I'm not a military general, but generally this varies from case to case.
Obviously, your soldiers should be well trained. Since fantasy species are available type and terrain advantage are worth noting, can't fight the scorpion people in a desert.
Magic always helps, with the best magics being protection and targeted damage. In a high-magic setting, counter magic will also be valuable.
Hi, First time posting. I am hoping to find out what a good DnD army should look like.
I have done some research. And have fond a typical army set up is: a four person Team lead by a Sergeant, four Teams in a Squad lead by a Staff Sergeant, four Squads in a Platoon lead by a Lieutenant, four Platoons in a Company lead by a Captain, five Companies in a Battalion lead by a Lieutenant Colonel, three Battalions in a Regiment lead by a Colonel, three Regiments in a Division lead by a Major General, seven Divisions in a Corps lead by a Lieutenant General and 5 corps in a army lead by the General.
All that together equals about 403,200 soldiers, 100,800 Sergeants, 25,200 Staff Sergeants, 6,300 Lieutenants, 1,575 captions, 315 Lieutenant Colonels, 105 Colonels, 35 Major Generals, 5 Lieutenant Generals and 1 General.(this is not including all the other ranks.) So in total that is 537,536 people.
As you all can see these are some big numbers that are broken down to more manageable numbers.
So my questions are: what should each Squad consist of? what races work well together? What should the lowest LV be? what should the highest LV be?
Hi, First time posting. I am hoping to find out what a good DnD army should look like.
I have done some research. And have fond a typical army set up is: a four person Team lead by a Sergeant, four Teams in a Squad lead by a Staff Sergeant, four Squads in a Platoon lead by a Lieutenant, four Platoons in a Company lead by a Captain, five Companies in a Battalion lead by a Lieutenant Colonel, three Battalions in a Regiment lead by a Colonel, three Regiments in a Division lead by a Major General, seven Divisions in a Corps lead by a Lieutenant General and 5 corps in a army lead by the General.
All that together equals about 403,200 soldiers, 100,800 Sergeants, 25,200 Staff Sergeants, 6,300 Lieutenants, 1,575 captions, 315 Lieutenant Colonels, 105 Colonels, 35 Major Generals, 5 Lieutenant Generals and 1 General.(this is not including all the other ranks.) So in total that is 537,536 people.
As you all can see these are some big numbers that are broken down to more manageable numbers.
So my questions are: what should each Squad consist of? what races work well together? What should the lowest LV be? what should the highest LV be?
So you want to apply a modern nation state army hierarchy to a D&D civilization? I mean, you're aware your order of battle is product of modern organization.
The bigger presumption you're missing with a "modern" (western professionl/volunteer) is "who are these people?" Where do the elements that make up a team come from? What's the social standing of the NCOs? What is the social division between NCO's and Commissioned officers?
I also think there's a presumption that all these soldiers are combat arms whereas a "real" army you're model seems to be derived from that's not at all the case.
I just don't know how starting the conversation defining an army as ~530k ranked people actually leads to anything.
If you look around the existing 5e publications, you won't find many military organizations numbering in the 100s of thousands. Check out the Flaming Fist, Goblin Warbands, etc. D&D battles, the so-called "epic ones" that appear in actual adventures seem to be clashes of the thousands at most.
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Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Thank you. I will go and read these publications as soon as I am able. And I'm sorry for starting this thread this way. All I had to start with was the western modern military organizing. Anymore impot is welcome.
Nothing wrong with starting the thread the way you did, just wanted to point out that, speaking specifically to 5e, as a game that doesn't really have real rules, officially, for organized or disorganized large scale warfare, the instances of warfare and military org in various D&D worlds tend to be a lot smaller scale and more "background" to whatever smaller scale acts of heroism or villainy the PCs get up to.
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I would personally look into the rules from a game called Warhammer Fantasy Battles, and the various codices for the armies for that game for inspiration. It’s a MWG, with guidelines for how to construct one’s army. It should do you fine. The game is no longer supported by its publisher, and a new game has replaced it, so you should be able to find those books dirt cheap.
Having a battle line with mobile troops in the back to deal with break throughs and opportunities would be a stranded formation.
