[DF][Mass Combat] Handling heroic, superhuman, etc. fighters, esp. in DF-esque worlds

[Michael Thayne]

Been thinking about how the assumptions of a Dungeon Fantasy world would "bubble up" to the level of mass combat, and struggling with how to translate DF stats into mass combat. Ideally, I'd like something like the old "Heroes on a Mass Scale" article from Pyramid #3/84, except that article seems badly flawed, even if you don't care about consistency with the tables of element types in Mass Combat. For example, I tried writing up a basic foot-soldier in mostly leather armor and running the guy through the "heroes on a mass scale" system, and got that the guy would have about 25 TS on "realistic" assumptions. But upgrading his armor to heavy plate would only add about +7 TS, which seems far too low.

I can think of a couple alternatives here. One is to think about how various levels of mundane troop and equipment quality translate into individual-scale GURPS stats, and then use that as a source of benchmarks to determine what individual-scale boosts are required for +50%, +100%, +200%, etc. improvement in TS. For example, if a "super-soldier" racial template seems to be about twice as useful as upgrading from basic to fine equipment, maybe that's +200% to TS.

Another approach is to notice that Extra Attack is 25 points, while Extra Attack (Multi-Strike) is 30 points, and say that each 25-30 points in traits directly relevant to an elements primary job in combat is worth +100% TS. I need to specify "directly relevant" because GURPS massively rewards specialization, and probably most 250-plus-point characters aren't narrowly optimized for being the best possible heavy infantry or whatever. So this is a rough guideline more than cut-and-dried rule, but it's a start.

What other ideas do people have?

[Christopher R. Rice]

That article is meant to write up hero units, not everyday soldiers and warriors - which it warns against. It literally says this in the first paragraph.

[Michael Thayne]

Originally Posted by Christopher R. Rice

That article is meant to write up hero units, not everyday soldiers and warriors - which it warns against. It literally says this in the first paragraph.

I'm not sure how this helps. For example, the fact that a massive gear upgrade can result in only a modest improvement in TS will be exacerbated, not lessened, for characters with better stats than my basic foot-soldier. In fact, the basic approach seems unworkable, because everything is additive and nothing is multiplicative. A +6 to primary combat skill should pretty much always be a massive upgrade, but under the article's system it gives a flat +6 to TS (multiplied by the "austerity multiplier"), which might not be very meaningful if the hero's TS is already very high.

[Anthony]

You could try to be consistent with CER (itself a dubious formula, but..); I get something like a combined CER of 160 for a unit of light infantry (TS 2), so saying 1 TS is 80 CER isn't out of hand.

[Michael Thayne]

Originally Posted by Anthony

You could try to be consistent with CER (itself a dubious formula, but..); I get something like a combined CER of 160 for a unit of light infantry (TS 2), so saying 1 TS is 80 CER isn't out of hand.

My issue isn't the scaling, as I said in my OP I'm happy to throw out the tables in Mass Combat and and have say 25 or 50 or 100 TS mean something totally different than it does in RAW Mass Combat. My issue is with things that should be major force multipliers instead offering a relatively modest flat bonus.

[mlangsdorf]

A Mass Combat Element is roughly 10 guys. An individual soldier who replaces 10 guys doesn't just need to have a 50% chance of beating those 10 guys in a a fair fight, he needs to do all the other things those 10 guys do: patrol 10 guys' worth of fortifications, extend the battle formation like 10 guys, cover 10 guys' worth of sight lines while marching, and so on. Just having Altered Time Sense or Extra Attack doesn't really cut it.

For my own DF-inspired Fantasy Mass Combat game, I was mostly generous with the requirements for promoting a PC to Hero status, but it was just Hero status. A single DF Scout might arguably be a Hero Bowman unit, but he's still an Average/Average Hero Bowman with TS 2 F. Depending on the quality of his Soldier skills and equipment, he might qualify to be a Good/Very Fine Hero Bowman with TS 6 F, Night. But TS 23 is way out of line, in my opinion - no 250 point DF Scout is worth 110 basic bowmen, and a hour or two of having a 250 point DF scout fight against 110 archers will prove that.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

My issue isn't the scaling, as I said in my OP I'm happy to throw out the tables in Mass Combat and and have say 25 or 50 or 100 TS mean something totally different than it does in RAW Mass Combat. My issue is with things that should be major force multipliers instead offering a relatively modest flat bonus.

There's no easy method of representing all the variables possible for GURPS characters within the framework of mass combat.

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

My issue isn't the scaling, as I said in my OP I'm happy to throw out the tables in Mass Combat and and have say 25 or 50 or 100 TS mean something totally different than it does in RAW Mass Combat. My issue is with things that should be major force multipliers instead offering a relatively modest flat bonus.

