High level issues in Birthright, a partial solution?

[Riggswolfe]

4. Something I have brought up a bit before - at highest levels, D&D is designed for characters to singlehandedly annihilate armies (or even populaces!), thus making the BRCS system for war units... not the most effective. This doesn't even start including realm magic, but just say... repeated hammering of a place with meteor strikes, cloudkills and fireballs/delayed blast fireballs. Or a 20th level fighter who can mop the floor with 200 3rd level fighters as they kill 2 or 3 a round... and the 3rds can't even hit the 20th level fighter, except with 20s - If even...


This is a sort of spin off of a previous thread entitled low level syndrome in Birthright. One point that was repeatedly brought up was that high level characters could concievably massacre an entire army unit singlehandedly.

Now, I figure the BRCS is going off of the SRD. (The links to the design philosophy are dead, so I'm not 100% sure.) But...could we maybe suggest an idea from a new D&D core book that isn't in the SRD? That being the idea of a swarm from the DMG2. Obviously we can't copy the idea directly but at the least it could be a suggestion "Keep in mind that armies as a whole will overwhelm even a 20th level character. To simulate this you might wish to use the swarm rules from the WOTC DMG2." Or even, come up with something similiar but unique.

For those who don't know, the idea behind a swarm is you take a horde of low level characters. The horde starts with the base attack bonus and hitdice and hit points of the base character type. Now, for every X monster added on (I don't own the DMG2, I've only seen a brief description of this mechanic in a WOTC product), let's say every 10, you add +1 BAB,+1 saves, +1 HD.

So, if we go with 10, then by the time you reach 200 people, based off even an NPC warrior 1, you'll have something like +20 BAB, +20 saves and say 21 or so HD, so probably an average of 100 or so hps. Every X amount of HPs lost reduces all stats reflected through a negative level-like mechanic.

This of course reflects the fact that a large amount of creatures will wear down even a much more powerful foe by simple attrition and luck.

I may be mistaken on this one's origin but I think it is the DMG2. Any thoughts?

[Thelandrin]

I think that that is a really good idea, but of course it would need sound implementation to be used properly.

Then again of course, you can always be extremely strict on allowing high-level characters in the first place.

[kgauck]

There is no reason that the mechanics of mobs and swarms cannot be employed. The whole purpose behind d20 is to get people using a common set of rules rather than the old style of having third parties invent a similar but alternate set of rules. What remains protected in the modern gaming age are not rules, but descriptions of rules. If you can describe swarms and mobs, you can do so in this forum or on the wiki.

The standard mob in Cityscape has a +22 attack, grapples at +34, is an expert grappler, and deals 5d6 in bludgening damage.

This seems quite fitting.

[irdeggman]

I updated the design philosophy link (had to do a search since the links were broken in one of the earlier site/server maintenance efforts).

Here it is for ease of reference:

http://www.birthright.net/forums/showthread.php?t=2378&highlight=design+philosophy (http://www.birthright.net/forums/showthread.php?t=2378&highlight=design+philosophy)


The BRCS is using the SRD (because we can't legally directly take information from other books and put it in).

Nothing, however, prevents anyone from using the mob rules for their game (and I agree they work fairly well for that too) but as per the "legal" issues involved we can't formally use them in the BRCS itself. D20 and OGL/OGC issues - gotta love them and hate them at the same time.

[Riggswolfe]

Nothing, however, prevents anyone from using the mob rules for their game (and I agree they work fairly well for that too) but as per the "legal" issues involved we can't formally use them in the BRCS itself. D20 and OGL/OGC issues - gotta love them and hate them at the same time.

I figured as much. Hopefully some of that new info will go into the SRD. I'm not familiar with the legalities, but could the BRCS make mention of it like I said. Something like "If you own product X by WOTC, there are rules for mobs and swarms that will help with problems of high level characters versus armies."

As it stands, the official version of the Gorgon should be able to singlehandedly destroy any army. Even if we can use the rules, could we perhaps just say "If for some reason you need to know the RP stats of an army of 200 soldiers, consider them a group that has X hit points, does X amount of damage with +X base attack and if it takes damage it loses X from each of these per X amount of damage." Just sort of come up with something reasonable?

Or is that too close to using their rules?

[irdeggman]

Well the other reason for not doing it the way you suggest is that all a player/DM needs to have to use the BRCS is the core 3 books (or SRD) and the BRCS.

Referencing a non-core book (that is not in the SRD) defeats that purpose by requiring someone to buy more books to play.

I much prefer a Unearthed Arcana version of Birthright that can have a whole slew of house-rules and other such variantions.

