FancyMel/MassCombat

Mass Combat fix

Mission Statement: To make it possible for epic large scale battles without massive bog down of the entire game where entire players are made irrelevant.

That said it should be adjustable so that if desired by the play group the complexity can be increased as needed.

For the most part the base rules assume on the majority of the people in following unit are generic units that are there simply to act as an extension of their leader. Think Dynasty Warriors or the Lord of the Rings battle scenes and you'll get the vibe I'm trying get across.

Base Unit Stat Block

Magnitude: Number of Extra's inside the unit or their numerical equivalent.

Attack: Accuracy Pool divided by three rounded up

Damage: Base Damage Pool divided by three rounded up

Armor: Divide by two rounded down

Defense: ([Dexterity + Ability ) + (the Defense weapon)]) ÷ 3 rounded up

Magnitude:

The overall size of the unit,and partially a measure of potency. A Commander can control up to his (War+relevant Specialty) in Magnitude without any penalty.

-Each point of Magnitude adds one die Unit's Pool.

-Whenever the Unit attacks,it's target receives a cumulative -1 Onslaught DV Penalty for every two full points of Magnitude it
has over the target.

Example: A Magnitude 3 Unit attacking a Magnitude 2 Unit inflicts no penalty. But should the Magnitude 2 Unit drop a point to a Magnitude 1 it would begin suffering a -1 Onslaught Penalty if attacked by the same opponent.

-The overall health of the Unit is indicated by Magnitude,when the Unit suffers enough damage to mark the Incapacitated level
it loses a dot of Magnitude.

-For each point of Magnitude above the Commander's War the Unit suffers a cumulative +1 Difficulty to all relevant rolls. 
However each relay attached to the Unit increases the total possible magnitude by (War+Relevant Speciality/2) though at a cost. 
Each Relay within the unit increases the speed of actions by +1

-Whether supplementing,attacking or defending against the Unit Charms without the War Keyword must be activated a number of
additional times equal to half the unit's magnitude rounded down or in the case charms which can have multiple targets activated
a number times until the total number of targeted units is equal to the Magnitude.  

For Example: Poor Test Subject is currently under attack from Experimental Unit 1. Like all good Solars he wishes to use Seven Shadow Evasion to avoid the surplus of pain that would come from getting a full Unit of Boots connecting with his rear. Unfortunately the Experimental Unit has a Magnitude of 5 meaning what is normally 3m Perfect Defense now needs to be activated a total of 3 times for a whopping 9m.

Experimental Unit Commander 1 seeing that his Unit's target is burning through his mote pool at egregious rate decides to add more to poor fellow's troubles. He decided to go with Hungry Tiger Technique adding a die to post-soak damage for each mote he spends,not a bad deal so he decides to spend 5 motes for a grand 5 extra dice added. Still supplementing such a large Unit's(Magnitude 5) abilites comes at a hefty cost the Commander needs to activate the same Charm two more times ,3 in total, for a total of 15 motes.

But all is not lost! You need not burn through your entire mote pool every time you engage with or against a Unit! You see the Pattern Spiders adore big epic fights and wish to see as much of it as possible,with big epic Princes/s of the Earth hopefully involved for extra entertainment value. So in addition to your standard Stunt Die rewards each Natural die in the reward counts towards the total activations of the Charm! So following the above examples if Poor Test Subject had been able to one die stunt his madcap escape he would only needed to activate Seven Shadow Evasion twice! Or is Unit Commander had managed an appropriately entertaining two die stunt describing his magically fueled unit's attack he would have only had to pay paltry single Activation!

Alas there are limits to what the Spiders can do in the name of Entertainment,even if either fellow had managed a totally Epic 3 Die Stunt this bonus cannot reduce the cost below a single activation.

Now you got all rules behind how to get Magnitude and what sort of things it affects,but what exactly can you do with said Unit's dice pool now that you figured it out?

Things you can do with said Unit Dice:

Attack: Of course! With every Success you get On the Unit's roll you get a number of Successes added to your Total Attack roll (Aka the Unit's and it's Commander's total number of successes) equal to the Unit's Attack Value. What's more for every die the Unit rolls after the first it lower's it's Target Number by One(to a minimum of 3) and inflicts a cumulative -1 Coordinated Attack Penalty on the opponent.

Defense:For 2 dice Add the Unit's defense to their DV. This is in addition to the automatic Bonus from simply having a Unit. For every die after the first 2 add another point to their DV with a cap of 7 dice being used on Defense.

Additional Attack: The Same as the First, this counts as a completely different attack. So no reduced Target Number or Coordination Penalties aside from what the attack would get from the number of Unit Die devoted to it.

Attack, Damage, Defense and Armor: This is a bit simpler then Magnitude

Add the respective numbers in Successes to each of the Commander's pools.In the case of Defense simply add the number to the Commander's Physical Parry DV when using the Defense Option.

Comments

This is cool, but I'm not sure exactly what you are streamlining. I will go back and re-read all of the mass combat rules so I can see what you have done. I know this is an "unhelpful" comment, but since there is so little activity on this board nowadays, I figure knowing that someone is reading may help you to keep posting. Jimcrimson