Battle Groups
Systems and Conflict: Glossary | General Structure | Combat | Complications | Battle Groups | Social Influence | Disease | Crafting
Battle Groups
Storyteller Advice: Resolving Battles
While the decisive/withering attack division is an abstraction and doesn't represent different sorts of attacks within the Exalted game setting, Initiative is an abstraction of something that is more measurable— who's pressing the advantage in a fight. Observant combatants can usually tell when they're in trouble, or when they’ve got an opponent on the ropes.
Most combatants in the world of Exalted aren't fanatics— they're soldiers doing their job to make a living or because they didn't seem to have any other course to follow in life, or they're thugs hoping for an easy mark, or they're heroes with ambitions they hope to live to fulfill. While life is cheap and death is common in the Age of Sorrows, few people want to fight to the death if it means their own death. As a result, it's worth keeping the withdraw, go to ground, and surrender actions in mind. Once it becomes clear that a fight can't be won, or that the cost of doing so is unacceptably high, many opponents will attempt to lay down arms and beg for mercy or to simply run.
Players have no obligation to let their characters' enemies get away or to accept a surrender, but actions build reputations. Those said to be bloodthirsty and merciless can often expect no mercy on the day they find themselves outmatched.
Bands of mountain bandits. Mobs of angry rioters. Squads of hired mercenaries. Vast armies. The Wyld Hunt itself. Sometimes battles in the world of Exalted consist of only a tiny handful of heroes, but more often they feature a great many combatants, far too many for it to be practical to keep track of each fighter's traits individually. These mobs, gangs, and armies are represented by battle groups.
Battle groups are an abstraction used whenever there are more than two combatants on the battlefield who are reasonably similar to one another in terms of capabilities and equipment, who aren't especially noteworthy to the story as individuals, and who aren't potent supernatural beings such as Exalts. Battle groups can represent small groups, such as a squad of a dozen of the Tri-Khan of Chiaroscuro's palace guards, or vast forces such as 1,000 men-atarms riding to war.
Simply put, a battle group is treated as a character with the traits of the average combatant making up the group, plus a few other traits which modify these capabilities.
Quick Overview
Before we get down to details, here's a basic idea of how a battle group works: A battle group is a group of fighters who are mechanically represented as one character. A group of soldiers, for example, is basically a single soldier, except this soldier gets a number of bonuses to his attack, damage, soak, and Defense based on his battle group traits. He always uses withering attacks against you (which start inflicting Health Track damage once you run out of Initiative). By contrast, your withering attacks don't take his Initiative, but instead directly damage his "Health." He's got a special Health Track (called a Magnitude Track) that can absorb a lot of punishment, and it's likely that a battle group will break and run before being totally destroyed— whenever you empty the Magnitude Track, there's a chance they'll flee or surrender. If they don't, their Magnitude refills, but their combat bonuses become weaker, and it gets harder for them not to rout next time they run out of Magnitude.
Battle Group Traits
There are only four differences between a solo character's traits and those of a battle group: battle groups have three special values that individual heroes don't (Size, Drill, and Might), and instead of a Health Track, they have a Magnitude Track.
Size
Size is simple—it measures how big a battle group is, in terms of how many fighters are in it. The greater a battle group's Size, the harder it hits and the tougher it is; Size is the single greatest source of a battle group's power. Battle groups enjoy a bonus to their attack rolls, raw damage, Magnitude (see below), and soak equal to their Size. Thus, a Size 3 battle group adds +3 to its attack pools, +3 to its raw damage, +3 to its soak, and has 3 extra points of Magnitude.
Size 0: One or two fighters. These should be modeled as individual combatants, not as a battle group. Any battle group reduced to Size 0 through Magnitude loss effectively ceases to exist—all of its members are either dead, fled, or surrendered.
Size 1: A small group: a half-dozen thugs in an alley, a fang of Realm legionnaires, a bar brawl, ten Dune People lying in wait beneath the sand. A dozen or fewer combatants.
Size 2: A modest group: a late-night lynch mob, a scale of Realm legionnaires, a Harborhead war-band, an aristocrat's house guard. Several dozen combatants.
Size 3: A moderate group: a mercenary company, a talon to a wing of Realm legionnaires, a sweeping riot, a war band of the Fair Folk. Over a hundred combatants.