So something like 5 types of cores
1. line/undead core. The largest core of the army typically around 100-500 strong. Divided among a part of the front line their main goal is to apply pressure and defend cores behind and to the side of then
2. skirmisher core. Light horsemen and infantry placed to guard or attack the flacks. Around 50-100 they use equipment like alchemists fire and short bows
3. Line breaker core. Around two groups of archers and two groups of cavalry. Typically heavy cavalry their goal is to plug holes in the front line and exploit holes in the enemies. Around 50-100 strong
4. Mage core. A mage and bodyguards supported by cavalry. Typically light and mobile they are hard to go into specifics as each mage can effect the battlefield in different ways around 5-20 strong
5. Command core. A few people who can cast messages/sending and a officer assigned to the area. Any artillery, diviners or medical staff will be assigned to this core. Usually also has a unit of line breakers to ensure it’s defense. Around 30-50 strong
Notes
Outriders would probably not be part of the main battle
Flying units would be handed separate from any of the cores
Each of the cores (save for mages) would be assigned to a Battalion of 1 command core, 3 line breaker cores and 5 line cores as well as a supply unit
Special battalions would be the assault battalions (1 command core, 4 line breakers, at least 1 mage core and a supply unit) and the scouting battalions (1 command core, 3 skirmisher core, assorted outriders and a supply unit)
Mages would attach themselves to other cores as needed but typically have a significant amount of free reign
I would say necromancy is a good base for line troops as zombie are remarkably well suited for that. Add in living troops as specialists probably in groups of 5 (mage and bodyguards) to 20 (mass archers) and spread them out a bit. That way AOE spells are much less likely to hit harder to replace troops
Well, your modern army template is too idealized. There are thousands upon thousands of support troops involved in sending that army to battle. Even in D&D you would need the support troops. Remember, War is about Logistics. A Battle might be almost exclusively about tactics and fighting, but you have to sustain your men in the field. So lets take a look at a model, which I use in my own setting, when I rarely have to.
A Team would include one Jr Sgt and four or five "troops". You will have teams of spearmen, teams of archers, teams of sword and board and teams of cavalry.
A Squad will typically consist of two teams. You could allow a squad to consist of three teams. You will have the same kind of squads in a combat unit as before. The squad is led by a seasoned sgt.
A combat platoon will consist of an officer, a senior sgt, a messenger, and three of four squads. The messenger also carries the unit pennant. He will likely be a Jr SGT. A combat platoon will include any of the four types I described before. The officer may or may not be mounted during "marches", except in a horse (cavalry) unit, when he will always be mounted.
A combat company is where things really start to look different. A combat company will have three or four combat platoons. The company will also have a headquarters section and possibly a support platoon. So in addition to the combat platoons, a company will have a company commander, a company XO, a company Top Sgt, a company operations sgt (a Senior Sgt), a company supply sgt (a seasoned sgt), and a company clerk type sgt (junior sgt). The Ops section will include one of two other soldiers. The clerk section will include at least five messengers. The company supply section will include the supply sgt, a blacksmith, a weapon smith, a fletcher, a leatherworker, a squad of teamsters to carry, load and unload gear, a stablemaster to care for the animals, a cartwright, a wheelwright, a carpenter, a head cook, about a dozen other cooks, and about a dozen other soldiers to do miscellaneous tasks. All in all, the company headquarters section will be about as numerous as a combat platoon, but will have numerous specialists to make sure the gear is repaired and maintained. The company headquarters section will likely have a dozen wagons pulled by a team of two draft horses, and a half-dozen to a dozen carts pulled by mules. The officers will ride horses when traveling distances and the Top sgt and the ops sgt will probably also ride horses. Most of the rest of the headquarters section will be riding on a wagon, either as a driver or as a passenger. The messengers in the clerk section will possibly also have horses to ride.
