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War Rules

Posted: Fri Apr 12, 2019 11:58 am
by DM Juan
Pretty major changes to warfare if/as using the BirBattle Java Applet.

Obviously no levels of war... also it incorporates battle magic in programming so maybe add that back. Or I will see how easy it is to simulate adventure level instead.

It would severely de emphasis rogues as useful in war, titling towards magic users.

Re: War Rules

Posted: Fri Apr 12, 2019 12:25 pm
by TH - The Hunt
As long as it's coherent, I'm not going to complain about the balance changes. What's the part that makes rogues less useful, though? Will they be able to use swashbuckling moves in naval combat, instead?

Re: War Rules

Posted: Fri Apr 12, 2019 12:26 pm
by CI - Charrek Ironfist
If it means we can more easily handle world wars, go for it.

Are battle spells a thing vs just casting Phantasmal Force for an F result or Fireball for an R?

A lot of the racial DC for terrain mods were balanced against the units that race gets.

Also, at this stage of the game, I don't really see a difference between Anuirean and Brecht, for example. We should stick with generic, underpowered units for everyone, and races that get good DC's to rule provinces should continue to have worse units.

Re: War Rules

Posted: Fri Apr 12, 2019 12:40 pm
by DM Juan
They are like... heal unit ... stone skin unit... cost 1GB I think per spell... will check later. I assume it would involve researching access to all of them as well.

Racial units in core rules are better for elves/dwarves and worse for gnolls and goblins anyway.

Rogues are pretty useless in core war because fighter level also matters, battle spells are good... rogues kind of do nothing.


Will post spells from PC here later.

Re: War Rules

Posted: Fri Apr 12, 2019 12:42 pm
by TH - The Hunt
If knowing is half the battle, at least rogues can be pretty good at that part.

Re: War Rules

Posted: Fri Apr 12, 2019 12:44 pm
by CBC - Garand
Well, sounds like Gnolls and Goblins need an upgrade then. :)

Re: War Rules

Posted: Fri Apr 12, 2019 12:46 pm
by YK - Yuri Khavlor
The adventurer war card, did not care what class a player was. It definitely had an impact in battles. It did not care about character level either, so may not be the ideal way to simulate character impact on a battlefield.

Re: War Rules

Posted: Fri Apr 12, 2019 1:15 pm
by CI - Charrek Ironfist
The adventurer war card represented a party of adventurers, or perhaps multiple parties of adventurers. Not some x level something.

Phantasmal Force, any magician or wizard could cast this at level 1 with no research under the war rules.

Battle spells was something different, and really hard to research. Like you could research Rain of Magic Missiles, DC20, and that would do 1 hit on a unit and be a battle spell. This was all from the Book of Magecraft, one of the few I don't have a PDF of, but can browse on scribd.

The idea then, is a wizard has
1. Wizard/Priest Spells. These can be used in battle and some can cause F, R, or D results, or have other impacts
2. Battle Spells: Special researchable versions of the spells above(1) that would be more powerful.
3. Realm Spells: Not cast for a specific battle generally, but why the hell use Mass Destruction when an 11th level wizard can just drop 5 fireballs on the fight for free?

Re: War Rules

Posted: Fri Apr 12, 2019 1:31 pm
by MS - Meaghan Smith
Tying spell use to source level would help to mitigate this.

If you show up to a battle and have no or a low-level source, the spells you can use are none or extremely limited.

This would also work to make people seriously consider invading the 'Magewood,' known for its powerful sorcerer able to almost single-handedly decimate a unit.

As an aside, allowing spells outside of researched Battle Spells or Realm Spells to impact military actions is likely to be unbalancing and one of the things I liked best about the old war system.

Allowing researched Battle Spells can be kept balanced (most likely) and then makes those libraries all the more appealing and valuable (especially if the DC for the Battle Spell research is something like 10 + 2x effective level --- so magic missile battle spell would be DC 12, a fireball spell would be DC 16, while a cloudkill variant would be DC 20).

Re: War Rules

Posted: Fri Apr 12, 2019 1:36 pm
by TH - The Hunt
I'm pretty sure Mass Destruction does a lot more damage than five fireballs. Seems to me the fireballs wouldn't be able to destroy more than one unit, since units have hundreds of soldiers in them. In regular play, fireballs aren't used to kill more than around 30 enemies at a time, at most. Plus, fireballs have short range, a wizard who gets close enough to cast it directly on the enemy is almost in melee by battlefield standards.