Quote Originally Posted by HerbieRAI View Post
I've got a few ideas.

1) No retreat - This isn't too realistic, but basically says that 2 units will fight until one is destroyed. If you have a moral system that would let one side retreat, they are considered destroyed for the current battle and you can probably make a percentage roll of some kind to see how many survive.
A simple morale system should probably be in place, as only undead, constructs and highly trained units (think Spartans) wouldn't start breaking when half their number have died, a smaller percentage for greener troops.

2) One at a time - It's not horrible unrealistic to believe that enemies will target one person in a unit until he is dead then move on to the next one.

3) percentage - When determining casualties, increase each persons hp by a certain amount, then divide the rest of the damage equally. This will add a bit more work for the DM, but isn't impossible. For an example, lets add 50% in the example above. The archers have 16 hp base, so we add another 50% (8hp) giving them a total of 24. For each 24 damage dealt one archer dies, so that would be 4. The rest of the damage would be 100 - 4 * 16 (we go back to the real hp) or 36 damage would be divided equally in the rest of the unit.
Not sure where the extra percentage is coming in unless it's something for Death's Door, which is honestly not that relevant in a skirmish style game, as when you're unconscious, you're as good as dead. One at a time makes the most sense, agreed, though there's something to be said for having facing in this kind of system for determining who takes what damage. It doesn't make sense for the guys in the back of the formation to take damage when the berserkers are only using melee to carve through the front ranks unless they manage to carve their way through and even then, the back rank has probably broken by then, as archers in melee is a real morale breaker. If they didn't break when the berserkers approached, they certainly did when contact was made.