And as written the mass combat system in the BRCS doe not allow for single handed defeat of an army.

The stats are designed such that that doesn't work. A character adds to a unit's abilities by giving up his own actions to support it.

You can zoom in to handle how an individual operates but this is not an individual versus an army.

Scale is an important issue to maintain here. If going into tremendous detail like what a high level character can do h8imself verrsus the stats for a bunch of low level characters defeats the purpose entirely IMO.

[Riggswolfe]

That makes alot of sense. The only reason I thought about it is because of the other thread I made a semi-quote from. I was honestly going to just say. "I don't care if you are level 20 or 30 or whatever and have the stats to singlehandedly defeat the enemy army, you'd get overwhelmed by 200+ men."

[kgauck]

Mobs and swarms already appear in d20 OGL materials, such as Celtic Age.

[irdeggman]

Mobs and swarms already appear in d20 OGL materials, such as Celtic Age.


Celtic Age by Avalanche Press?

I must have missed the mob rules there.

Check the Offical Fan Site rules

http://www.birthright.net/forums/showpost.php?p=25466&postcount=5

It is pretty specific on who "owns" material posted ehre (basically the BRCS stuff).

By the way I am friends (well I've known him for about 20+ years through our full time jobs) with one of the "owners" of Avalanche Press and several employees (well recently former employees for a long, long time).

Celtic Age is 3.0 (and one of my favorite source books) along with Noble Steeds (another Avalanche Press product).

[kgauck]

I like both Noble Steeds and Celtic Age very much. They are excellent products.

[Riggswolfe]

Sounds cool. I know my upcoming game is going to be using a ton of house rules, in particular I got the idea from a thread here to borrow some of the Conan rules, combat manuevers and armor as DR plus dodge and parry stats. I'm also going to use the class defense bonuses from Unearthed Arcana and make players choose between a good AC and DR.

You know, they ought to come up with some kind of SRD for all the OGL material out there. Anyway, this was a great discussion guys and I'm thankful for it.

[kgauck]

I'm also going to use the class defense bonuses from Unearthed Arcana and make players choose between a good AC and DR.


I'm not clear on the attraction between eitherAC or DR. In the standard rules, defensive ability (AC) is a function of presumed training to fight and thus wear armor. But that principle doesn't apply to most standard class defense bonuses.

Here is my defense system:

My calculation goes like this:
AC=10+armor bonus+shield bonus+class bonus+Dex mod+size mod

Armor Bonus:
Light Armor has a bonus of +2
Medium Armor has a bonus of +3
Heavy Armor has a bonus of +4

Class Bonus:
Classes who recieve no armor proficiency get a Class Bonus of +0
Classes who recieve light armor proficency get a Class Bonus of +1
Classes who recieve med armor proficiency get a Class Bonus of +2
Classes who recieve hvy armor proficiency get a Class Bonus of +3

In addition:
Light Armor has no damage reduction
Medium Armor has -/1 damage reduction
Heavy Armor has -/2 damage reduction

[Riggswolfe]

Well, if you've seen the Unearthed Arcana book the bonuses start at around an average of 4 or so and go up every few levels. The main reason to force a choice between AC or DR is to keep things in balance. If you had a high AC and DR then the characters become much tougher and it throws balance out of whack. It also encourages some strategic thinking.

I'm going to look at the Conan rules when 2nd Ed comes out next week. Part of the problem with DR is that it starts good but ends up not being worth it by the end of a campaign. Then again, in 3rd Ed that seems to happen to armor in general.

[kgauck]

If you had a high AC and DR then the characters become much tougher and it throws balance out of whack.

I think this would be true of the whole game were combat, and the pure combat game is making something of a come-back, but I don't see a lot of combat, so I'm not bothered by the fact that in combat some characters become supporting players.

[Riggswolfe]

Well, on further reflection I remembered that Birthright is a low magic world, so having a decent AC and DR might actually not be as bad for balance in that world as it is in a "standard" D&D world. My upcoming campaign is going to be the typical balance of domain stuff with some adventuring as well so combat will not be as important as it might be in a typical setting.

[kgauck]

In my experience the real problem to look out for in Birthright is having only one PC who has a decent score in any or all of the social skills (Dipomacy, Bluff, Intimidate). Then any extended diplomacy action will be a one-man show with the rest of the party acting as spear carriers.

[Riggswolfe]

In my experience the real problem to look out for in Birthright is having only one PC who has a decent score in any or all of the social skills (Dipomacy, Bluff, Intimidate). Then any extended diplomacy action will be a one-man show with the rest of the party acting as spear carriers.

I plan to highly encourage the more social skills in this game. Especially Diplomacy and Administration.