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I'm pretty satisfied now. I mean, what Chamomile and Maglag described already sounded pretty dumb taken individually but the part where the results flip-flop and ogres go from always losing to always winning as the scale changes is impressively stupid.

maglag wrote: There is, since the RNG is a single d20 and units cap at 400.

What half-assed justification do they provide for capping unit size at an understrength battalion? Even a Roman cohort had more guys than that, and a cohort was a pretty small unit in terms of battlefield deployment.

I get that the historical battle of Cannae involved pretty large forces by ancient battle standards, but if your mass combat system requires 215 separate units to represent the Roman side, then the abstraction has broken down pretty badly.

mlangsdorf wrote:

maglag wrote: There is, since the RNG is a single d20 and units cap at 400.

What half-assed justification do they provide for capping unit size at an understrength battalion? Even a Roman cohort had more guys than that, and a cohort was a pretty small unit in terms of battlefield deployment.

I get that the historical battle of Cannae involved pretty large forces by ancient battle standards, but if your mass combat system requires 215 separate units to represent the Roman side, then the abstraction has broken down pretty badly.

With max 400 man units it would be difficult to model even much smaller actual Medieval battles. The Battle of Crecy - one of the more well known and prototypical Medieval battles - features around 10000 on the English side and 30000 on the French side. So you'd need 100 units, which is ridiculous. Graphical representations of the battle show the English split into roughly 9 groups and the French into a mere 7 (because the French weren't dividing up archers from men at arms), and while there were no doubt subunits, it's clearly a major abstraction fail.

Whipstitch wrote:I'm pretty satisfied now. I mean, what Chamomile and Maglag described already sounded pretty dumb taken individually but the part where the results flip-flop and ogres go from always losing to always winning as the scale changes is impressively stupid.

Actually, the ogres don't auto-lose at the lower scale if you take in account some details that Chamomile appears to have missed:
-Units move at 10x lowest speed since turns are supposed to represent 1 minute.
-Units always take 100 x100 feet space regardless of the base creature's numbers/size.
-"A unit can attack an adjacent enemy unit if any creature in the unit is within 5 feet of the target. It can make an attack at range if all its members can make ranged attacks that can reach the target."


Goblin unit max range is 320 feet. But each goblin unit takes 100 feet as well.

So if the ogres can force a battle anywhere that the goblins 100 feet square units can't move around (valley, fortification, dense forest, mountain path, etc), then a max of 3 goblin units can engage them at a time.

And since the ogres move at a whooping 400 feet per mass combat round (base movement, dashing would be 800 feet), they're also a lot harder to kite than a single ogre vs 10 goblins would. If a goblin unit can shoot the ogres, the ogre unit is close enough to move and attack right away.

Not very sure what the ogre's chances are in a chokepoint since losing combat makes you lose BR and thus more likely to lose the following combats. But each goblin unit starts at only a 13.50% chance of hurting the ogres and will need 10 successes (goblin winning deals 2 BR damage and 10 ogres have 10 BR so goblins need to win 5 times) while the ogres have a straight 86% something chance of splattering each goblin unit. So I would wager at least double digits chance of ogre victory at lower scale unless they were somehow ambushed in open plains and find themselves surrounded on all sides in which case I would say it's fair they lose hard.

Mind you, if you go just a bit higher in the lower scale with 30 ogres vs 10x30 goblins squads, aka BR 30 rolling vs BR 3, that's already enough to make the ogres auto-win.

mlangsdorf wrote:

maglag wrote: There is, since the RNG is a single d20 and units cap at 400.

What half-assed justification do they provide for capping unit size at an understrength battalion? Even a Roman cohort had more guys than that, and a cohort was a pretty small unit in terms of battlefield deployment.

No justification at all, they just say max limit is 400 and roll with it.

Speaking of which, larger creatures take more space, so max stack size for ogres is actually 100. That's still 100 BR total and more than enough to splatter any max size goblin stacks.

Also units are supposed to have a commander that does not count towards unit max size but does count towards the unit's BR.

God damn unearthed arcana. It feels nearly shameful and pathetic. Like a company SO scared of being criticized for being shit they only release any form of mechanical content thats not just more races or spells as permanent beta.

If anything in terms of design this is Gary Gagax scribbling on a cocktail napkin. At least even the most shit games have had the courage to say "This game is finished, here is my product".

Being craven and cowardly got Mearls the big chair when everyone else got pink slips. Why would he be inclined to change?

maglag wrote:

Whipstitch wrote:I'm pretty satisfied now. I mean, what Chamomile and Maglag described already sounded pretty dumb taken individually but the part where the results flip-flop and ogres go from always losing to always winning as the scale changes is impressively stupid.

