Stats for an Army Unit, Stats for a Town

[New Fire]

Greetings, everyone! I am working on a game known as New Fire. It is a fantasy RPG set in a world based on Aztec/Mayan/Mesoamerican culture and mythology. Players take on the role of elite Warriors or Priests (or some combination thereof) and pursue glory and prestige for themselves and the ever-hungry gods! I have many of the basics of the game figured out, but there are a few other areas that I am looking for some input/feedback on.

The game works pretty well for players creating and playing their individual characters. However, because this is an Aztec-themed game, war is a very important part of it, so I want to have a really nice, easy-to-use system for representing army/battle scale combats. One of the assumptions I am making is that the PCs will be elites--Jaguar Warriors, Eagle Warriors, Sun Priests, etc--and therefore they will be the ones leading the battles. Specifically, they will each have a unit of soldiers or priests under their command. This avoids the problem of having PCs constantly taking orders from higher-ranking NPCs. The other is that the players should be using the same skills in massed combat as they do in the individual game--I don't want to force them to invest in two separate sets of skills. I've seen some games have a 'Battle' or 'War' skill, and while I'm not completely against the idea of having such a skill I don't want to make that particular skill the center of it, both because I would have to find a legitimate use for it in the individual game and also because I want the two "Scales" of the game to move seamlessly together (after playing a few round on the Battle Scale, the GM might move the game to the individual level to allow the player to personally battle the leader of an enemy unit, for instance).

The solution I've arrived at is to have different sets of Stats for the different Scales of the game--for the individual scale, the PC uses their character's skills (melee weapons, ranged weapons, etc) and pairs them with their character's stats (Strength, Intelligence, etc). For the Battle scale, the PC uses those same skills (melee weapons, ranged weapons, etc) but pairs them with the Unit's stats, which represent the competence and abilities of the men you're leading. That means that, on the Battle scale, the "character" you're playing is the unit that your character is in command of. You can move and take actions just like you would as an individual, but your rolls are based on your Unit's stats, rather than your own personal ones.

An example: if your individual character is walking down the street and gets attacked by some horrible flying monster, he would use his Ranged Weapon skill associated with his character's Perception stat. But if your character was leading his unit in battle and wanted that unit to rain down a hail of arrows on an enemy unit, he would use his Ranged Weapon skill associated with his unit's Archery stat.

At this point, however, I'm not quite sure what stats to give units. Here is what I have so far:

Hand-to-Hand (represents the unit's skills in close up combat)
Archery (represents the unit's skills with ranged weapons)
Scouting (represents the unit's sneaking, spotting, and tracking abilities)
Medicine (represents the unit's ability to render medical aid to other units, "healing" them, as well as the unit's ability to support magic use)
Size (determines how many "hitpoints" the unit has, as well as applying a bonus to the unit's "damage rolls")

Two questions: firstly, what are your thoughts on this way of representing mass combat? Secondly, can you guys think of anything else that might work as stats for a Unit?

Continuing in this line, I thought about extending this idea to reflect town leadership as well, for characters who want to draw upon the resources of their home town, or lead their town on a larger scale. They would still use their character's skills, but the rolls would be associated with the stats of the town.

Here were some ideas I had for town stats:

Farming (the town's agricultural output)
Crafting (the town's ability to make and build things)
Prestige (the town's social rank in comparison with others)
Spiritual (the town's favor with the gods)

Thoughts? And any other ideas for town stats?

[Jason J. Patterson]

Hello, interesting ideas there. I'm talking to someone right now but wanted to link to some things I created for Warhammer that might be useful or help give you inspiration for your game.

http://www.zanysite.com/tabletoprpgfun/downloads/

I can't concentrate enough to post to reply with ideas on your work right now but will try to get back to your post, but hopefully something on my list could be helpful to you.

[Jason J. Patterson]

Looking back over your post, I think your stuff looks relatively solid, as far as it goes, which is why it reminded me so much of what I put together. But mine ws strictly as measures for mass combat and for town info, for when the party was dealing with these things, using a system that already had established statistics, and I just adapted those, so I guess I'm a bit on the vague side as to be able to give advice, as it seems like what is important to the towns and such will likely be more abstracted values of whatever the PCs have to begin with, and vice versa.

[Ron Edwards]

Hiya,

As I posted in the other New Fire thread, these threads cannot continue unless the game author makes some kind of external document available to us as a touchpoint for discussion.

Dr. V, I do appreciate the positive feedback and help you're providing, and I want to jump in too. But let's wait until the game meets the new requirements for this forum before replying further.

[New Fire]

Whew! Sorry for the delay--my website had some technical difficulties to grapple with! Here is a link to the New Fire website: http://newfirerpg.com/

[Simons]

So, effectively each unit becomes a character?  Interesting idea.  The one problem with it is that, presumably, as a unit looses soldiers, it becomes less able to attack, whereas that doesn't typically occur when a character loses health.  I've seen one game that fixed that problem by having 3 levels of stats for their unit (like, between 15 and 11 hp you have this attack, at 10 to 6 you have a weaker attack, and at 5-1 you have a very weak attack).  I guess see what happens when you playtest it.

For unit stats, things look pretty solid.  The two things that jump to mind which are missing are "speed" (unless that is part of scouting), and "discipline."  The first would be important if different characters could move at different rates (although, if this is Aztec, maybe everyone would run at the same speed until Cortez showed up).  The second would signify how likely the group is to panic, become disorganized, and run when hit by a superior force.

Town stats looked pretty good as well.  Technology might be a stat, but that might be somewhere between prestige and craft.  Also, you might have population as a stat (unless that is implied by agriculture).  Last, defenses (in case you try to lay siege to it).  Maybe?  As I said, what you have look pretty good, and you could get away with not altering it.

Simon