Giants in the field

[Deleted]

I have some fiddly little questions about giants, which relate to broader question I'm trying to answer for myself: do the target numbers in the Fantasy Combat Table relate in any way to the offensive and defensive capabilities of the various fantasy types outlined in the Fantasy Supplement?

Giants appear to be far too weak in the FCT, despite being described as one of the most effective fighters.

My copy of Chainmail says that giants "...melee as 12 Heavy Foot with an extra die for their oversized weapons. They defend as 12 Armoured Foot..."

Does the extra die for oversized weapons mean you roll one extra die period or one extra die per man equivalent? Put another way, would you roll 13 dice for a giant attacking a unit of light foot or 24 dice?

What I've read elsewhere suggests that this kind bonus should be applied to each man equivalent rather than the total number of dice. If correct giants attack as 12 Light Horse. If this is correct, why are their offensive capabilities described differently? Is the oversize weapons thing just colour or am I missing something?

Finally, if giants attack as 12 Light Horse and defend as 12 Armoured Foot, why does the Fantasy Reference Table say they attack and defend as 12 Heavy Foot? Is this a holdover from an earlier version of the rules?

If Giants were "upgraded" in later version of the rules, did the numbers relating to giants in the Fantasy Combat Table change or stay the same?

[foxroe]

Welcome to the forum, @bertman ! I am by no means a CM expert, but I'll give it a shot. There are several members here with much more experience with the rules than I.

Giants seem to fair better than most on the FCT - only Balrogs and Dragons are better (though an argument for Superheros and Wizards could be made).

My interpretation is that they fight as 12 heavy Foot, +1 die only for large weapons, so 12 dice +1 die = 13 dice, a 6 hits on any die. There is some prescedent for this if one looks at the note for men with pikes/halberds on the CT.

Whether they defend as Armored or Heavy is unclear - it would be up to the ref/players which way to go I suppose. If you think they are more likely to shrug off attacks from normal men, then go with the Armored.

[Deleted]

Sorry Foxroe - I totally forgot I made this post.

So basically the Giant attacks as 13 heavy foot (12 dice for being equivalent to 12 heavy foot, plus 1 extra die for the heavy club). That means they're not as underpowered in the FCT as I thought they might be.

Thanks for the help.

[derv]

Feb 10, 2017 12:45:49 GMT -6 @bertman said:

So basically the Giant attacks as 13 heavy foot (12 dice for being equivalent to 12 heavy foot, plus 1 extra die for the heavy club). That means they're not as underpowered in the FCT as I thought they might be.

No, the Giant fights as 12 heavy foot and gets an additional die when fighting normal troops. How many dice they gets is dependent on the class of who they are fighting. But, he will always get one additional die for his weapon (an extra chance of scoring a hit/kill).

So, if they are facing light foot they would get 13 dice, where a 5,6 kills (12+1 die). But, if they are facing light horse they would only get 7 dice where a 6 kills (6+1 die).

This may appear as nit picking, but it is more important to get this distinction in your mind should you ever decide to try your hand at the Man-to-Man rules.

On the FCT, one-on-one, only Balrogs and Elementals have a better chance of a kill. Dragons and Superheroes would have an equal chance. Giants do not get an extra die on the FCT.

[Deleted]

Thanks Derv. Basically that means the club adds one die that kills on a 6 against everything bar light foot, where 5 or 6 kills.

I fully understand that giants don't get an extra die on the FCT.

I guess I should explain what I'm up to. I was wondering if the numbers in the FCT were somehow derived from the fighting capabilities of the various fantasy types outlined in the fantasy supplement, so I set about producing a version of the FCT based solely on their troop type equivalencies to see how closely it matched the original. The only remaining ambiguities related to giants, which you've now cleared up.

The product is a table where the target numbers deviate from the FCT with an obvious concentration of numbers in the -2 to +2 range. A lot of the deviations are in weird vertical blocks of equal magnitude, three to five numbers in length.

