Using Chainmail for Hirelings&Henchmen.

[cooper]

In another post I showed that the % chance of a "hit" in CHAINMAIL is identical (or very close) to that of D&D. To whit:

Hireling (0-level att/def: HF hits: 1c dmg: 1d6/6
Goblin att/def: HF hits: 1c dmg 1d6/6

The 0-level fighter has a 16% chance of scoring a "hit" against the goblin and the goblin has the same. A hit "kills" in CHAINMAIL, but statistically it does in d&d as well. The average hit points of a goblin and a hireling is 3.5, the average damage they do is 3.5 (d6). If you moved this further to the LBB+suppliments a d8 hit points and d8 long sword changes nothing.

In d&d terms (att=thac0)
hireling att/AC: 20/5 hp: 3.5 (average) dmg: d6 (3.5 dmg average)
goblin att/AC: 19/6 hp: 3-4 dmg: d6

The % chance to score a hit really doesn't change in relation to the other about 35% (14+ on a d20) each round that either will score a "hit" and roughly 50% chance of scoring a kill (3+ on damage dice) = (35%/x.5%)= +-16% chance of killing per round!

With that said, why not have the PC's stated out as normal, but keep your 5 hirelings for the party (or whatever number) as CHAINMAIL units? That way the battle remains about the PC's and their actions and doesn't get bogged down by running combat for redshirts and what not? The other benefit of chainmail is that attacks and damage are rolled on one dice, which halves the amount of dice rolling for no-names anyway.

Take 5 3rd level PC's and 4 0-level hirelings and pit them against 27 goblins. Lets assume the goblins attack all the humans equally (3 each). Normally in d&d this would take a while to do. Using the nitty-gritty of d&d for all the PC's and the goblins they're fighting you can bunch up the "second bit" characters thusly.

scale: 1:1 5 units Hirelings att/def: HF hits: 5c dmg: 5d6/6
15 units goblin att/def: HF hits: 15c dmg: 15d6/6


each hit kills 1 unit (individual). Very quickly rolling for the hirelings (PC's won initiative that round): 3, 2, 5, 6, 2. gives us 1 hit. So for the hireling portion of the battle you can simply assume that 1 goblin was killed. The goblins turn (only getting 14d6 now) 6,6,1,2, 3,2,2,1,6,5,4,1,2,3. Three hirelings bite the dust! Statistically this is probably within the margin of error of what would happen if played out in "long hand" using man-to-man rules. Is this preferable to rolling 15xd20 for attacks and then a bunch of damage dice for NPC's the players don't really care about anyway? Torchbearer #1 dies who cares? Right?

Can anyone point out a flaw I may have missed that would make this unworkable?

[cooper]

Let's take one more example of our brave troupe. This time pitting them against 3 ogres, using 0d&d+supp. (but works well up to and including 2e)

ogres:
AC: 5
HD: 4+1 (19 hp)
dmg: 1d10+2
att/def: HF
hits: 4
dmg: 4d6

Party wins initiative (again...lucky them)
The fighter in the party rolls d20=16 and hits an ogre: 1d6=5 dmg bringing one ogre down to 14 hp)
magic user sleeps one (party members coup de grace)
lets assume the other PC's miss on their attacks leaving us with two ogres standing with one of them wounded.

hirelings turn (lets pretend 3 didn't die to the goblin horde moments ago....)
5d6/6=3,3,2,1,6 they attack the wounded ogre.

since it's HF vs. HF it's 1:1 dmg ratio. It's one hit, average 3.5 (shortsword=heavy foot) (lets round up for fun) 4 dmg.

we now took care of 5 hireling attacks vs. an ogre in one throw of the dice.

One of the ogres attacks the pesky fighter:
d20 thac0: 15 vs. AC 2=19 hit! Ogre rolls damage d10+2=7. Fighter takes 7 dmg.

2nd ogre attacks hirelings.
4d6/6 (1:1) 4,5,6,6. He smashes two hirelings into paste. If the hirelings had been in plate armor (armored foot), the ogre would have only killed one of them (same as the ogre having a more difficult time hitting AC 2 with his thac0 15 instead of AC 5)

Now if the hirelings were 2nd level henchmen instead, the rules are exactly the same only the ogre requires two 6's to kill 1 heavy foot 2nd level fighter and if the 2nd level fighter was in plate it would take 4 cumulative hits to kill (2nd level fighter has 2 hits and HF ogre is 2:1 vs. AF = 4 total 6's to kill).

At 4th level an NPC becomes a hero unit and cannot be "bundled". He's no longer a red shirt, but now a minor re-occurring character in the series...

