Behind the Curtain: Against the Undead, Part I – Lex, Severance, and the Ghoul Army · 11:54pm Jun 24th, 2018
Spoiler alert for chapter 241 - Full Potential and chapter 242 - Breaking Point.
A major aspect of Lateral Movement – one that I've spoken about many times before, both in this blog and in the comments of the story – is how much of it is based on the d20 System rules. Monsters are drawn from various game bestiaries, characters have stat blocks representing what they can do, magic items can be expressed in game terms, etc. Strictly speaking, everything that happens in the story could, at least in theory, be represented at the game table.
This includes the sequence where Lex and a small number of ponies stand against an army of ghouls that number in the thousands.
That particular part of the story requires some additional explanation, however. We see Lex using his magic, the terrain, and most of all Severance to mow down ghouls by the score, inflicting hundreds of losses on them while taking virtually no damage himself...at least until his endurance finally gives out, due to wounds he sustained fighting Xiriel, a belier devil, and from several self-inflicted injuries due to his utilizing magic beyond what his body can handle. Even then, Severance keeps fighting (albeit not as adroitly), while Lex and co. deal with the few ghouls that slip by the scythe. So what would that look like in game terms?
Well, while we could say that it was just the usual d20 combat sequence of characters taking on enemies, albeit with an unusually large number of enemies, that explanation doesn't fit very well. Mostly, it doesn't account for the sheer level of power that Severance displays, downplays (somewhat) the degree to which the terrain and Lex's spellcasting was able to help shape the scope of the battle, and isn't very artful in its idea of representing each ghoul individually. While you could kludge together a way to do this under the standard d20 combat rules, it wouldn't be very artful.
Fortunately, there's a better way: Pathfinder's mass combat rules.
Now, I say "better way," and it is, but Pathfinder's mass combat rules are still less than ideal. The major issue is that some of their presumptions about representing an army in game terms break down (again, somewhat) when representing a single individual as an army. They do allow for one-man armies, of course, but the abbreviated mechanics used for armies mean that a lot of things that are salient for individual characters at the "tactical" level (i.e. the small-scale skirmish level of combat that the d20 System typically focuses on) are suddenly irrelevant at the mass combat level. Depending on what's being looked at, that's can be either advantageous or disadvantageous for a particular character. So let's get into the specifics regarding just what happened during that particular sequence of Lateral Movement.
Battlefield Statistics
The first thing to do is define the scope of the actual area of combat itself. In this case, the fight is taking place at night with only some campfires spread around to illuminate things. Further, Sonata has led a team of ponies to dig enough holes to make the terrain less than ideal, which Lex then enhanced by covering up with a large tent canvas. That gives us the following:
Battlefield Conditions: Advantageous terrain (defenders gain +2 DV), dim light (-1 OM to all armies that don’t have darkvision).
Now we come to the actual combatants themselves, as represented by their army stats. One thing that needs to be made clear, however, is that extraneous materials have been removed from these stat blocks. Specifically, none of the armies listed below bother with a Speed or Consumption listing. The former statistic is only to measure an army's overland movement across a period of days, which doesn't really matter here, while the latter (despite how it sounds important for the army of starving ghouls) is a measurement of how much it costs to fund a standing army on a weekly basis, which is likewise irrelevant. On a similar note, a "Preferred Strategy" line has been added, noting what Strategy Track the army will default to if there's no compelling reason to change it.
For Strategies and Special abilities, their effects are listed parenthetically for ease of reference. Note that abilities that don't have the ability to affect the course of the battle (e.g. the ghouls' disease ability, which inflicts penalties to an army on a per-day basis and is therefore too slow to affect this battle) have their parenthetical listing as simply being "N/A." None of these armies know any boons; the ghouls have no commander, and Lex hasn't participated in a mass combat prior to this. Similarly, none of the listed armies have acquired any tactics besides "standard." Note that Lex has no XP value listed, as he represents a Player-Character.
Note also that all of the armies listed below have the effects of the battlefield conditions given previously, and all other modifiers, factored into their statistics. So, for example, the +2 DV that the ghouls receive for the undead quality listed in their Special line has been added to their total DV value.
Ghoul Army XP 6,400
CE Colossal army of ghouls
hp 40; ACR 9
DV 17; OM +13
Tactics standard (+0 DV, +0 OM, +0 damage)
Preferred Strategy Reckless (-4 DV, +4 OM, +6 damage)
Special cannibalize (N/A), darkvision (no penalties in dim light or darkness), disease (N/A), paralysis (-1 to enemy army’s DV per successful hit), starving* (cannot be routed or change tactics or strategy), undead (DV +2; immune to disease, fear, paralysis, poison)
The ghoul army is considered to be an army without a commander. Normally this would erode an army's Morale by a factor of -1 per week, but as mentioned above the limited time that the battle takes place in makes this irrelevant. They are not considered to have an unexceptional commander.
