Mixing Chainmail and OD&D

[chicagowiz]

I didn't want to step on derv's awesome thread, so I thought I would start another one. This is sort of a stream of consciousness, so look at this as step 1 of probably a lot of fun times.

I'm a sucker for the Chainmail system of combat resolution. Ever since 2009/10, I've looked for the "Holy Grail" of merging mass combat with D&D to make it a seamless experience, while not overpowering things for the PCs when they find themselves amidst 100 opponents. I wrote about that on this very forum in that time period.

I found that Holy Grail in Daniel Collins' (Delta) Book of War rules and a subsequent supplement I developed called "The Fellowship" that finally did what I wanted. And life was good...

Recently, I rediscovered "The Compleat Chainmail" which is Jason Vey's (Grey Elf) edited conversion of aldarron's approach to using the 3 Chainmail combat mechanics (mass/man2man/fantasy) as part of OD&D. I became REALLY curious about how this would run. And something about Delta's approach to a single value representing a "hit" vs armor types that was statistically compatible to D&D was poking around as well.

So I run a 1on1 OD&D game with my wife. Last night, we had a largeish combat of about 10 men (plus an evil mage) vs. 6 men and several PC/NPC types. In a fit of mad inspiration, I took Compleat Chainmail and this idea of the value of the die vs AC from BoW and ran the combat that way. It worked! The 5th level PC doing serious damage, the men and lower level NPCs/henchmen beating each other up seriously, and tracking this by # of hits based on level (instead of HP) made the combat very quick, it "felt" right and very fun!



(Click the image to embiggen)

The top part of that sheet is just the stats of the PCs/NPCs. I'm using Swords & Wizardry White Book so that's why one saving throw value. For the fighting capability, I based it on Compleat Chainmail's evaluation of armor/weapons ... so Aeli using a magical long sword and her capabilities rates as an Armored Foot for attacking, and with her platemail, rates as an Armored Foot defending. Turchao is chainmail + shield (AC4) and a regular sword, so that's Heavy Foot attacking, Heavy Foot defending. Fighting Capability (FC) is the # of dice to throw. So Aeli as a Fighter 5, gets 5 dice to throw in her attack. Caren, as a thief, gets 2 dice.

I don't use hp, I'm using Hit Die to represent how many hits a figure can take before out. If a PC/NPC gets to 0 hits, they do a save vs. death to either die or be unconscious.

The bottom right two charts bear some explaining. The middle is the rough division of armor types and what a figure has to throw to "hit" that armor type. If someone is at -1 (which you need magical armor or some sort of magical effect to be at), then you have to roll a 6 plus be attacking with some magical weapon/effect to hit.

If you're a Heavy Foot (attack) vs. Light Foot (defend), then you get a +1 to your roll. If you're an Armored Foot vs Light, you get +2.

This spins down combat to merely a bunch of D6s being thrown, and tracking if the value is a hit vs an armor type.

Crazy? Probably... but it feels pretty neat like Chainmail and it still flows like D&D combat, at least in the game last night. Time will tell.

What do you think?

[thegreyelf]

Quick correction: I didn't edit Aldarron's. I just slapped a cover on it, and I host it on my site. His is a combination of mine and a few others'

[harlandski]

Sounds cool. I like the idea of a death save not to die, and it certainly streamlines things to do hits instead of dice. So far I've only used man-to-man combat rules for OD&D dungeons, which was frankly extremely deadly, though that could have been mitigated by using the death saving throw too.

I'm guessing the combat went quite fast? I have used the Chainmail mass combat tables to play Chainmail, and that was pretty speedy (though morale was more devastating to my troops than anything else).

One question: Did each character roll their d6s individually, or did you roll a bunch of dice for each side? If you used the latter system, how did you decide which hits applied to whom?

[chicagowiz]

Combat went really fast. Funny enough, the PCs and forces of Weal suffered very few deaths, and since those were NPC/mobs, I didn't do the saving throws. For morale, I revert back to the old Moldvay 2d6, low rolls are broken morale, high rolls are good morale and I'll rule modifiers on the fly depending on the situation. I'm going to look at Compleat Chainmail for what they suggest.