Size 4: A large group: a mercenary army, a dragon of Realm legionnaires, an entire Delzahn clan and its bannermen rallied to war, most of a small town slain and raised as the undead soldiers of an Abyssal. Several hundred combatants.
Size 5: A full army: two dragons of Realm legionnaires, a barbarian horde, a city-annihilating plague of fae or undead. Over a thousand combatants.
If appreciably more than a Size 5 battle group worth of combatants are present, they are represented by creating an additional battle group (or groups). 20 extra combatants are a drop in the bucket, but if an extra 300 are present, that's worth starting up a second Size 3 battle group.
Drill
While the traits of the average character making up a battle group determines the quality of the group overall, Drill measures how well the combatants within that group work together. In mass combat, Drill is one of the most important traits a group of fighters can have. It represents hours of training and familiarity—the ability to know what the soldier to the left or right of you will do at any given moment because you've been through these maneuvers with them countless times. Well-drilled units hold together better in the face of sudden catastrophe, respond more readily to orders, and are generally much more difficult to defeat than low-Drill units of greater Size. As a result, Drill modifies rout rolls (p. 208), provides modifiers to command actions (p. 209), and enhances a unit's Defense. In short, high-Drill battle groups are tougher to defeat, and respond better to commands.
There are three categories of Drill:
Poor—A unit with poor Drill has no training in fighting together, or no capability for such training. This is the Drill quality of rioting mobs, of impromptu peasant conscripts tossed directly into battle, of most village militias, of many bandits, of raiders who fight without any sort of coordination, of groups of experienced fighters brought together without any particular familiarity with fighting alongside one another, and of mindless undead.
Poor-quality battle groups inflict a -2 penalty to order and rally for numbers actions (p. 210), do not modify their Defense, and raise the difficulty of all rout and rally rolls by 1.
Average—A battle group with average Drill has some training fighting together, either in the field or through extensive training and practice. In a fight, they know what to do and they move with ease and precision. The majority of military forces in the world of Exalted have average quality Drill. This covers standing armies, common mercenary groups, well-trained guards, Guild caravan security, and the war-bred minions of the Fair Folk.
Average-quality battle groups inflict no penalty to command rolls and enjoy a +1 Defense bonus.
Elite—Elite battle groups have drilled extensively with one another, and have probably gone through a number of battles together. The members of the battle groups often eat, sleep, and relax together, and spend far more time honing their skills as a group than the average band of soldiers. As a result, these battle groups are often small, prestigious units or semi-religious orders. The Realm's elite Imperial Guard, Harborhead's Brides of Ahlat, the warrior-brotherhoods of Medo, and the very best mercenary companies employed by the Guild are all elite-quality battle groups.
Elite-quality battle groups add a +2 bonus to command rolls and enjoy a +2 Defense bonus.
Might
Might is an uncommon trait in the Age of Sorrows, measuring the supernatural power of a battle group. A battle group only possesses might if the average member composing it is supernaturally powerful in some martially relevant fashion. As a result, the overwhelming majority of battle groups have Might 0; very few battle groups with Might above 2 have been fielded since the founding of the Realm. Might goes from 0 to 3, and adds to the accuracy, damage, and Defense of a unit.
Might 0: The Might rating of battle groups primarily composed of ordinary mortals. This rating has no effect on the battle group's traits.
Might 1: The Might rating of battle groups lightly touched by the supernatural or whose members are slightly superhuman. This is the Might rating of groups of beastfolk and martially-enhanced Wyld mutants, or units which fight under divine blessings of a martial nature—something only very potent spirits are able to grant to battle groups above Size 2.
Might 1 bestows a +1 bonus to accuracy and damage and a +1 bonus to Defense.
Might 2: The Might rating of battle groups composed primarily of supernaturally potent beings, such as lesser spirits. This is the rating of groups made up of first circle demons, war ghosts, or lesser elementals, as well as the armies of the Fair Folk.
Might 2 bestows a +2 bonus to accuracy and damage and a +1 bonus to Defense.
Might 3: This is the Might rating of battle groups composed of Terrestrial Exalted or similarly potent beings. Such battle groups have rarely been seen since the First Age—in the Age of Sorrows, such beings simply don't gather in sufficient numbers to require abstract representation, and are almost always depicted as individual heroes, even when three or more are present.
