to 4 phases of fighting (1 Tactical choice, 1 Ranged, 1-3 Ranged/Melee).
At the end of the day the defenders had had taken no losses but there Fortification had lost 9 DV point.
The attackers had taken minor damage.
-----------------
My problem.
It's clear that we have a binary situation.
With the one Siege Engine unit the fortifications will be pretty much destroyed in a 2 days of combat (average 7 pts a day) and the defending force defeated.
If the siege Engine wasn't there is nothing the attacking forces could do to the defenders.
Have we missed something or is this the way the Mass Combat rules are supposed to work - Fortifications of moderate extent make defending troops (no matter how few) largely invulnerable to attack... unless the attackers have a single Siege Engine or better and a unit to attach it to that is moderately tough (DV) in which case the Fortifications last for a few days.
Looking at the rules (I haven't used them) there is still a natural 20 is always a hit rule, though it also does just 1 damage. Also if you're doing house rules then some of those units, stone giants at least, should maybe do a little damage to fortifications.
Otherwise this is such an incredible mismatch that the only real question is how long it will take for the defenders to die. Is 24 DV really 'moderate' fortifications?
Yeah, OK, by the kngdom building rules 24 defence isn't over the top, it's city walls and a moat on all sides of a max size settlement, or slightly less if there's barracks etc. within. Still way, way more than the cost of the defenders though.
Yep. Like I said it was our 1st time and so we weren't sure what to see.
Unfortunately because one of the players was going for something mildly medieval historical he decided Significant fortifications and a few archers and hold forever...
And we then discover yes, he would have held forever against an arny that should've taken it on a simple albeit bloody assault without the siege Engine, but with the siege Engine it became a "3 days and you're toast".
The Wyverns should have been able to clear the walls by flying up and attacking (100 Wyverns vs 200 lev 2 Warriors) but apparently they only ignore city Walls due to flight, not the Moats and Castle.
I did point out that Pathfinder really isn't medieval despite the trappings. All that magic creates weird effects. But I can understand some of his frustration.
Dotting ... on my phone, at work, on break, back later.
So from what I've read people generally don't like the mass combat rules. This might be one of the reasons.
I haven't used the mass combat rules myself.
From a historical standpoint a moat and a wall and some archers would be able to repel a huge number of enemies trying to assault them. However, as you pointed out Pathfinder isn't really medieval combat (walls stopped effective used when explosives became available, and when flight became available they became useless entirely).
I agree with avr that the Stone Giants should do some siege damage, and it's perfectly reasonable to let wyverns ignore moats as well as walls.
As siege engines turning it into: "3 days and you're toast" that's pretty much accurate too. If you can't hit the siege engines with your bows you're pretty much waiting till they break down the wall, then you get overrun. This is why people build siege engines. If you can hit the siege engines with your bows then the enemy doesn't really understand the concept of siege engines.
Someone with more experience with these rules might be able to make more enlightening suggestions.
We're looking at moving to Ultimate Battle by Legendary Games.
Basically it's set to work with Mass Battles but improving and modifying them.
The more I look at it the more it looks to me that over half the problem is the way that fortifications are handled as a blunt bonus to the DV of all units in the area.
And since DV determines whether you take any damage, a unit in a city with Walls, Moats, a Castle and couple of other defensive buildings gets a DV so high they are almost immune to damage. Even if they are fighting well away from the castle.
Siege engines didn't really bust walls though.
Goblin_Priest wrote: Siege engines didn't really bust walls though. Depends on the siege engine. Mortars and Cannons would typically be used against walls to cause a breach. Before Cannons became wide spread that was generally handled by sappers who would very slowly dig tunnels under the wall and collapse its support. Often killed the sappers.
Stuff like catapults, ballista, trenchbuchet could be used to target soft sections of the fortification (like gates) and break them down, but were generally used as a way to harass the opposition. Nothing says 'give up' quite like a week long bombardment. Then again, if you bother to build strong walls, you should of also bothered to build your own siege engines to harass attackers.
