DariusSolluman/ArtifactTactics

Draft v1 of using Artifacts in Exalted Level Mass Combat.

Note: I'm specifically talking about an ARMY using Artifacts- not an individual fighting an army. For them, the rules need not change. However, it should be noted that weapons which have a blast radius are considered spreading against an army. This information is also being heavily drawn from Exalted: The Outcastes.

First: The normal troop in this army is mortal. That is, they would normally max out at training +3.\\ Second: I have never been concerned about the nicieties of how seemingly temporary the advantages of Essence expenditure are. It would be a shame to start now.\\

Further, I'm only considering those artifacts which are directly useful in combat; Elementally Imbused Fridges are terrifyingly handy at helping to keep maintenance down, but not as handy as Elementally Imbued Javlin-Spears. I'm also assuming an all or nothing proposition; artifacts will either contribute their whole rating, or nothing at all. (This is my most mentally disliked bit so far; some artifacts should be worth only partial amounts). This also presumes the army can use all it's firepower- it does no good for a peasant uprising to have a Daiklaive in hand, if none of them can weild it. Nor would 1,000 suits of Ashigaru Armor help a single scale.

Secondly, any artifact which doesn't have an artifact rating automatically is exempted from the general army rating increase; instead, the user of the artifact acts independently of the army as a whole. A Warstrider may have a Scale assigned to protect it, but the Scale and the Warstrider act as seperate characters on the battlefield.

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Artifact Bonus

In addition to a Training Bonus, armies can also have an Artifact Bonus. This is treated identically to the Training Bonus, in so far as what they are capable of doing.

Each artifact adds the square of it's value to a meter. For these purposes, an Elementally Imbued Item counts as a half a 1 dot artifact; every two adds 1 to the meter. At the following points, the army gains an additional +1 Artifact Bonus

25: +1

50: +2

100: +3

150: +4

250: +5

350: +6

500: +7

650: +8

800: +9

+200: +1

Virtually all artifacts also dramatically increase an army's maintenance cost; they cost a seperate resources purchase equal to the Artifact Bonus of the army. Failing to meet this price results in the army's Artifact bonus droping by 1 per month not met, with a conmiserate drop in Maintenance cost. So, an Elite Mortal Wing, each man equipped with Elementally empowered armor and blade (1 point each, 250 total) has a Resources Cost of 6 (for the Wing itself) and 5 (for the artifacts).

Mental comments

Not so sure about the flat increase to increasing the Maintenance cost. If I had a Fang of Dragonblooded, each with a Daiklaive and Jade armor equal to an artifact bonus of +1, there'd be no additional maintenace. They might CHARGE more, but it's not a matter of maintenance. Whereas a like side army of Mortals in Genzshoa (or whatever) armor that each has Repair 2- there WOULD be a maintenance cost there.

Maybe just leave this out entirely- just come up with macroscopic guidelines on teams to repair stuff and such, based on relative numbers of relative Repair levels...

As a side note, any thought on the basic premise of this piece- the whole Artifact Bonus Meter thingy? DS

I'd assume mortals come with mortal armor and weapons, and DBs come with Jade, and Celestials come with Warstriders when appropriate. That is, only Artifacts beyond a particular coolness threshold matter, and that threshold varies with the coolness of the unit, much as the maximum training bonus varies. Second, I think you have the right idea with your warstrider comment: all troops in a unit should be considered effectively identical. If there are different sorts of load-out in the unit, model it as separate units, or decide (as in the case of a mixed troop of Terrestrials in Dragon Armor) that they're equally powered, and don't matter on the scale of the mass combat system. So a hundred men with Warstriders are a unit, and the thousand men protecting them are a unit. I would suggest that any Artifacts matter for mortal troops, only Artifacts above 1 count for weak natural Essence users (Godblooded and Ghosts), onyl Artifacts above 2 matter for DBs (you assume the Princes of the Earth have Jade armor and a Daiklave), and only Artifacts above 3 matter should you somehow get the entire Silver Pact onto the battlefield. When the Solar Deliberative is called to battle, only Artifact 5+ counts.

Given all that, I think "better than average equipment" -- exceptional equipment for mortals, or noticeable artifacts for anybody else -- should give bonuses approximately equal to training. So, say, +3 per level of the highest Artifact past the breakpoint for your type, plus one more per additional smaller artifact, which can't more than double the basic artifact bonus. Exceptional equipment would grant a +1, half-artifact gear like Elementally Empowered stuff a +2. How's that?

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First, keep in mind, I don't ever contemplate Celestials fighting in ranks on the battlefield. They're the Leaders and Heroes- they fight armies without backup. So, yeah, that doesn't matter so much.

