Macro-Monstrosities of Whitehack pt.1
A brief preface: Whitehack is an indie TTRPG built off the original edition of The Most Popular Roleplaying Game(tm) but doesn't let that limit it. It's genre agnostic (to a point), incredibly simple, and incredibly powerful. I heavily recommend it if you want a light-weight rules system. This will deal with a singular aspect of the game.
Alright, hear me out: maybe using macro-characters could help make RPG mass-combat viable again (not a PIA). Think about it, that where the hobby started after all, and individual combat is just an intersquad fight. But what happens when you want to get bigger? Well we have macros and scale for one and we also have officers. So lets break it down.
If you have your character at the head of a squad of ragtag followers it's probably just better to break down combat into phases (ex: declaration, magic, ranged, move, melee) but what happens when you have say: a platoon or company? We'll follow this wizards and muskets world just for variety.
The standard organizational level on the field should be a scale 0 macro, got it? Good. Why is it randomly generated? Reasons can be anywhere from officer competency, to disease, to how well they were first supplied. Congrats now all you have to do is adjust the scale of combat time and map scale and there you go, easy 1x1 army groups as macros.
But what about wizards and the wise? Now this is where things get weird. On the individual level, our little platoon is a 10x2 enemy that has 1 attack at turn that does 10d6 at say 150ft range. Think about some popular spells from other games, even some of those really big spells only really threaten half that group. For the wise to be using magic they should be their own battle group of wizards firing volleys or pooling their health together to upcast a mass sleep spell (and this is why an individual player may be small to bug size in the face of 100 angry fellas.)
Now here's the tricky part. Officers aren't usually the best, they're either born into it or buy into it, for these guys roll a save after a crit to see if they fall in battle. But what about you? This is honestly up to the GM, at platoon level it might be a more powerful attack, maybe d6+2, at the company level? Not so much (￣ ￣|||) (yeah I know breaking this to players sucks.) PCs are assumed to fall or be captured last, if you want to be more deadly about it assume you can get downed by that lucky shot from earlier.
Troop quality is also dependent on level. A higher level unit is made of veterans and, at lower levels of organization at least, have more competent and wizened officers and NCOs. They should have a morale score or make a charisma or will save of some sort in case they meet a situation that calls for it like damage or mass illusions. Money at this level is handled in thousands so keep that in mind if a PC is fronting the cash for upgraded gear; 2000 cr just gives a platoon the muskets going by ROW.
This is where good judgement needs to be practiced. How does cavalry move? Can they do a passing attack? Can they do a split-move ranged attack? How do they get stuck in? Eventually you will get questions like this that the standard classes will no be able to cover and the GM will have to make a call. Whatever they decide here will be a new rule going forward so please workshop the rules first.
And that's it. :P Well not really, this is just humanoid v. humanoid and not Giants & Guard Regiments. Eventually something will get me to think at this scale again! So uh good luck with the rest of that till then!
Piqu signing off ∑d(°∀°d)