[derv]

You seem to have it bert. I see I have a typo above with the one target number in my example (which I corrected). Glad it didn't lead to any head scratching.

As for your analysis, I think I can safely say that you will find they do not really correspond. As I mentioned above, Giants and Dragons are on equal footing with the FCT. Yet, a Dragon is worth 4 heavy horses and the Giant is worth 12 heavy foot on the MCT. These values are really for combat with "normal" troops (those not found on the FCT). Consequently, Dragons are impervious to all normal attacks, where Giants must take 12 cumulative hits to kill.

But, let's quickly look at them for arguments sake. Twelve heavy foot vs. heavy horse would get 3 die where a 6 kills. On the other hand, four heavy horses vs. heavy foot would get 12 die where a 5,6 kills. Even if we give the Giant the benefit of being armored foot it would still result in 8 die where a 5,6 kill. Clearly this is not equal footing.

[Deleted]

Ah, but they do correspond.

Not exactly, but to a statistically significant degree. The differences between the numbers in the troop type FCT and the original FCT exhibit a bell-curve distribution, with 50% of the numbers in the -1 to +1 range and 79% in the -2 to +2 range.

Lets take a closer look at your giant example, bearing in mind that the FCT takes everything into account to deliver a "one hit kills" system - so it must account for the defensive value of a defenders man rating. The higher the man rating of a foe, the greater their ability to take a licking and keep on ticking.

A giant attacking a dragon (12HF v 4HH) gets 4 dice (remember the extra die for the club), each killing on a 6 - but a dragon can only take 4 hits. Thats 0.66' "kills per giant" divided by "4 men" or 0.16' kills total. This translates into a 17% chance of a kill, corresponding to a 2d6 target number of 9 - same as the original FCT.

A dragon attacking a giant (4HH versus 12AF) gets 8 dice, each killing on a 5 or 6 - but a giant can take a whopping 12 hits before he croaks. That's 2.66' "kills per dragon" (ouch) divided by "12 men" or 0.22'. This translates into a 22% chance of a kill, rounding to a 2d6 target number of 9, same as the original FCT.

They may not be on a precisely equal footing in the mass combat system, but on translation into the fantasy combat system the discrepancies vanish in a haze of coarse grained 2d6 rounding and they end up on an equal footing.

As I said - the troop type FCT is not a perfect match for the one true FCT, created by the dark lord of "making s**t up" in the first age. How could it be when the target numbers for one fantasy type attacking a like type are all over the place? Now what's that all about?

Whatever the case, I'll keep poking at troop types and the FCT with a mental stick until something interesting crawls out.

[derv]

Keep at it bert. I actually like reading peoples analysis. I think you will still discover a few more anomalies. You and waysoftheearth would get along. I'll bet a dollar to a doughnut he's already done this.

btw, have you considered the statistical significance between those who require simultaneous hits versus cumulative hits?

[Deleted]

I guarantee you Gary and Jeff never went through that sort of mathematical analysis. When CHAINMAIL was written there was no such thing as a calculator.

The Fantasy Combat Table was "make up some numbers and diddle with them until the game plays the way you want." I would bet ready money that the combat effectiveness versus normal men was not considered at all. ALL those calculations would have to be done with paper and pencil.


Of course, since I'll be seeing Jeff Perrin in less than a month at GaryCon, I can just ask him, but I bet I'm right.

[jacar]

Mar 3, 2017 12:42:28 GMT -6 @gronanofsimmerya said:

I guarantee you Gary and Jeff never went through that sort of mathematical analysis. When CHAINMAIL was written there was no such thing as a calculator.

The Fantasy Combat Table was "make up some numbers and diddle with them until the game plays the way you want." I would bet ready money that the combat effectiveness versus normal men was not considered at all. ALL those calculations would have to be done with paper and pencil.


Of course, since I'll be seeing Jeff Perrin in less than a month at GaryCon, I can just ask him, but I bet I'm right.

