So anyway I think we need more transparency and less winging it from me in mass combat, if anyone has ideas of how to represent the battles of tens of thousands pf people in a compact way that can also include skyships, dragons and champions feel free to drop the suggestions in thread. I'll try to design a system for the next time the legions engage in combat.
A Sword Without a Hilt: A Song of Ice and Fire/D&D 3.5 Crossover
- Thread starter DragonParadox
- Start date
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- Tags
- a song of ice and fire a sword without a hilt d&d 3.5 dungeons & dragons 100% high octane dragon fuel ave corvidae battle action dragon diplomacy best sister bureaucromancy delicious soul-stuff dragon dreams come true dragon ta'veren greatest uncle hubris is a coward's word in defiance of gods and men mammon's folly mutually assured mage's disjunction qm murderhobo top tier coatl
- Location
- Germany
Okay, I didn't find much, but it looks like Steam Cannons have to aim with only the user's AB, which essentially means they can't hit this Charnel God anyway.
For most big Monsters the ability too hit against touch-AC is devasting, but with over 30 Touch AC on Anu it's useless.
Might as well let them shoot.
For most big Monsters the ability too hit against touch-AC is devasting, but with over 30 Touch AC on Anu it's useless.
Might as well let them shoot.
- Location
- United States
I've actually really enjoyed the different perspectives. It's felt like a fight with consequences and losses, not this overpowered minmaxed behemoth that steamrolls every encounter.
It's been two Titans colliding in the battlefield.
It makes sense for that battlefield to be in Sarnor. It's an Undead gods tomb. His power source is from this region, not Westeros, not SD, not anywhere else. All he is is tied up in the dead of this region.
I'm not distressed, don't worry about it, just doing my best to understand criticism and improve as a writer, which is a good part of the reason I'm here. The other part of it is to provide an engaging story and a fair questing experience.
Goldfish
Friendly Spider-Fish Abomination
- Location
- Formerly of the Far Realm
I don't think that's necessary, DP. That just sounds like a way to make more work and bog you down in numbers.
The battle has flowed quite well, IMO, shifting between POVs and fronts without any issue. It's been pretty great, just tense and stressful, which isn't a bad thing.
People need to realize that a lot of what we've read, different fights from different POVs, have all been happening simultaneously in multiple locations, sometimes miles apart from one another. The central front alone stretches over nearly seven miles. If a Moonchaser or Wyvern is five miles away in the middle of a cannon salvo, it cannot immediately spin around and come into firing range on a target it didn't even know about until two seconds previously. A Wyvern screaming in the opposite direction while making a bombing run is going to have to turn and get line of sight on a new target to launch a Beetle Bomb, if it even has any left in its racks. Etc, etc, etc.
Our other aerial assets, while powerful, are pretty slow compared to the magitech ships. A Fiery Dragonbeast would take several minutes to fly from one end of the battlefield to the other, and even an Erinyes who can Teleport at will is going to have to receive a new order, stop what she's doing (assuming she can and isn't in the middle of a life or death fight), find a destination she can see to Teleport to, then use the SLA, all of which is going to take a minimum of six seconds.
- Location
- United States
In general the option to fully use our magitech spaceships instead of having them sidelined for a classic epic fantasy battle would be nice. If the magitech doesn't so much as dent the epic monster because it can't make it past the AC, that's fair. But the spaceships all of a sudden not being able to target something literally larger than a building felt contrived.
Goldfish
Friendly Spider-Fish Abomination
- Location
- Formerly of the Far Realm
Like I mentioned above, the battlefield is huge. It's completely plausible that none of our assets would be within even maximum firing range of Anu-Simung for several rounds.
I included the option in my plan, however, because we've got a lot of assets in the air and it makes sense that at least a few of them might be close enough to squeeze off a shot or launch a bomb in the first couple rounds of combat.
That is fair. easy enough to change, but I'm not sure that is the only issue here.
Edits done, you can try to shoot the colossus with the Moonchasers right away, just be aware its touch AC is quite high.
Shadow of the doom doesn't allow SR. Is arcane spellsurge already up? If not we probably should be using it. If it is, we're probably better off using another maximized shadow of the doom on him.
