Couple of unit-building questions

Hello! I’ve been building custom mercenary units for my setting, and ran into a couple of uncertainties.

First, I’m looking at a human L0 unit that uses a one-handed weapon in two hands. Assuming this increases the damage to 1d8 instead of 1d6, average damage per hit goes up to 4.5, and the unit’s number of attacks should be 120 * 1.35 * 4.5 / (4.5 * 60) = 1.35 * 2 = 2.7 rounds up to 3. However, looking at the examples in the unit rosters, I observe that units using a one-handed weapon in two hands, such as conscripts and longbowmen forced into melee, receive only 2 attacks. Why is this?

Second, I am curious about the determination of wages for beastman units. I stumbled upon http://www.autarch.co/comment/13209#comment-13209 earlier today and it has helped me greatly with wages for human units, but this formula does not seem consistent for beastmen.

Oh yeah, and if veterans are 1st-level fighters, do they get fighter damage bonus (hence possibly more attacks)?

Also, hypothetically speaking, if I wanted to stat absurd monster cavalry like frost giants or trolls riding mastadons, should I use the behemoth cavalry rules or the normal cavalry rules?

I'm marginally confident you'd create the units with the behemoth rules, because of the behemoth rules section stating about how attacks are weighted towards the mount, which makes More Sense(tm) to me. The Behemoth section also contain the table for determining how large a single rider the behemoth could take.

I wouldn't mind seeing them both ways to see what the differences end up being.

Yes.

Page 77 of D@W:B, the tiny bit of text under the table, confirms this.

(this is of course a response to the top post, at the bottom because forum, and I already responded to the sub questions subbed...eh)

Given their calculated number of attacks, I'm not confident the conscripts or longbowmen are actually meant to be using their weapons two-handed.

I'd wager a derived reason could be that the conscripts are just bad at things, and the longbowmen are probably too worried about being in actual melee for a consistent attack method. 

That being said, I'd like to see the difference in effectiveness between, say, Light Infantry D (2 swords, 10+) and a hypothetical Light Infantry I (3 spear, 11+) who are actually two-handing their spears.

Which beastmen so far are abnormal?

The break-even point for Light Infantry D is AC8, at which point both D and I expect 0.3 hits per attack sequence (D gets 2 at 18+ → 15%, I gets 3 at 19+ → 10%). Against targets with ACs less than 8, I is superior.

Hm, interesting. I feel potentially more OK with the pricing on veteran heavy infantry then; double-wages are a lot more justifiable to my players if they may be getting a 50% boost in offense from a third attack in addition to their 33% increase in HP (and the harder-to-quantify morale and to-hit benefits). I should check the book when I get home to see if any of the veterans are explicitly listed as getting a third.

Beastmen wages were based on the battle rating of the various units.

I did not assume that longbowmen or militia were using their weapons two-handed.

 

 

Ah, I see! Guess I’ll want to read that BR thread after all :stuck_out_tongue: Thanks Alex!

Yeah I’ll probably end up doing them both. You’re probably right that behemoth makes sense, since the mounts are so big that regular infantry will attack them preferentially. I really ought to cook up a reasonably fuzzy, frozen-north type huge mountbeast (pretty much the only non-fantastic option in Campaigns is the Large Crocodile) for my trolls to ride. Part of the reason mammoths / war elephants are so brittle is that you get so few of them per unit, but being huge instead of gigantic would help with that.

I’m considering having a unit of veteran hill-folk longbowmen level into explorer rather than fighter, but I’m not really sure how to handle the Hide in Wilderness ability. I’ve been thinking about either adding an action in lieu of attacking for hiding in obscuring terrain, at which point the unit cannot be attacked and attacks at +2 until the next time it moves or attacks, or just increasing the AC bonus against missile attacks when in obscuring terrain. Thoughts?

All of your ideas sound good. You could also consider basing it on the spotting rules for Hero Visibility, something like: 

"A unit with Hide in Wilderness that remains stationary in a Broken Ground, Cliffs/Mountain, Forest/Jungle, Hill, or Swamp hex becomes hidden at the end of its movement sequence. It remains hidden until it moves out of the hex or conducts an attack sequence. A hidden unit is not an eligible target of an attack, spell, or special ability unless it is within visibility distance of the unit or hero targeting it. Visibility distance is determined by the size of the constituent creatures in the hidden unit." 

  • Man Sized - 1 hex
  • Large Sized - 3 hexes
  • Huge Sized - 6 hexes
  • Gigantic Sized - 9 hexes
  • Colossal Sized - 15 hexes

 

Now I have a mental image of an army trying to conceal an enormous elder dragon under a camouflage tarp, to amusing effect. Probably a reasonable way to handle explorers though.

"We're gonna need a bigger tarp."

Hey, are Dwarven Crossbowmen supposed to be Formed Foot like the unit roster on page 76 of Battles indicates? Are dwarves just always Formed (as the mounted crossbowmen would also suggest)? I like it (because it is very dwarfy, and it means you can up-armor and get the battle line morale bonus on your crossbowmen), but I just want to make sure there isn’t something I’m missing here.