War combat in fifth edition

Another thing I got up to a few weeks ago was having a go at getting some paid writing work. It was my first attempt, and I ultimately did get rejected, but I had fun writing my pitch and it did get me to finally write a treatment of war combat for fifth edition. I got permission to retain use of the rules, and the publisher said that they would like to see them further developed. I might get back to them later; step one is sharing them with everybody.

I based my take on the winning entry of the thought eater contest; the basic design principle was "D&D already has combat". I wanted to make war rules which a GM could run alongside any other combat, with as little additional bookkeeping as possible. Additionally, I wanted to make them an outgrowth of pre-existing rules (in this case, the group combat rules in the DMG). Finally, I wanted players to be able to both intuitively understand the rules without additional reading requirements, and still be able to make strategic decisions.

War combat

Some battles pit heroes against hordes of enemies; dozens, even hundreds at once! To keep a handle on the scale of these enormous conflicts, we introduce some rules abstractions that make running such epic battles no more difficult than a standard combat.

In these rules, a collective mass of troops is referred to as an army. Armies function similarly to characters, but have some new rules.

Shared Defense and Health

The members of an army share a unified health track, lumping their collective HP into a huge communal pool.

This abstraction allows the GM to easily track the overall fighting strength of the army without the need to track individual HP totals within the throng.

It is a mixed blessing for players. Martial characters now leverage the full damage of every strike (indeed, GMs should encourage meaty descriptions of broadswords cleaving multiple foes at a swing!). However, an army attacks at full strength until vanquished, so players cannot rely on victory by attrition.

When players wish to attack an army, they make their attacks against the shared AC of the foe. If they hit, they do damage to the communal health pool.

Should the player’s attack the army with an effect requiring a saving throw, the statistics of an average member of the army is used to make the save.

Army attacks

When battling an army, players enter a world of strategic abstraction, where clever positioning and armor matter more than a foe’s relative skill

To simulate the hectic, opportunistic nature of war, heroes are dealt damage based on two factors; their armor class, and their overall exposure to attacks.

Fronts and Armor categories

While operating within the abstraction of mass combat, characters have three broad vectors which can be attacked by the foe: Left front flank, right front flank, and the rear.

·       Without utilizing cover or strategic positioning, a character exposes all three fronts to attack.

·       Fighting back-to-back with an ally, behind ½ cover, or with their back to a wall protects one front, closing it off from attack.

·       Fighting in a triangle formation with two allies, behind 3/4ths cover, in a regimented squadron, or from a corner protects two of a character’s fronts from exposure, closing them both off as vectors form attack.

Characters behind the battle line or full cover are Unengaged, and may neither attack or be attacked by an army.

A similar abstraction determines the protection offered by a character’s armor.

·       Characters with AC 15 or less are considered Lightly armored.

·       Characters with AC 16-18 or less are considered Moderately armored.

·       Characters with AC 19+ or less are considered Heavily armored.

Armies deal damage (or make attacks) against all characters battling them. Such characters take injury based on their overall exposure and armor according to the army’s threat Chart.

Example: Horde of Berserkers Threat Chart

Deadliest threat	12 automatic damage
	8 damage
	4 damage
	Attack roll with advantage; +3 (4 damage)
Minimum threat	Attack roll; +3 (4 damage)

The Horde strikes lightly armored, fully exposed characters with 12 automatic damage every round.

For every Front a character closes off from attack, reduce the Horde’s threat level by 1 step.

Example: A character fighting with their back against a wall would close off the rearward Front, reducing their automatic damage by one step to 8 every round.

For every category of armor a character wears above lightly armored, reduce the army’s damage by an additional step.

Example: a character with AC 16 reduces the Horde’s damage by one step, to 8. A heavily armored knight with AC 20 reduces their threat by two steps, taking only 4 damage every round.

These abstractions encourage players to maneuver and make use of terrain, as well as armor themselves as heavily as possible when marching to war!

