8 May 2013

The 0-Level Man-at-arms

For some reason, D&D has gotten it into its head that men-at-arms would be 0-level. This trope dates back pretty far, and is taken as canon by many.

Let's examine this for a minute, though.

The historical term "man-at-arms" was used to denote a professional cavalryman in full armour. Knights would be an example of a man-at-arms, but many men-at-arms were not knights. In D&D, however, the term tends to be used to refer to any professional soldier, regardless of equipment.

In either case, though, the term refers to a professional.

The idea that a professional solder has the same odds of hitting in combat as an untrained peasant is, frankly, laughable. This professional, in fact, has lower odds of hitting in combat than your fresh-faced 1st-Level Fighter with 0 XP.

In an older edition like BECMI (my old stand-by), a professional soldier with training and experience should probably be around level 3 - greater odds of hitting, and much more survivable than an untrained peasant.

On average, a peasant (AC 9, 1-6 HP, Attack +0) will take around 5 rounds to kill a Level 3 fighter (AC 9, 3-18 HP, Attack +3). The Level 3 fighter will only take around 1 or 2 rounds to kill the peasant. The difference swells, obviously, if you give the man-at-arms armour.

Conclusions? City watchmen, mook guards, anyone with no real training - 0-level or Fighter 1.

Serious men-at-arms, with training and experience? Probably Fighter 3-5.

8 comments:

  1. Can I point out that tradtionally, a level 1 fighter was a veteran?

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    1. What kind of veteran has roughly the same combat ability as a peasant?

      That's my point - calling 0-level's "Men-at-Arms" and calling Fighter 1's "Veterans" just isn't borne out by the numbers.

      A better title for a Level 1 fighter might be "Squire" or "Trainee", judging by their combat power relative to a peasant.

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  2. The only way I was ever able to justify his by using the weapon proficiency rules in AD&D. I always assumed that 0 level humans were only proficient with improvised weapons and such, so they always had a negative modifier to their attack rolls. A 0 level "man-at-arms" had a weapon proficiency, and used the 0 level human chart with no modifier.

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    1. I played "AD&D" (in quotes) in my extreme youth, but really (like I think most people who started with BECMI) I was playing Basic D&D with a touch of AD&D thrown in.

      I toyed with negative modifiers for a while for untrained folks, and I may yet go back to it.

      I could see a Level 1 "Veteran" actually being a veteran if a normal person had a -5 to hit.

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  3. It helps to remember that a "man-at-arms" is supposed to have some sort of training. Thus, they get to use tactics - which the 0-level peasant doesn't. A group working as a tea beat a similar sized and armed group working as a bunch of individuals.

    As well, the 0-level peasant will logically not have any weapon proficiencies and thus have a to hit penalty, while the man-at-arms won't.

    Lastly, various house rules will allow things like shield walls which a peasant can't do.

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    1. Tactics are a separate consideration, I think. I'm talking here about just a stand-up one-on-one fight.

      And weapons proficiencies are a D&D/3E thing, methinks. There's nothing like that in Basic or 0e.

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  4. I don't see how you can separate tactics from combat. The whole idea of tactics is so that you can AVOID a stand-up one-on-one fight. Fighting fair is for people who want to get killed, a competent soldier will ambush, camouflage, sneak, use teamwork, high ground, outnumbering, surprise, flanking and so on.

    Put another way, the 0-level peasant thinks fighting is one-on-one and fair, the 0-level man-at-arms is smart enough not to get themselves into that situation in the first place. An unarmoured peasant with a club may not fear a single man-at-arms very much, but even 50 peasants with clubs should fear 10 men-at-arms very much. That's because 10 men-at-arms will be a team working together with a plan, while the 50 peasants are just a mob. Tactics turn a crowd into a unit.

    Weapon proficiencies are an AD&D1e thing (in any case it doesn't matter what is in which edition since your blog is about your making your own edition). A fighter begins with so many, and gains one every so many levels, a magic-user less of each. Absent being proficient in a weapon, you have a malus to hit.

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    1. "I don't see how you can separate tactics from combat. "

      Like this: consider a peasant with a club is fighting a man-at-arms with plate and mail and a longsword.

      If that fight doesn't play out with the man-at-arms winning 998/1000 battles, your combat system is fundamentally broken.

      " The whole idea of tactics is so that you can AVOID a stand-up one-on-one fight. "

      This has nothing to do with a combat system, though, so is not relevant to a discussion about how a combat system models men-at-arms.

      "Fighting fair is for people who want to get killed, a competent soldier will ambush, camouflage, sneak, use teamwork, high ground, outnumbering, surprise, flanking and so on. "

      And a competent soldier, well-equipped, will know that they can annihilate an ignorant, poorly-equipped peasant with little or no personal risk.

      You left out one of the most important military tactics (maybe the most important) - defeat in detail.

      That's where you bring overwhelming force to bear on an inferior force. Man-at-arms vs. peasant is defeat in detail on the micro level.

      "An unarmoured peasant with a club may not fear a single man-at-arms very much,"

      They may not, but that doesn't change the fact that they will most certainly lose that combat.

      "even 50 peasants with clubs should fear 10 men-at-arms very much."

      This I'm not so sure about. If the peasant's morale holds (say, they're fighting raiders attacking their homes), I would wager they would carry the day, but with heavy casualties.

      Simply surround the knights, and mob them. You don't need tactics in that fight - sure, some of you will get sliced on the way in, but there's no way the knights could kill 4 guys each before the mob bore them to the ground.

      Numbers count for one hell of a lot, and that's one thing D&D doesn't account for at all - it's no harder to defend yourself against five men than one. This is obviously ludicrous.

      A skilled swordsman could easily take on one peasant, two with some small difficulty. Five would be more or less impossible.

      But I'll put this to you, since this is the case you seem to be arguing:

      Taking armour out of the equation for a second, do you really think that fight between a peasant with no training or experience, and a man-at-arms with 10 years of training and 3 battles under his belt would come down to a 5% advantage for the man-at-arms?

      Should that battle really come down to basically a flip of a coin?

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