I use the idea that hits are distributed randomly, so for the hits, I just rolled to see who they affected. Kind of a count the opponents in the scrum and roll appropriate dice to get a result. If it were 1 on 1 or 2 on 1, etc, that would be a bit different.

[harlandski]

With OD&D I've used the "Loss Table" on p. 17 of Chainmail, which is adapted as "Method 1" in the Compleat Chainmail.

When playing Chainmail I also used the Post Melee Morale and Cavalry charge morale rules.

Method 2 in the Compleat Chainmail seem to be based on the rally rules.

The only snag of using the mass combat tables for OD&D that I can see is that the Chainmail rules assume that one homogeneous unit is attacking another homogeneous unit, which makes the calculation of dice on either side easy. But with a mixed force it's a bit of a puzzle how many dice to give each side.

The random assignation of hits is a nice middle ground between either side deciding where the hits land.

[chicagowiz]

I want to do the least amount of math at the table as possible, which is why I like a simple method Like Method 2.

I'm going to have to give the mixed groups some thought. I'll probably use a Book of War-ism and take the average and go from there. That's worked well in the past for several games I've run with BoW/Chainmail inspired rules.

[harlandski]

Yeah, that makes sense. I hadn't heard of the Book of War or Original Edition Delta before you mentioned the BoW - looks interesting & worth looking into further.

I'll see if I can run a few mixed Chainmail mass combat / OD&D skirmishes this weekend, and see what I think works best in practice.

[harlandski]

So I've done some preliminary playtesting with the help of my kids, and can confirm that using the mass combat tables (and one 'hit' per hit dice, plus one death save) feels 'right'. Did groups of 10 (admittedly homogeneous) monsters against those members of a ten-member adventuring party most likely to be involved in the melee (ie the fighters and the clerics), averaging their attack and defense capabilities where necessary. Haven't taken account of missile & magic, but overall I like the speed and possibility for sudden changes of fortune. A really feeling of the danger and randomness of melee you don't necessarily get from the alternative combat rules.

[chicagowiz]

Fantastic!

The other thing too is that, for me, even if I go into the situation of 1 on 1 battles, I can still use the mass combat tables and rolls to adjudicate combat. It will be extremely quick, based on hits/HD rather than HP, and a bit easier since it will be easy to tell if your opponent is LF/HF/AF and to determine what the hit values should be.

One way I differ from Chainmail is that I don't throw multiple dice (or require multiple figures) based on attack type (LF, HF, AF, etc). I assign bonuses to AF and HF if they're attacking lesser types. I throw multiple dice based on HD of creature.

Example: I have a group of 6 zombies (2HD) and 4 ghouls (2HD) attacking the group of heroes from the picture above. I'm going to rule that the undead attack as HF and defend as LF (average AC of 7.2).

In this case, I'll have the heroes attack individually, but the monsters attack as one group. Hang on while I try to explain this...

Each of the heroes throw dice = to their FC from Compleat Chainmail (that's the FC column from the pic). Several of them will get +1 on each of their dice since they attack as HF (Aeli attacks as AF and gets +2 on her rolls, she can throw 5 dice). For every 4+ they throw, it's a hit against that group.

So let's say they scored 12 hits. For each hit, throw a die, if it's 4 or less, a zombie was hit, otherwise a ghoul. For every two hits on zombies, one dies. For every two hits on a ghoul, one dies. Let's say 7 hits were to zombies, 5 to ghouls. That means I've removed 3 zombies (and one is hit once), 2 ghouls were removed and one is hit once.

Now the zombies/ghouls return the favor. The PCs average to be HF, so the monsters must throw 5s to score hits. There are 3 zombies and 2 ghouls. Their FC is 2, so I'm throwing ten dice. (at this point, I'm using my old Battletech shaker box of death! ) They score 4 hits! I randomly assign those hits by throwing a d8 (ignoring 8s) and doling them out. Not HP mind you, but rather their HD determine the # of times they can be hit. Yes, this means that a mage could sustain multiple hits. In this case, I'm OK with that. Their lightly armored and probably attacking as LF, so they're not going to survive long.