Morale

Armies live and die by their morale. Panic spreads like wildfire through an undisciplined force, resulting in routes. Well-drilled soldiers stand resolute through the searing flames of war.

Whenever an army takes enough damage a portion of its membership may quite the field in retreat.

An army’s Breaking Point is the threshold of damage it can take before requiring a Morale Test. This threshold is broken every time its stated damage is received, meaning that a single, powerful attack can cause multiple Morale Tests!

A Morale test is similar to a Wisdom saving throw, and generally it is taken the exact same way. Armies whose troops are weak-willed, undisciplined or otherwise demoralized take this save at Disadvantage, while inspired, well-disciplined or bravely led troops take it with Advantage.

If the save is failed, a squadron within the army breaks and flees. This is abstracted by damage to the army’s shared HP total (as they no longer contribute their health, having retreated!). The amount of damage taken is listed under the army’s Break Damage entry.

Areas of Effect

Some attacks, like cauldrons of boiling oil, catapult grapeshot and explosive spells, deal damage to every target within their area of effect. Against armies, such effects do their full damage multiplied by the density of troops in the area they target.

·       Loosely spaced: X2

·       Closely spaced: X5

·       Tightly packed or regimented: X10

Undisciplined hordes tend to be loosely spaced. Cavalry tend to favor closely spaced formations. Troops in shoulder-to-shoulder shield wall formations, or massed around a critical point are tightly packed.

Ultimately the GM’s description decides the density of the targeted area.

Ranged Warfare

Armies equiped with ranged weaponry may elect to fire a withering hail of arrows.

Armies track ammunition in whole-army increments. For example, armies with 20 ammunition listed are considered to have the majority of their membership equipped with full quivers of arrows.

When an army elects to use their ranged weaponry en masse, they collectively expend 1 ammunition and force foes to take cover or suffer damage as described below.

Ranged Warfare and Fronts

Player characters facing a ranged attack from an army replace Fronts with cover.

·       Uncovered characters are considered to have 3 exposed Fronts.

·       Those behind ½ cover have two exposed.

·       Those behind 3/4s cover have one.

·       Characters behind full cover are considered Unengaged.

Experience and War

The entry for an army lists the experience point award for vanquishing the entire force. Additionally, there is an Interval Reward which is earned each time the Interval Damage is dealt. This represents damage dealt sufficient to vanquish a single member of the army.

Oddball interactions

Some effects interact strangely when they encounter the abstractions of these rules. In oddball situations, GMs are encouraged to rule with an eye towards preserving the in-game reality of an army representing hordes of individuals, rather than “one big monster”.

Battles between armies

Direct conflicts between two opposing armies operate under a distinct, parallel set of abstractions. Such grandiose spectacles of war exist both as a clash of militaries and an epic backdrop to the individual heroics of characters.

The Clash of Armies

Armies act in minute-long rounds.

Engaged armies deal automatic damage to one another based on their War Damage Chart. This damage represented ten rounds of bloodshed and carnage between dozens or hundreds as the tide of battle ebbs and flows. Damage begins at the highest stage, but is reduced by poor performance or a foe’s defensive positioning as described below.

Example: Horde of Berserkers War Damage Chart

Maximum bloodshed	400 damage
	300 damage
	200 damage
	100 damage
Rebuffed offensive	No damage

Every minute, each army makes a standard attack against each other. This uses the Mass Attack statistics and is against the rival army’s AC. If this attack misses, reduce damage dealt by one step.

The foe’s strategic positioning further reduces incoming damage.

·       If the foe is positioned defensively in soft, natural terrain (trees, shrubs, etc.), reduce damage by one step

·       If the foe is positioned defensively in hard, natural terrain (stone mounds, cave systems, etc.) or soft, constructed terrain (houses, huts, etc.), instead reduce by two steps

·       If the foe has taken a fortified position (within castle ramparts, stone walls with murder-holes, etc.) reduce damage by 3 total steps.

Note that it is possible that one side takes no damage under some circumstances.

At the end of every attack, the army which dealt more damage is the winning side, and the one that received the most is the losing side.