The next level of command, the battalion, gets even more crazy with the Headquarters company. A battalion will have three or four "line" companies as I described above. There will also be a new company called the headquarters company. Most of the headquarters company will be dedicated to the logistics of feeding and clothing the battalion and carrying a bunch of equipment for the battalion. So one of the most important positions among the senior sgts will be the stablemaster or animal manager whatever title you want to give him. He will be responsible for the health and feeding of the animals that carry all the stuff when the army goes here or there. There will be teamsters to load/unload and run the wagon teams. There will be blacksmiths, armorers, weapon smiths, leatherworkers, harness makers, carpenters, cartwrights, wheelwrights and others to maintain equipment. Just figure there will be as many soldiers in the headquarters company as there are in any line company, and maybe 50% more. However, the headquarters company will probably also have a platoon sized group of armored knights, and a similar sized group of siege engineers. There will also be a group of about eight noble born soldiers that serve as staff officers to the commander and the XO of the battalion.
So lets just see where we are for manpower so far ...
Battalion has a commander, an XO, a Senior Sgt, a company sized element for supporting the rest of the battalion, and two platoon sized elements for special actions, along with another eight noble born officers and eight footmen to serve as servants to the nobles.
A line company consists of a commander, and XO, a Senior Sgt, a headquarters section about the size of a platoon, and four line platoons.
A line platoon contains an officer, a senior sergeant, a flag bearer, and 4 squads of eleven soldiers each (one squad leader, and two teams of one sgt and four soldiers).
So that gives us ...
Line Platoon 46 soldiers and one officer (LT=1 Senior Sgt=1 Seasoned Sgt=4 Sgt=9 troops=32)
Line Company 228+ soldiers and 6 officers (Cpt=1 Lt=5 Senior Sgt=6 Seasoned Sgt=17+ Sgt=45+ troops=160+)
Line Battalion 1162+ soldiers and 51 officers (Ltc=1 Maj=2 Cpt=12 Lt=36 Senior Sgt=42 Seasoned Sgt=70 Sgt=250 Troops=800)
You should translate officers to mean nobles, whether titled or just "knight" level without land.
You should expect 80% of the soldiers to be lvl 1 fighter or lvl 0 fighters, and the other 20% to be lvl 2 fighters (fighters is a generic term and could be a ranger, a paladin or a barbarian)
You should expect the Sgts to be lvl 2 fighters, the seasoned sgts to be half level 3 and half level 4, and the Senior Sgts to be lvl 5 fighters.
You could expect the Lts to be level 3 or higher fighters, paladins or rangers. You could expect the Cpts to be level 5 or higher fighters, paladins or rangers. You could expect the majors to be lvl 6 fighters, paladins or rangers, and the Ltc should be one level higher than the majors.
You could extrapolate this to higher sized units of regiments, brigades, divisions, corps, army and army group. However, large units like these were not a thing in this era. For the most part, units were raised by region and so you had the 3rd Alsace Spearmen or the First London Fusiliers. These units were probably limited to company or battalion sized units. They did not train at the level of modern armies where they practiced how to fight using coordinated Brigades of forces. So once you decide what sort of name to give your units, remember that there were nobles at the top of the pyrimid, the units were not really organized above the company or battalion level to fight until much more modern times. Also note, a regiment is more akin to a fat battalion, and not a collection of battalions. Three of four line battalions in modern times are organized into a brigade.
Good luck.
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That is much more detailed then my plan. However I don’t believe you mentioned any changes that magic would bring. Some spring to mind like using message instead of messengers or having skirmishers with heat metal countering knights. I’d like to hear what changes magic would bring to the standard layout of the force and how mages would be used
That is much more detailed then my plan. However I don’t believe you mentioned any changes that magic would bring. Some spring to mind like using message instead of messengers or having skirmishers with heat metal countering knights. I’d like to hear what changes magic would bring to the standard layout of the force and how mages would be used
The answers to your questions depend on some assumptions. The predominant one of these is how many magic users do you expect per 1000 fighting age adults?
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The answers to your questions depend on some assumptions. The predominant one of these is how many magic users do you expect per 1000 fighting age adults?
What if the set up was like that of a roman legion? 1000 fight age adults with 100 of them being magic users. What schools of magic would be more useful? How many healers should there be? What would a good ratio of light and heavy infantry.
So in your setting 10% of military age adults can cast spells? Wow.
Yea, well, there are a lot of things magic would replace. Except for the limits of what the spell describes, then there is very little you couldn't do with magic.
You would still need messengers because the message cantrip only goes 120 feet.