In the event that such a battle group appears, Might 3 bestows a +3 bonus to accuracy and damage and a +2 bonus to Defense.
Fighting Battle Groups
Noncombatants and Trivial Opponents
Not everyone on a battlefield is necessarily a combatant. Fights sometimes break out when individuals are present who have no meaningful combat capabilities and no real interest in fighting. Such individuals are considered bystanders, or noncombatants. For the most part, they're scenery—screaming crowds, panicked partygoers, confused shoppers in a Nexus market. Most notably, noncombatants have a permanent Initiative rating of 0 and cannot yield Initiative when targeted by withering attacks; if it becomes important to resolve an attack against a noncombatant for some reason, treat them as a Size 0 battle group—withering attacks simply inflict damage directly to their Health Track. Generally, though, this shouldn't be necessary—bystanders are mostly there to provide stunt opportunities for the players' characters and their opponents.
For games featuring particularly powerful and experienced characters, certain combatants might also be declared trivial opponents. A trivial opponent is a character vastly less powerful than other combatants on the battlefield—for example, a single mortal soldier of ordinary skill on a battlefield where every other fighter is a Fair Folk noble or Celestial Exalt. Any opponent the Storyteller decides is trivial is treated as a noncombatant, using the rules above; they have some slight chance to wound or impede the heroes around them, but thwarting such a minor adversary offers no meaningful opportunity to shift the initiative of the battle overall.
To keep things straightforward, fighting a battle group in most ways resembles fighting an ordinary character with its traits inflated a bit by Size, Drill, and possibly Might. There are a few key differences, detailed below: Making Attacks: Battle groups can only launch withering attacks. While these can damage a target's Initiative as usual, the lost Initiative is not gained by the battle group—it vanishes. Any damage the battle group inflicts against a target that has fallen into Initiative Crash, however, is instead applied directly to the target's Health Track as bashing or lethal damage, whichever is appropriate to the standard armament of the battle group.
Battle groups never enjoy the Double 10s rule on damage rolls.
Area Attacks: Like other characters, battle groups can only make a single attack on their turn, but these are often large attacks, consisting of hundreds of flashing blades or sheets of arrows darkening the sky. As a result, when a battle group makes a close-ranged attack, it makes a single attack roll and applies that roll's results to all enemies in direct contact with the group (depending on the battle group's Size, this could potentially cover a considerable area). When a battle group makes a ranged attack, it must select a single primary target for the attack. If this target is another battle group, the attack resolves normally; if it's an individual, then the attack is also applied to all other individual characters (friendly or hostile) within close range of that target. Huge mobs of archers make poor precision snipers.
Inert Initiative: Because battle groups can't make decisive attacks and can't take Initiative from other characters, their Initiative rating is used entirely to determine when the group takes its turn during each round. On the other hand, all withering attacks launched against a battle group instead directly damage its Magnitude (see below). Successful withering attacks directed against a battle group still generate one automatic point of Initiative for the attacker.
Magnitude and Damaging Battle Groups: Battle groups don't have Health Tracks. Instead, they have a number of points of Magnitude equal to the number of health levels contained in the Health Track of the average fighter in the group (usually seven), plus their current Size.
Withering attacks directed against a battle group are resolved normally, save that their damage is applied to the group's Magnitude rather than its Initiative. Decisive attacks directed against a battle group also resolve normally, save that they, too, are applied to its Magnitude, and inflict one additional level of automatic damage per four damage dice rolled (round up).
When a battle group loses all of its Magnitude, it must check for rout (see below). If the battle group survives its rout check, its Magnitude rating re-fills completely, and it loses a point of Size. Any damage in excess of the unit's Magnitude Track during a rout check ‘rolls over' into the new Magnitude Track—it's even potentially possible for a strong enough attack to fill up this new track immediately, forcing another rout check!
It's important to understand what Magnitude damage represents. Partially, it means dead or unconscious fighters, but it also represents damage to the group's morale— having the allies on either side of you cut down tests a person's resolve to stand and keep fighting, despite the dangerous likelihood that you may be next; in fact, without your fellows-at-arms, you're more likely to be next. Thus, Magnitude damage is a mixture of incapacitated combatants and those who have lost the will to fight, or have stopped fighting effectively.