Usually this is done with the classes: Armor class, Cavalry class, and so on. This represents stats that are different enough that they add their own quality. And they do change the battle roll pretty effectively.

[Michael Thayne]

Originally Posted by mlangsdorf

A Mass Combat Element is roughly 10 guys. An individual soldier who replaces 10 guys doesn't just need to have a 50% chance of beating those 10 guys in a a fair fight, he needs to do all the other things those 10 guys do: patrol 10 guys' worth of fortifications, extend the battle formation like 10 guys, cover 10 guys' worth of sight lines while marching, and so on. Just having Altered Time Sense or Extra Attack doesn't really cut it.

There's something to this, but sometimes you really just do need to hold a narrow pass, and even if 1 guy can't do this, a massively outnumbered uber-elite force might be able to, and modeling that requires the members of the uber-elite force to each provide the TS of many, many ordinary soldiers. I think we need to accept that sometimes, as when you try to use it to have a helicopter gunship fight an entire low-tech army.

Originally Posted by mlangsdorf

For my own DF-inspired Fantasy Mass Combat game, I was mostly generous with the requirements for promoting a PC to Hero status, but it was just Hero status. A single DF Scout might arguably be a Hero Bowman unit, but he's still an Average/Average Hero Bowman with TS 2 F. Depending on the quality of his Soldier skills and equipment, he might qualify to be a Good/Very Fine Hero Bowman with TS 6 F, Night. But TS 23 is way out of line, in my opinion - no 250 point DF Scout is worth 110 basic bowmen, and a hour or two of having a 250 point DF scout fight against 110 archers will prove that.

Yeah—though in a DF world, it's worth noting that an "elite" unit might consist entirely of 250-point PC-types, which is arguably more competent than what Mass Combat calls an "elite" unit. So it's worth thinking about those ultra-elite units and not just individual heroes.

Originally Posted by Anthony

There's no easy method of representing all the variables possible for GURPS characters within the framework of mass combat.

This is true, but we can try to represent as much as possible. Heck, around the edges the Mass Combat system doesn't fully represent everything within its domain—it just tries to be "good enough" for most purposes.

Originally Posted by ericthered

Usually this is done with the classes: Armor class, Cavalry class, and so on. This represents stats that are different enough that they add their own quality. And they do change the battle roll pretty effectively.

I think this is sometimes done with special classes, but excellent equipment can be a force multiplier even if that suit of plate armor doesn't give a knight the Armor special class.

[Varyon]

Let me preface this by noting I don't have GURPS Mass Combat and have only perused its contents briefly; I also don't have the article in question. So take what I say here with an appropriate volume of salt.

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

There's something to this, but sometimes you really just do need to hold a narrow pass, and even if 1 guy can't do this, a massively outnumbered uber-elite force might be able to, and modeling that requires the members of the uber-elite force to each provide the TS of many, many ordinary soldiers. I think we need to accept that sometimes, as when you try to use it to have a helicopter gunship fight an entire low-tech army.

"Holding a narrow pass" or similar should be a modifier of sorts, not built into the unit's basic TS. A situation like that should mean the forces involved can only field a certain size of unit at a time - so when a small (just throwing numbers out) TS 25 elite unit goes up against a massive TS 100 levy, you may end up with all TS 25 worth of elite troops being able to fight at once but the OpFor can only commit TS 10 worth of its levy at a time.

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

Yeah—though in a DF world, it's worth noting that an "elite" unit might consist entirely of 250-point PC-types, which is arguably more competent than what Mass Combat calls an "elite" unit. So it's worth thinking about those ultra-elite units and not just individual heroes.

Roughly speaking, I think the [62] bargain henchmen (DF8) / novice delvers (Delvers to Grow) would function just fine (with Soldier at 12 tacked on*, or perhaps replacing some other trait(s)) as normal-quality soldiers. [125] standard henchmen / journeyman delvers would be (again, with Soldier tacked on, at at least 12 and probably higher) elites, and the [187] advanced henchmen / master delvers would be a step up from there. Your [250] advanced henchmen / veteran delvers would be in a league of their own. Of course I think Mass Combat assumes elite units also have better gear, so to really keep the trend going, your [187] and [250] soldiers would likely need magical gear of some sort.

*Soldier is really important for functioning as a military unit; troops who lack it should have markedly reduced TS, such that a unit of soldiers with Soldier-12 and weapon skills at 12 should probably be equally matched with - perhaps even superior to - an equal number of warriors with Soldier at default and weapon skills at 15 or so.