[cooper]

From Simultaneous to Cumulative

Since clerics are part of D&D and the idea of simultaneous hits went bye-bye I should post a note how to transfer from one system to the other for heroes who perhaps want to partake of a little mass combat with their hirelings and henchmen.

Ogre vs. Hero using cumulative hits: Every hit counts as 3.5 dmg (using 0d&d if heroes and monsters are at d8 hit points then average dmg is upped to 4.5).

This gives us a range of damage from an ogre to an armored hero of between 3.5 to 7.0 damage (or close to the average of 2d6/1d10+2 dmg in 0d&d). The ogre will be correspondingly more deadly to a heavy or lightly armored hero, but that would be the case against anyone with a bad armor class as well in dungeons and dragons and their likelyhood of taking more damage over the long run.

Lets say our 4th level hero has a magic sword and magic plate armor fighting 3 ogres. Ogres wins initiative:

3d6/6=1,6,6 (magic armor reduces the dice you throw by 1; 3rd ed. pg. 38)
3d6/6=4,3,2
3d6/6=6,6,6

The ogres scores 2 hit (2:1 HF vs. AF) the fighter takes 7 dmg from the ogres. This is no different than if the 1st and 2nd ogres hit his armor class and then rolled say, a 2 and the other a 5 for damage. averages come out the same. In d&d an ogre with a thac0 of 15 vs. AC1 (magic plate+shield) has about a 40% chance of scoring a hit. Roughly similar to what the CHAINMAIL ogres above have.

Heroes turn.
5d6/5-6=5,5,1,2,6 (+1 dice because of a magic sword; 3rd ed. pg. 38)

Attacking a single ogre. (1:1 AF vs. HF) our hero scores 3 hits for 10.5 dmg, rounding up the DM subtracts 11 hit points from one of the ogres. In CHAINMAIL or in d&d the fighter needs to score 4 hits to kill 1 ogre (using average dmg and average HD). All I did was turn the CHAINMAIL hits into dmg.

You could of course just leave everything as "hits" and "hits needed to kill" and a clerics cure light wounds spell would cure "1 hit" aka 4.5 dmg (heals 1-8 hit points). A cure serious wounds spell would heal 2 hits et cetera.

[cooper]

Here's an even easier "mass combat" using 0d&d only. No chainmail whatsoever. Lets pit 0 level men at arms vs. gnolls (2hd). I'll also include the stats for a 4th level fighter, an ogre, and a dragon. I am changing absolutely none of the 0d&d rules to accomplish this goal.

taking the idea of chainmail (averaged damage and averaged hit points) and putting it into D&D (variable damage and variable hit points)


What this enables is cutting down the amount of dice you roll by 1/2 without effecting any of the underlying math. You would assume a 0-level man at arms has 3.5 hit points and with a long sword does 3.5 dmg. The gnoll has 7 hit points (2HD) and does 3.5 dmg. so, when 10 of your gnolls attack from an ambush, you simple roll 10d20 and each hit on the AC chart kills 1 "unit" of men. In our case our ratio is 1:1 men:units and not 1:10/1:20 like chainmail (although chainmail can really be any ratio from 1:1 to 1:100).

men at arms:
hits: 1
dmg: 1
att: 1/1
AC: 5
thac0: 21

gnoll
hits: 2
dmg: 1
thac0: 17

4th level fighter
hits: 5
dmg: 2
AC: 2
att: 1/1
Thac0: 17

Your PC's simply divide their hitpoints by 3.5 and this gives them their new "hits". A 4th level fighter who rolled quite well (17 hit points) hit points is listed has having 5 hits. With gauntlets of ogrepower, a sword +2, and a long sword he does d6+4, or 2 damage (3.5+4/3.5), It takes 2 damage to kill a gnoll. An an ogre with 21 hit points would have 5 hits and deal d6+2/3.5= 1.5 dmg on average.

A red dragon with 36 hit points would have 10 hits and his damage of d6/d6/3d6 is translated as three attacks dealing 1/1/3 with a breath weapon dmg of 10 (save for 5). AC and thac0 of course remain unchanged, all we've done is averaged damage and hit points.


This literally saves you half of your dice rolling when running larger scale combats, with no cost to the integrity of the d&d rules.

The problem of course is most people don't have as many d20's as they do, say, d6's. You could translate the d20 attack roll vs. AC into a a d6 roll, which chainmail has nicely done for us. man at arms: 1d6/6 vs. gnoll 2d6/6

[cooper]

The beauty of the above, is that it works seamlessly with 0d&d as well as suppliments. Once the default hit points of the fighter and monsters goes to d8 and default weapon damage is also d8, you simply start dividing by 4.5 instead of 3.5. If the fighters HD is now d10 you still divide by 4.5 because that is still considered, "default" and the fighters extra hit points now take him above and beyond this level.