That reads more like he gave them clocks than anything else to me. Its definitely not a domain, and should be weaker than what it can do with travel, but I can see why your worried.
If you really want to fully model the army combat, you can. It looks like a lot of work for not much gain to me though.
Goldfish
Friendly Spider-Fish Abomination
- Location
- Formerly of the Far Realm
Yeah, it's Profane Will ability is pretty sick. I can't think of any creature I've seen with such a high unbuffed Touch AC. It's good to see something like that in a CR 23 enemy, since Touch AC is so often a massive weakness in otherwise really beefy monsters.
Thanks for the reminder. I wrote that plan on my Kindle while trying to finish up work stuff for the day. My memory is spotty and it's hard to check character sheets on that thing.
Updating the plan now.
Crake
I AM THE STORM THAT IS APPROACHING
- Location
- USA
@DragonParadox You know, introducing the concept of a comprehensive After Action Report for Mass Combat might alleviate some of the issues with people only having an incomplete picture of the battle which they have to leave to their own innate reader's comprehension to piece together (and comments from the other participants).
But that would be one of the more massive updates, justifiably, since you are trying to represent something like at least 98 military units, within seven different divisions, each of which is three to four individual armies on three battlefronts, with specialist AND hero units supporting them simultaneously.
This is possible to do with a progressing system which allows you to organize mass combat, or a personal system of record-keeping and note taking which allows you to show how everyone behaved and reacted in a logical, straight forward manner.
Given how rare mass combat is in this quest, I am struggling to present the argument "but that might take too long to post more than one update a day".
Maybe mass combat should take an update a day pace, given you are trying to represent something epic in a way that actually makes sense.
Thus far what you have represented seems alright, all the complaints I have are mostly in the lack of compelling motivations for enemies that aren't explicitly painted into the pre-existing background for antagonistic factions, like Baator or the Others. At this point just as it doesn't make logical sense for the enemy to prevent us from basically bombing them with relative impunity (and indeed they pretty much haven't been for the most part, as it is a OCP for them), it doesn't make logical sense for most of our enemies not to act through credible proxies with basically just enough personal power to discourage us trying to flatten them but more than enough soft power to make interacting with them a multi-faceted challenge.
I think this is mostly an artifact of you introducing multiple obviously flat evil factions in an effort to make the world feel more alive, but grinding the plot progression of some of them to a halt.
For instance, you have the opportunity to slowly introduce what the Deep Ones have been up to rather than trying for clever "reveals" right when we decide to deal with them, because then you deal with players complaining about information overload, or things going missing in the lurch, or something being forgotten because it had to be dredged up from years ago rather than us being mostly refreshed on it for months leading up to a confrontation.
This requires more time taken showing the motives of other groups on screen when they become relevant, even if there is no reasonable means for us to react to it immediately. It's not all background rolls, either, since conveyance of plot relevant information is basically paramount for those among us who do not have a encyclopedic knowledge of everything introduced in this quest. The casual reader is going to pretend something doesn't exist until you have it in an update. That is a sad natural fact.
But that would be one of the more massive updates, justifiably, since you are trying to represent something like at least 98 military units, within seven different divisions, each of which is three to four individual armies on three battlefronts, with specialist AND hero units supporting them simultaneously.
This is possible to do with a progressing system which allows you to organize mass combat, or a personal system of record-keeping and note taking which allows you to show how everyone behaved and reacted in a logical, straight forward manner.
Given how rare mass combat is in this quest, I am struggling to present the argument "but that might take too long to post more than one update a day".
Maybe mass combat should take an update a day pace, given you are trying to represent something epic in a way that actually makes sense.
Thus far what you have represented seems alright, all the complaints I have are mostly in the lack of compelling motivations for enemies that aren't explicitly painted into the pre-existing background for antagonistic factions, like Baator or the Others. At this point just as it doesn't make logical sense for the enemy to prevent us from basically bombing them with relative impunity (and indeed they pretty much haven't been for the most part, as it is a OCP for them), it doesn't make logical sense for most of our enemies not to act through credible proxies with basically just enough personal power to discourage us trying to flatten them but more than enough soft power to make interacting with them a multi-faceted challenge.
