Troll Lord Games

I have been playing tabletop games lately like mordheim. And, after rereading the rules for FOB this weekend, i want to ask if there is a point system to create armies? I am thinking using experience points but i thought i would ask.

I am thinking of starting a FOB campaign with a group and would like to start with equal point armies.

I don't think you really need a points system, just make the army up of the same strength and numbers and they will be of similar effectiveness.

So if one army has 500 1 HD orcs, and another army is 250 2 HD gnolls, they should be pretty even. Assuming similar armor and weapons.
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The Ruby Lord, Earl of the Society

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That does not work too well when using higher HD. For example, is 32 HD worth of kobolds equal to a 32 HD dragon, with spell casting? Obviously no. Are 7 trolls worth the dragon? Again, probably not. Is a dragon more than a prysmal eye, despite the HD difference? I would think the Eye is actually more powerful, if all of its abilities are factored in...

And this has nothing to say for treasures... the dragon is going to have a ton of loot, but what of it can be used? Likely not much. Same for the prysmal eye, but those kobolds might have magical armor and weapon for each individual... but that, unless they're artifact level goodies, is not likely to help them much against either. Of course, you give them scrolls of immunity to magic or potions of dragon control and then you've got a whole different situation...

So, umm, yeah. I was going somewhere with this. Unfortunately, I do not know how the battle itself plays out, as I do not yet have the box set, but I am sure it would not be too hard to develop an "army builder guide."

But, like in the really real world, the armies do not need to be equally matched....
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Serl's Corner

I don't know, I didn't think three squads of 1 HD town militia would take out a Dragon Turtle, but they did. They lost a lot, but they still won.
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The Ruby Lord, Earl of the Society

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see, im looking at using this product alone, not as a tool for say my hh campaign and the battle of dro madris. just a couple of people bring minis and we calculate armies to do battle. when i say exp, lets say the dragon is 600 exp. and a kobalt is 5 then 5 man squads would be 25 and then thats 24 squads vs 1 dragon. now i do not have my books in front of me so my numbers may be off but this is my train of thought

If you have a FB account you may want to friend Casey and ask him if he has a point system worked out. Otherwise we will havee to wait for him to see this thread. If I see him on FB I'll give him a link.
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The Ruby Lord, Earl of the Society

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Yeah,

No. There isn't one. As Serleran pointed out 32hd worth of kobolds is not equal to a 32 HD dragon/demon/demigod avatar. C&C just doesn't work that way. I know that in "the worlds most popular table top miniatures battles game" they get away with points systems because their "heroes" and heroic structures don't really "have" all the powers that say ... an 18th level wizard or a lich would bring to the table. Instead a "demon hero unit" in that game adds dice of damage to other attacks, or deals x amount of "dice of damage" to adjoining units and so on. Quite a different deal from how C&C works, and that wasn't really what we were going for in this. We wanted C&C with mass combat that could also bridge itself to other d20 type games.

On the concept of "points" what I do however, is assign amounts of points for objectives in battles. Taking a bridge, killing an enemy commander, holding a battlefield strongpoint for an amount of time. Then I use a maximum point total to determine victory for meeting and maintaining objectives in a similar fashion to the way several popular first person shooters determine victory.

An example of this is given in the 2nd Dro Mandras book.

C.

Thanks Casey.

Bowbe wrote:
Yeah,

No. There isn't one. As Serleran pointed out 32hd worth of kobolds is not equal to a 32 HD dragon/demon/demigod avatar. C&C just doesn't work that way. I know that in "the worlds most popular table top miniatures battles game" they get away with points systems because their "heroes" and heroic structures don't really "have" all the powers that say ... an 18th level wizard or a lich would bring to the table. Instead a "demon hero unit" in that game adds dice of damage to other attacks, or deals x amount of "dice of damage" to adjoining units and so on. Quite a different deal from how C&C works, and that wasn't really what we were going for in this. We wanted C&C with mass combat that could also bridge itself to other d20 type games.

On the concept of "points" what I do however, is assign amounts of points for objectives in battles. Taking a bridge, killing an enemy commander, holding a battlefield strongpoint for an amount of time. Then I use a maximum point total to determine victory for meeting and maintaining objectives in a similar fashion to the way several popular first person shooters determine victory.

An example of this is given in the 2nd Dro Mandras book.

C.

not to beat this dead horse but then how, as a ck, would i set up a proper conflict with the pcs as heros using firlds of battle?

the chalenge level is used for encounters and i get war is unfair, but their is also some sort of balance that needs to come into play. if not its a tpk or its not fun. I was looking at the roadhouse battle in FOB and used UHP as a gague, bulls group had app 600 uhp in squads while the orcs had app 1100. add in heros and bull, the dwarf and pcs would bring this app 200 points closer. then add in fortifications, this should be an even fight. now the adition of siege engines and fortifications not addressed, i tink total uhp is a good point value to create conflicts.

am i the only one wondering about this?

It shouldn't be to hard to generate a point buy system, if you wanted to use FoB as a miniatures war game rather than a supplement to C&C. You can approach it in many ways, but I will give two examples.

The first requires more prep-work as you need to codify abilities and such as described here:

(Note the examples below are truly not play-tested, and offered as a sample of how you can try to codify creatures.)

Format is Points Description

Hit Dice/Class Levels

[quote]Code:


Note on multi-classed methods:

[quote]Code:


Spell Casting Ability
[quote]Code:


Special Abilities

[quote]Code:


The second, much more simple, but still requires some work for codification, is to use the XP of the creature as calculated from M&T. This way you have a pre-built method of determining the cost of a give creature, that should stack up fairly well with it's power. It isn't exact, and would need to be tested, but should work fairly well.