With plenty of Bags of Holding you could replace the need for half of your wagons. With enough portable holes, you might be able to replace all of your wagons.
With enough teleports you could eliminate most of the traveling difficulties, and all of the siege engines you would otherwise need.
You would need as many counterspell casters as you could find. And you would want many dispel magic casters too.
For your army, Heat Metal would make most enemy armors above light armor obsolete. Any character wearing metal armor better have some sort of magical protection of they are toast.
Polymorph would be incredible and most of your fighters in the army at the higher levels would spend most of the battle in polymorphed form. You wouldn't waste it on a 3rd level fighter, because that is a limit on what they could polymorph into.
the sending spell would possibly replace the need for some messengers, but not many. It would have only a few applications and compete with Counterspell, Dispel Magic and Polymorph for spell slots. You'll probably keep the spell slots and not use them for Sending. If you have magic items that do it and don't need charges, well then ...
OK, so I was describing an army and it had leveled NPCs in it. Lets see how many ...
A battalion (1213+ soldiers, I miscounted earlier) has 800 troops, 250 Sgts, 70 Seasoned Sgts, 42 Senior Sgts, 36 LTs, 12 Captains, 2 Majors and 1 LTC. That translates to ...
Lvl 0 - 320 Troops
Lvl 1 - 320 Troops
Lvl 2 - 160 Troops, 70 Sgts
Lvl 3 - 35 Seasoned Sgts, 20 LTs
Lvl 4 - 35 Seasoned Sgts, 12 LTs
Lvl 5 - 42 Senior Sgts, 4 Lts, 8 Cpts
Lvl 6 - 4 Cpts, 1 Major
Lvl 7 - 1 Major, 1 LTC
So the next questions is how many rangers and paladins make up this mix of soldiers? Assuming the lions share of the troops would be from a fighter class background, we could easily assume one quarter of the leveled soldiers would be paladins and another quarter would be rangers. If that were the case ...
Your 10% spellcasters are already accounted for in this distribution leaving no room for Wizards, Warlocks, Sorcerers, Druids, Clerics or Bards, the full casters, nevermind the 1/3rd casters.
Most of the spells you would want to use militarily are not on their list. This puts a very different complexion on the question. Are we going to add another 100-ish magic user folks to the battalion manpower over and above what we had earlier and not count the paladins and rangers as part of the number of magic users? Or should we depress the levels of the soldiers so that less than 10% of the manpower are paladins and rangers? Or should we make some other kind of adjustment?
As you can see, even at 10% magic user capable people in the right age, making a meaningful impact on a regular army isn't going to happen unless you distort the numbers of participants to unexpected levels. For me 10% magic users is a heck of a lot of magic users. Another question is what is the distribution in society of leveled characters? If we have 10% magic users, do we have close to 20% of the population as qualified adventurers? And whether we do or not, what is the distribution along the lines of level for the adventurers? Do we have 5% at each of the 20 levels evenly distributed?
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All good points and questions. And I think what kind of imposing force is this army facing. Is the army defending or attacking?
So say these a large city or a group cities and towns that population equals close to 100,000 and with 5% of the population being capable adventure grade or able to be in a military of some kind. Also using to 5% of the population is able to use some form of magic, but of those able to use magic only 50% is adventure grade or higher.
How should an attacking force look to an defending force? Are Calvary units involved in someway?
It all depends upon the terrain and the enemy. Historically, period warfare was heavily dependent on formations, which was why I recommend looking into Warhammer Fantasy as it was all about formations.
Your average skirmishers (light infantry) would likely be a bandit, with a bandit captain leader, or their equivalents.
Your average standard troops (medium infantry) would be a guard, or equivalent.
Your average elite troops (heavy infantry) would likely be a soldier, or equivalent.
Your average Sergeant would likely be a veteran, or equivalent.
Your average Officer would likely be a hobgoblin captain, or equivalent.
What areas of combat do you think that plan would be best at comparing to area they would suffer in. For my plan It’s decent for line battles and attrition but is comically weak to maneuver warfare and gorilla warfare.
For a standard army Setup maybe 250 light infantry, 100 heavy infantry, 150 archers, 100 heavy Calvary(ground/flying), 200 light calvary, 20 acolytes, 4 priests, 20 apprentice wizards, 4 adept Wizards and 152 reserve forces.
