Warfare Rules

[Lord of Halfcastle]

Greetings fellow adventurers!

I present to you the earliest draft of my warfare rules for Basic Fantasy. I see that we have rules for mercenaries and strongholds in the core book but no rules on how to resolve a mass battle between two armies. Attached to this thread is my solution to that hole. Keep in mind that these rules as of the time of this post have NOT been playtested and that there will be many revisions to come. It is also worth noting that these rules are not supposed to turn Basic Fantasy into a miniature war game, but rather provide role-playing rules to resolve an army scale battle and allow PCs to participate in these battles to add to the story of the campaign.
Please let me know what you think and any reports from playtesting will go a long way. So far these rules cover field battles but I will be updating these rules to include sieges and magic as well.

[Lord of Halfcastle]

Video tutorial here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgamrCf8i9U&t=

[Pirate GM13]

These are the actually quite good, no problems that I can see. Though I have a question about the hit points:
Seeing as some creatures roll a d4 or get to add a number to their hit points after they roll their hit die / dice, would there be any special rules on that?
Ex :
I have 3 wood golems (2 HD + 2). Should they count as 6 hit dice?

[Lord of Halfcastle]

These are the actually quite good, no problems that I can see. Though I have a question about the hit points:
Seeing as some creatures roll a d4 or get to add a number to their hit points after they roll their hit die / dice, would there be any special rules on that?
Ex :
I have 3 wood golems (2 HD + 2). Should they count as 6 hit dice?

Thanks for your question, it's quite a good one! As for now, a HD counts as 1 HP towards the platoon's total regardless of any special rules that say an individual would roll d4 instead of d8 for example. The +2 is something I haven't account for lol. My advise is to add +2 once to the platoon's HD total instead of stacking it for balancing sake.
Also thank you for the kind words! If you decide to test out the rules please let me know what happens, once I've gathered enough feedback I'll update the rules considering the information I am given.

[Pirate GM13]

These are the actually quite good, no problems that I can see. Though I have a question about the hit points:
Seeing as some creatures roll a d4 or get to add a number to their hit points after they roll their hit die / dice, would there be any special rules on that?
Ex :
I have 3 wood golems (2 HD + 2). Should they count as 6 hit dice?

Thanks for your question, it's quite a good one! As for now, a HD counts as 1 HP towards the platoon's total regardless of any special rules that say an individual would roll d4 instead of d8 for example. The +2 is something I haven't account for lol. My advise is to add +2 once to the platoon's HD total instead of stacking it for balancing sake.
Also thank you for the kind words! If you decide to test out the rules please let me know what happens, once I've gathered enough feedback I'll update the rules considering the information I am given.

1. OK nice
2. Already done, twice now :
Once before asking and then I just played. It works excellently. The first time I had an army of undead march against the imperial guard (3 platoons each), and I kinda expected my players to be super bored (because they were commanding the imperial guard), but they found it super exciting and didn't want to skip through it. They thought outside the box and I had to make some rules up pretty quickly for an ambush and the high ground advantage, and then of course they won.
The second time I tested it outta game while I was preparing for my next game session. I had the second army of necromancers attack the capital city, which the players had left in the hands of a mad wizard and an old knight. I have the wiz knight team 2 platoons, and the other army 4. Apparently numbers matter, and though they had more hit dice than the enemy Platoons, team wiz knight went down...

So my feedback is :
It's all going super well at the moment. Should there be any rules for stuff like ambushes and high ground and low ground or should the GM just make it up?

[Lord of Halfcastle]

1. OK nice
2. Already done, twice now :
Once before asking and then I just played. It works excellently. The first time I had an army of undead march against the imperial guard (3 platoons each), and I kinda expected my players to be super bored (because they were commanding the imperial guard), but they found it super exciting and didn't want to skip through it. They thought outside the box and I had to make some rules up pretty quickly for an ambush and the high ground advantage, and then of course they won.
The second time I tested it outta game while I was preparing for my next game session. I had the second army of necromancers attack the capital city, which the players had left in the hands of a mad wizard and an old knight. I have the wiz knight team 2 platoons, and the other army 4. Apparently numbers matter, and though they had more hit dice than the enemy Platoons, team wiz knight went down...

So my feedback is :
It's all going super well at the moment. Should there be any rules for stuff like ambushes and high ground and low ground or should the GM just make it up?

I'm glad that you had fun with the rules! As of now I don't plan on making rules for ambushes or ground levels just yet. However if I were to house rule it, I'd have the ambushed platoon roll for surprise. If they are surprised, then the ambushers get to score 1d6 casualties before the combat begins. Thank you for enjoying my rules!

[Dimirag]

Its not a bad rule system, but I see it lacks some important parts:

PCs with low charisma should be allowed to lead other, there could be a limit on the platoon size or other modifier based on his or her Charisma bonus, maybe even his class and level should account for this.

As it stands now the rules are over-simplified, becoming a matter of luck and hit point attrition, equipment and skill should be factored, giving each platoon an AC, AB, and damage score could make things better.

"Mixed platoon" members should provided mixed results and options while "full platoons" should be better at some options than others.

As it stands now, if a platoon of 5 level 5 npc engages 25 level 1 npc, both sides will have 25HP, and each round they can lose up to 12 members, but one platoon can't lose more than 5 persons... so, there is no true "1HP lost = 1 casualty"

[billiambabble]

I've downloaded this and am looking forward to seeing how your system works. I can't promise a proper play test, since I don't have a group atm.

I posted my own ideas on large groups in combat in the following thread but haven't had much feedback. viewtopic.php?t=4129

I'm a big fan of very simple systems - in the spirit of BF. As soon as you mention armies and warfare to people there seems to be strong desire for strategy and manoeuvres in the style of minis-based war games (like Warhammer or something from bolted on battle systems supplements to the original RPG). I would definitely be in favour of rules which can work within "theatre of the mind".

[billiambabble]

I really like this. It's straight forward and easy to follow. I especially like the shield wall idea.

[Lord of Halfcastle]

Its not a bad rule system, but I see it lacks some important parts:

PCs with low charisma should be allowed to lead other, there could be a limit on the platoon size or other modifier based on his or her Charisma bonus, maybe even his class and level should account for this.

As it stands now the rules are over-simplified, becoming a matter of luck and hit point attrition, equipment and skill should be factored, giving each platoon an AC, AB, and damage score could make things better.

"Mixed platoon" members should provided mixed results and options while "full platoons" should be better at some options than others.

As it stands now, if a platoon of 5 level 5 npc engages 25 level 1 npc, both sides will have 25HP, and each round they can lose up to 12 members, but one platoon can't lose more than 5 persons... so, there is no true "1HP lost = 1 casualty"

Thank you for your feedback. I have to mention that simplification is one of the principals for the supplement. To keep things simple, I've relied on arbitrations and quick rules over trying to simulate a battle in detail. It should be the job of the dungeon master to add in details as they need them to fit their world and narrative.
Also, 1HP lost does not equal one actual death of a unit. You can think of the HD as the unit's accumulated strength that decreases as causalities on the field are lost.