If a character causes a battle group to lose a point of Size or to dissolve, she gains an Initiative Break bonus (p. 193), just as though she'd sent an opponent into Initiative Crash.
Damage and Rout: Few large-scale battles end when all the soldiers of one side kill all the soldiers of the other side. At some point in almost every battle, one side breaks, and soldiers begin to flee, or if that is impossible, to cast down their weapons and attempt to surrender. These moments when a battle group's will is tested are known as rout checks.
A rout check occurs whenever a battle group's Magnitude Track fills up with damage and it loses a point of Size. Having so many of its soldiers whittled away causes the group to hesitate, and there's always the danger that this hesitation could spread into full-blown panic and retreat—a sufficiently daunting assault by a small, elite group may even cause a vastly superior force to panic and collapse into disorder.
A rout check is normally a Willpower roll, using the Willpower rating of the average fighter in the battle group, as modified by the unit's Drill. The difficulty of a rout check begins at 1, but may be modified in a number of ways:
| Difficulty | Condition Modifier |
|---|---|
| +1 | Another allied battle group has already suffered dissolution during the fight. |
| +1 | One or more of the battle group's leaders or heroes have been incapacitated or killed during the battle. |
| +1 | per point of Size the battle group has already lost during the scene. |
| +1 | The rout check is provoked by a devastating supernatural area-of-effect assault such as the spell Death of Obsidian Butterflies. |
If the rout check succeeds, the battle group loses a point of Size and restores all points of Magnitude. If it fails, the battle group suffers dissolution on its next turn and attempts to surrender or run—either way, it's no longer a meaningful participant in the battle.
Taking Actions: Battle Groups may take most of the same actions as normal characters. Notably, they can't take grapple actions. Rather than grappling, battle groups may take ”Engage” actions, in which the battle group swarms the target, encircles him, or otherwise pins him down with force of numbers. Engage works the same way as a grapple, with the following exception: no Initiative roll is required to confirm the action (the gambit automatically succeeds, deducting an appropriate Initiative cost), savaging and control rolls use the group's standard armament and combat Ability rather than unarmed attacks, and the restrain/drag and throw options aren't available. Engage is primarily useful for pinning an enemy in place and preventing movement.
Battle Groups and Movement
Battle groups use the same movement system as individual heroes, but they take up a lot more space than a single person does. Depending on their Size, they can be truly enormous, potentially covering hundreds of yards of ground.
As a general rule, a battle group can direct attacks with its full strength at any character or group within range of any edge of the group. Also as a result of this enormous size, individual characters are capable of moving through the space occupied by a battle group, crossing it as difficult terrain at a cost of 1 Initiative per round spent doing so (battle groups can't move through one another). Storytellers must use common sense when deciding what sort of positioning-based actions to allow individual characters to take—two characters at close range to a 500 man battle group on opposite sides of it, for example, may well be at long range with regard to one another.
Battle groups can potentially spread out to cover truly enormous amounts of ground, allowing them to direct close-range attacks at a greater variety of characters, but if the members of the group spread out so much that the average space between group members is 10 yards or more, the group loses all Size advantages to its attacks.
Battle groups don't need to take disengage actions to move away from opponents two or more points of Size smaller than themselves.
Command Actions
Battle groups are mostly self-contained and self-directed entities, under the Storyteller's control—even battle groups allied with or “owned by” players' characters. Sometimes, however, individual heroes wish to exercise more direct command over a battle group. This is done with command actions.
To issue a command action, a character must be either the recognized leader of a battle group—such as the boss of a gang or the commander of an army—or must be a known hero to the members of the group, whom they would be willing to trust and rally around in the midst of battle.
A command action is a one of three different combat actions: Either an order, a rally, or a rally for numbers. None can be placed in a flurry. In order to direct command actions to a battle group, a character must have some way of making himself understood—shouting to subordinate officers from the front of battle, using signal relays from a back-line command post, and battlefield magic are the most common methods.
