TheHoverpope/MailAndSteel

The quandry

There are definately issues with the whole mail and steel system that need to be addressed. I am not rightly sure how all of them are going to be done yet, but I will be working on this for a little while and adding problems and little fixes as I find them. The whole issue of might being completely insufficient to model powerful beings will be problematic to figure out. At the moment I have only a few minutes work up, but there will be much more to come.

Unit health levels

So at the moment, a unit has as many health levels as its commander, matching his damage track. That doesn't make a whole lot of sense, given that the commander is just one individual in the unit and the health track is quite specifically tracking the number of people deserting, scattering, and being killed in the troop as a whole.

Final: The number of health levels per magnitude track that a unit has is equal to the base number of seven, plus the unit's might.

Routing

As is, routing is ridiculously devastating. A scale of dragonbloods charging a first age legion of troops will result in a general losing thousands of troops.

Final: Instead of losing a point of magnitude for each success that the commander of the routed unit fails by, lose a health level on the unit track instead.

Healing

The healng system is not immediately notable in mail and steel. After all, it is noted in a paragraph split between two sidebars. However, this doesn't make it any less broken. As currently listed, you regain a magnitude of troops in that number of days. Given this logic, assuming 3 survivors of the battle with the bull of the north (a gross exaggeration, for comic effect), the Tepet Legions would have been back up to full strength just over one month later - 35 days. Sooner, if they took the mechanical precaution of splitting their troops into smaller groups.

This, I think, doesn't work.

At least, based on how canon keeps talking about it shattering the house's military, and not just inconveniencing it for a few weeks. This needs to change. The problem is that this is, like most exalted things, on a geometric curve. I am tempted to put healing on an exponential curve; something along the lines of each magnitude healing at magnitude^2 weeks. Alternately, I can just change the units to seasons, rather than days; this is too harsh on the lower magnitudes, though. It may not take long to pick up the 75 troops to go from magnitude 2 to 3, but it will take (what is the wiki policy on swearing?) a metric fuckton of time and money to go from magnitude 7 to 8 or 8 to 9.

Final: it now takes current magnitude ^2 weeks to heal an order of magnitude, and a resources purchase equal to magnitude to a cap of 5.

Might

Might is a problem also. A sidereal martial arts master does not add five dice to their attacks. Grandmother Spider Mastery or Essence Shattering Typhoon will quite clearly singlehandedly destroy an army. An experienced solar with turns to activate a few persistents doesn't really have much to fear from an army, no matter how many of them there are. On the other hand, if they aren't using charms than their die pools, taken into account in the hand to hand rating, will make up much of the difference. I propose - and this is my least thought through and most poorly constructed idea here - that might become a 10 point scale, with the current might 1 staying the same, current might 2 becoming 3, and the rest of the listed ones doubling. The extra modifiers can stay as they are.

My final house ruling: the might for a unit is now equal to its permanent essence, if it can be channelled. There is no bonus for dragonblood group charms, as they can activate them and just have the charms take effect.

Charms

This is difficult. Say you've got a solar up against a scale of troops. Throwing up a persistent and then using a few reflexives and supplementals will change this from a sure loss to a win. Charms are fundamentally the difference. Now, say you've got the same solar leading a magnitude 5 army against another mag 5 army. Yes, the solar can carve through the enemy troops, but his flow like blood in no way protects his allies. Likewise, if he is using excellent strike all the time, he had better be damn stunting, or he is going to run out of essence, and fast. On the other hand, if there is a solar in the fray, he will get a whole lot of attacks directed in his direction. So after a fashion, he is protecting the troops under his command by being the focus of the battle. Still, the entire army is not in a bulwark stance, and the entire army is not flowing like blood, except in the bad way. I will say one thing for sure: charm use stays the same for attacking unit leaders and defending if you personally are attacked. But what of the rest of it?

One idea I had is that charms that are not designed to target groups are half as effective. This will reflect that the solar is, in fact, the most important person in the unit, while keeping in mind that there are other people too. So die adders add half as many dice for the same cost (or for something like excellent strike are now 1 die for 2 motes), reflexive defenses work with half as many dice, persistent defenses give half their usual die pool. Single target status effects (joint wounding, etc.) follow the same system, as well as things like soak boosters. Extra actions charms do not function. Dragonblood multi-target charms work at full effectiveness, if they are enough to cover the whole unit; otherwise, they work at the same half rate.

Mass effects are wierder; I think I will take the idea from comments of those being a seperate thing from unit actions. This should prevent a solar from making an army invulnerable with dipping swallow or some such, while reflecting that yes, they are using powerful magics.

An alternate option: non-mass charms lose dice equal to their opponent's magnitude. This way, we keep the idea that using a charm against a crowd of 5000 people does less in terms of portions of magnitude than using the same effect against a dozen people.

Final: The half power idea above.

Wound Penalties

I am of the opinion that in a large combat, the use of the leader as in mail and steel is an abstraction. Leader wound penalties apply to things that they are directly doing, such as charisma + presence checks, but not to unit actions, such as attacks and defenses.

