Mass Combat: Mobile Dryad Trees

[Angle]

Originally Posted by Kelly Pedersen

Once again, though, the prices aren't calculated based on game balance. They're not really intended for some wargame-like budget thing, where if two forces have similar costs to maintain, they'll have "balanced" forces. They're meant to be a reasonably-good guess at how much those sorts of elements would actually cost, for those situations when they're actually available to recruit normally. Whether that's actually possible is always up to the GM. And there's lots of circumstances where things like cost to raise, at least, won't even come up, and even times when cost to maintain can be ignored. If the players are collecting a ragtag band of misfit creatures to oppose the Dark Lord's advancing army, and a giant comes into camp offering their services, the cost to raise doesn't matter - it's already paid, basically. And the cost to maintain will only matter if the heroes survive their desperate fight and have to keep the army in the field after that.

And I'd actually argue that many of the fantastic elements aren't actually that bad for their cost. In particular, a lot of them give unique access to classes, or combinations of classes, that just aren't otherwise available at those TLs. Consider Giants, for example, which provide Arm, Art, and Eng, all three of which are not precisely common at TL 0-5, and in combination, even rarer. Even a single element of giants is quite likely to give you superiority bonuses in three classes. That's worth quite a bit, I'd say.

Hmm, yeah fair enough. Still seem a little high, but I guess it doesn't matter that much.

Oh! What kind of defense bonus would you put a french village thats been reinforced by a dryad, an engineering milita, and a unit of shield mages at? I figure they could probably make it into a small fortress, for a TL of +8. I'm not sure though.

[Kelly Pedersen]

Originally Posted by Angle

Oh! What kind of defense bonus would you put a french village thats been reinforced by a dryad, an engineering milita, and a unit of shield mages at? I figure they could probably make it into a small fortress, for a TL of +8. I'm not sure though.

Depends on how long they've had to work, really. If it's several days or even weeks, then yeah, I can see DB +8, or even higher - at TL 6, the DB from a fortress would +10 (TL+4), and I think that's a pretty reasonable guideline. On the other hand, if they've only had a few hours, I probably wouldn't give above +4 or +5, the maximum for improvised fortifications. The main benefit of the dryads' and mages' powers would being creating improvised fortifications faster than non-supernatural sorts could, rather than higher overall bonuses, I'd say.

[Angle]

Originally Posted by Kelly Pedersen

Depends on how long they've had to work, really. If it's several days or even weeks, then yeah, I can see DB +8, or even higher - at TL 6, the DB from a fortress would +10 (TL+4), and I think that's a pretty reasonable guideline. On the other hand, if they've only had a few hours, I probably wouldn't give above +4 or +5, the maximum for improvised fortifications. The main benefit of the dryads' and mages' powers would being creating improvised fortifications faster than non-supernatural sorts could, rather than higher overall bonuses, I'd say.

Yeah, thats about what I'd figure. It's been a bout a week and change, so +8 seems pretty reasonable. Oh, and the terrain counts as a forest and a city, for things that care about that.

[Angle]

Hmm. Is it possible to make a deliberate defense or something like it that takes advantage of engineering superiority? Lots of dropping things on the enemy, I would assume. :/

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Angle

Hmm. Is it possible to make a deliberate defense or something like it that takes advantage of engineering superiority?

Those are called fortifications and usually statted separately.

[Angle]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Those are called fortifications and usually statted separately.

I was thinking more of a strategy of using your engineering units to drop walls and ceilings on the enemy, set traps, divide their forces with rubble, that kind of thing.

[Angle]

Oh! What about elementals? Earth Elementals seem pretty straightforwards, they'd have Armor and Engineering classes. Air elementals seem like they'd have (Air)? And maybe a class for being insubstantial. Maybe they should be Support TS, if they have trouble affecting solid enemies? Or what about a freshwater elemental? I guess just take the amphibious warriors and give them Terrain (Freshwater)? Or should they get the Armor class too? What about metal Elementals? I kinda want to give them both the Armor class and the (armor) class, for their ability to both be made out of metal and tear to pieces anything else thats made out of metal. They'd need a feature or something to be able to use both of those at once though. :/

[mlangsdorf]

Mechanically, you can't have Class and (Class). That's not a rules prohibition, that's a function of the way that class specials work.

