Warfare

*Part of a Series on Strongholds*

This system deploys a lot of jargon that evokes the feel of real strategy and tactics—“heavy infantry,” “flanking,” “morale”—and those terms all have real mechanical meaning. But we don’t track position at all. The Order of Battle describes which units that a unit can legally attack, but the physical positions of your units are entirely abstract. The armies clash outside the castle walls, or over the nearby hill, or along the road leading to the town, but we don’t worry about where the units are standing, or how far away they are from each other, or which unit is next to which. We do not track individual soldiers nor do we worry overmuch about exactly how big a unit is. The typical Medium Infantry unit is assumed to be 100 soldiers, give or take. A group of 12 knights could be a unit unto themselves, and they would have very good stats indeed, but a very small casualty die (probably a d4, see The Casualty Die section).

Even a powerful wizard with a *potion of flying* should be able to single-handedly obliterate an enemy army. An RPG about heroic fantasy may mean to you that your hero is the key figure in a war. But in reality, that isn't even the case in Lord of the Rings or the Hobbit. It was not about the armies—they’re about small groups of heroes who alone make the difference.

All commanders yearn for a tactical masterpiece, a la the Battle of Cannae, whereby through careful planning, expert maneuvering, and a little luck, one side executes a perfect encirclement of the other. But even under these ideal conditions, the battle isn’t won when the last soldier is killed—that is a deeply ahistorical notion. The battle is over as soon as one army breaks morale and runs. Archeological diggings bear this out: the heaviest casualties were not inflicted on the site of the battle, but along the path of the fleeing army. So, morale is critical. Every unit has a Morale score—its ability to deal with adversity and the unexpected without breaking apart in panic. Your units will make lots of Morale checks, and failing a Morale check is just as devastating to a unit as its soldiers dying.

This is something all field commanders quickly learn: Killing a soldier with sword or pike is long, dangerous, bloody business. But if you can cause a soldier to panic, if you can convince them the battle is lost before it’s begun, if you can throw their unit into disarray, then you have won. A soldier who quits the field and runs away is tactically no different than a dead soldier. Neither contributes their might to their unit anymore, and the unit is diminished as a result. If enough soldiers panic and flee, the unit disbands. An entire unit can be annihilated without a soldier ever dying. Because a unit is not merely a collection of soldiers—it is their ability to move, take orders, and fight in a coordinated fashion. Attack that ability, and you attack the unit. The good news is, soldiers who run away actually do live to fight another day, and units that break morale in one battle can, under certain circumstances, be reformed to fight in the next battle.

## Anatomy of a Unit

Your army is made up of units. Each unit has a card with stats, and its status is tracked with a casualty die. Let’s take a look at a typical unit card.

### Name and Keywords

Every unit has an evocative name. *The Stoneheart Defenders*. *The Solar Infantry*. *The 6th Imperial Legion*. These names are purely flavor. Our *Stoneheart Defenders* have the following keywords: dwarf (ancestry), seasoned (experience), medium (equipment), and infantry (type). Each keyword has an associated chart (See Creating Your Own Units) showing you which bonuses you get from each keyword.

#### Composition

You can find a chart listing several likely ancestries you might need and the unit bonuses they confer in the Creating Your Own Units section. Any ancestry you find in the core rules, any species or monster, could be fielded as a unit. You might fight an army composed of jellies and oozes if you fail to stop the cults in the Temple of Primordial Chaos. You could also encounter armies of plants seeking vengeance for the destruction of the Sacred Sycamore Grove.