I think this is mostly an artifact of you introducing multiple obviously flat evil factions in an effort to make the world feel more alive, but grinding the plot progression of some of them to a halt.
For instance, you have the opportunity to slowly introduce what the Deep Ones have been up to rather than trying for clever "reveals" right when we decide to deal with them, because then you deal with players complaining about information overload, or things going missing in the lurch, or something being forgotten because it had to be dredged up from years ago rather than us being mostly refreshed on it for months leading up to a confrontation.
This requires more time taken showing the motives of other groups on screen when they become relevant, even if there is no reasonable means for us to react to it immediately. It's not all background rolls, either, since conveyance of plot relevant information is basically paramount for those among us who do not have a encyclopedic knowledge of everything introduced in this quest. The casual reader is going to pretend something doesn't exist until you have it in an update. That is a sad natural fact.
- Location
- Texas
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] Goldfish
Thanks for the critique @Crake, the broader narrative implication are certainly something to think about . I tend to hyper-focus on the current arc which makes other things fade into the background. I'll do my best to counter that tendency going forward. I really wish I could give a more in depth answer to the analyses but it's getting really late and I really should turn in
Speaking of that, sorry we had a two update days again guys, there was just this confluence of updates with a lot of rolls and a busy IRL day for me. Tomorrow should be a better writing day
Good night guys, see you in the morning with more battles of gods and men
Speaking of that, sorry we had a two update days again guys, there was just this confluence of updates with a lot of rolls and a busy IRL day for me. Tomorrow should be a better writing day
Good night guys, see you in the morning with more battles of gods and men
- Location
- ?????????
[X] Goldfish
Ace of Scarabs
Mechanoid Pilot
- Location
- Singapore
[X] Goldfish
@Goldfish I wasn't in the thread earlier, but for targeting enemies mixed with our own troops Cleansing Conflagration is pretty good. It's limited to undead, aberrations, and evil outsiders, so a vast majority of our line troops will be okay. Anyone who is going to die from 1 damage is probably not going to make it out of the sorts of meat grinders we'd use this stuff on.
As for the Charnel God, it's technically a construct which has some fun implications. Drain Construct would be convenient, since we could wipe it's DR away for 20 rounds or so.
Alternatively we could pull a Robert, but with more fire and using the mace's answer to a lightsaber.
As for the Charnel God, it's technically a construct which has some fun implications. Drain Construct would be convenient, since we could wipe it's DR away for 20 rounds or so.
Alternatively we could pull a Robert, but with more fire and using the mace's answer to a lightsaber.
Goldfish
Friendly Spider-Fish Abomination
- Location
- Formerly of the Far Realm
Yeah, Cleansing Conflagration is great. I do wondered it, too, but the area is too small to targets numbers of Undead on the battlefield.@Goldfish I wasn't in the thread earlier, but for targeting enemies mixed with our own troops Cleansing Conflagration is pretty good. It's limited to undead, aberrations, and evil outsiders, so a vast majority of our line troops will be okay. Anyone who is going to die from 1 damage is probably not going to make it out of the sorts of meat grinders we'd use this stuff on.
As for the Charnel God, it's technically a construct which has some fun implications. Drain Construct would be convenient, since we could wipe it's DR away for 20 rounds or so.
Alternatively we could pull a Robert, but with more fire and using the mace's answer to a lightsaber.
Drain Construct is interesting. If this fight lasts more than one round, that will probably end up being used. Nice find.
Looking around some more, and I think a reached Disable Construct would be better. It's a will save, but if it fails it drops straight to helpless and we'll only really need that round to finish it. For a level three spell it's a pretty useful save or die.
Would something of that powerlevel work on a dead God construct though? feels too low level to manage something of that magnitude. Anyway.
[X] Goldfish
That depends on what it's exact sheet looks like. The example sheet we have for this type of creature gives it a few ways to ignore magic, but none of them really apply to this spell since it specifically targets constructs despite any magic immunity they might have and doesn't allow for spell resistance.
It could have a globe of invulnerability style effect of some kind, but that'd be really unusual. Barring something similarly strange (or the spell being banned) it should work just fine. Getting through that will save isn't a sure thing though, so it's not exactly an Achilles' heel.