Actually, the ogres don't auto-lose at the lower scale

When Chamomile talk about lower scale, he's talking about the skimirsh rules. The combat chapter in the PHB. Using those rules, a single ogre is vaporized by 10 gobs within two rounds.

Actually, 7 gobs are ore than enough to vaporize an ogre. 210 goblins vs 30 ogres is either an auto-win or an auto-lose, depending on the rules you're using. : in skirmish (eg using a computer to simulate the fight (*) ) it's an auto-win for the gobs, in mass battle it's an auto-lose.


(*) It isn't that hard to program - using simplified skirmish rules - , it would allow to handle mass combat with a computer instead of special rules, and while designing mass combat rules it would allow to simulate large skirmish and see if both rules give give more or less the same result. I don't understand why it doesn't exist in Insider.

Well, the scale does flip results even within the mass battle game. 400 Goblins (BR+40) cannot lose to 20 Ogres (BR+20) but if you multiply both groups by 3, the Goblins hit the stack size limit and the Ogres don't, so the Goblins are three stacks at BR +40 and the Ogre is one stack at BR + 60 and now the Ogres are off the RNG in the other direction.

-Username17

Another curiosity: 400 Balors vs 399 Balors is an auto-win for the 400 Balors. Actually, 399 Balor + 1 random FP 13 monsters autowin against 399 Balor.

Because that's how battles actually work: recruiting one less competent soldier makes you automatically win.


One of the design goal of D&D 5 was "many FP 1/8 bandits are still dangerous for 4 level 10 PC". The max BR of bandits is 20 ; the BR of 1 unit of 4 level 10 PC is 48. Under the mass combat rules, an infinity of bandits cannot hurt the PCs.

... I guess the designer doesn't know anything about D&D 5, and he's creating a mass combat system for D&D 3.


Edit: weren't some people criticizing the Balor for being too easily killed by a few archers ? With the mass combat rules, the Balor may train 10 kitty and form an invincible unit with them. Because a weak unit (10 kitty) + an easily killable single trash mob (the balor) = an invincible unit.

GâtFromKI wrote:

maglag wrote:

Whipstitch wrote:I'm pretty satisfied now. I mean, what Chamomile and Maglag described already sounded pretty dumb taken individually but the part where the results flip-flop and ogres go from always losing to always winning as the scale changes is impressively stupid.

Actually, the ogres don't auto-lose at the lower scale

When Chamomile talk about lower scale, he's talking about the skimirsh rules.

Ah, you're right, thanks!

GâtFromKI wrote:Another curiosity: 400 Balors vs 399 Balors is an auto-win for the 400 Balors. Actually, 399 Balor + 1 random FP 13 monsters autowin against 399 Balor.

Because that's how battles actually work: recruiting one less competent soldier makes you automatically win.

I believe you meant "lose" instead of "win" there.

That reminds me of a 40k fluff piece where Khaine in the distant past gives a set of 100 super swords to 100 super elite eldar warriors to fight a necron army. And the eldar are all kicking ass and taking names until their formation suddenly starts crumbling. Because one of the swords was actually of lesser quality. And the 100 eldar all died because of that one less competent soldier. Necrons technically took casualities but if you don't fully wipe them out they will be back so technically emerge unscratched when the dust settles.

Clearly D&D 5e is hiring GW writers behind the scenes.

GâtFromKI wrote: Edit: weren't some people criticizing the Balor for being too easily killed by a few archers ? With the mass combat rules, the Balor may train 10 kitty and form an invincible unit with them. Because a weak unit (10 kitty) + an easily killable single trash mob (the balor) = an invincible unit.

"A Balor is leading kitties into an unstoppable army of doom!" sounds like an hilarious quest/campaign.

In particular since PCs have the ability of "zooming in" during mass combat to strike at individual members. So the Balor may want to bring more than 10 cats or he risks some pesky adventurers ruining his killing spree in a single round. "Take out a cat and the Balor will be nothing but arrow fodder!"

maglag wrote:

GâtFromKI wrote:Another curiosity: 400 Balors vs 399 Balors is an auto-win for the 400 Balors. Actually, 399 Balor + 1 random FP 13 monsters autowin against 399 Balor.

Because that's how battles actually work: recruiting one less competent soldier makes you automatically win.

I believe you meant "lose" instead of "win" there.

No, I mean "the army with 399 + random FP 13 monster has one more soldier than the other army, and that supplementary soldier is less competent than other soldier. But his mere presence makes the first army auto-win". But since I'm not very good at speaking/writing English, that's not what I wrote at all.