> Our sample unit is of dwarf ancestry, which determines its basic stats.
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#### Experience

Experience describes both how much fighting the unit has seen and how well trained they are. The levels of experience are:

* ***Green***. Soldiers with any training, but who have seen no action. Levies who survive a battle automatically convert into green infantry.
* ***Regular***. Normal soldiers. A unit of volunteers who’ve been well trained by seasoned commanders can begin as regular, and a typical large army is mostly composed of regular units.
* ***Seasoned***. Troops who’ve seen more than one battle and lived to tell the tale. Well versed in warfare, probably been exposed to stuff that really challenged their morale, like battle magic.
* ***Veteran***. Troops who have seen several battles and know what to expect in warfare. They are resilient and versed in tactics used to break morale.
* ***Elite***. Soldiers who haven’t just seen a lot of battle and survived, but have trained and executed complex maneuvers under extraordinary conditions. Elite troops require a degree of flexibility in thinking and improvisation rarely found in normal soldiers, even veterans.
* ***Accolades***. The most highly trained and battle-hardened units. These are typically shock troops, orders of knights on horseback. Small units capable of surviving for long periods behind enemy lines.
> Our Stoneheart Defenders are seasoned, which means they are not only well trained, but they’ve served in combat and survived. But there are three more levels of experience above that!
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#### Equipment

How heavily armed and armored is the unit? The ranks are:

***Light***. Leather gambeson, linen cuirass, or no armor. Some troops are lightly armored because they’re peasants. Some are lightly armored because it grants them greater mobility, allowing them to be deployed quickly into a distant battle.

***Medium.*** Lamellar, brigandine, laminar, or mail.

***Heavy***. Cuirass-and-mail, plate-and-mail, or splint, and shield.

***Super-heavy***. Full plate armor, heavy weapons, and the training to use them effectively.

> Our Stoneheart Defenders have medium equipment, which means they’re probably wearing mail, which is pretty typical for dwarf units. They don’t like wearing light armor.
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#### Unit Type

What kind of unit is this? How does it fight? More than any of the other keywords, type defines the unit and affects all of its stats. It also defines which units are legal targets, as described in the Order of Battle.

* ***Levies***. Non-soldiers. Levies have no experience level and always have no equipment. They are peasants forced to fight by cruel masters, or willing to fight to defend their land. They’re basically useless in everything, but they perform a critical function: they absorb casualties, allowing your better-trained units to keep fighting longer. If they survive, they can become green infantry automatically. Levies usually disband after a couple days’ battles. They do not stick around for weeks waiting to fight—they have farms to tend. Once they disband, you must convince them to fight all over again. You cannot pay upkeep to maintain them as a standing army.
* ***Infantry***. The meat (possibly literally, depending on whom you’re fighting) and potatoes of your army. Very limited in whom they can attack.
* ***Archers***. Typically bowmen, slingers, or javelin-throwers. Can basically attack anyone.
* ***Cavalry***. Highly mobile troops deployed to flank the enemy and hit them where they’re not defended.
* ***Flying***. Flying units! That’s right!
* ***Fortifications***. Keeps, towers, and temples are all fortifications (see Strongholds as Fortifications), but so too can a hill or a wall be one. Any terrain feature one side can defend or occupy. Typically, defending a fortification grants the defending units a Morale bonus.
* ***Siege Engines***. Typically catapults and trebuchets, but also monsters like treants, if pressed into service.
> Our dwarves are infantry, which is pretty typical for them. Dwarves have an aversion to riding on anything taller than them and tend to consider most missile weapons cowardly. Now that we know what Dwarf Seasoned Medium Infantry is—a unit of dwarves, on foot, carrying medium gear, who’ve seen a lot of battle—let’s look at what their stats mean.
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### Casualty Dice and Unit Size

How big, in numbers, is your unit? This is the unit’s Size, which is represented by a casualty die placed on its unit card. New units begin battle with their casualty die on its highest face (e.g., 6 for a d6, 8 for a d8). A unit’s die is decremented—reduced by one—each time it fails a **Morale** check and after a battle as indicated.

A unit's **Morale** is a number equal to their Composition bonus plus their Experience bonus. Units of mixed ancestry only use their Experience bonus. Morale checks are made in terrible circumstances as dictated by the DM, like in a hostile environment, or when a unit takes a casualty while diminished.

