[OOC] Banners & Blood

[dangelo]

Link to the IC thread

Banners & Blood
ooc thread

"A tremendous volume of research indicates that the primary factor that motivates a soldier to do the things that no sane man wants to do in combat (that is, killing and dying) is not the force of self-preservation but a powerful sense of accountability to his comrades on the battlefield."
("On Killing", 1995)

"So many vows . . . they make you swear and swear. Defend the king. Obey the king. Keep his secrets. Do his bidding. Your life for his. But obey your father. Love your sister. Protect the innocent. Defend the weak. Respect the gods. Obey the laws. It's too much. No matter what you do, you're forsaking one vow or the other."
("A Clash of Kings", 1998)

"Here do I swear fealty and service to Gondor, and to the Lord and Steward of the realm, to speak and to be silent, to do and to let be, to come and to go, in need or plenty, in peace or war, in living or dying, from this hour henceforth, until my lord release me, or death take me, or the world end. So say I, Peregrin son of Paladin of the Shire of the Halflings."
(The Return of the King, 1955)

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Spoiler: Big16

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System: 5e
Player Count: 4
Style of Play: Player-driven, open-ended with a clear objective
Allowed Content:

* Anything officially published.
* No UA or Homebrew
* If we get more applicants than spots, I'll prioritize PHB content a as personal preference

Character Creation:

* Everyone gets the Skill Expert feat for free
* At least one Ranger is necessary for the game to work
* A Fighter (Cavalier) is desired, though not mandatory
* Only one spellcaster allowed, maybe two (Paladin and Ranger don't count for this purpose)

Backstory: Just make sure you have solid Personality Traits, Flaws, Ideals and Bonds written on your sheet. That's all I need to motivate your characters and play around with their quirks.
Experience: 5th Level
Wealth: 2 Uncommon Magic Items and whatever mundane items you may want and can carry on you. King Harald provided for you.
Ability Scores: 15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8 (+1 from Skill Expert, +ASI)
Hitpoints/Health: Roll, take Average if it rolls below Average. First one is maxed
Alignment: Any
Other Notes: Your character must remain loyal to King Harald all throughout the story, whether you're a lawful good paladin fighting for honor or a chaotic evil rogue serving the king for coin. One of your characters will be the official commander of these knights (normally a highborn cavalier, but not necessarily), though that's just a formality. In practice, the four of you hold council and debate the best course of action together.

The map is 40 hex wide and each hex represents 6 miles, which means your army can move a total of 4 hexes every day (unless you push into a Forced March). Rivers can be forded, but their hex counts as difficult terrain. Mountain hexes are blocked (There are spots where you can cross, but you gotta scout ahead and find them before you take the army). Forests are difficult terrain, but offer guaranteed concealment against enemy units.

Objetive: You must lead your unit of 300 mounted knights accross the map from West to East. You'll begin at the westernmost point of the map - Going back by ship (the way you came) can be especially dangerous, but quick. Marching north around the mountains would be fast enough, but the area around the King's Road is patrolled by enemy cavalry. Going through mountains and woods would be stealthy and safe, but slow, so it will consume your resources. If you run out of food for the troops, you'll have to raid villages for plunder, which is not dangerous but costs time and announces your position.

Scounting: Whether to find a way through the mountains or just look for enemy scouts, you'll often wanna detatch from the troops and travel as a lighter, stealthier unit. Instead of Random Encounters in a dungeon, there will be issues that must be solved so your army can travel safely: get rid of the minotaur guarding the gate, sabotage enemy troops, convince the druids of those woods to let you pass, etc. Skill checks, roleplay and sometimes battles will determine how fast and how well you solve these issues. Keep in mind you must reach King Harald as fast as possible.

Battles: If you're spotted and intercepted by enemy cavalry, the PCs will face proper enemy champions while the soldiers fight in the background. I'm toying with the idea of giving each player each a few knights to control in certain battles, or to allow you to do special attacks once per encounter, like ordering archers to shoot a volley at a 10-foot radius area and things like that. I'm still on the fence about all this, but I'll make sure not to go overboard with it. Not really trying to turn D&D into a different game.

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Updated map with each biome more clearly defined. I realize villages, mountains and rivers weren't hex-exact and that's kinda important in a hexcrawl.

Mountains are blocked, but can be explored for passages. Woods grant concealment against enemy troops. Villages can be raided and plundered for food, in case you linger too much. King Harald commanded you to kick the villagers out of their houses and send them to the town by Riverlord's Keep, which is Wilhem's capital. You're still burning his crops and breaking his economy, but there's no slaughter. This is heavy cavalry composed of dutiful noble knights.