If you have Class, you contribute your TS for determining advantage in Class. If you have (Class), you contribute your TS for determining advantage in Class, but only to the point where the enemy doesn't get a bonus. In either case, you're only contributing your TS.

So if we have 4 forces:
Force A: Total TS 40, no Class elements.
Force B: Total TS 40, 20 TS in Class.
Force C: Total TS 40, 20 TS in (Class).
Force D: Total TS 40, 20 TS in Class and (Class).

Force A and C have no Class advantage bonus against each other, because neither have elements with Class.

Force B and Force D gets a +3 Class advantage bonus against Force A, because they have elements with Class and Force A doesn't.

Forces B and C have no class advantage bonus against each other, because C's TS 20 in (Class) is at a 1:1 ratio with Force B's TS in Class.

Forces B and D have no class advantage bonus against each other, because D's TS 20 in Class is at a 1:1 ratio with Force B's TS in Class. Force D's TS in (Class) can't improve the ratio for D past 1:1.

Force C and D have no class advantage bonus against each other, because C's TS 20 in (Class) is at a 1:1 ratio with Force D's TS in Class. Force D's TS in (Class) has no effect here.

All that is regardless of force composition: it doesn't matter if Force D is 4 elements of Heavy Cavalry and 5 elements of Pikemen or 5 elements of Heavy Infantry and some hypothetical anti-cavalry cavalry elements with Cv and (Cv).

Now, you could house rule that some elements contribute a different amount to their class specials than their TS, but that would be really complicated and I'm not sure it would change things.

[mlangsdorf]

As far as elementals go: my recommendation is adding another Class Special, Insubstantial (Insub).

Insubstantial elements are highly resistant to all forms of conventional attack, because they are diffuse or insubstantial or exist on a different plane of matter. For simplicity, insubstantial units can usually damage other insubstantial units. Specialized substantial units may have training, equipment, or special abilities that allow them to counter Insubstantial units and get (Insub). Ghosts, nature spirits, and elementals are examples of Insubstantial units.

With that, I would do the various elementals like this:
Air Elementals: Insubstantial Flying Infantry.
Earth or Metal Elementals: Heavy Infantry with Armor.
Fire Elementals: Insubstantial Bowmen.
Void Elementals: Insubstantial Heavy Infantry.
Water Elementals: Insubstantial Amphibious Warriors with Terrain: Any Ocean and Terrain: Underwater.

[Angle]

The idea with the metal elementals is that their TS is counted twice for the purpose of armor, as both Arm and (Arm). Which does make things a bit more complicated, but not too much so, I don't think. Here are my first draft write-up for the elementals, and a bonus for Bear Cavalry:

Spoiler:  

Freshwater Elemental
TS: 10
Innate Features: Terrain: Freshwater
Class: Arm, Ins
WT: 3
Mob: Coast,Foot
Raise: 150K
Maintain: 30K
TL: 0

Air Elemental
TS: 10
Classes: Air, Ins, Rec
WT:2
Mob: Foot, SA
Raise: 120K
Maintain: 24K
TL: 0

Earth Elemental
TS: 15
Innate Features: Battlefield Control
Classes: Arm, Eng
WT: 3
Mob: Foot
Raise: 180K
Maintain: 36K
TL: 0

Fire Elemental
TS:20
Classes: Art, Ins, Fire
WT: 3
Mob: Mtd
Raise: 240K
Maintain: 120K
TL: 0

Metal Elemental
TS: 20
Innate Features: Double Duty
Classes: Arm, (Arm)
WT: 3
Mob: Foot
Raise: 600K
Maintain: 120K
TL: 0

Bear Cavalry
TS: 5
Classes: Arm, Cv, Rec
WT: 3
Mob: Mtd
Raise: 300K
Maintain: 60K
TL: 3