I'm thinking in terms of a War on the Primordials game, where 90% of the Exalts in Creation will be on the battlefield at once, with Third Circle Demons on the other side. This system -- particularly the key insights of Army As Weapon, Turn As Scene, and Spreading Attacks, is the most wonderful set of house rules I've seen, handling a huge fraction of the work I need to do for my game.

Glad to help :) I guess, under those circumstances, a unit of Celestial Exalted should start out at least +3 on the scale, and be capable of advancing up to +12. However, I'd also suggest they'd usually be better off fighting as individual heroes, or leading massive armies of Dragonblooded.

Second, it doesn't sound ya disagree with the idea of an artifact bonus, just the way it's tabulated. Also, it doesn't sound like you've read Outcastes yet, which is what initally prompted this line of thought; there are a wide variety of Essence-powered weapons and armor specifically for mortal use, and they + Lookshy's super intense training (almost all their field forces should be at a Training bonus of +2 or +3... including their bloody reserverists).

Yes, I have read that, but only once. It'll take another couple tries to sink in. Gunzosha implants seem to redefine the "mortal" wielder as a natural essence user. I'm not sure about Firedust cannons and such. As far as the tabulation, I had an insight this morning: the right metric may not be Artifact level, but effect level. Dragon Armor grants about five important benefits of ranks 2-4, and could be emulated with Good Armor, an Elemental Lens, a Jetpack, etc. A Daiklave has one power: it's a Really Cool Sword.

My inital write up did, in fact, make Gunzosha armored folks able to train to +6, which is the normal bennie of an army of Essence wielders. However, it struck me that that wasn't quite right... I mean, the Gunzosha armor gives you an immediate, massive boost rather than vastly increasing your potential.

And effect level is very subjective. What will let someone deal more damage in a tactical situation- an Elemental Lens or a Grand Daiklaive? What's more useful, a Small Essence Cannon or a Jade Powerbow? To what degree? In theory, artifact level already subsumes this role, which is why I wanted it for my inital metric.

Third, if I can handle heavily Artifact armed Mortals, I wanna be able to handle unarmed with Artifact Dragonbloods; that is, I don't wanna make assumptions about the level of equipment an army is fielding.

That's a fair point. I would think an army of Terrestrials without their toys would start with a pretty heavy Equipment penalty... maybe the right way to do it is to tie the Equipment stat to the artifacts in use?

Which was another thought- except Equipment, in the Mass Combat system, only helps with dealing and soaking damage, whereas I can easily see equipment letting an army coordinate more effectively and move more quickly (Communication), make them fiercer or more deadly accurate in strikes (Traning), or boost the moral of the troops by knowing that the famous blades Heaven's Fist, Burning Glory of the Dragons and Morning's Light are fighting for their side (Spirit, Health Levels). In other words, the potential benefits of artifacts are more numerous than just equipment covers.

Plus, it would mean that an army of Terrestrials gets artifacts based on training, which is the current method of gaining an absolute advantage (as in, an advantage that doesn't require any trade off). And that makes no kinda sense. Any army with access to artifact equipment it can use should become dramatically more effective.

Mm. On the other hand, I do like your definitions better, even though they're more fuzzy. Maybe because they're more fuzzy. :) I'm still a bit zonked at the moment, but I'll be revisiting this to include your thoughts on simply eyeballing equipment levels to provide an Artifact bonus, rather than totaling Artifact levels.

I've been thinking about GURPS' mass combat system, which has a "construction kit" for figuring out the stats for units of troops, but just eyeballs "a 1970s US tank = 60 pts" and "a dragon with the following stats is 50 pts". And I've been looking at what you did with existing fuzzy Charms, giving them great mechanical effects in this system. It seems that the same thing could work for both Artifacts and Charms used by ranked Essence-users.

See, the GurpsDariusSolluman/Warhammer method of points assignment is either a well balanced formula, or the result of extensive playtesting (and, most likely, a combination of both). I'm trying to tread a middle road with mechanical guidelines for the playtesting.

Also, something else I thought of while typing this- having the artifact meter lets you simulate having a 'scale' of Gunzosha armor held in reserve for sharp points of the fighting, without having to make them a seperate unit. Now, it'd just be recorded as a Dragon with X points of artifact from 25 suits of Gunzosha armor, granting an overall +1 or +2 to the army's effectiveness.

Hm. That may not be a bad way to go about it. Assign an arbitrary Artifact Bonus to published artifacts used in mass combat; when the total artifact bonus reaches certain threshholds, the army gets a +1... Seems like a good compromise to me, at the moment...