Your army only has one card for a given unit. So if your army has a lot of Regular Heavy Human Infantry, to pick a random example, you won’t have several cards all with the same stats. Instead, that unit gets a larger casualty die. The largest casualty die is a d12, which represents a very large unit that can suffer many casualties before it breaks or is slaughtered.

#### Diminished

Once a unit loses half its size—for example, if its d6 casualty die reads 3 or less—it is diminished. Each time it suffers a casualty while diminished, it must make a DC 15 Morale check. If it fails, it immediately suffers another casualty. Levies are always considered diminished.

## Creating Your Own Units

Using the following rules, you can build your own units with some ancestry options found in most campaigns.

Start by picking a row from each of the following charts. As you go, write down the total for each bonus on a blank unit template. Remember that levies have no equipment rating or experience rating. They’re just levies.

#### Step One: Composition

Choose an ancestry or unit type below and add its stat bonuses to the unit card. Then find the traits of the unit’s ancestry on the next page and add them to the unit card.

#### Step Two: Experience

Next, choose an experience level and add the bonuses listed to the unit’s card.

#### Step Four: Type

Levies and cavalry both have traits listed below that can be added to their unit card if you want to make it easier to remember during battle.

**Cavalry** can choose to roll their Combat dice at disadvantage. If they win against their opponent regardless, the victory is counted as a Rout.

**Levies** are always diminished.

#### Step Five: Size

Choose a size. This can dramatically affect the unit’s final cost.

#### Step Six: Calculating Cost

Now that you’ve filled out the unit card with all its stats, it’s time to calculate its cost. This can be the literal cost to buy the unit in gold pieces, in the case of mercenaries, or just the cost used to balance encounters and calculate upkeep.

First, add the Composition bonus and twice the Trait bonus. Then add the bonuses from its Equipment, Experience, and Type.

Then, multiply this total by the Cost Modifier from the unit’s type, and then multiply it by its Cost Modifier from Size. Multiply this result by 10. Add the cost of all the traits of the unit’s composition, plus its earned traits.

Finally, add a flat 30 points.

### Unit Creation Tables

#### Unit Experience

 Regular
 Seasoned
 Veteran
 Elite
 Accolades

#### Unit Equipment

 Medium
 Heavy
 Super-heavy

#### Unit Size

 1d6
 1d8
 1d10
 1d12

### Mercenaries

Mercenaries are troops loyal only to the coin you pay them. Any units bought with gold are mercenaries. Their cost is equal to their unit cost in gold pieces, but their upkeep is double that of a normal unit.

### Ancestry and Attitude

You can buy units with the same ancestry as your character with no extra cost. However, units from other cultures have their own attitude toward working for a human rat, a knife-eared elf, or whatever your character’s ancestry might be, as described on the chart below.

The chart is mirrored across the diagonal, so you can use it in either direction. Find your character’s ancestry in either a row or a column, and then index it against the ancestry of the unit you wish to buy.

**Allied (A):** This unit has its normal cost to buy and upkeep.

**Friendly (F):** This unit costs 25% more to buy and upkeep.

**Neutral (N):** This unit costs 50% more to buy and upkeep.

**Hostile (H):** You cannot buy this unit.

***Ambassadors***. An *ambassador* allows you to buy units from their ancestry as though they were friendly. If the ambassador’s presence in your court leads to a formal alliance and a signed treaty, then units with that ancestry are treated as allied.

### Unit Upkeep and Improvement

Depending on the scenario, the units you command may naturally disband after the battle, such as levies, or return to their homes, like a unit of elves who come to your aid in a time of dire need. But units you recruit from your stronghold or buy with cash require upkeep.

A unit must be paid a tenth its cost each season. Not all this cash goes into the soldier’s pocket—much of it is paying for food and training and repairing their gear. A unit that has not been paid for a season suffers disadvantage on Morale checks. A unit that has not been paid for two seasons disbands.

#### Improving A Unit

A unit’s equipment (light, medium, heavy, super-heavy) can be improved once per season by paying gold pieces equal to the difference in cost between the new and old unit.