For example, an age category 5 (Adult) Gold Dragon would cost: 24292

[quote]Code:


At this point total another player decides to take a horde of orcs, each orc would cost 13 points, meaning you would have 1869.62 orcs facing off against that one dragon. Hope you have a lot of models!!!! if you go with a 10:1 ratio on the models you still need 187 orcs models on the field. The tricky part is how do you add classed characters? Well I would follow the same XP value from M&T but use level instead of HD as the base XP.

At 1st level a fighter would cost 1315, though this seems quite a bit high.

[quote]Code:


But it works better for a 12th level as it fighter would cost 4822, but still seems a bit high to me.

[quote]Code:


You will note that Extra Attack is not on the list since you must have 3 attacks or more to qualify for a Type I special ability.

If we decide the Weapon Specialization really doesn't fit a Type I special ability, and drop it from the xp calc, we get 15 points for the 1st level, and 3522 for the 12th. That does make much more sense to me, especially when comparing against a foe of "equivalent power". Where that orc is 13 xp, the 1st level fighter is 15, makes sense, better HP, all else is is close. The 12th level fighter compares well with a Fire Giant, and it is 3602xp.

So how does that break out against the Gold Dragon above? 6.9 12th level fighters against that dragon, a pretty fair fight I think I'd give the edge to the dragon though. It would take 1619.47 1st level fighters, 162 models at 10:1, again I think the dragon wins this, but it would be a bit more interesting.

How does the fighter stand against the orcs? At 1st level it is 1 on 1, fighter probably has a bit of an edge, but it isn't overwhelming. At 12th level though, the fighter will have to face 270.92 orcs. Daunting, at a 5:1 ratio for models, you need 54 models, but it is doable, also consider the fighter has 106 HP.

Next, the orcs are a medium creature at 1d8 hp, giving them 6 hp per individual. The fighter we will say has Str 16 for +2, Dex 13 for +1, +2 plate mail and a +2 long sword. He will hit with each of his 4 swings since his total to hit bonus is 12(base) +2(Str) +2(Sword) +2(Specialization), dealing 1-8+6 points of damage. Lets say he averages a 5 with each swing and does 11HP damage, this is only enough to take out one member of the unit per swing. However, this takes down 4 members of a 5 man unit, diminishing it's combat capabilities. It would take 81 combat rounds to slay all the orcs. Sounds like a long time right, well at 10 seconds/round that is 13.5 minutes!

The orcs, start with a unit bonus of +5 to hit, and +4 damage, so they have a total bonus of +6 to hit, and start out striking the AC 20 fighter about 30% of the time, but suffer a -1 to hit and damage for each member slain, so on the "off" round they are only +2 to hit thus striking 10% of the time. So in those 81 rounds of combat you can assume a total of 12 hits at full strength, and 4 hits at one member of the unit remaining. Orcs like pole arms, so lets say that they are armed with Halberds. Those halberds are a d10, so lets say we average a roll of 6, and 1/2 the rounds they have a damage bonus of +4, the other half the time they get no damage bonus in that "off" round. This means that they could deal 144 points of damage. If the fighter also had a shield +1, he would reduce the number of hits during the full unit round by 2, resulting in a total of 124 points of damage, still enough to slay him.

So in this scenario the orcs will usually win the combat. However, the random factor of the dice may tip the scale the opposite direction. One other thing that can really swing things in favor of the orcs, oddly enough, is if instead of evaluating each individual swing of the sword, you combine the total swings. In this case the fighter is doing 44hp per round, resulting in 7 kills per round, so 1 complete base per round since each unit is only 30 hp (6hp*5), the extra 14 damage is ignored. This results in every attack against the fighter at full strength (30% hit, 10hp damage) so in 55 rounds he is hit 16.5 times, so say 16 times, for 160hp damage! If you allow the 14 hp to carry over to the next squad, the fighter will dominate that combat since he will slay two members of that unit, resulting in fewer hits, and far less damage. He will slay 4 bases in three rounds or 42 rounds to finish the combat and with a 30% and 20% chance to hit in every other round dealing 10hp and 8hp respectively, you get 6 hits at 10hp, and 4 hits at 8hp, for 92hp total damage done. He is hurt but cut a huge swath through the enemy line!

Using XP value, I would allow for 5% of the XP of the base model to be used to purchase magic items for hero types. Magic items would have a cost of 10% the listed XP value in M&T. Once you have exceeded the 5% level, all magic items (including the one being purchased that pushes over the 5% level) cost 100% XP value.

So in the example above, the 12th level fighter could purchase 176.1xp worth of magic items. A +2 sword is worth 75xp (base 750xp), and a +2 plate mail is also 75xp (base 750xp), resulting in 150xp spent, adding the +1 shield 25xp (base 250) results in 175xp. If the shield was to be +2, it would have been 75xp (base 750) which would have been a total of 225xp, exceeding the 176xp cap, so it would then cost the full 250, meaning the XP cost for the character would be increased by 224xp (250-26 remaining free magic points). In that case, you would need to add an additional 17.23 orcs, or 3 bases, maybe upgrade one base to have a leader of some sort. This would make the case a bit closer, but still probably end in the doom of the hero.

Also, this is only a good comparison with the fighter, and only against 1hd creatures, increase to 2HD, cut the numbers opposing him in half, and the fighter is in big trouble. He will only get 2 attacks each turn, and kill 1 maybe 2 unit members per turn if lucky! At 3HD he doesn't stand a chance! Again it shows the numbers will usually rule a battlefield. Though, it does show how you can compare the XP values out to create a point-buy system.

So the moral in the end, you can get close to "fair" with any system, but there will always be exceptions to the rule.