Battlefields (POCT)

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Every fight the player characters participate in has to happen somewhere. Defining the setting for an encounter may provide players with ideas for ways to use the terrain against their enemies, or present the DM with an opportunity to make an encounter tougher by giving the monsters the same opportunities.
==The Four Basic Battlefields==
In most fantasy role-playing games, battles tend to take place in one of four environments: a dungeon or cave, a town or building, a castle or fortification, or outside. There are exceptions, of course, but most battles occur in one of these environments.
The DM can prepare four basic battle maps to represent each one of these areas, and then modify the map for the particular details of each new battle. For example, TSR's Dragon Strike® game includes maps of a town, a meadow, a dungeon, and a cave—with a little work, the DM could use these generic maps to handle almost any fight.
===Dungeons or Caves===
There are three basic problems with fighting in a dungeon or cave: first, the fight usually takes place in a confined area; second, lighting may be a critical issue for characters who don't have infravision; and last but not least, the monsters usually know their own homes well. Unfortunately, most PCs end up going into dungeons or caves to confront monsters in their lairs.
Overall, dungeons or caves may be the most dangerous places to have a fight. The lighting is poor, the footing is questionable, and there are all kinds of possibilities for traps and ambushes. The cramped quarters eliminate all but the most rudimentary choices of tactics and strategy.
When preparing a dungeon battle for the PCs, the DM should note the characteristics of the area in advance. Just about anything can live in a dungeon, and almost any kind of furniture or obstacles can be found there.
===Town or Building===
Fighting inside buildings or in the streets of a town is almost as risky as fighting inside a dungeon. Ambush lurks around every corner, and at times it may be hard to distinguish between enemies and bystanders. Many town fights involve thieves or cutthroats who know their turf far better than the PCs, who are often visitors.
The biggest consideration in a fight in a civilized area is the possibility of help or interference from the local watch or nosy bystanders. Unless the PCs are willing to accept a price on their heads, they'll want to cooperate with the local constabulary. The DM should make a point of preparing for the arrival of the watch, since it's likely that someone will call for help before too long.
===Outside===
Battlefields in the great outdoors range from featureless to impassable, depending on the terrain and ground cover. From the DM's point of view, an outside battle is a difficult one to run, since there aren't many maps of forests or hillsides around. A second consideration is the possibility of long-range combat that becomes a melee, forcing a change of scale.
The battlefield generation system in the next section of this chapter deals with battlefields in all kinds of terrain. Using this system, the DM can randomly create a detailed battlefield in no time at all.
===Castles or Fortifications===
It doesn't take a genius to realize that storming a castle or fort of some kind is dangerous and bloody work. The defenders have the advantage of full cover and deadly traps or devices to make short work of attackers. Even high-level characters should think twice before entering the killing zones of a well-designed gatehouse or keep.
As with dungeons or buildings, the DM should prepare accurate and detailed maps, with notes about cover and trap locations, before the gaming session. This will save a lot of time during the game and eliminate the half-hour pauses in the game while the DM sets up the fight.
==Battlefield Characteristics==
The characteristics of a battlefield can often change the nature of an encounter by limiting movement, visibility, or missile fire. For example, charging is impossible in waist-deep water, and archery is ineffective in dense forest. Battlefields are described with six general characteristics: encounter range, lines of fire, cover, footing, obstacles, and materials or hazards that can be found there.
===Encounter Range===
This is the distance at which one group sights another group. The encounter range is governed by the ground cover and terrain; obviously, it's much harder to sneak up on someone on a flat plain than it is in heavy forest. Tactical encounter ranges are found in Chapter One under Opening the Battle.
These ranges may seem very short, but keep in mind the fact that these distances assume that both parties are trying to avoid being spotted. If one side or the other doesn't care about being seen, it's fair to double or triple the listed encounter ranges.
Note that encounter range is always the shortest of two ranges: the visibility from the surrounding terrain, and the visibility from the ambient light. A character may be able to see for miles on an open plain in daylight, but on a moonless night that open land is fairly well hidden. On a dark night in the forest, people can pass within five feet of a patient enemy without knowing that he's there.
===Lines of Fire===
This is related to encounter range, since terrain types that limit visibility also restrict missile fire. A battlefield's lines of fire are described as clear, impaired, or severely impaired. Clear lines of fire are easy: the battlefield has no effects on missile fire.
Impaired lines of fire have no effect on missile fire within the terrain's minimum encounter distance; for example, light forest has an encounter range of 4d6 squares, so the first 4 squares of any missile fire are unaffected. After this minimum distance, targets are treated as if they had one step of hard cover more than they actually do; a target in the open actually has 25% cover, 25% covered targets are bumped up to 50%, and so on. This is because low branches or trees are obscuring the line of fire.
Severely impaired lines of fire have no effect on fire within the terrain's minimum encounter range, similar to impaired lines of fire, above. In severely impaired lines of fire, the maximum range of any missile fire is reduced to three times the minimum encounter range, and all targets in this area gain two levels of cover.
===Cover and Concealment===
Most battlefields offer a fair amount of cover or concealment. This tends to be related to encounter range and lines of fire. Cover is simply described as available or unavailable; if there is cover present, its range from the character looking for cover is noted.
===Footing===
The ground's movement characteristics can have a drastic effect on the course of a battle. This is referred to as footing. Footing is briefly described in Chapter One; the terrain descriptions that follow this section go into more detail on the footing for each type of battlefield.
The principal effect of poor footing is to limit movement to a fraction of normal. A character with a normal movement rate of 9 who is in heavy brush is limited to a MV of 3. The character's full-move and half-move combat actions are all affected by this limitation.
===Obstacles===
Assuming that the basic battlefield is a flat, barren plain, obstacles are anything that interrupt a character's movement or provide cover against missile fire. They include streams, ponds, bogs, trees, thickets, dunes or drifts, slopes or bluffs, boulders, buildings, or walls.
As noted above, obstacles have two basic effects: limiting movement and providing cover. For example, most characters have to go around a tree trunk and can stand behind it to use it for cover. If an obstacle just limits movement instead of blocking it completely, it can usually be crossed or climbed at the cost of a half-move for the character.
===Unusual Materials or Hazards===
This last category is a catch-all for items that just can't be described above. Some battlefields may have the makings for spears, lassoes, or slings just lying around. Other battlefields may have special hazards such as fires, quicksand, or water deep enough to drown in.