How do you kill a horse in MtM combat?

[cooper]

Man, this question has been vexing me something fierce ever sense I figured out how to play. In mass combat, it's easy: 1 unit of armored foot can defeat 1 unit of heavy horse with 3 hits (more likely 3 units of armored foot getting lucky and rolling three 6's and defeating 1 unit of heavy horse). Now light foot require 4 hits to bring down 1 unit of heavy horse.

Similarly in mass combat, armored foot can kill one unit of ogres/trolls with a cumulation of 6 hits.

follow me here...

A single troll also can take 6 hits from men on the man to man table, but nowhere does it say how many hits--for example, a heavy horse can take!...is it 3 hits as if from fighting armored foot? or is it 4 hits as if fighting light/heavy foot?

If a troll has 6 hits, does a horse have 3 hits or 4?


The answer my friend is, "it depends".

On the MtM table if you are listed in mass combat as being "attack as light foot" this will run the gamut of daggers, hand axes, and probably maces.

Therefore, if you are, say, a group of four men, or a single hero wielding a dagger(s); of your 4 attacks, you need to score 2 hits to kill a LH, 3 to kill a MH, and 4 hits to kill a HH. However, if you are a hero armed with a zweihander (armored foot to be sure) then you can kill a light horse--in MtM combat, with 1 hit, 2 hits for MH, and 3 hits for HH!

Which brings us to DRAGONS!. Now, the only "mass combat" aspect of a dragon is it's morale effect, and it's breath weapon, just like a wizards fireball is 3" (enough to engulf 9 units/180 men) but his sleep spell and haste only effect 20 men/1 unit or 1 fantastic opponent.

Even though a large red dragon is listed as 4 heavy horse pg. 35 the game does not mean that a dragon fights like 160 normal light foot men, no! Certainly no more than it means gimli can kill 80 men/4 units per turn (we know the answer is he can kill 42 over an entire battle).

Rather, it simply means that when fighting on the MtM table a dragon has 16 "hit dice" when fighting someone (perhaps a hero) with a dagger and 12 "hit dice" if that hero is wielding a weapon typically wielded by armored foot. This means that a mounted hero wielding a lance, could kill a dragon in 4 hits (HH vs. HH).

This also tells us how wights fight in MtM combat as it says they, "melee as light horse and defend as heavy horse" pg. 37 We know that light horse get 1 attack per turn in 1:1 man-to-man combat pg. 25, so the "hit die" of a wight is either 3 HD or 4 HD depending on what weapon you are using.

Interestingly, D&D reversed this:

Chainmail: weapons do the same damage (1 hit) and hit dice change (3 or 4 hits to kill). If you are light foot (dagger) fighting an ogre it will take 12 hits to kill it. If you are heavy foot (long sword) it takes 6 hits to kill it.

Dungeons and Dragons: weapons (eventually) did variable damage and hit dice remained constant! If you're wielding a dagger that does d4 dmg vs. an ogre with 12 hit points, switching to a longsword doing d8 will kill the ogre twice as fast.

This will help me greatly with determining how to introduce draconians and lord soth's skeletal knights into my "Battle of the High Clerist Tower" for my Dragonlance set up.

[cooper]

Chainmail: weapons do the same damage (1 hit) and hit dice change (3 or 4 hits to kill). If you are light foot (dagger) fighting an ogre it will take 12 hits to kill it in both mass combat and MtM combat (light foot scores 1 hit for every 2 men vs. heavy foot). If you are heavy foot (long sword) it takes 6 hits to kill it (heavy foot vs. heavy foot).

Dungeons and Dragons: weapons (eventually) did variable damage and hit dice remained constant! If you're wielding a dagger that does d4 dmg vs. an ogre with 12 hit points, switching to a longsword doing d8 will kill the ogre twice as fast.

Is there a way then to introduce variable hit die and weapon damage into CHAINMAIL? I believe the answer is, 'yes' and it would all take place mass combat chart (on a "hit" roll appropriate damage for each unit) on the MtM table (2d6) or the 'optional' (d20) MtM table.

LF: d4 hd/d4 dmg
HF: d6 hd/d6 dmg
AF: d8 hd/d8 dmg
LH: d10 hd/d10 dmg
MH: d12 hd/d12 dmg
HH: d12+3 hd/d12+3 dmg

What does this mean? It means that armor has a "damage reduction" quality to it indicated by a proactive addition to ones hit points.

For example, an average hero dressed in chain armor and a shield has 12 hit points, whereas the same hero dressed in leather armor has 8 hit points. The chain armor acts as damage reduction, this damage reduction is concomitantly reduced when being attacked by an armored foot weapon (zweihander) that does d8 damage (exceeding the d6 hit points in armor that the chain provides)

It means a sword does d6 dmg, a two handed sword does d8 and a mounted heavy lance does d12+3

The above system almost perfectly matches the mass combat chart. For example: 2 unit of light foot vs. 2 unit of heavy horse.

LF: 5 hp/2d4 damage.
HH: 20 hp/2d12+6 dmg.

In CHAINMAIL the light, heavy, and armored units need to score 8 hits in order to kill two units of heavy horse (1:4 dmg ratio). the average damage of a d4 is 2.5, which means that the LF need to score 8 hits to kill the HH and HF and AF would need 6 and 5 hits respectively, "close enough for jazz" as they say.

MASS COMBAT EXAMPLE:
No longer do you have to deal with the, "count each hit as 3", or "count every 4 hits as 1" because we've accomplished the same goal with variable dice. all that you do, is roll 1d6/x for each unit and for every hit roll damage dice.

So we could do 10 units of heavy foot (35 hit points and d6 dmg) vs. 3 units of Medium Horse (20 hit points and d12 dmg). The heavy foot rolls on the mass combat chart 10d6/6 each hit does d6 dmg. The medium horse roll 3d6/5-6 each hit does 1d12 damage.



Am I missing something? Help me out here.