That's how I did it with my wife's game.

What do you think?

This is, of course, for non-fantasy combat. If we got into fantasy combat, I'd switch to those tables... maybe. I'm still poking at this hybrid of delta 's Book of War approach combined with Compleat Chainmail.

[chicagowiz]

PS. harlandski - I highly recommend delta's Book of War. If Lulu has their Black Friday/Cyber Monday deal, I highly recommend getting a copy. www.lulu.com/us/en/shop/daniel-collins/original-edition-delta-book-of-war/paperback/product-17158134.html

It's a fun skirmish (1:10 scale) first off. But it has some surprising depth. This book has given me a toolkit to do things like including mass combat seamlessly into my OD&D/AD&D games, and now has given me a way to explore Chainmail while retaining a simplified approach. (fanboy mode = OFF)

That's what I want to use at my GaryCon "Rescue of Hommlet" game... a Chainmail-esque resolution of combat that statistically is comparable. I'm not smart enough at the math to know if I'm breaking something important by using FC to determine # of dice to throw, but it feels right.

[harlandski]

Nov 28, 2019 9:33:20 GMT -6 chicagowiz said:

Fantastic!

The other thing too is that, for me, even if I go into the situation of 1 on 1 battles, I can still use the mass combat tables and rolls to adjudicate combat. It will be extremely quick, based on hits/HD rather than HP, and a bit easier since it will be easy to tell if your opponent is LF/HF/AF and to determine what the hit values should be.

One way I differ from Chainmail is that I don't throw multiple dice (or require multiple figures) based on attack type (LF, HF, AF, etc). I assign bonuses to AF and HF if they're attacking lesser types. I throw multiple dice based on HD of creature.

Example: I have a group of 6 zombies (2HD) and 4 ghouls (2HD) attacking the group of heroes from the picture above. I'm going to rule that the undead attack as HF and defend as LF (average AC of 7.2).

In this case, I'll have the heroes attack individually, but the monsters attack as one group. Hang on while I try to explain this...

Each of the heroes throw dice = to their FC from Compleat Chainmail (that's the FC column from the pic). Several of them will get +1 on each of their dice since they attack as HF (Aeli attacks as AF and gets +2 on her rolls, she can throw 5 dice). For every 4+ they throw, it's a hit against that group.

So let's say they scored 12 hits. For each hit, throw a die, if it's 4 or less, a zombie was hit, otherwise a ghoul. For every two hits on zombies, one dies. For every two hits on a ghoul, one dies. Let's say 7 hits were to zombies, 5 to ghouls. That means I've removed 3 zombies (and one is hit once), 2 ghouls were removed and one is hit once.

Now the zombies/ghouls return the favor. The PCs average to be HF, so the monsters must throw 5s to score hits. There are 3 zombies and 2 ghouls. Their FC is 2, so I'm throwing ten dice. (at this point, I'm using my old Battletech shaker box of death! ) They score 4 hits! I randomly assign those hits by throwing a d8 (ignoring 8s) and doling them out. Not HP mind you, but rather their HD determine the # of times they can be hit. Yes, this means that a mage could sustain multiple hits. In this case, I'm OK with that. Their lightly armored and probably attacking as LF, so they're not going to survive long.

That's how I did it with my wife's game.

What do you think?

This is, of course, for non-fantasy combat. If we got into fantasy combat, I'd switch to those tables... maybe. I'm still poking at this hybrid of delta 's Book of War approach combined with Compleat Chainmail.

Using pluses as you do and limiting the number of dice is an interesting option - I need to think more about it.

I take it you run melee in initiative order (not simultaneously)?

I would like to get hold of the Book of War and think more about how to do this.

One more question I have for you - if you run a melee in a dungeon corridor or small room, do you assume that everyone can be involved in the melee or only the front line?

***

Now to my own experiments...

So at the weekend we ended up playing OD&D and Chainmail, though in OD&D there was little combat (due to clever play). I had decided to run the first combat using the Alternative Combat rules, and the second using mass combat, but there never was a second combat...

