Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Kingdom Building Part 4: Units

Early on in my development of Kingdom Building, I realized that, of my 3 PCs, 2 were very much skill-focused and likely to be very successful in Kingdom building.  However, Prince Oargev was a Paladin with few trained skills and one skill related utility power, and I figured he could use something else to do during Kingdom Building.  It seemed, from that point, that the obvious answer was to give Oargev (and the other PCs, should they wish it) the opportunity to raise armies, units, or other groups and send them to do stuff in their place.


This is what I came up with:

Rule for Units:
Units represent groups of soldiers, adventurers, or other groups that can be commanded to complete tasks on the behalf of the PCs.  They don’t have combat statistics like regular monsters, NPCs or PCs.  They are designed to interact with Policies or Missions.

Competencies:
There are six core Competencies that all units have.  These Competencies are abstractions that represent how good a unit might be in certain types of situations.  Each Competency has a number of related skills.  If a unit is called on the make a skill check (such as when it is Supporting a Policy, it can use this competency modifier in place of a skill modifier.)
Combat: The unit’s ability to fight.  This includes all forms of combat, physical and magical.

Related Skills: Arcana, Athletics, Endurance, Intimidate, Religion
Survival: The unit’s ability to live off the land and endure extraordinary hardships
Related Skills: Acrobatics, Athletics, Endurance, Heal, Nature, Perception
Espionage: The unit’s ability to sneak, set traps, and engage in other clandestine activities.
Related Skills: Acrobatics, Bluff, Diplomacy, Dungeoneering, Stealth, Streetwise, Thievery
Research: What the unit knows and what they can find out.
Related Skills: Arcana, Dungeoneering, Heal, History, Nature, Religion, Streetwise
Observation: How well the unit can perceive and understand the world around it.
Related Skills: Insight, Perception, Stealth, Thievery
Intrigue: The unit ability to negotiate, lie, or engage in other social situations.
Related Skills: Bluff, Diplomacy, History, Insight, Intimidate

The Competency modifier of a Unit is determined by how good a unit is at the particular Competencies.

Specialty: Competency modifier equals ½ level+10 (round down).  At Paragon Tier, and again at Epic Tier, it gains a +3 bonus to this skill check.  
Trained: Competency modifier equals ½ level+2 (round down).  At Paragon Tier, and again at Epic Tier, it gains a +2 bonus to this skill check.  
Untrained: Competency modifier equals ½ level-3 (round down).  At Paragon Tier, and again at Epic Tier, it gains a +1 bonus to this skill check.

I wanted to give Units stats that paralleled the core 6 abilities, but with lots of simplicity. Strength is a PCs ability to exert force on the world, so that became the unit's "Combat" stat. Constitution is a PC's ability to survive, so I converted it to a unit's ability to live off the land and survive in dangerous environments: "Survival." Dexterity is all about a PC's ability to physically manipulate the world, and "Espionage" seemed to be a good equivalent to a unit's ability to break, enter, lie, and steal. Intelligence represents what a PC knows, similarly, "Research" is what a Unit can find out.
Wisdom represents a PC's understanding of the world around him, whereas "Observation" represents a Unit's ability to see what is going on. Finally, "Intrigue" represent's a group's social skills the same way Charisma reflect's a PC's force of personality.
Since I wanted these six Competencies to represent what a unit can do, I didn't want a Unit to be very good at all of them, in order to make for differentiation. I also couldn't always decide where to place each skill. The combination of those two factors led me to include every skill in two different lists.
I am not very happy with the bonus levels as I have them now. I want to keep 3 levels of competency, and I want it to level up fairly linearly. Right now, units pretty much always fail Untrained checks and pretty much always succeed at Specialty checks. This makes finishing a complete mission involving a variety of checks next to impossible. I developed these numbers by looking at the standard Easy, Moderate, and Difficult DCs for each level and subtracting 10 from each DC. Then I tried to make a line-of-best fit equation that fit each progression. I had to use a per-tier boost to make the line fit well. I'd love to get suggestions on how to have 3 levels of skill that will be pretty effective in completing challenges of their level.

Level: All units have a level.  Hero units level up after a number of successful missions equal to their level.  Military Units have a starting level related to their size and can only level up once they become veterans.
Starting Military Level
Level 1: 25-79 troops
Level 2: 80-299 troops
Level 3: 300-2,999 troops
Level 4: 3,000-5,000 troops

     I figured military units probably don't gain a lot of benefit from being very experienced, they get better the BIGGER they are.  Heroes, on the other hand, keep getting better and more deadly.

Special Orders: Most units have special abilities or effects that they can be commanded to utilize.

Stamina: How many failures in missions a unit can sustain before it is broken.
Broken: A unit that has failed a number of Competency checks on missions equal to their Stamina rating is Broken.  The exact definition of “Broken” depends on the mission the unit is attempting when it reaches its final failure.  Removing the Broken condition usually involves completing a Policy or Mission.

Training: Each unit has a certain level of training.  Most units have Standard training.  Some, primarily conscripts and peasants, have Minion training.  The best units have Elite training.