Morale in War

The losing side makes a single Morale roll as normal. However, on a failure, they double the damage they received from the opposing army as a mass retreat takes place.

Military Objectives

The winning side gets to advance their military objectives by one step. The specific goals and steps vary by battle, but examples include breaching a sieged wall, pushing the foe into less favorable terrain, and capturing a strategically important hill.

Because of the tactical infinity of the game’s world, it is impossible to make exhaustive guidelines for determining military objectives. GMs are encouraged to use the above examples as a guide to allow mass battles to proceed in dramatically powerful stages.

Epic Backdrop

Because they operate on a faster timescale, the swirling chaos of war acts as the milieu in which heroes experience a mass conflict.

Characters can charge into the fray using the above rules, dealing and risking damage to an opposing army. Additionally, they can perform any actions which operate below the fidelity of the army conflict abstraction; they can and should heal injured comrades, join regimented troops, climb besieged castle ramparts, set fire to enemy structures, and hurl bolts of arcane power into the rank of the enemy.

The GM simply records the damage done and dealt by armies, and metes out damage according to armor and risk as above. They roll every ten rounds to see how the tide of war is turning. They make morale checks when heroes scythe down enough of the foe.

With the above rules, you can easily and satisfactorily add the explosive thrill of warfare-scale conflict to your games. Enjoy, but remember; victory favors the bold!

Horde of Berserkers

...

Finally, I have copious design notes so you guys can peer into the mad machinations of my mind:

Mass Combat

Concept 1: Mob rules

When battling mobs of adversaries, the DMG allows them to be abstracted into auto-hits based on their relative ability to hit a target’s AC. It’s a very reductive calculation: to-hit, minus a character’s AC, results in a number necessary to roll to hit. This number is compared to a chart to determine the minimum number of enemies that must attack to generate an automatic hit.

Concept 2: Getting surrounded

On a hex grid, as opposed to a square grid, there are a maximum of 6 foes which could be considered adjacent to a given character. This places a clean, highly divisible (6, 3, 2) limit on the number of adversaries which could reasonably surround a target,

When you combine a dash of concept 1 with a sprig of concept 2, what emerges is a system which allows groups of 2 to approach a character from 3 angles on an open field. This results in three scenarios:

1. A character is surrounded on three sides by six adversaries

2. A character closes off a front, potentially by an act as simple as fighting with their back to a wall

3. A character closes off two fronts, by something like backing into a corner

Because we have an abstraction which demands a certain number of adversaries attack a given AC to produce an auto-hit, we can forgo the chart (since we know the numbers of adversaries which could attack) and practice some conservation of rules using the following method:

1. Determine the to-hit of the mob (for my purposes, I’m using the tribal warrior stats form the back of the MM, so this is +3)

2. Consult the chart in the DMG, recreated here for convenience:

D20 roll needed/attacking creatures needed to hit

·       1-5: 1

·       6-12: 2

·       13-14: 3

·       15-16: 4

·       17-18: 5

·       19: 10

·       20: 20

Because of the banded nature of AC, we can predict that it won’t rise significantly above 20 except in the most extraordinary circumstances, and will nearly never drop below 10. Because of this, we can abbreviate the chart thusly:

·       7-12: 2

·       13-14: 3

·       15-16: 4

·       17-18: 5

·       19+: no auto-hits possible (only 6 can surround)

To make it fit more cleanly into our paradigm, we can wiggle the numbers to make all results divisible by groups of 2, 3, and 6:

·       7-12 (Against AC 10-15): 2

·       13-15 (against AC 16-18): 3

·       16+ (against AC 19+): 6

Now, when we consider our new chart in the context of our three frontages, we enter scenarios in which a well-armored PC can close off their frontages through simple strategic positioning. To continue with our conservation of rolling, we can add a new rule, expanding the scope of mobs by digging a bit deeper into our chosen template’s special rule allowing them to get advantage if they outnumber the foe.

