ncg@ukc.UUCP (N.C.Gale) (05/21/85)
This is in response to a request via email. The problem is: battles involve hundreds of people (and other things...), so how do you handle the fate of a small group of individuals? To do every single melee in the battle would take rather a long time :-( I won't tell you anything about the actual battle combat system I use, but the method I use to injure and kill the players is as follows: Each battle-combat turn is about 50 melee rounds. At the beginning of each battle-combat turn, each player must announce how involved they are going to get in the combat, in terms of bravery: Desertion, Poltroonery, Excessive caution, Caution, Brave, Recklessly Brave, Suicidal, etc I have drawn up a table of number and severity of injuries, based on the average number of injuries the average fighter should sustain when wearing the average armour in the average 50 melee rounds. So if I roll a '10' on a D20, he gets hit three times, for 1,3 and 6 points respectively (nb, for most of the fifty rounds, he is assumed to be just out of combat) This roll is heavily adjusted by a character's armour, defensive adjustments, the damage he does, and especially his bravery level and the local battle-combat result. Each character is expected to do a certain amount of bravery during the battle according to his Fighting Ability, Social Level, and how many injuries he has already sustained (Lord Ghangor the Disgraceful cannot be expected to lead his troops into battle when he only has one hit point left). The more bravery above this level that the character does, the more chance has he of being noticed by someone important and promoted, knighted, given medals, rewards, land, titles etc. It is possible for a high-level, high-social-level player to influence a battle-result by one or two (ie a very small amount) if he is suitably brave. The injury table should also include things like being dehorsed, captured, severely injured, pickpocketted (:-). More detail I cannot give because: (a) there is quite a lot of it, and (b) I don't claim that my system is perfect (it is continually being changed). You have my idea, make up your own rules. -Nige Gale Credit-card holders welcome.
james@alberta.UUCP (James Borynec) (05/21/85)
>I have drawn up a table of number and severity of injuries, based on the >average number of injuries the average fighter should sustain when wearing >the average armour in the average 50 melee rounds. 50 melee rounds is an awful long time to fight. A turn, I suspect would be a little more flexible (10 rounds). C & S as I recall, had a rather excellent method for dealing with individuals, and mass combat. Since mass combat did not deal with individual statistics, I rather suspect that a modification of it would be an excellent adjunct to any campaign with a war. J. Borynec alberta!james