With fighter, rangers, Paladins, wizards and Clerics banging able to multi class if the lv is good enough.
This doesn't include the messengers, horse and carriages, ect...
I’ve made a army once in a campaign and it was because we needed to raid a massive fortress but my army was made up of mercs and other people we had helped or recruited. I think in total I had like 140 troops. But we sadly lost due to a the army of skeletons and the half ogre half orc creature they had leading the enemy’s.
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A place to discuss DnD armies.
How to Build an army, What should an army consist of, How big should a army be, ect.
I'm not a military general, but generally this varies from case to case.
Obviously, your soldiers should be well trained. Since fantasy species are available type and terrain advantage are worth noting, can't fight the scorpion people in a desert.
Magic always helps, with the best magics being protection and targeted damage. In a high-magic setting, counter magic will also be valuable.
This should go in story and lore.
My homebrew content: Monsters, subclasses, Magic items, Feats, spells, races, backgrounds
Hi, First time posting. I am hoping to find out what a good DnD army should look like.
I have done some research. And have fond a typical army set up is: a four person Team lead by a Sergeant, four Teams in a Squad lead by a Staff Sergeant, four Squads in a Platoon lead by a Lieutenant, four Platoons in a Company lead by a Captain, five Companies in a Battalion lead by a Lieutenant Colonel, three Battalions in a Regiment lead by a Colonel, three Regiments in a Division lead by a Major General, seven Divisions in a Corps lead by a Lieutenant General and 5 corps in a army lead by the General.
All that together equals about 403,200 soldiers, 100,800 Sergeants, 25,200 Staff Sergeants, 6,300 Lieutenants, 1,575 captions, 315 Lieutenant Colonels, 105 Colonels, 35 Major Generals, 5 Lieutenant Generals and 1 General.(this is not including all the other ranks.) So in total that is 537,536 people.
As you all can see these are some big numbers that are broken down to more manageable numbers.
So my questions are: what should each Squad consist of? what races work well together? What should the lowest LV be? what should the highest LV be?
So you want to apply a modern nation state army hierarchy to a D&D civilization? I mean, you're aware your order of battle is product of modern organization.
The bigger presumption you're missing with a "modern" (western professionl/volunteer) is "who are these people?" Where do the elements that make up a team come from? What's the social standing of the NCOs? What is the social division between NCO's and Commissioned officers?
I also think there's a presumption that all these soldiers are combat arms whereas a "real" army you're model seems to be derived from that's not at all the case.
I just don't know how starting the conversation defining an army as ~530k ranked people actually leads to anything.
If you look around the existing 5e publications, you won't find many military organizations numbering in the 100s of thousands. Check out the Flaming Fist, Goblin Warbands, etc. D&D battles, the so-called "epic ones" that appear in actual adventures seem to be clashes of the thousands at most.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Thank you. I will go and read these publications as soon as I am able. And I'm sorry for starting this thread this way. All I had to start with was the western modern military organizing. Anymore impot is welcome.
There's a pretty cool thread on trench warfare you might find interesting, it seems pretty adjacent to your interests:
https://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/dungeons-dragons-discussion/dungeon-masters-only/134611-trench-warfare
Nothing wrong with starting the thread the way you did, just wanted to point out that, speaking specifically to 5e, as a game that doesn't really have real rules, officially, for organized or disorganized large scale warfare, the instances of warfare and military org in various D&D worlds tend to be a lot smaller scale and more "background" to whatever smaller scale acts of heroism or villainy the PCs get up to.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
I would personally look into the rules from a game called Warhammer Fantasy Battles, and the various codices for the armies for that game for inspiration. It’s a MWG, with guidelines for how to construct one’s army. It should do you fine. The game is no longer supported by its publisher, and a new game has replaced it, so you should be able to find those books dirt cheap.
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
Having a battle line with mobile troops in the back to deal with break throughs and opportunities would be a stranded formation.