This gives us a cross-chart, with (number of fronts) on one axis and (ac of target) on another:

	3 Open Fronts	2 Open Fronts	1 Open Front
AC 10-15	12 damage	8 damage	4 damage
AC 16-18	8 damage	4 damage	+3 atk w/ advantage (4 dmg)
AC 19+	4 damage	+3 atk w/ advantage (4 dmg)	+3 atk (4 dmg)

Now, for each PC fighting, the GM never has to roll more than a single d20. Players are incentivized to position themselves strategically with clever use of the described terrain (and more on that in a moment), and the rules are minimal, organic, and ultimately a satisfying abstraction.

If we consider the case of ranged attack, we can use a similar abstraction regarding cover in place of Fronts: No cover is equivalent to 3 exposed Fronts, half-cover is equal to 2, and 3/4ths cover is equal to 1.

Damaging the Mob

Attacking the mob is basically identical to attacking any single foe in it; in other words, the AC (which is 12 from our template, but I would strongly consider reducing to 11 or even 10 for naked barbarians) is exactly the same from their template.

HP is another matter, and one in which another abstraction is called for. Multiplying the HP of a single character by the number of the army yields one large HP track, which represents the whole force. Following our example, the HP of a 100-man mob would be 1000 (in this case I am reducing their HP from 2d8+2 to 2d8+1)

Sounds nuts, right? Hear me out; armies are only rarely vanquished through murdering every last member. Typically, they take enough casualties to force a retreat. So, we dip our toes into the morale rules.

Morale

The DMG poses morale as a pass/fail will save, and gives some circumstances under which such rolls can trigger. For the purposes of our system, we break the entire mob into chunks of 10-member groups and use one of the criteria to create the following simplified moral structure:

For every 5 members of the mob slain (here abstracted as 50 dmg dealt), a morale roll (will save) is made. Failing this roll results in 10 members fleeing the field (here abstracted as 100 damage to the group)

Inspired troops make this roll with advantage, while demoralized ones make it with disadvantage.

*Why 10?*

You don’t want to use half of the entire group’s membership; for one, that number is huge. For two its constantly changing. Nuts to that, abstracting it into “chunks” of 10 lets you gauge the deadliness of an attack by the number of moral rolls it generates, which is a solid abstraction that lets morale play the part it was born for.

*Are we counting bodies?*

Nope. 10 damage is equivalent to one dead foe, doesn’t matter if you’re technically killing this guy with wasted damage, or technically reducing that guy to 1 hp: the result is abstracted for sanity’s sake. The GM can simply divide the damage dealt by (a single foe’s HP, in this case 10) after the battle to determine casualties. Actually:

XP rewards

Take the total damage dealt (which, as with every combat in D&D, is recorded through the battle by subtracting from the foe’s starting HP). Divide the result by 10, discard any remainders. That number is multiplied by the XP of a single member of the mob (25 for our purposes) and the result is the XP reward (and number of casualties)

((Yes, I’m assuming cowards are executed or otherwise don’t rejoin the army. Who needs that headache?))

More stuff

Areas of Effect

When a spell or cauldron of boiling oil or whatever hits a mob, it’s going to fry more than one dude. To simulate this, I again crunched some pretty thankless numbers and created an abstraction which I think will make everybody happy

Rather than trying to figure out who would be hit by an AOE, it’s damage is rolled than multiplied based on the density of troops it impacts, abstracted into three categories:

·       Loose: x2

·       Close: x5

·       Packed: x10

This way it fries a reasonable number of foes (in HP)

Mob V.S. big monster combat

Big monsters cover more area than a single person; they therefor have more fronts which can be exposed to attack.

·       A large sized creature has 9 surrounding hexes, translating to 4 fronts (rounding down to make this safer)

·       A huge sized creature has 12 surrounding hexes, translating to 6 fronts

·       A Gargantuan sized creature has 15 surrounding hexes, translating to 8 fronts (rounding up to make it more dangerous)

Mob on Mob action

So what happens when two mobs go at it? Here I favor forgoing the round-to-round damage in favor of a different system, which adds context to the round-to-round heroics experienced by the characters without adding tons of bookkeeping.