Comments

(Delete if unwelcome) - If a unit routs, it IS devastating in the real world. Suddenly it goes from two organized forces attacking each other to one organized force attacking a bunch of guys running around in a panic. This is particularly true if you have cavalry in reserve ready to run down infantry who just turned and ran - "shooting fish in a barrel" isn't far off. -- BillGarrett

I believe his concern is not just one of how bad routing can be, but how easy it can be to rout. Why should 1000's of troops run away just because they see a few dozen DB's coming their way? Yes, some might not make it, but even DB's have problems dealing with 500 incoming arrows, followed by 250 men with swords and pikes. Really, a 500-to-1 ratio for mortals to DB's, and the DB is toast, due to their lack of persistents, and other scene longs. The issue, therefore, is why a whole legion of well-trained troops with essence-equipment would lose so many troops (a point of magnitude for large unit is quite a lot of troops) just because they see some DB's coming. Yes, routs can be horrible - but at the same time, routing a bit unit is 100+ troops in a heartbeat, but a similar show of force against a small unit and they lose fewer troops - it doesn't make sense to him, methinks. - GregLink

The problem with the routing system in my opinion is in the way that magnitude is set up in, well, orders of magnitude. I am a history student, and specialized in war history; I understand the importance of routing. But as the system is set up, you lose exactly half of your troops for each success that you don't get. That is exceptionally punitive, and it means that every single mail and steel battle that I play out ends in the first turn that somebody fails a valor check. I mean, I did a battle where 75 trained troops charged a barbarian war troop of 5000. Between hesitation and the loss to routing, the barbarians were entirely done in one long turn. That doesn't make sense thematically, mechanically, or realistically. By my rules, their rout, a bad one, cost them half an order of magnitude - about 1500 troops. That is a major rout, and a devastating one, without being silly. By mail and steel rules, their four failure rout would cost them 4700 of their 5000 troops. - TheHoverpope

I'm interested in seeing an actual scenario played out to see how bad the damage is according to Mail & Steel. Since my campaign has an imminent attack against an assload of Terrestrials, I have an opportunity.

Terrestrials are incredibly devastating in mail and steel. As they should be, of course. Depending on whether you rule that being led by a supernatural's bonus stacks with the unit composed of supernatural's bonus, their charges' valour rolls are incredibly difficult to succeed in. - TheHoverpope

I would expect that a lot of guys are going to flee thanks to the Heritage of the Gods factor, but that's specific to the Dragon-Blooded and their adversaries. One thing, though - I see "losing a dot of Magnitude" as "a bunch of guys (a) turned and ran like schoolgirls, (b) died, (c) got severely wounded and are bleeding out, or (d) are hiding underneath a fallen horse or behind a discarded shield.". No matter their individual fates, those guys are no longer participating in this battle as a unit. You could rally a lot of those guys together, just not right when the unit is being pressed. I don't know how closely this view matches that of others. -- BillGarrett

That view is, I think, pretty much presented as close to the canon one; they specifically say that most of the troops are not dead but instead gone. But there is still no way that that many troops could scatter in that little time. I need to think about whether my solution works and test it; but it seems to make more sense, at least to me. TheHoverpope

If you game it out, please post comparative results, if possible including post-game wrap stats like "number of guys this actually knocked out".

Charms don't apply correctly to Mail and Steel in some instances also. I realise many of these can be fixed by simply altering the charmtext, but I shall give an example in case anyone missed it. The Abyssal army-killer multi-action melee charm is great. With an average abyssal character who's got to this charm, an army of elite extras is dead in the turn you use it. And you also get an attack against their leader. In mail and steel, however, it doesn't really do much, since the leader parries. Now, if supplemental charms and defensive charms work for the entire unit, this problem gets bigger. It makes the flame-arrow charms for Solar Archery way, way more powerful than the solar archery charm that lets you shoot everyone until you miss or run out of ammo. On top of that, we have single-target effects such as Flying Guillotine, which simply don't apply to units as a whole.

I can see two solutions to this:

• One, add tons of house-ruled extra bits to charms, to give them different mail-and-steel effects (such as the abyssal army-killer making an unblockable attack and subtracting that many magnitudes, or something)
• Two, we state that ONLY the multi-target supplementary charms have any effect, which makes most exalts kinda useless in battles aside from high dicepools, and solves the problem somewhat, since now if they want to defend against the keep-attacking charm, they need an "I HGD for everyone in 50 yards" or similar.

If anyone else has suggestions or comments on this, I'd love to hear it. Also, if you think it should be a new section, go ahead, I'm really hoping we can make the system work, because I like the idea, the execution is just a bit flawed.
-- Darloth

There's always the "Astonishingly Simplistic" way of dealing with it. It works something like this:

For all single-target Charms, persistant or not, consider 1 Willpower to be worth 5 motes. Add the mote cost to the Willpower motes. Then...
If the Charm is offensive and you are a Celestial Exalt or god, every 5 motes adds one die to the attack. Charm use is flavour.
If the Charm is defensive and you are a Celestial Exalt or god, or if you are a Dragon-Blood and the Charm is offensive OR defensive, every 3 motes adds one die to the attack. Charm use is flavour.

Multi-target Charms such as Death of Obsidian Butterflies or Glorious Carnage Typhoon function outside of normal unit actions. Thoughts? - FrivYeti

Yes, but my answer is to both cheat and pimp, and claim boldly that my mass combat system is superior in most playability respects to Mail and Steel.  :) DariusSolluman/MassCombat -- DS

I'm worried that misses out on one thing - Essence. If I'm whipping out an Essence 6 army-killin' melee charm that give me reflexive parries, counterattacks, and then converts my entire melee die pool to auto-successes for any action involving melee, and it costs 5m, 1WP, that's all cool. Then, my sidekick activates the Essence 1 "Wasteful Essence Prana" and burns 11 motes bringing his melee pool up a few dice. At the end of the day, I've spent less, but in theory, can now kill everything. He, on the other hand, gained a few dice on a single attack. The system you describe would have him do more than I would, and I've got a persistent 20-success parry+counterattack +all attacks are 20 autos as well. - GregLink, making up a fun Essence 6 melee charm on the spot.