However in Chainmail the mixed unit situation did come up, as a unit made up of an ogre, five orcs and ten goblins faced off against four treants. In any case, the forces of chaos decided to use fire to destroy the treants (an effective strategy), so they were busy trying to roll 10 or more on 2d6 for each unit (which did for the treants in the first round of melee). However (as melee was simultaneous) at the same time the treants were attacking the baddies. Each treant attacks as 6 armored foot, so I divvied up their attacks between the different types (goblins defending as light foot 4-6 to hit, orcs & the ogre as heavy 5-6 to hit). This felt better than taking an average (which would have upgraded the goblins to heavy foot).

[delta]

Thanks for the shout-out! :-D

[chicagowiz]

Sunday's experiment

I set out to be more deliberate in my approach. When it was individual PCs fighting, they would use their FC against individual creatures. That worked well, although I think I should have considered the Fantasy Combat rules for fighting a giant shark.

My battle of 55 saughin vs. 40 crew members of a ship + PCs/NPCs got a bit more squishy.

The "demons of the deep" attacked in waves. First wave was 30, second was 25.

I took two figures (20 individuals) of crew members vs. two figures (20 saughins) as one mass combat battle.

I took 10 saughin vs the PCs as more of 1 on 1.

The mass combat, I ran using Book of War + Chainmail. They used the AH value from BoW. The saughin were HF/HF. The crew were HF/LF. I changed my bonuses on HF vs LF to be nothing, only AF attacking LF get a bonus, mainly because AF are the heavy hitters.

This worked well and deadly! The crew fought off the first wave.

For the 1 on 1 piece, my wife couldn't roll well, so the combat took awhile. I used the FC value from Compleat Chainmail for # of attacks that each PC got. The saughin got two attacks each. The PCs needed 5s to hit, so it was pretty easy to just roll all the dice for all the PCs and look for 5s, 6s.

The saughin attacking were a different matter. They get 2 attacks per individual, so that was 20 d6s. I could eliminate anything less than 4, but how to assign 4s and above? I used a die per "hit" to assign, but then I also thought that perhaps looking at the value and assigning downwards - meaning that 6s would hit AF first, then if no AF were left/available, go to the HF and so on. It seems more deterministic that way, so I'm not convinced yet.

Although her rolling didn't show it, my wife's PC at 5th level did do significant damage to the saughin's numbers.

The second wave proved deadly as they scored a hit on one of the 1HD crew figures and eliminated it. (Not all were dead, some were seriously wounded - I rule that most combats see 50% dead, 25% serious wounds, 25% light wounds)

The battle ended up that the PCs started affecting the remaining figure of saughin. I had a choice of converting the players midbattle into a PC figure for mass combat (using BoW rules) - or - I could keep the PCs as they were, and just allow the final battle to be 1 on 1 but versus PCs only. I took the latter route, it was more dramatic as proof that the crew would allow heroes to finish off the invaders.

I asked my wife afterwards what she thought of the battle and she said it felt dynamic but not too overwhelming. She was more worried if her tactics were good - she'd not fought on a ship before with nowhere really to run!

I'm starting to get more comfortable with my hybrid approach. Using BoW for mass combat makes it extremely simple - I've done the conversion of LF/HF/AF to BoW AC/At Hit values.

For 1 on 1, using the Chainmail "mass combat" method of rolling to see if there are hits, using FC for number of dice to roll, and using BoW's AH value to see if they hit (apply modifiers based on target, instead of # of dice), and using HD = # of hits versus hp - this works.

I haven't had a combat yet with men or creatures that are mounted - when that happens, I'll have to figure out appropriate bonus/penalty values.

[harlandski]

Sounds like a lot of fun, and situations where you have 30-40 on either side is surely where Chainmail shines. You've definitely piqued my interest about BoW - need to get hold of it from Lulu.

[chicagowiz]

Highly recommend it!

My next challenge is to codify this simply so I can use it in my GaryCon "Hommlet" game.

[thegreyelf]

FWIW, I just recently (read: 2 days ago) discovered that the version of "Compleat Chainmail" on my site was actually an incomplete, poorly-formatted, incorrect version. I've no idea how long it's been like that, but I fixed it today!