Likely they took many, many games in and analyzed the empirical evidence then. I will tell you that the points costs of troops are actually spot on with relation to the ability to deal damage. I don't believe they took movement into account based on my own analysis. Based completely on fighting ability. So, if they did no statistical analysis, they did quite a remarkable job of balancing the points system.

[Deleted]

Mar 3, 2017 12:42:28 GMT -6 @gronanofsimmerya said:

I guarantee you Gary and Jeff never went through that sort of mathematical analysis. When CHAINMAIL was written there was no such thing as a calculator.

The Fantasy Combat Table was "make up some numbers and diddle with them until the game plays the way you want." I would bet ready money that the combat effectiveness versus normal men was not considered at all. ALL those calculations would have to be done with paper and pencil.


Of course, since I'll be seeing Jeff Perrin in less than a month at GaryCon, I can just ask him, but I bet I'm right.

I don't think they went through any kind of rigorous mathematical process to define the FCT.

What I'm saying is, whether they planned it or not, there is statistical correlation between the FCT and the combat effectiveness of the various fantasy types in the mass combat system. Its an after the fact correlation. The same people, with the same intuitions, contributed to the development of both systems.

The correlation is by no means perfect, but that there is a correlation is statistically undeniable. The FCT is not entirely random and neither are the fighting capabilities of the various fantasy types. That doesn't mean to say it was based on a formulae requiring an historically anachronistic electronic calculator.

It looks like they established a roughly systematic framework and "diddled with the numbers" until it caused the least number of disagreements. I think the relationship might have originally been as simple as: plus one per 2 dice difference, plus one per troop type difference, plus a bunch of play testing tweaks, plus some tweaks based on arguments over whether they thought a Balrog could beat a Hero in a fight and so on.

The bottom line is that the amount diddling was not sufficiently extensive to hide the underlying order, whatever the basis of that order might be.

I'd love to know if Jeff Perrin has any info on how the FCT table was built. It looks like the FCT is a cut down version of a much larger table, reduced to fit printing requirements.

[waysoftheearth]

Hey derv, long time no see.

Interesting idea @bertman. I'm sure there are mathematical relationships between the numbers, but I'd want to verify your initial assumptions before reading too much into it.

FWIW, my view is that fantastic and normal combat are immiscible. It can either be night or day, not both (except perhaps elves with magic swords). Efficacy during the day need not inform performance at night, or vis versa. E.g., a vampire might be powerful at night, but helpless during the day.

Another thing to consider is whether the mass combat rules can express the same level of detail as do the fantasy combat rules. Fantasy combat individually specifies the attack and defense capabilities of 13 types versus 13 opponents, and these capabilities vary considerably from type to type, and from opponent to opponent within each type. On the other hand, the mass combat rules have half as many types with relatively linear variation in capability.

[Deleted]

Hi WotE,

I have a few outlying ideas left to explore. When I'm done I'll pull what I've got into a document and post a link in this thread. That should help you decide whether I'm on to something or not.

I agree that in the published rules the two systems are not meant to be interchangeable. However the published rules are the product of a lengthy design process and I can't help but wonder if at some point there was no FCT. Just a list of fighting capabilities for the various fantasy types in the mass combat system and a distinction between normal combat involving normal men and fantasy combat involving no normal men. I also agree that there's no reason a given fantasy type should exhibit statistically identical performance in both systems, although a relative correlation makes sense.

The level of detail inherent in the mass combat system is not a limiting factor. While it is based on only six troop types, some fantasy types attack and defend as different troop types, nearly all function as varying multiples of men and most have at least one special ability. No two fantasy types are the same. The mass combat system delivers far more varied results than the FCT, which reduces everything to 11 target numbers where 1 hit kills. However a matrix like the FCT is far more amenable to arbitrary Gygaxian tweaking on a case-by-case basis if that's what you mean by detail. Of course a matrix derived from the mass combat system is just as amenable to this kind of embellishment.