I abstract the conflicts of the mobs into ten-round (1 minute) long battle rounds. This allows the GM to roll every 10 round of hero combat, which greatly reduces their bookkeeping, but will allow them to inform the players how the battle is unfolding around them.

The amount of damage dealt is the standard damage multiplied by the number present in the mob (for my army of barbarians, this is 4 damage multiplied by 200, for a total of 800 damage against a rival army)

This base damage I “chunked” into quarters (I’ll go into the why in a second). This makes 4 separate 200-damage chunks.

·       Every battle round, both sides roll a single attack against one another. They use the standard to-hit and AC of a typical member. If they miss this attack, they reduce their base damage by 1 chunk.

·       They additionally reduce their damage by 1 chunk per level of defensive positioning and favorable terrain the opposing army employs. This is an abstraction that considers terrain as a key strategic element of war.

Terrain occupied by foe (use only highest)

·       Open field- no reduction

·       Soft, natural cover (trees, shrubs, tall grass, etc.)- 1 chunk

·       Hard, natural cover (Stones, clay mounds, etc.) OR soft, constructed cover (houses, huts, etc.)- 2 chunks

·       Hard, constructed cover (castles, walls with murder holes, etc.)- 3 chunks

After both armies roll and apply damage, the army which deals more damage is considered the victor, and the other the loser. The loser must make a single morale roll, doubling their losses on a failure.

Achieving military goals

The winning side gets to push around the losing side, dig in, or otherwise accomplish a military goal.

I’m leaving the full realization of this rule abstract; for the purposes of these rules, military goals are things like storming the ramparts, breaking through the gatehouse, advancing to the courtyard, pushing the invaders off the walls, etc.

Looming Large and Toothy

That Crocodile has been eating me alive for these past few weeks

Pavel's art was finished and sent up a while ago. I chose not to post it right away, though. Its beautifully sinister; take a look:

That big, nasty looking piece of work has slithered into my brain and nested there.

I destroyed a perfectly sound notepad with page upon page of design that will (thankfully) never see the light of day. From that design-slag, I mined about three pages of pure, gameable gold. Here is the current form of some of it (describing the ways in which characters fight and abuse one another):

Combat (physical and social)

Violence (physical harm)

When you want to hurt or kill somebody, use these rules.

First, determine the order in which characters will act:

• Higher-tier combatants always go before lower-tier ones

• Within a tier, the highest-ranked combatants act in descending order

• Finally, equally skilled opponents roll 1d6, re-rolling ties, until their order of actions is decided 

• This action order remains until the end of combat

Second, attackers choose a target and roll 1d6 per Rank of their Violence, choosing the highest-rolling die as their total. For example, if their Violence Rank is 3, they roll 3d6. Assuming they rolled 2,4 and 5, their attack total would be 5.

Third, subtract the defender’s Rank in Violence from the attacker’s roll; any remainder is damage. For example, if our aggressor from the previous example was battling a Violence-2 thug, they would subtract 2 from their result, For a final total of 3 damage.

Fourth, the defender chooses whether to buy down damage with Willpower; if they will not or cannot, they are placed At the Mercy of the attacker.

Continue until every character has taken a turn. Any combatants left standing may continue the fight for subsequent rounds until a victor emerges.

Other things you can do in a fight

Characters retain their ability to take any action a typical person could; their timeframe is a handful of seconds, but they are operating at their physical peak due to the savage stresses of battle.

Characters can move around within the same area, typically sprinting or running toward or from their foes. If they attempt to leave the area, then the fight becomes a chase.

Characters can exchange brief banter, insults, expletives, and other short, direct communication during a fight. Anything more complex than seven words or so isn’t possible except in unusual circumstances.

Weapons

Armed characters are orders of magnitude more lethal in a scrap. When attacking with a weapon, add its damage to any attack which lands (ie, one which inflicts damage).