Lex Legis
LN Fine army of ponies
hp 22; ACR 9
DV 31; OM +10
Tactics standard (+0 DV, +0 OM, +0 damage)
Preferred Strategy Defensive (+4 DV, -4 OM, -6 damage)
Special debilitated* (5% cumulative chance per turn of becoming unable to fight), Severance* (+4 to ACR, one additional melee attack per turn), spellcasting (+6 to OM and DV)
One of the reasons I said that the mass combat rules are an odd fit for one-man armies is with regards to Morale. Technically, even as a PC Lex should have a Morale score that would need to come into play if he wanted to change tactics or strategies (which are moot points anyway) and to avoid a rout if his hit points fell below his ACR. However, that makes little sense considering that he's not managing any other individuals in his "army" of one. Further, as a PC, it's not really appropriate for a die roll to determine if he tries to retreat from battle or surrender. Hence, Lex effectively has no Morale score. (If he did, it would be: -2 Charisma modifier, +11 character level = +9 Morale.)
The listings that have an asterisk (*) next to them are unique abilities that aren't found in the standard mass combat rules. (I figure that if the Tarrasque can have special modifications to its stat block to account for its special abilities, so can these armies.) They also require a bit more explanation:
Debilitated: Due to the numerous points of ability damage he's taken, and his currently being exhausted, Lex has a 5% cumulative chance per turn of being unable to continue fighting in a mass combat (though he can still take actions in tactical combat).
Severance: When wielded by an army commander and bringing its full might to bear, Severance grants the army it's with a +4 increase to its ACR. It also allows for a bonus attack to be made during the Melee phase of battle. This attack may be made even if the commander becomes incapacitated, so long as the army is not routed or made to surrender, but is always made as a standard strategy.
Starving: Mad with hunger, the ghouls never fail Morale checks but must always use standard tactics and reckless strategy.
That effectively covers everyone that participated in the conflict as part of an actual mass battle. After Lex's debilitated condition rendered him unable to fight, Severance took over and continued to whittle the ghouls down, while the "scene" switched back to tactical combat rather than mass combat (with the latter effectively becoming a background element). At that point, the focus was on the few individual ghouls that were "bled off" from the undead army, and which Lex, Sonata, and Garden Gate (and eventually Aria) had to deal with one-on-one. Of course, that largely depended on Garden Gate, and the various buffs that were applied to her, which is what we'll cover in Part II.
As a bonus, here's what Sonata's mass combat stats would have been if she'd fought the ghoul army directly (which should also illustrate why Lex didn't want her doing that):
Sonata Dusk
CN Fine army of ponies
hp 3; ACR 1
DV 20; OM +4
Tactics standard (+0 DV, +0 OM, +0 damage)
Preferred Strategy Cautious (+2 DV, -2 OM, -3 damage)
Special inspire courage (+1 to OM and Morale), spellcasting (+5 to OM and DV)
As a one-mare army, and a PC, Sonata has the same issues with Morale that Lex does. If she had a Morale value, it would have been as follows: +7 Charisma modifier, +9 character level, +1 inspire courage (if applied to herself; she could apply the bonuses from that ability to another army if she wanted) = +17.
Wow, mass combat? Talk about the ugly stepchildren of Pathfinder. I had forgotten that existed, I think about a year after these rules came out they replaced them with Troops. It's a good way of abstracting battles I suppose. I was thinking Severance had some kind of at-will ability to cast Blade Barrier, and the "bled-off" ghouls were the 5% getting 20s on their reflex saves.
Interesting, that you're trying out some of the more exotic subsets of pathfinder rules. Will we see Lex use Downtime rules to earn productive labor, goods and influence to rebuild his city? Will the siren sisters get into a Verbal Duel? Will the next enemy to face Lex be a gestalt character?
I can't wait to find out!
4889764 Well, the troop subtype isn't really a "replacement" for the mass combat rules per se. Rather, they're a way of essentially shoehorning groups of enemies into the standard combat rules by aggregating them into a single monster stat block (with a few special rules baked into the subtype) rather than reinventing the entire combat system the way the mass combat rules did. Most notably, the troop rules work when the players are running PCs rather than fielding their own army or armies in opposition.
That said, there were no troop listings for ghouls anyway (the closest I could find was a CR 17 stat block for "the legion of the damned" from a third-party product: Monster Menagerie: Troops), that essentially ruled those out. That, and the greater abstraction involved in the mass combat rules gave me greater cover to mix things up a little, such as having Lex only have one leg paralyzed by the ghouls (i.e. being hit with the ghoul army's "paralysis" special listings, where he's a one-person enemy army) rather than all of him. Besides, this way I got to have a literal arc where a few ponies stood against an entire army and won. That's practically the definition of "epic."
As for using other Pathfinder subsets...well, I'm mostly looking around for things that aren't covered under the normal rules for Eclipse and The Practical Enchanter, so it depends. I'm not sure how deeply I want to venture into the kingdom-building rules, though; as with the mass combat rules, they have some...issues (as well as areas they don't cover, such as intelligence-gathering, which is why I wrote my own), so I'm leaning against using them (though I'll confess that I haven't made up my mind yet). Insofar as the others go...well, we'll see.
I did see a ghoul troop once, in this scenario: http://paizo.com/products/btpy9wer?Pathfinder-Society-Scenario-907-Salvation-of-the-Sages
I only played, not GMed, but it was probably something like CR 8 - CR 10.
4890278 Yes, I've heard that we've started seeing new monsters - not just NPCs but actual new monster entries - in some of the Pathfinder Society Scenarios. I might need to start picking those up.