Rams could be used to attack an obviously weak section of wall, but generally would be used on gates. Its also very popular to create some sort of cover so the Ram team loses men slower. Nothing like cauldrons of molten lead to discourage men from using a ram.
And then there are the ever popular siege ladders and siege towers. Both are means to breach walls. And both are high risk endeavors that tend to get the over achievers killed before any real progress can be made. A real test of the army's moral.
My understanding was that Catapults were used to form breachs, although not as effective as Cannon, and a damned site harder to move around, which was just as relevant.
Sappers would normally set fires to burn out the supports (or explosives once they were available) so that they hopefully wouldn't be in the tunnel when it collapsed. The real nightmare was it was mostly done in the dark - getting enough air to breath was hard enough without burning it, and the defenders would build counter tunnels. So you could be digging away when suddenly a bunch of enemy soldiers burst out of the wall and you are all chopping and stabbing at each other in total darkness (a candle or lantern would be one of the 1st casualties in such a fight). And also the counter-sappers would try and collapse your tunnel. The stuff of nightmares apparently.
The castles that were never taken by siege usually had some oddities that made them very hard to take, and generally not many people lived there. There was an English castle on a chunk of firm ground in a marsh, connected to firm land by a causeway. Couldn't be sapped, couldn't be attacked by ladders effectively except near the gate, Couldn't get siege engines near. Also hard to cut off from food ans they could slip out a postern gate into the marsh for a spot of hunting, or trade with villages on the other side of the marsh, because the locals sure as hell knew the safer paths through the marsh.
Sappers aren't siege engines, canons and mortars are post medieval and even then I don't think they reliably made points of entries. Catapults certainly did not. Ladders bypass walls they don't destroy them.
Real sieges often involved starving the enemy out not destroying the castle (which typically an invader will want to use himself afterwards anyways). The doors certainly might be targetted but it just seems like a weird mechanic to handle that and rams would probably be the weapon of choice for that.
All of which is a little silly with 100 wyverns to slaughter the defenders.
The biggest takeaway is magic alters everything very dramatically (duh).
Siege is an endangered species with things like Disintegrate, Earth and Air Elementals, Mass Charm, Fly/flight, Cure Disease, Create Water, Purify or Create Food and Drink, Dragons, etc., etc..
Castles were mostly about controlling the countryside. That job would remain but I suspect the effect on castles is going to radically change their design in any campaign where higher level magic and highly magical creatures exist in anything beyond the very very rare state and the DM tries to go there. D&D spells and magic aren't designed to keep up with the strategic impact of such magic and mostly we gamers ignore it except as a thought exercise. They'd need much more extensive guidelines than offered as well as new spells to truly harden a target like a castle against the likes a mid to higher level high fantasy magic and creatures. They are meant for and designed around a small group of adventurers not armies.
Cannons and castles coexisted for a while. Round towers as opposed to square ones were developed specifically because square towers were vulnerable to getting their corners shot off. And this was definitely in medieval times, too.
If it wasn't just an oversight, which is certainly possible, then city walls in PF may include anti-flyer measures. Likely magical in nature.
avr wrote:
If it wasn't just an oversight, which is certainly possible, then city walls in PF may include anti-flyer measures. Likely magical in nature.
I'm going for oversight. If walls had anti-flyer measures some module or AP somewhere would have mentioned it :-).
All the static defenses allow you to give the party a special mission to take out the siege weapon before you die.
Well, to be fair the mass combat rules were designed to be very simple this vs that sort of affair. Are they overly simplified? Yes. Can you do better? Maybe, but the more complicated it gets the more it detracts from the parts us players are there for in the first place: the parts where the heroes matter.
One of the biggest frustrations of the Kingmaker AP is that you aren't allowed to take your party and simply stomp the enemy army. If we were allowed to the members of those armies posed no threat for the most part and if we ambushed the army 1 or 2 days away from an outpost the survivors wouldn't be a threat even if the party left them alone (and who is going to leave survivors?). Heck, a wizard walks into the enemy camp with a pair of Eyes of Charming and he should be able to bring the army to its knees by himself.