Crossing rivers:
1. You enter the river hex normally.
2. You decide to cross, and spend 1 hex to do it.
3. You enter the next hex normally.

This is so you can march alongside a river without crossing it, as observed in the example below:

Spoiler

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While the real war is being fought by King Harald to the East, his majesty has sent the PCs ahead of a heavy cavalry unit by ship to create pressure on the opposite side of Wilhem's province. Those ships are still available, and can be sailed up and down the rivers. With good wind, ships will move 8 hexes per day rather than 4. Boarding the ships should cost a hex of movement.

Zoomed-out regional map for clarification:

Player	Character	Race	Class
JNAProductions	Luna Starbright	Half-Elf	Druid 5
samduke	Percilla	Bugbear	Fighter 5
Flashkannon	Ginarie	Drow	Ranger 5
Infernally Clay	Cheshire	Human	Rogue 2/Cleric 3

Welcome to the Riverlands, brave champions! I'm glad to have the four of you along for what I plan to be a short-to-mid term campaign divided in two parts: First, the bulk of the game, is a long march from West to East; The second is a fast-paced dungeon-like experience where your 4 PCs will infiltrate the capital to kidnap King Harald (held hostage in his own castle). The longer you take to return from the Riverlands in the first part, the more complications you will encounter in this second/final part, which means higher encounters with a higher CR and higher chances to die. Tpk becomes a real possibility if you linger too much.

Wargame mechanics:

Spoiler

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Movement
Infantry: 2 hexes per 8 hours of travel
Cavalry: 4 hexes per 8 hours of travel
Ships: Up to 8 hexes per 24 hours of travel

Skirmishing
To skirmish with another unit, the attacker must invade and occupy the same hex as the defender. We roll d6 to determine its outcome: Each result of [6] means one success, and whoever gets more successes wins the skirmish. The loser side can choose to take a Wound to maintain their position, or retreat and lose ground while suffering no penalties.

+1d6 for every 50 soldiers
-1d6 for every Wound

Modifiers:
Favorable terrain: A result of [5] or [6] counts as a success for the defender if they're occupying a hex that's difficult terrain. Attackers can't get that bonus. It's slower to move through difficult terrain, but worth it if you can pick a nice hill and defend it.

Fortified position: The defender gets +2d6 if they're occupying a Fortified hex. Your unit can spend 4 hexes of movement to grant your hex the "Fortified" condition. Anti-cavalry wooden spikes, palisades, trenches and such. You may choose to destroy these fortifications when you leave that hex, or abandon them there for anyone to use.

Morale: If you win 3 skirmishes in a row, your unit gets the "Morale" modifier, which ignores all Wound penalties and lasts until you lose a skirmish (even if you don't take a Wound).

Please introduce yourselves and your characters and provide either a physical description or a reference for their appearance. I'm still gonna need another day (or two) to fine-tune the map, but we can get an intro scene going once everyone is here. Let me know if you have any questions about anything.

Also are you all active discord users? I can set up a small server and send you invites via PM. Though I'd still rather keep all dice rolls in this thread or in a dice thread. Just so it's easier for me to check everything in one place.

[Flashkannon]

Please introduce yourselves and your characters and provide either a physical description or a reference for their appearance. I'm still gonna need another day (or two) to fine-tune the map, but we can get an intro scene going once everyone is here. Let me know if you have any questions about anything.

Also are you all active discord users? I can set up a small server and send you invites via PM. Though I'd still rather keep all dice rolls in this thread or in a dice thread. Just so it's easier for me to check everything in one place.

I, for one, am an active discord user; I'll happily participate in a little server.

As for a self-introduction, I'm Flashkannon, long-time D&D player and long-time but more occasional DM. I used to do 3.5 back in the day, and I've futzed about with a few systems here and there. There are many, especially here on this forum, who spend more time thinking about D&D than I, but I do spend a good amount of time thinking on such. I love a good balance of combat and roleplay, both being separate aspects of the game I greatly enjoy, though I profess not to be a master of either.



As for my character, Ginarie Yl'tizte, she's an underdark expat merc with an affable manner off the battlefield, happy to talk shop, swap stories, or talk about nothing in particular. She loves the stars, fresh fruit, and an unfair fight. She takes things with an easy attitude, unless they get serious for her, personally. She hates windy days, mushrooms, and has learned to tolerate the sun.

