Raising an army in TL3-4 High Fantasy

[mlangsdorf]

[QUOTE=Orion Deckrect;905570
Look that. A soldier, at the basic, have an income of $700! Lets say our soldier have a living cost of $100. [/QUOTE]

Per Characters p 265, a Status 0 soldier has a cost of living of $600. The people who have a cost of living of $100 are "Serf, street person"(s).

$20K is enough to get a knight, a handful of men-at-arms, a wizard, and a half dozen archers for a month or two. That's not a useful force for anything more complicated than stagecoach robbery, and for that it may be overkill.

[martinl]

Originally Posted by Ubiquitous

social turmoil enough to allow a coup de tats

I think you mean coup d’état.

I like the idea however, and this is Sparta! I mean GURPS. If you want to beat people with tattoos, the tats should probably just be a special effect of an attack power. Maybe you could qualify for some equipment discounts if they don't work when covered up or something...

[Orion Deckrect]

Sure.. sure... I still thinking on 3rd edition. I suppose i should leave the forum until my players decide to convert to 4th edition! Hahaha!

But well... then it works, because you are paying $700 and taking $600. At 3rd edition it was a major problem. And also, i suppose then all the calculations have to be done with a mass combat system to 4th edition. The one to the 3rd edition was a bit strange...

[demonsbane]

Originally Posted by Orion Deckrect

Oh! If theres a mass combat for 4th edition, it have to be better! LOL

Originally Posted by Orion Deckrect

Sure.. sure... I still thinking on 3rd edition. I suppose i should leave the forum until my players decide to convert to 4th edition! Hahaha!

But well... then it works, because you are paying $700 and taking $600. At 3rd edition it was a major problem. And also, i suppose then all the calculations have to be done with a mass combat system to 4th edition. The one to the 3rd edition was a bit strange...

GURPS 4e Mass Combat is enough different than the third edition one (anyway some people still likes it). It's a very good work by David Pulver with a different approach. Check it out! Also, I recommend to check GURPS Fourth edition.

However I'm not against people playing with the third edition. And some groups are playing with a kind of mix of third and fourth edition rules. All I want to mean is . . . check out the things and pick the good stuff!

[Ubiquitous]

These ideas were helpful, insightful and relevantly nice, and I took most to heart when coming up with the idea.

But there's been a development that I think means I should re-ask the question.

If I had, $86500 (rough approximation) then I think I now qualify for maintaining a decently portioned force. Since wealth is about 2000$ at TL4 or so (riiight?) this theoretically means I could hire near 43 professional soldiers, maybe even above-average (assuming 2000$ is EVERYONE'S yearly take, assuming fringe benefits are incentive enough to make some people turn sides and assuming that Soldiers don't get paid less/more than that) squaddies.

I am not sure about the roles of certain types of units in Medieval Times, and this is further exacerbated by High Fantasy adding in more variables.

If I wanted a 20-man nomadic raiding party, composed of specialists, what should these specialists specialize in, to maximize their ability against magical medieval forces?

Also, how many men would it be necessary to have before I could reasonably perform a coup de e'tats? There, I spelt it right.

[CrimsonDawn]

Originally Posted by Ubiquitous

If I had, $86500 (rough approximation) then I think I now qualify for maintaining a decently portioned force. Since wealth is about 2000$ at TL4 or so (riiight?) this theoretically means I could hire near 43 professional soldiers, maybe even above-average (assuming 2000$ is EVERYONE'S yearly take, assuming fringe benefits are incentive enough to make some people turn sides and assuming that Soldiers don't get paid less/more than that) squaddies.

If you don't want Mass Combat.. the typical monthly pay for status 0 at TL4 is $800 (B517), so you'd get 9 guys for a year with that money. And you'd have to arm them, too - even though their starting wealth is $2,000, I'd assume only 20% of that would be in "adventuring equipment". Or then you could have soldiers with their own gear, but I think they'd have more Wealth and higher monthly pay.

But I'd still go with GURPS Mass Combat. (1 element of Light Infantry low readiness mercenaries with a long contract: TS 1 / 7.5K / month, or 90K for a year - and with consistently very good Administration rolls, you could drop that to 81K, right within your budget).

Originally Posted by Ubiquitous

If I wanted a 20-man nomadic raiding party, composed of specialists (snip)

I'd get two elements of Light Cavalry with Good Equipment and Elite Quality (again, as low readiness mercenaries): TS 5; 42.75K / month (including a logistics force). Compare this to ten elements of Light Infantry with Poor Equipment and Inferior Quality (as low readiness mercenaries): TS 2.5*; 22.5K / month (includes logistics). Then add the PC's as Hero elements, if appropriate.

*I had the TS wrong in an earlier post.

[Philomath]

Your specialists should specialize in stealth and trickery. It doesn't matter how many oppose you if they are all poisoned and dying, tied up, or knifed in their sleep.

Your troops don't need to specialize if you have enough of them, some way for them to infiltrate the enemy, and a solid enough plan.

Like CrimsonDawn says above, use Cost of Living to determine how much to pay your troops. Not their starting Wealth. You then have about 108 man-months of Status 0 pay.

Since a coup will either be successful or you will be dead or in hiding before the first month's pay is up, hire all you can and assume you can pay them from the treasury after the initial pay runs out. If you assume you need the soldiers for only a week (a reasonable assumption I think), you can hire 432 soldiers.

With that many, a couple of days of preparation, and one hell of a plan you should probably be able to pull off a bloodless coup assuming you can get them all in the proper places without setting off alarms.

Remember that if you have to fight, you will likely lose to a superior foe (which the defenders and people in power are likely to be). Go study your Sun Tzu.

All that said, get the new Mass Combat. Your last couple of threads have to do with armies. Mass Combat is all about the armies and is less than $10.