So something like 5 types of cores
1. line/undead core. The largest core of the army typically around 100-500 strong. Divided among a part of the front line their main goal is to apply pressure and defend cores behind and to the side of then
2. skirmisher core. Light horsemen and infantry placed to guard or attack the flacks. Around 50-100 they use equipment like alchemists fire and short bows
3. Line breaker core. Around two groups of archers and two groups of cavalry. Typically heavy cavalry their goal is to plug holes in the front line and exploit holes in the enemies. Around 50-100 strong
4. Mage core. A mage and bodyguards supported by cavalry. Typically light and mobile they are hard to go into specifics as each mage can effect the battlefield in different ways around 5-20 strong
5. Command core. A few people who can cast messages/sending and a officer assigned to the area. Any artillery, diviners or medical staff will be assigned to this core. Usually also has a unit of line breakers to ensure it’s defense. Around 30-50 strong
Notes
Outriders would probably not be part of the main battle
Flying units would be handed separate from any of the cores
Each of the cores (save for mages) would be assigned to a Battalion of 1 command core, 3 line breaker cores and 5 line cores as well as a supply unit
Special battalions would be the assault battalions (1 command core, 4 line breakers, at least 1 mage core and a supply unit) and the scouting battalions (1 command core, 3 skirmisher core, assorted outriders and a supply unit)
Mages would attach themselves to other cores as needed but typically have a significant amount of free reign
I would say necromancy is a good base for line troops as zombie are remarkably well suited for that. Add in living troops as specialists probably in groups of 5 (mage and bodyguards) to 20 (mass archers) and spread them out a bit. That way AOE spells are much less likely to hit harder to replace troops
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Well, your modern army template is too idealized. There are thousands upon thousands of support troops involved in sending that army to battle. Even in D&D you would need the support troops. Remember, War is about Logistics. A Battle might be almost exclusively about tactics and fighting, but you have to sustain your men in the field. So lets take a look at a model, which I use in my own setting, when I rarely have to.
A Team would include one Jr Sgt and four or five "troops". You will have teams of spearmen, teams of archers, teams of sword and board and teams of cavalry.
A Squad will typically consist of two teams. You could allow a squad to consist of three teams. You will have the same kind of squads in a combat unit as before. The squad is led by a seasoned sgt.
A combat platoon will consist of an officer, a senior sgt, a messenger, and three of four squads. The messenger also carries the unit pennant. He will likely be a Jr SGT. A combat platoon will include any of the four types I described before. The officer may or may not be mounted during "marches", except in a horse (cavalry) unit, when he will always be mounted.
A combat company is where things really start to look different. A combat company will have three or four combat platoons. The company will also have a headquarters section and possibly a support platoon. So in addition to the combat platoons, a company will have a company commander, a company XO, a company Top Sgt, a company operations sgt (a Senior Sgt), a company supply sgt (a seasoned sgt), and a company clerk type sgt (junior sgt). The Ops section will include one of two other soldiers. The clerk section will include at least five messengers. The company supply section will include the supply sgt, a blacksmith, a weapon smith, a fletcher, a leatherworker, a squad of teamsters to carry, load and unload gear, a stablemaster to care for the animals, a cartwright, a wheelwright, a carpenter, a head cook, about a dozen other cooks, and about a dozen other soldiers to do miscellaneous tasks. All in all, the company headquarters section will be about as numerous as a combat platoon, but will have numerous specialists to make sure the gear is repaired and maintained. The company headquarters section will likely have a dozen wagons pulled by a team of two draft horses, and a half-dozen to a dozen carts pulled by mules. The officers will ride horses when traveling distances and the Top sgt and the ops sgt will probably also ride horses. Most of the rest of the headquarters section will be riding on a wagon, either as a driver or as a passenger. The messengers in the clerk section will possibly also have horses to ride.
The next level of command, the battalion, gets even more crazy with the Headquarters company. A battalion will have three or four "line" companies as I described above. There will also be a new company called the headquarters company. Most of the headquarters company will be dedicated to the logistics of feeding and clothing the battalion and carrying a bunch of equipment for the battalion. So one of the most important positions among the senior sgts will be the stablemaster or animal manager whatever title you want to give him. He will be responsible for the health and feeding of the animals that carry all the stuff when the army goes here or there. There will be teamsters to load/unload and run the wagon teams. There will be blacksmiths, armorers, weapon smiths, leatherworkers, harness makers, carpenters, cartwrights, wheelwrights and others to maintain equipment. Just figure there will be as many soldiers in the headquarters company as there are in any line company, and maybe 50% more. However, the headquarters company will probably also have a platoon sized group of armored knights, and a similar sized group of siege engineers. There will also be a group of about eight noble born soldiers that serve as staff officers to the commander and the XO of the battalion.