In battle, she remains relatively easygoing, but that is overshadowed somewhat by her ruthless tactics. She keeps her bow in one hand, alternating between stabs from her rapier and nocking arrows. She'll never fight fair when she can deny an opponent an advantage, and she prefers to fight in the dark, or, when the darkness is not available, she'll loose the stopper on the bottle she keeps at her hip and let loose a mighty cloud of smoke to cover the battlefield, keeping her opponents blind while she hunts them down with her keen hearing and sixth sense. She's a team player, for what it's worth, and can adjust to the plan if need be, but she's not nearly as effective when she's playing fair.

Below is a quick heroforge I worked up:

[JNAProductions]

I am JNAP. I speak for the Productions. :P
And I feel like you probably have seen me around the forums-I'm literally the 8th most prolific poster on this site!
I'm usually DMing, so it'll be nice to have a chance to get a good old hex crawl in.

Luna is short, especially for someone with elven blood, standing at 5' tall. Her hair is a long, somewhat tangled blonde mess on her head, and her eyes are a cloudy grey.
She greatly prefers to NOT fight-her favorite spells being things like Fog Cloud, Healing Spirit, and Pass Without Trace, all useful for avoiding fights or patching up after, rather than fighting directly.
She's also a very friendly and trusting person, always ready to help others.

[Flashkannon]

I am JNAP. I speak for the Productions. :P
And I feel like you probably have seen me around the forums-I'm literally the 8th most prolific poster on this site!
I'm usually DMing, so it'll be nice to have a chance to get a good old hex crawl in.

That's... actually really impressive. I knew colossus was up there, but my goodness. This'll be my first ever hex crawl, personally.

Luna is short, especially for someone with elven blood, standing at 5' tall. Her hair is a long, somewhat tangled blonde mess on her head, and her eyes are a cloudy grey.
She greatly prefers to NOT fight-her favorite spells being things like Fog Cloud, Healing Spirit, and Pass Without Trace, all useful for avoiding fights or patching up after, rather than fighting directly.
She's also a very friendly and trusting person, always ready to help others.

Ah, Fog Cloud, wonderful! I'm sure she and Ginarie will get along splendidly. Luna actually has a few inches of height on Ginarie, too.

[samduke]

oh interesting I was selected.. for the purpose of choosing text colors I will have Percilla speak in blue

just general commentary: I have known JNAP for a few years, we have had a few games together.

this will be my 3rd hex crawl

I use discord.

Spoiler: percilla image

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let me know if you want something of a backstory

[Flashkannon]

oh interesting I was selected.. for the purpose of choosing text colors I will have Percilla speak in blue

Hmm... maybe Ginarie should be red, perhaps? If we're all doing colors, that is.

Modifiers:
Favorable terrain: A result of [5] or [6] counts as a success for the defender if they're occupying a hex that's difficult terrain. Attackers can't get that bonus. It's slower to move through difficult terrain, but worth it if you can pick a nice hill and defend it.

Actually, I was rereading these - since we're doing Revised Ranger, how does the first bullet point of the Natural Explorer stack up with this? for reference, that reads: "Difficult terrain doesn’t slow your group’s travel." Which... I suppose skirmishes aren't exactly travel. Would Plant Growth be able to create favorable terrain? If I recall correctly, it makes basically doubly difficult difficult terrain.

[dangelo]

"Difficult terrain doesn’t slow your group’s travel." Which... I suppose skirmishes aren't exactly battle. Would Plant Growth be able to create favorable terrain? If I recall correctly, it makes basically doubly difficult difficult terrain.

Difficult terrain doesn't slow your group's travel, but that only works for the adventurer party, and doesn't include the 300 knights under your command.

Plant Growth could be used for that, yes.

I have an IC opening post half-written, but got extra busy with mother's day coming up. Give me til Monday to post it.

[samduke]

Difficult terrain doesn't slow your group's travel, but that only works for the adventurer party, and doesn't include the 300 knights under your command.

Plant Growth could be used for that, yes.

I have an IC opening post half-written, but got extra busy with mother's day coming up. Give me til Monday to post it.

casual reminder to post the link to IC up in the 1st post and then once IC is up put a link back to OOC

[Infernally Clay]

Sorry about taking so long to post.

Cheshire Changeling Rogue 2 / Cleric 3 AC: 18 | HP: 41/41 Spell Slots: 1st: 4/4 | 2nd: 2/2 Spells Prepared: 1st - ???, Charm Person, Disguise Self 2nd - ???, Pass Without Trace, Mirror Image Channel Divinity: 2/2 Harness Divine Power: 1/1 Active Effects: None Concentrating: None Conditions: None

I'll use this as my header.