A unit’s experience (regular, seasoned, etc.) can be improved by one level after they survive a number of battles equal to their Experience Bonus without breaking morale or retreating. For example, a Regular unit becomes a Seasoned unit after it survives 4 battles, and a Veteran unit after it survives another 5 battles. It takes a week of training at a keep and costs gold pieces equal to the difference between the new and old unit.

You can field several infantry units, or several cavalry units for instance, but you can only field one unit with identical keywords. You may fight a battle with Human Veteran Light Infantry and High Elf Veteran Light Infantry, but not two units of Human Veteran Light Infantry. If you roll on a follower chart and get an identical unit to one you already have, just increase the first unit’s size by one increment. Once per season, you can spend gold pieces to increase a unit’s size by one increment. The cost is the difference in price between the old unit and the new unit.

#### Earning Traits

Traits are an incredibly valuable additions to a unit's ability to perform in combat. Every time a unit upgrades to a new level of Experience, it potentially qualifies for a new Trait. A Green unit becoming Regular does not receive a new Trait. From Regular onward, every time the unit's Experience increases and it spends a week training in a keep, the unit can either gain a new Trait worth 50 points, or exchange any number of current Traits to create a new Trait worth its new cumulative amount.

A unit cannot, as an example, have a single Trait worth 100, and then exchange it for another Trait worth 100 AND a Trait worth 50 when it goes up in experience. It must create a Trait worth 150, or keep the Traits it currently has.

### Narrating the Battle

You can narrate a units’ actions while the DM narrates the enemy units. A unit that fails an attack might be described as surging forward, smashing into the opposing units, but the enemy’s hold fast and repulse the attackers with a solid heavy infantry line. Archer units loose a volley of arrows into the air and the recipients fail to deploy shields in time; dozens of soldiers are cut down by a cloud of arrows. In the end, however you do it, the raging battle should evoke resounding clash of arms, routs, victories and reversals.

Now that we understand the basic rules, and we’ve looked at a sample unit and talked about how it functions, let’s fight a war!

## Battle

### Step One: Army Strength

Determine the army strength of each army by adding up the costs of their units. Special units with no cost are worth 400 points. Units who have suffered casualties from previous battles but which are not diminished contribute their full value to the total. Diminished units contribute nothing.

Certain units stipulate that an enemy army have at least one type of certain units in order to be attacked by an enemy army. **Flying units** and **cavalry** require the enemy have archers or flying units; **fortifications** require the enemy to have siege engines; **siege engines** require the enemy to have infantry, siege, or flying units.

### Step Two: Force Advantage

Now that we know which army is stronger, we need to know: by how much? That means we do a little math. Subtract the smaller army’s total from the larger. Then divide the difference by the smaller force. This gives us a percentage measuring how much stronger the stronger army is. This is the stronger army’s force advantage.

### Step Three: Strategic Advantage

We need to know all the strategic advantages each army has based on the circumstances of battle. Include all that apply from the table below.

### Step Four: Combat Roll

Each side rolls percentile dice (1d100). This is their Combat roll. Both then sides add their strategic advantage to their Combat roll. The larger army also adds their Force bonus. The army with the larger total is the victor. The difference is the degree of victory.

### Step Five: Casualty Determination

Now we figure out which of your units will inflict casualties. Use the chart below to determine which of your units inflicted casualties, and roll dice for them based on each unit’s size.

Distribute the casualties you suffered among your units according to the Order of Battle: levies, then infantry, then archers, then cavalry, then flying.

 11-50%
 51-100%
 101-200%
 201%+

### Step Six: Retreats

Determine retreats. If an army loses all their infantry, they immediately retreat. If both sides retreat, neither side wins objectives. Either side can, at this point, choose to retreat and quit the field, granting the opposing side a victory and yielding any objectives. If either side retreats, the battle is over. Otherwise, return to step one, and fight another battle.