Issuing an order is a ([Charisma, Appearance, or Intelligence] + War) roll against difficulty 1. Intelligence is used by rear line characters who are not actively participating in the battle, generally characters protected somewhere behind the battle group they're issuing orders to. Charisma and Appearance are used to lead from the front, by characters actively participating in the battle. Charisma directs troops through impromptu speeches and valorous exhortations, while Appearance leads by example, such as charging at the enemy while calling for troops to follow. An order action both determines what the targeted battle group will do on its next turn and adds its successes to the battle group's dice pools for all actions taken during that turn.
Rally actions can be taken after an allied battle group has failed a rout check, but before dissolution occurs (remember, a battle group dissolves on its next turn after it fails a rout check). They effectively give a unit a second chance to rally back. A rally action is a (([ Charisma or Appearance] + War) roll, against the same difficulty as the failed rout check. If the rally action succeeds, then the targeted battle group recovers as though it had succeeded at its rout check.
Finally, a rally for numbers action can be taken after the Battle Group has suffered Magnitude damage, to stiffen the resolve of hesitating soldiers or to call warriors who have begun to break formation and flee back to battle. It is a ([Charisma or Appearance] + War) roll against difficulty 1. Every two successes rolled restore one point of Magnitude. Rallying for numbers can't give a battle group more Magnitude than its current maximum rating, nor can it restore a lost point of Size—that can only be done by recruitment or rounding up deserters after the battle. A battle group can only benefit from one rally for numbers action per battle, though losing a point of Size resets this limit.
Why Battle Groups?
Lone heroes fighting many times their number in nameless lackeys is a staple of many of the sources Exalted draws on. Additionally, because of the scope of martial conflicts often present in Exalted, it's impractical to depict each soldier in a war scene individually. Battle groups satisfy the demands of both huge-scale mass combat scenes and more modestly scaled scenes where the heroes smash up two dozen thugs in a furious display of their martial prowess.
The astute may wonder if it wouldn't be more useful to divide, say, a Size 5 group up into ten Size 3 groups, netting ten attacks per round instead of one stronger attack. However, battle groups are a gameplay abstraction, and military minds within the world of Exalted don't plan wars around the battle groups system. Battle groups are there to reduce the Storyteller's workload, and splitting 1,000 soldiers (one thing for the Storyteller to keep track of) into ten 100-fighter groups (10 things for the Storyteller to keep track of) defeats that purpose.
The only time similar mobs of fighters should be represented as separate battle groups is if they are so widely separated geographically (two units of infantry fighting at opposite ends of a mile-long valley) that it becomes impractical and implausible to combine them. Otherwise, don't split battle groups into smaller units for greater offensive power.
Complications
There are two additional factors to consider when using battle groups:
Perfect morale: Some rare battle groups possess a quality called perfect morale. A battle group with perfect morale is made up of fighters incapable of fear. Such a group automatically succeeds at all rout checks, and simply will not retreat unless ordered to do so. Fearless battle groups enjoy a +3 bonus to their Magnitude, but cannot benefit from rally for numbers actions (since all of their casualties represent fighters killed or injured too badly to continue fighting).
The most common groups with perfect morale seen in the Age of Sorrows are mindless undead, although legends of the First Age speak of fearless groups of clockwork legionnaires and similar wonders of mystic artifice. If such a force could be excavated and restored to working order in the Second Age, it would be a treasure beyond price.
Slaughter: While a battle group that has suffered rout and dissolved is no longer a meaningful actor in battle, the surviving fighters that made up the group still exist— they're usually either laying down arms or running away from the fight in an uncoordinated manner. In the latter case, if allowed to escape, they may very well re-form and offer battle again at a later date. As a result, the standard military response to a rout is to run down the fleeing survivors and slaughter them.
This gruesome practice consists of simply directing attack actions at the fleeing battle group, which suffers a -3 penalty to its Defense. As the group no longer has any Magnitude, the Storyteller simply looks at the damage inflicted and the number of fleeing soldiers, and estimates what it amounts to in terms of dead enemies—the more damage, the more carnage inflicted against the routing battle group.
Of note, if the fleeing group is of a Size greater than 2, then only other battle groups can generally attempt slaughter attacks against it—an individual hero just can't cut down enough fleeing soldiers to make much of a dent in a 600-man retreat, at least not without powerful magic such as battlefield sorcery.