[dangelo]

IC thread is up!

The red cross marks your position, blue arrows mark Wilhelm's forces. We'll use proper tokens for this, but I'm posting from work now so this is all I could put together. Thanks for your patience!

[samduke]

okay well I am open for suggestions but it looks like a standard pincer maneuver.

I would like to take some of the forces and go south to that port town and maybe meet Wilhelm's forces
before they beach or just north west ish of the town

if we can stop/ defeat them there we can then have access to boats to head east with.

as for Wilhelm's forces that are coming down from the north, they should also be delt with there is a town north of our current position where if we were west of would most likely be a possible spot to battle with them in that area.

without knowing numbers of either force however.. we would need to decide very soon what to do with the 300 that we have. if we have any way of divining their size/strength direction of travel ect.. that would be grand but at our levels I am not sure we have that option.


Question for players is other than movement by warhorse (60ft) do any of you have a faster mode of movement to go act as a scout ?

[dangelo]

Your outriders inform you that at around 600 infantry and 100 cavalry are coming from the north - You don't know how many are coming by ship from the south.

[Flashkannon]

Ah, reading that intro post has me quite excited! Let's get to it!

okay well I am open for suggestions but it looks like a standard pincer maneuver.

I would like to take some of the forces and go south to that port town and maybe meet Wilhelm's forces
before they beach or just north west ish of the town

if we can stop/ defeat them there we can then have access to boats to head east with.

as for Wilhelm's forces that are coming down from the north, they should also be delt with there is a town north of our current position where if we were west of would most likely be a possible spot to battle with them in that area.

without knowing numbers of either force however.. we would need to decide very soon what to do with the 300 that we have. if we have any way of divining their size/strength direction of travel ect.. that would be grand but at our levels I am not sure we have that option.

Hm, to my thinking, I'm not sure we need that, precisely - to defeat them, that is. I'd say we need to avoid being pincered at all costs, and we can likely just juke them. Our knights are mounted, I believe, so to a degree we can outrun the combined infantry and cavalry to the north, unless the cavalry breaks away. It'd be foolish of them, but they could certainly do it. If they do, we can catch and kill them, easy peasy - one hundred versus three hundred. My thought is that we make like we're going to honorably meet them in combat to the north, and then make for the pass in the mountain - likely here:

Spoiler: tall image of map

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If we're uncertain as to the presence of the mountain pass, we can swing through the already thoroughly-intimidated village and get a little more information out of them, and slash or send scouts (perhaps players) ahead to confirm.

For bonus points, it's a classic maneuver to approach and then retreat to split forces for a rout, been used throughout history - it's in the nature of humanity to chase a fleeing target, especially a close one, and if Wilhelm's forces are comprised of a coalition of glory-hungry traitors, I anticipate splitting their forces in this manner to be easy. But if possible, we don't want to have any large-scale conflict on a burned tile where Luna can't use her Plant Growth to give us a tactical advantage. I imagine Plant Growth used in tandem with the Eversmoking Bottle would allow us to fairly easily slaughter that cavalry detachment before they can figure out where the sun went. Still, if they chase us to cut us off, we could try to take them even on burned land, I imagine we could get a reasonable advantage even there.

Question for players is other than movement by warhorse (60ft) do any of you have a faster mode of movement to go act as a scout ?

Not... personally, no. Ginarie gets a +10 bonus on speed on round 1 of any combat, but that hardly counts. I was tempted by Longstrider, but that's better taken by someone who can learn a number of spells higher than their level, i.e. not a Ranger.

Your outriders inform you that at around 600 infantry and 100 cavalry are coming from the north - You don't know how many are coming by ship from the south.

Yeah, we don't want to get caught in the pincer, or allow the combined cavalry-infantry force to catch us. Given that we're the smaller force, it'd be best to evade for now, especially because, barring complications, our mission is just to get to the capital, with as many of our noble knights as we can manage.

Only way the 600 becomes manageable is if we can get to the village hex (difficult terrain, I presume), and fortify it - granting us 8d6 vs their 12d6 with a double chance of a success, which is better than even odds.

[samduke]

agreed on the village idea aspect.. going north to fight them knowing what they have is a slight advantage over the unknown of the ships.