But you're forced to use the mass combat rules because kingdoms vs kingdoms and plot.
Btw, one of the players in our campaign cheesed the Mass Combat rules. He was human, took the human racial luck feats and used the +8 luck bonus to wreck enemy armies on the first turn. Those rules are fairly easy to crock if you plan on exploiting the weaknesses.
Casually blend the concepts.
The mass/ship combat rules are overwhelmingly boring, much like kingdom building rules.
You can have entire flanks live and die on mass combat rules, but have your party in the middle of it all, tracking down a particular general or, perhaps, a necromancer...
avr wrote: Cannons and castles coexisted for a while. Round towers as opposed to square ones were developed specifically because square towers were vulnerable to getting their corners shot off. And this was definitely in medieval times, too.
If it wasn't just an oversight, which is certainly possible, then city walls in PF may include anti-flyer measures. Likely magical in nature.
They did indeed coexist for a while. Walls generally got thicker and sloped as well (which much like armor on a tank makes things effectively thicker) until they simple got too deadly and efficient at smashing walls and structures. Sloped walls constructions aka Plinths, Taluses etc. made the walls not only thicker to smash through but made the distance for siege towers or scaling ladders to wall tops greater, cause objects dropped by the defenders to ricochet outward thru the attackers instead of striking just the ones directly below and deflect things like battering rams upward instead of tranfering all the force into the wall itself.
The best anti-air defense for a castle wall would probably be to just cover the tops with roofing and place murder holes and arrow loops to enable upward fire as well as down and outward directions as well as make the roofing inhospitable with spikes and entangling defenses. This also improves their AC and provides sufficient cover for the defender to gain improved evasion. Now start tacking on magic --> Glyphs, Greater Glyphs, Symbols, Hallow, Forbiddance, Permanency of various sorts, etc.. All this circles back to what level and quantity of magic is assumed and available for a given fortification. Castles represented an absolutely enormous investment by their owners and would be defended as such.
Castles are one of the prime examples of the problem the Mass Warfare rules have with fortifications.
Your city has a castle in the centre of it, not even attached to the out walls, but all the defending troops get the considerable defensive modifiers of the walls, even though the Castle is going to have minimal effect unless the walls have actually been breached. It's only when you stack all the Fortifications modifiers together that a boy and his dog with a large pile of stones becomes undefeatable without siege weapons. :-(
I'm looking at trying Siege weapons roll damage once a day, but DV from fortifications no longer count as DV for the combat roll but instead become Damage Reduction after damage has been calculated, but can only be allied against 80% of the damage.
1-5 pts of damage - 1 point goes to defending army, the rest is stopped by Fortifications DV (upto the the DV of the Fortifications).
5-10 - 2 pts goes through
etc.
Meirril wrote: Well, to be fair the mass combat rules were designed to be very simple I don't mind simple but they have to vaguely sort of kind of maybe give similar results that would occur if you took the time to do things using pathfinder rules. And to reward the same kinds of builds.
Which is probably best handled by GM fiat together with some guidelines as to how to adjudicate tactics and abilities
Or with a REALLY long book.
But, IMO, the middle ground taken by Paizo is the worst solution. It's REALLY aggravating to be told that various army destroying Druidic spells are identically effective as same level single target spells. It's really aggravating when AC is totally useless when fighting troops. It's really aggravating when you can't use half of your abilities intelligently.
Paizo LOVES to create little mini games and it's not actually very good at doing so
After some perusal of the guidelines ... nope wouldn't touch those for mass combat myself. I'd be tweaking (rewriting) them so much it wouldn't barely resemble what it started as. Overly simplistic I may as well just narrate what happens rather than roll anything based off these rules.
Most people I know just run massiv battles as series of individual encounters on the battlefield - each with its own goals.
Or they shift system - typically to warhammer, and run a massive battle with some modifications to those rules.
I haven’t tried it my self, but I plan to run the naval encounters i Skulls and Shackles using modified ManOwar rules soon.
Recent threads in Rules Questions
|