So lets just see where we are for manpower so far ...
Battalion has a commander, an XO, a Senior Sgt, a company sized element for supporting the rest of the battalion, and two platoon sized elements for special actions, along with another eight noble born officers and eight footmen to serve as servants to the nobles.
A line company consists of a commander, and XO, a Senior Sgt, a headquarters section about the size of a platoon, and four line platoons.
A line platoon contains an officer, a senior sergeant, a flag bearer, and 4 squads of eleven soldiers each (one squad leader, and two teams of one sgt and four soldiers).
So that gives us ...
Line Platoon 46 soldiers and one officer (LT=1 Senior Sgt=1 Seasoned Sgt=4 Sgt=9 troops=32)
Line Company 228+ soldiers and 6 officers (Cpt=1 Lt=5 Senior Sgt=6 Seasoned Sgt=17+ Sgt=45+ troops=160+)
Line Battalion 1162+ soldiers and 51 officers (Ltc=1 Maj=2 Cpt=12 Lt=36 Senior Sgt=42 Seasoned Sgt=70 Sgt=250 Troops=800)
You should translate officers to mean nobles, whether titled or just "knight" level without land.
You should expect 80% of the soldiers to be lvl 1 fighter or lvl 0 fighters, and the other 20% to be lvl 2 fighters (fighters is a generic term and could be a ranger, a paladin or a barbarian)
You should expect the Sgts to be lvl 2 fighters, the seasoned sgts to be half level 3 and half level 4, and the Senior Sgts to be lvl 5 fighters.
You could expect the Lts to be level 3 or higher fighters, paladins or rangers. You could expect the Cpts to be level 5 or higher fighters, paladins or rangers. You could expect the majors to be lvl 6 fighters, paladins or rangers, and the Ltc should be one level higher than the majors.
You could extrapolate this to higher sized units of regiments, brigades, divisions, corps, army and army group. However, large units like these were not a thing in this era. For the most part, units were raised by region and so you had the 3rd Alsace Spearmen or the First London Fusiliers. These units were probably limited to company or battalion sized units. They did not train at the level of modern armies where they practiced how to fight using coordinated Brigades of forces. So once you decide what sort of name to give your units, remember that there were nobles at the top of the pyrimid, the units were not really organized above the company or battalion level to fight until much more modern times. Also note, a regiment is more akin to a fat battalion, and not a collection of battalions. Three of four line battalions in modern times are organized into a brigade.
Good luck.
Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt
That is much more detailed then my plan. However I don’t believe you mentioned any changes that magic would bring. Some spring to mind like using message instead of messengers or having skirmishers with heat metal countering knights. I’d like to hear what changes magic would bring to the standard layout of the force and how mages would be used
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The answers to your questions depend on some assumptions. The predominant one of these is how many magic users do you expect per 1000 fighting age adults?
Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt
For my settings around 100
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What if the set up was like that of a roman legion? 1000 fight age adults with 100 of them being magic users. What schools of magic would be more useful? How many healers should there be? What would a good ratio of light and heavy infantry.
So in your setting 10% of military age adults can cast spells? Wow.
Yea, well, there are a lot of things magic would replace. Except for the limits of what the spell describes, then there is very little you couldn't do with magic.
You would still need messengers because the message cantrip only goes 120 feet.
With plenty of Bags of Holding you could replace the need for half of your wagons. With enough portable holes, you might be able to replace all of your wagons.
With enough teleports you could eliminate most of the traveling difficulties, and all of the siege engines you would otherwise need.
You would need as many counterspell casters as you could find. And you would want many dispel magic casters too.
For your army, Heat Metal would make most enemy armors above light armor obsolete. Any character wearing metal armor better have some sort of magical protection of they are toast.