I do worry some on the 600 infantry though as I feel that about 200 or so may be archers.

crossing the river/mountains would be slow and if their forces are close enough they could pepper us with arrows while going through the mountains.

if we had some terrain advantages I would say drop the knights off hidden someplace, then go in as a small force (just the party members) on horseback, stay outside of archer range & try to draw the 100 cavalry off into a chase and then the 300 could come in and flank them that would probably see them totally destroyed with minimum losses from our 300 knights

now if the infantry has no archers - which I doubt - then full on charge through the edges would be best overall as a center charge would see more losses on our knights.

[JNAProductions]

I can Wildshape, so I can BE a horse. And good call on the terrain-Plant Growth can be a heck of an advantage.

[Flashkannon]

I do worry some on the 600 infantry though as I feel that about 200 or so may be archers.

I don't know how relevant archers are mechanically, there's no rules for archers in the little wargame rules section, and you need to be on the same hex to battle, so it might not matter at all.

[dangelo]

Good question. I hadn't thought about archers.

Each hex represents 6 miles, so I don't think an archer-type unit would be able to hit-and-run (or "kite") other units. Instead I'll keep them as narrative flavor, and mechanically they'll just be Infantry

[samduke]

well archers were a factor that I thought about... but okay..

[dangelo]

Apologies, I'll make sure to be more clear about these things in the future. Also I'll give the system another re-read to make sure we're not leaving anything behind.

[samduke]

Apologies, I'll make sure to be more clear about these things in the future. Also I'll give the system another re-read to make sure we're not leaving anything behind.

no problem its been a great while since I have played this format, so I am intuitively default mode normal dnd style game. and I do not remember everything for this format, so you will probably need to at least for me remind me on things.

[Flashkannon]

no problem its been a great while since I have played this format, so I am intuitively default mode normal dnd style game. and I do not remember everything for this format, so you will probably need to at least for me remind me on things.

I believe we are flying by the seat of our pants here, then. Barring rules or situation clarifications, then we have our plan set? We make for the northern contingent, break off to bait their cavalry into following us, then confront them in the village, fortified with Luna's powerful druidic magic. Though... we will just have to hope that there's plants enough left to fuel said magic. Perhaps we cut and run with Ginarie serving as a distraction, if things go south.

[dangelo]

After giving it some thought, I have realized that given the wargame aspect of this campaign, I should be more clear regarding numbers and positions, so here's an updated version of the map.

Keep in mind that ships can move 2-8 hexes per 24h depending on wind and cannot force march, while infantry moves 2 hexes and cavalry moves 4 hexes per 8 hours of travel.

The ship unit is marked as infantry because that's the unit aboard of them.

Spoiler: tall map

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Important disclaimer: Your unit does have ships, in case I wasn't clear about that. You have sailed around the Inner Sea and up the river to attack the Western Riverlands, so they are waiting for you by the river, should you wish to use them.

Also also: I have PM'd you all a link to the discord server.

[samduke]

I believe we are flying by the seat of our pants here, then. Barring rules or situation clarifications, then we have our plan set? We make for the northern contingent, break off to bait their cavalry into following us, then confront them in the village, fortified with Luna's powerful druidic magic. Though... we will just have to hope that there's plants enough left to fuel said magic. Perhaps we cut and run with Ginarie serving as a distraction, if things go south.

I would not retreat south, I would head east through a gap in the mountains if it came to that

[Flashkannon]

I would not retreat south, I would head east through a gap in the mountains if it came to that

Ah, south as in the idiom not the direction - see also, going all pear-shaped, taking a dip, etc.

[samduke]

Ah, south as in the idiom not the direction - see also, going all pear-shaped, taking a dip, etc.

well I actually ment south as in the bottom of the map.. and now that we have a number associated with the ship I have actually changed my opinion and going south seems like a good idea..

still open to suggestions

[Flashkannon]

We coordinated on the discord, and unless Luna or Cheshire want to do something else, I believe we're going to bait out the cavalry, crush it, then make for the mountains.

I'll be drafting that post up today.

[Infernally Clay]

We coordinated on the discord, and unless Luna or Cheshire want to do something else, I believe we're going to bait out the cavalry, crush it, then make for the mountains.

I'll be drafting that post up today.

Sounds very good to me.

[Flashkannon]

Posted! Hope everyone's happy, I left a question at the end, because I dunno if everyone else wants to be part of the force that draws in the cavalry.

[samduke]

Posted! Hope everyone's happy, I left a question at the end, because I dunno if everyone else wants to be part of the force that draws in the cavalry.

I am good with this plan

Well I can hope that was an inspiring speech with a total of 20..