Minion Unit: Stamina is reduced to 1.  
Standard Unit: No modifications to stats.
Elite Unit: +1 to Stamina (after multiplier, if any), +1 to any one Competency.  Elite Military Units may level up as heroes.



Type: There are two types of units, Hero Units and Military Units.

Hero Unit: A small groups of heroes (less than 25 members).  These units have 1 Specialty Competency, 2 Trained Competencies, and 3 Untrained Competencies. They have Stamina equal to their level+2.  They may be issued commands to work on both Policies and Missions.  They level up after completing a number of missions equal to their level.
Military Units: Large army units (25-5,000 troops).  These units have 3 Trained Competencies and 3 Untrained Competencies.  They have Stamina equal to twice their base level.  You must have Military Credentials to send them on missions.  They gain one level when they become “veterans,” completing a number of missions equal to their base level.  This only increases their Stamina by 1.  They may not work on Policies.  


This differentiation show the difference between conscripts (military minions), regular soldiers (military standard), and  the units that DO get better the more they accomplish (military elites).  It also shows the difference between what diverse, small bands of adventurers can do vs. what homogeneous military forces can do.

Unit Actions:
Issue Orders (Standard Action):  You command one non-Broken unit you control and can communicate with to work towards a certain goal until they fail, are successful, or until a period of time you have specified has expired.  Orders you can issue include:
1. Complete a Policy:  Only Hero units can be ordered to Complete a Policy.  Each round, they will attempt either the “Support a Policy” or “Aid Another” action once.  They may only work on policies that have already been started by a PC.  They will always make their check using whichever of the policy’s key skills they have the highest modifier in.  If another PC is attempting this policy with the skill they are using (either Pursue or Support) they will aid another.  Otherwise, they will Support the policy.
2. Attempt a Mission:  The unit will make a number of Competency checks to complete their mission.  They make all of their Competency checks at once, not one per round like Policy skill checks.  Missions are developed in a joint effort of the PC and DM, designing mission parameters and objectives.  If more than one unit has been assigned to a mission, they aid another every Competency check.  The Unit with the highest modifier takes the lead, and all Units with a lower modifier aid them.
Split a Unit (Minor):  You may split a Military Unit into two Military Units of one level lower.  The Unit’s Stamina is reduced by two.  The unit’s Competency modifiers are adjusted accordingly.
Resting (Free):  A unit commanded to not given any commands for a round reduces the number of failures they have suffered by 1 at the end of the round.
Attach to a Unit (Free Action):  As the very first action of a Kingdom Building phase, a PC may decide to attach to a Unit.  This offers some significant benefits to the unit.  Compare the number of the PC’s related skill modifiers that are greater than one of the Unit’s Competency modifier.  The unit gains a bonus to that Competency modifier equal to the number of PC skill modifiers greater that the Unit’s Competency modifier.  Do this for each competency.  The final Competency modifier may not exceed the PC’s highest related skill modifier in that competency.  An attached PC cannot do anything but Issue Orders or Split a Unit.  They may detach as the first action of the following round.

I am not happy with the attachment rules right now. They work, but they take too long to calculate.


Example:
Order of the Prince’s Shield (Standard Level 1 hero unit)
Combat: +2
Survival: -3
Espionage: -3
Research: -3
Observation: +2
Intrigue: +10
STAMINA: 0/3
Special Orders: Social Creatures: You may spend a standard action to throw a banquet for the Order of the Prince’s Shield.  If you do so, reduce the number of Failures they have suffered by two.
Replaceable:  If the Order of the Prince’s Shield is broken, you may reform them by completing the Manage Order of the Prince’s Shield Policy at the level of the broken unit.  They return at the same level as they were before being broken.

Order of the Prince’s Shield (Prince Oargev attached) (Standard Level 1 hero unit)
Combat: +5
Survival: +2
Espionage: +1
Research: +3
Observation: +4
Intrigue: +10
STAMINA: 0/3
Special Orders: Social Creatures: You may spend a standard action to throw a banquet for the Order of the Prince’s Shield.  If you do so, reduce the number of Failures they have suffered by two.
Replaceable:  If the Order of the Prince’s Shield is broken, you may reform them by completing the Manage Order of the Prince’s Shield Policy at the level of the broken unit.  They return at the same level as they were before being broken.

Next time, in Kingdom Building, we'll look at how missions are put together, and later, how I'd use Units and Missions to resolve mass-combat in 4ed.

2 comments:

  1. I was looking back at this article to get a grasp on the consequences of failing a Mission skill challenge. Am I missing the reason that the Order of the Prince's Shield loses Stamina when Prince Oargev is with them personally?

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  2. Failing costs stamina. 0 stamina=failing the mission+Broken. Broken can be all hands dead, complete loss of morale, rebellion against their leader, or anything else appropriate to the situation they lost their stamina to.

    When Prince Oargev is with a unit that is broken, something BAD happens to him too, though I don't intend on killing any PCs permanently in these off-camera excursions.

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