(btw, the rules actually prevents from stacking 400 balor - a Balor takes more than 1 unit slot - , but I guess you understand the idea).

I had the sudden urge to see if 4th editions Edgelords, I mean Revenants, made it into 5th edition. they didn't, but 3rd editions "immortal until reach their goal" Revenants made it in and this teeny bit from the UA Gothic Heroes gave me the urge to share the pain.

For races that don't have subrace options, taking on the revenant subrace means making changes to your character’s base traits, as follows.
(This playtest article provides options only for human and dragonborn characters. Because half-­elves and half-­orcs have no subrace options, they shouldn't be used with these revenant subrace rules.)

Jesus Fucking Christ, even copy and pasting this bit from the pdf was a mess, but I wanted to share this little bit for being a hilarious mess. how does Mike Mearls still have a job again?

On the upside I can see GMs all over the world shit their underoos for having a player subrace with regeneration and 24h auto-reincarnation, plus a homing beacon on your "target", so kudos for giving out real toys.

Oh and in case anyone wants to see the article themselfs, here is the LINK

Thematically I think I'd rather be an edgelord because my goal is always immortality. I mean, I don't want to be a dick about it, but if given the opportunity I'm signing up for lichdom. It can't be worse than my herniated disc.

I like the implicit admission that only fighters and rogues are appropriate for gothic horror.

The revenant is... puzzling. There seems to be no downside to it, or even edginess to it. Just skip around in the sunlight picking flowers because you're fucking immortal until you finish <task> so... screw that noise. Just be fucking immortal forever.

The fighter archetype seems less a monster slayer and more 'just add more bonuses to the fighter:' here have a way to hit more often and actually pass saving throws.

Rogue is: get to actually use sneak attack when you don't have friends standing next to the target. What a theme!

Bonus points for the link to other tiefling subraces that isn't actually a link.

Whipstitch wrote:Thematically I think I'd rather be an edgelord because my goal is always immortality. I mean, I don't want to be a dick about it, but if given the opportunity I'm signing up for lichdom. It can't be worse than my herniated disc.

Don't get me wrong, I liked playing the edgelord revenants in 4th edition for all their 90s glory. they weren't quite The Crow, but Ravens are close enough... I wonder if that was intentional *wink, wink* from the designers, a thematic coincidence or just a thinly veiled rip off. anyway, was actually a fun race to play in that system, though the GM was so overwhelmed even years later he believed that race to be utterly overpowered and unstoppable.

Anyway, I now want to play an immortal bard who plays death metal in combat. or whatever the fuck HIM was when he is feeling angsty. I doubt any D&D system can actually handly it without people shitting their pantaloons because of how OP it is to not have to reroll your character to the same level your dead character was...

Well my character just got nearly killed by a CR 2 Intellect Devourer. And there are no rules for restoration. Fuck this game.

Ah, the Intellect Devourer - the point where it became clear the the 5E authors didn't know or didn't care what CR was for. A monster with nasty SoDs that buff it hugely if they work and good stealth skills, and an ambush ability that can only be foiled by acting like paranoia murderhobos, and it's CR 2?

Not only is an equivalent CR of Intellect Devourers much more of a threat than a Balor ... 3-4 might be more threat than a Balor.

It's like That Damn Crab but moreso.

Shrieking Banshee wrote:Well my character just got nearly killed by a CR 2 Intellect Devourer. And there are no rules for restoration. Fuck this game.

Well, greater restoration fixes any amount of ability score loss.


But those are damn stupid monsters. Even the background is stupid: mind flayers make intellect devourers to... eat the same thing they do. Good job, geniuses.

But greater restoration is level 5 Spells. At a CR2 monster that ignores HP.

Honestly, don't care. If the DM is going to throw obvious bullshit monsters at the party (in an edition where I didn't even know ability damage is a thing), they're obliged to provide access to the one way of fixing that damage.

what the fuck, who even came up with that "roll 3d6, DC is intelligence of target, if successful reduce intelligence to 0"?

An asshole who clearly wanted to punish players for recognizing that intelligence is the edition's dump stat.

Another one of these...they seem to spring up like mushrooms, and then die away quietly.

http://io9.gizmodo.com/a-new-dungeons-d ... 1793213377

great choice of name. D&D is indeed Beyond. hope. help. what have you.

"Make a preview video. Glam it up. I'm thinking something like the first World of Warcraft gameplay trailer. Except since we don't have any sweeping digital vistas, you can just portray a cursor clicking on some fucking spreadsheets."