DariusSolluman/TerrainShieldsAndHorsemanship
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 or difficulty increasing effects perform likewise.
Example: Rising Dawn faces down a a large company of soldiers. He's on horseback, bearing a large 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) involved reduce this to only two.
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 or Exalt can take the high ground in combat (if it's available) by using a full action moving to it. (SeeDariusSolluman/FlanksManuversAndEnvelopment). An army can push an enemy on high ground off by by getting more dealing more health levels of damage to the enemy in one turn than the Exalt's Stamina or the enemy commander's Charisma.
Fortifications provide further difficulty to attack an army. 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. Further, an army inside a fortification cannot simply be knocked out of it the way an army on the high ground can be.
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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Comment: This makes Shields and EbonShadowForm much less useful. I suggest using this to impose a split difficulty on the Spread roll: a Shield which gives a +1 to be hit means that instead of 10 successes becoming 10 Simple Successes, they become 5 simple Successes. With a +4 to be hit from EbonShadowForm, it woudl be two simple successes. See what I mean?
I considered this at first, but decided to go with the 'cancel 1 success on the attack per automatic success in defense'; that way, they're treated like a Spreading defense.
Like... okay. If I've got Fivefold Bulwark Stance up, and an army gets 4 successes to hit me, I don't roll four times; I roll once, and each of my successes plinks out one of those. I'm still parrying every individual attack, but that's abstracted out. If I have a shield, it's slightly easier- functionally, I've got Fivefold Bulwark Stance +1 automatic success every time. Rather than make that success something magic and special, I decided to treat it as though you got 1 bonus success on the spreading defense roll. BTS
Does that make any sense? Like, I see your point, but it makes things both more inconsistant and more mathematically complicated. DS
I do see what you mean. Hrm. I don't think I'd fully considered the effects of splitting persistent defenses. Ah ha! I see the source of my perplexity: spreading attacks scale linearly, whereas persistent defenses scale exponentially: in the normal system, every +1 to the difficulty of hitting my character cuts the number of attacks which hit him by half, and weakens those which do get through by a damage level. With this system, spreading defenses only scale linearly. The Essence-5 Ebon Shadow user who is nearly impossible to hit in the normal system is now regularly plinked. What happens when you have an army equipped with shields? How about an army with a persistent defense (say, from a commander who grants a reflexive dex+dodge roll to his troops, or from some funky drug)?
And I'll grant you, there's a trifling bit of unrealism inherent when you start talking about an Essence 5 Ebon Shadow Form guy facing down an army composed of functional mooks. An extra with 4 dice should never be able to hit that Exalt. At the same time, consider that it takes (presuming a 6 die commander) at least a full Talon (125 troops) to be attacking you for an entire scene to probablly deal 1 or 2 successful attacks. Essentially, it's importing some notions of my own about individuals being able to aid one another, and clever tactical orders letting people coordinate to greater effect than they could individually achieve. If I put enough arrows in the air, even Agent Smith can't dodge it. Etc.
An army equiped with shields should have a slightly improved Equipment rating; or rather, an army that isn't equiped with shields should probally trade down their Equipment rating. As far as an army with a Persistant Defense, since it scales up to the army's level, they get a defensive roll against every incoming attack. Course, that's also only possibly via Charm, and it'll be the only Charm used that Clash.
Basically, the concepts of Spreading vs Normal only come into play for Individuals (excepting some powerful Sorcery fun). Individuals have to deal with spreading attacks. Armies only have to deal with normal attacks. Likewise, Armies only deal spreading attacks against individuals; never against other armies. Ergo, if an army is fighting, you can pretend it's an Exalt. Exalts have to be struck with an attack dealing at least 1 success, and have the chance to parry such attacks; if they have the right Charms, they can even reflexively parry them and keep fighting.
Does that make sense?
Also, the Commander granting a reflexive Dex+Dodge roll is a sweet idea :) I'll have to keep it in mind when I get around to writing up the Lunar and Sidereal Tactics Charms- probablly in a slightly different form, but still... DS
I just realized I fibbed a bit- an army CAN suffer from Spreading attacks; Charms that let an Exalt attack an entire group of people at once are treated as Spreading, and are thus stupidly hard for an army to defend against since they don't have the full dodge option. Things like Glorious Carnage Typhoon and Magma Kracken- army killers. And I really need to think about Cantata of Empty Voices- it would slaughter an army of mortals caught in it's presence, but barely phase (relatively speaking) anyone that could soak Lethal with their Stamina...
