Terrain, Shields And Horsemanship

Terrain, Shields and Horsemanship

In the normal scale of combat, having a shield or being on horseback is a fairly useful advantage. They increase the difficulty of hitting you by +1 each. However, since (in the Clash scale) that would mean an Exalt with a shield could never be hit, such advantages instead reduces an Army's successes by 1 before the split. Shields always provide the lesser of their melee/ranged defense bonuses. Similiar, success reducing effects (such as Starmetal shields and armor) has a similiar effect.

Example: Rising Dawn faces down a a large company of soldiers. He's on horseback, bearing a large Starmetal shield. When the soldiers attack him, they roll four successes. Normally, this would be four seperate attacks for Rising Dawn to parry- but the horse (+1), shield (+1), and Starmetal (+1) involved reduce this to only one.

Such attributes for the indivudal soldier are assumed to be covered under the Spirit and Equipment attributes. But armies do have their own shields- the advantages of terrain. An army that conrols the high ground of a fight is at +1 difficulty to hit. An army can take the high ground in combat (if it's available) by using a full action moving to it. (See Flanks, Manuvers and Envelopment).

An army behind foritifcations is at between +1 difficulty to hit (for a simple wooden palisade) to +3 (a First Age complex, filled with cunning traps and murder holes). An Exalt will have to use an action just to be able to attack- scaling or breaking through the walls, etc. Additionally, almost all foritifications are built on the high ground, giving it to the holders automatically.

Example: Rising Dawn is chasing a routing army. They retreat into their fortress, built atop a high and lonely hill. The fortress is of sturdy construction, stone and with the normal arrangements of dangers that come from such an assault- it adds +2 to the difficulty of hitting the army. Additionally, being built on the hill adds another +1, meaning the difficulty for Rising Dawn to actually hit anyone is +3.

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