Here is a list of common weapons and their damage:

• Improvised weapon: 1

• Knife, truncheon, small weapon: 2

• Baseball bat, sword, impact weapon: 3

• Pistol, small caliber firearm: 5

• Rifle, high-caliber weapon: 7

• Shotgun, machine gun, military-grade weapon: 9

Monsters, being engines of death incarnate, always add 5 additional damage (on top of weaponry) to a successful attack.

Dominance (Emotional harm)

When you want to badger, bully, or otherwise intimidate someone, use these rules:

First, roleplay out the interaction. Talk tough, get mean, and try to threaten your target. If the GM decides that you’ve sufficiently cowed them, then that’s that. You win.

If not, or if you can’t think of what to say, or if you just want to show off, roll your Dominance Rank in d6s, choosing the highest. Subtract your target’s Dominance Rank: anything remaining is emotional damage.

As with Violence, a target can buy down emotional damage with their Willpower. If they can’t buy it all down, then they must Fight, Flight, or Obey as described below.

If a character can’t buy off all the emotional damage done to them, then their WP is reduced to 0.

Dominance is social, and hence much more fluid and subjective than the cut-and-clean turn order of Violent conflict. If there’s ever any confusion about the order in which things get said: 

1) If it’s a character’s turn in combat, they go first. Otherwise:

2) Highest-tiered dominators go first, in order of Rank, rolling off for turn order exactly as for combat.

Yes, you can use Dominance in combat instead of attacking physically. It’s awesome.

Willpower

When faced with danger or distress, a character can use their Willpower to resist panic or injury. Spend willpower equal to the damage inflicted (either physical or emotional) and it does no harm; it’s a close shave, or a petty put-down, but nothing more.

Mortal characters gain +1d6 WP every time either their Violence or Dominance increases beyond the other in rank. For example, they gain +1d6 when their Dominance rises from 1 to 2, but not again until either their Dominance or Violence increases to 3.

Monsters gain WP identically. In addition, they can take Wounds to buy down Violence attacks.

Wounds

When buying down a physical injury, you may take a Wound to increase your reserve by +1d6 temporarily. 

Wounds begin at severity 6. After any rolled action, at the end of every scene, and after attempting any action deemed by the GM to be physically strenuous, roll a single d6. If the number rolled is equal to or greater than the severity of your Wounds, you succumb to your injuries and perish.

After taking a wound, a character may take another to gain an additional +1d6 WP. However, each time they do so, they increase the severity of their wounds by 1 (from 6 to 5+, 5+ to 4+, etc.).

If a character’s wounds ever become severity 1+, they die after taking one of the above-described actions, or at the end of the scene.

Fight or Flight… Or Obedience

If a character is facing any remaining social damage after buying down a Dominance attack, they crack under the grinding social pressure of their adversary. They must choose between one of three unappealing options:

1) They can run. They retreat from the aggressor at their top speed, breaking social etiquette and losing face as they do. They attempt to quit the social battlefield and find a quiet place to recover willpower alone, or in the company of only deeply trusted friends.

2) They can submit. Devoid of coping mechanisms and emotionally exhausted, they can obey the commands of the aggressor. This isn’t mind control: its admitting defeat. The character retains the other options in this list, and can choose them at their discretion.

3) Finally, they can fight. True, they have no Willpower remaining, which makes them a fragile target, but they’re not thinking clearly and this dickbag is just begging for a fist to the teeth. They retain the option to flee after every assault.

Not every one of these options is always available; the GM will determine if escape or combat is possible and restrict a character’s options as they deem reasonable.

At your Mercy

When you have a character “at your mercy”, this means that you hold the power of life and death over them until the situation radically changes. You can kill, maim or otherwise mutilate them with impunity while you retain this advantage.

“…until the situation radically changes”

When this phrase is used, it is meant to imply a complete change of circumstances, such as would be experienced when standing on a building, then falling off.  If such a circumstance change begins, characters having an advantage that “ends when the situation radically changes” may exercise it one final time, or relinquish it and forfeit the advantage at their option.