Polymorph would be incredible and most of your fighters in the army at the higher levels would spend most of the battle in polymorphed form. You wouldn't waste it on a 3rd level fighter, because that is a limit on what they could polymorph into.
the sending spell would possibly replace the need for some messengers, but not many. It would have only a few applications and compete with Counterspell, Dispel Magic and Polymorph for spell slots. You'll probably keep the spell slots and not use them for Sending. If you have magic items that do it and don't need charges, well then ...
OK, so I was describing an army and it had leveled NPCs in it. Lets see how many ...
A battalion (1213+ soldiers, I miscounted earlier) has 800 troops, 250 Sgts, 70 Seasoned Sgts, 42 Senior Sgts, 36 LTs, 12 Captains, 2 Majors and 1 LTC. That translates to ...
Lvl 0 - 320 Troops
Lvl 1 - 320 Troops
Lvl 2 - 160 Troops, 70 Sgts
Lvl 3 - 35 Seasoned Sgts, 20 LTs
Lvl 4 - 35 Seasoned Sgts, 12 LTs
Lvl 5 - 42 Senior Sgts, 4 Lts, 8 Cpts
Lvl 6 - 4 Cpts, 1 Major
Lvl 7 - 1 Major, 1 LTC
So the next questions is how many rangers and paladins make up this mix of soldiers? Assuming the lions share of the troops would be from a fighter class background, we could easily assume one quarter of the leveled soldiers would be paladins and another quarter would be rangers. If that were the case ...
320 lvl 0 "fighters" - 446 leveled fighters (1st and above) - 223 leveled rangers - 223 leveled paladins
Your 10% spellcasters are already accounted for in this distribution leaving no room for Wizards, Warlocks, Sorcerers, Druids, Clerics or Bards, the full casters, nevermind the 1/3rd casters.
Most of the spells you would want to use militarily are not on their list. This puts a very different complexion on the question. Are we going to add another 100-ish magic user folks to the battalion manpower over and above what we had earlier and not count the paladins and rangers as part of the number of magic users? Or should we depress the levels of the soldiers so that less than 10% of the manpower are paladins and rangers? Or should we make some other kind of adjustment?
As you can see, even at 10% magic user capable people in the right age, making a meaningful impact on a regular army isn't going to happen unless you distort the numbers of participants to unexpected levels. For me 10% magic users is a heck of a lot of magic users. Another question is what is the distribution in society of leveled characters? If we have 10% magic users, do we have close to 20% of the population as qualified adventurers? And whether we do or not, what is the distribution along the lines of level for the adventurers? Do we have 5% at each of the 20 levels evenly distributed?
Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt
All good points and questions. And I think what kind of imposing force is this army facing. Is the army defending or attacking?
So say these a large city or a group cities and towns that population equals close to 100,000 and with 5% of the population being capable adventure grade or able to be in a military of some kind. Also using to 5% of the population is able to use some form of magic, but of those able to use magic only 50% is adventure grade or higher.
How should an attacking force look to an defending force? Are Calvary units involved in someway?
you make a good point but because that point is boring, I'm going to ignore it.
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It all depends upon the terrain and the enemy. Historically, period warfare was heavily dependent on formations, which was why I recommend looking into Warhammer Fantasy as it was all about formations.
Honestly, most of that won’t matter much, only what the PCs will interact with directly actually matters.
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What areas of combat do you think that plan would be best at comparing to area they would suffer in. For my plan It’s decent for line battles and attrition but is comically weak to maneuver warfare and gorilla warfare.
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For a standard army Setup maybe 250 light infantry, 100 heavy infantry, 150 archers, 100 heavy Calvary(ground/flying), 200 light calvary, 20 acolytes, 4 priests, 20 apprentice wizards, 4 adept Wizards and 152 reserve forces.
With fighter, rangers, Paladins, wizards and Clerics banging able to multi class if the lv is good enough.
This doesn't include the messengers, horse and carriages, ect...
I’ve made a army once in a campaign and it was because we needed to raid a massive fortress but my army was made up of mercs and other people we had helped or recruited. I think in total I had like 140 troops. But we sadly lost due to a the army of skeletons and the half ogre half orc creature they had leading the enemy’s.