Strategic Warfare
Long before armies and heroes clash on the field of battle, the strategies of their generals shape the conflict to come.
What follows is a simple system for strategic conflict for use whenever a battle between two military forces is imminent. This is intended to shape the clash of armies—it's not intended to be used by a Circle of Solars preparing to fight a Circle of Abyssals, or for any similarly small-numbers conflicts.
Overview
This is how strategic conflict works:
- The strategic decision-maker (generally a general or strategos) for each side decides upon a desired stratagem.
- The players of each involved general tally up any advantages they may have that would provide modifiers to their attempt to implement their strategy.
- The players make a opposed (Intelligence + War) Strategic Maneuver roll. If one side or the other manages to triumph, then the battle that follows plays out according to the terms of the stratagem they've selected.
- The battle is then played out in the combat system as usual, subject to the selected stratagem.
Potential Modifiers
The following is a list of potential modifiers to the Strategic Maneuver roll. This list is not intended to be exhaustive—the Storyteller should feel free to add additional modifiers if they seem appropriate.
| Modifier | Condition |
|---|---|
| -1 | General knows nothing at all about opposing general. |
| -1 | General knows little to nothing about the forces he is to face. |
| -1 | General commands troops with poor Drill. |
| +1 | General has extensively studied his opponent's past strategies. |
| +1 | General has spies and informants within the enemy's ranks. |
| +2 | General has a high-placed traitor within enemy ranks. |
| +1-3 | The players have roleplayed one or more scenes in which they obtained some concrete advantage over the enemy or harmed the enemy army (stealing its secrets, devastating its supply lines, killing a famous hero of the opposing forces, etc). |
Potential Stratagems
What follows is a list of potential stratagems. Each has a listed threshold—a number of successes by which the opponent's Strategic Maneuver roll must be exceeded in order to successfully implement the stratagem. If you roll more successes than your opponent, but fail to accumulate enough to implement your stratagem, then the battle simply occurs with no stratagem in place and no particular advantage accorded to either side.
Back to the Sea (threshold: 1): The victorious general confronts his enemy on terrain that makes escape or retreat impossible. The enemy may literally have his back to the sea, or might be forced to fight at the edge of a cliff or river, or inside of a box canyon, or similar environment. The enemy force cannot take withdraw actions; Size loss indicates massive deaths or surrenders rather than soldiers fleeing the battlefield, so that later regrouping and recovery becomes vastly more difficult if not impossible. Slaughter actions are vastly more effective than normal. Rally for numbers actions require three successes per point of Magnitude restored.
Strategic Placement (threshold: 1): The victorious general forces the fight to occur somewhere advantageous by dint of its nature—generally this is used by Fair Folk strategoi to force their opponents to pursue them into the bordermarches of the Wyld, or by Abyssal Exalted to force confrontations inside shadowlands. This stratagem offers no mechanical advantage in and of itself—it's up to the general to have a battle strategy in mind to exploit the ground she's chosen.
Demoralized (threshold: 2): The victorious general demoralizes his enemy's forces before the battle begins. Perhaps their supply lines have been ravaged and they must fight hungry; perhaps vengeful ghosts have been sent to haunt their camps. In any event, the enemy takes a -1 penalty on all rout checks and all command actions.
Fortifications (threshold: 2): The victorious general leaves her enemy with no choice but to confront her on a battlefield she's prepared in advance to confound her foes. This may be an entrenched camp on a hill surrounded by palisades of stakes, or it may mean street-to-street fighting in a city where the victorious force has prepared avenues of swift movement with which the enemy is unfamiliar; it may even indicate warfare across a series of collapsible trenches. In any event, the opposing force begins the fight at long range, and treats the entire battlefield as difficult terrain, whereas the victorious force treats the battlefield as normal terrain.
Ambush (threshold: 3): The victorious general tricks his enemy into a trap, joining battle when it is least expected! All attacks launched by his forces during the first round of combat are considered ambush attacks. All attacks launched by his forces in the following 3 rounds are considered surprise attacks.
Pincer Attack (threshold: 3): The victorious general arrays her forces to attack her opponent on several fronts simultaneously. The enemy force is considered to suffer a -1 onslaught penalty throughout the entirety of the battle.