Mass Combat Playtest Results

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NukeHavoc
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Mass Combat Playtest Results

Post by NukeHavoc »

The mass combat playtest on Sunday went well, and about as we expected. We threw a bunch of B1 battle droid units and a droidika unit against some clone trooper units.

The military combat-as-starship-combat approach works; the units scale up easily and there's a tactical feel to moving around the board.

The attrition mechanic (in which units move persistent steps down the condition track as they take certain amounts of damage) worked very well, and combat itself had less of the "you hit, you die" feel of starship combat.

That is, unless you roll critical hits, which I did twice. That gave rise to a question about multipliers (the same question from starship combat) -- all "starship scale" weapons have a x2 multiplier on their damage. So if you crit, you end up doing x2 damage for the crit, then x2 again from the weapon multiplier.

This is a devastating effect, and got us thinking about how such multipliers stacked in D&D 3.5, which is that damage might be tripled, but never quadrupled (IIRC correctly -- basically 2x damage plus 2x damage = 3x damage in 3E rules).

CLs remain dicey when calculating comparable forces. Five CL6 B1 droid units against four CL7 clone troopers is not an even fight. We ran into similar issues with starships.

Aside from the criticals though, it played really well, I think it will finally provide that sort of heroic mass combat integration we've been looking for. Note -- we only played with units, not with heros in units, but based on how starship combat works with player roles (e.g. pilot, engineer, etc.) I think the corresponding mass combat roles will work just fine.
"Oh, I'm so sorry. Forgive me. I'll try and be a tad more quiet as I desperately struggle to break free -- and save all creation!" -- Doctor Strange
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