Cavalry in the forest??!

[keikobad]

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The battle of Nireth Cove began in earnest on the morning of the 17th.
...
The final contingent of half-elves and humans were roughly equally divided, consisting of light cavalry and infantry reserves along with the dwarves.

I'm missing something...was southern T'Nanshi not a huge forest back then that you could use horses, etc. in a battle at Nireth?

If that area wasn't always a forest, or if it was cleared before, I'd be interested in using that information in-game.

[Nob]

Port Nireth has a clearing(and right south of it is the giant lands) which seems pretty devoid of trees. The general area(at least until you go further north) is relatively devoid of vegetation, the orcish presense in the area plus the blood spilled might have made it difficult for it to have grown back.

I neglected to write the first few prefaces of the Nanshi front, but the idea was that the orcs were burning a swath through the forest on their original campaign towards Le'Or.

Also, point of lighter cavalry over the heavy, lumbering mounted cavaliers was that it could traverse relatively easily through woodlands.(Hussars/light cavalry during the peninsular war period were capable of forging through forests, at the very least, and those never seemed to stop the mongols either.)

The orcs primarily used heavy cavalry and chariots as a means to a field battle, which they would force by burning the forest in a large enough pattern.

[Jermulore]

The best thing about horses are that they can move trough forest.

[Titanium Dragon]

The best thing about horses are that they can move trough forest.

Not terribly well though. Light cavalry could, but you wouldn't be going too much faster than on foot. All depends on the type of forest though - I'm not sure how dense the T'Nanshi forest floor is IC and how much shrubbry is there.

[Spell Singer]

Light Calvary is a catch all phrase:

Horse archers, lancers, skimirshers, hobilars, dragoons, steppe nomads, etc are all light calvary. Most can fight in forests at a disadvantage but since light calvary does not (generally) rely on shock it is more able to do so then heavy calvary which requires flat open ground for maximum effect.

The Mongol's were mainly heavy calvary so they would do poorly in a forest. If they had been light calvary they would not have had much impact as the fuedal knights would have rode them under. This was still at the point in time where the knight was the ultimate weapon of war.

The trouble with the battle report though is D&D specific. The spell "Silence" cannot be imbued into an Arcane Archers arrow as it is not an area of effect spell, it is target "Person." *shrug* so they fired lightening arrows (which would be more useful then fireballs anyway) or confusion arrows (my personal favorite). But whatever spell it has to be an area of affect spell (hmm does lightening count?) not a personal one (even one with a radius of effect).

[KinX]

Silence has a 15' radius on it

[Starslayer_D]

Elven Dire-Boar cavalery?

[Heronimous Fox]

I think the problem here is not whether your mounted or dismounted but whether your strength suits combat in woods. Also long established woods tend to be free of ground cover at certain times of the year and 10 ft deep in bracken and brambles at others.

Archers would be at a disadvantage, as would close formation infantary, e.g. pikemen. Giants would be in a shit state as they would be either fighting bent over or spend all their time breaking off branches while dwarves were hacking at their knees.

Its all semantics, literary license holds sway here. IMHO. Nice write up Nob.

[Spell Singer]

Silence has a 15' radius on it

The spell is targeted on a person though. Imbue arrow only works on Area of Effect spells (fireball, lightening, confusion, etc) which can be targeted at a point of ground. You have to cast silence on a person...you can't silence an area.

Sorry it is a wonderful idea but it does not work.

[Tangleroot]

The real question is.. does it matter if it makes a good story?

[markschouten]

The real question is.. does it matter if it makes a good story?

No.

[Nob]

First.

Did anyone even bother to LOOK at what the area around Nireth looks like? The eastern coast of T'Nanshi is relatively barren and hilly rather than outright forests.

Second.

About the imbued arrows.

YES I took liberties with the spell primarily because honestly the inability to imbue silence is rather stupid when you're able to imbue spells like wail of the banshee(theoritically). The assumption was because silence can be cast as a caster-centric AoE spell(which it is if you stretch the term enough to near breaking) it can work as an AoE spell on an imbued arrow.(My story and I'm sticking with it.)

As for the use of fireballs. The average level of these army warriors is meant to be represent something between 6-10. While higher level spells would undoubtedly be nice, it's also highly unfeasible unless we have legions of level 30+ archers like there are in-game.

Obviously that doesn't work too well in a literary fashion and it reduces the infantry into pointless hacks if you can just toss weirds at them until the only thing left are mages.

[keikobad]

Heh, sorry for the mess, Nob. I was just wondering if there had been a major change in terrain over the years, and you answered my question.

I am familiar with the area around Nireth and most of it, IMO, isn't suited for mounted combat on anything larger than a wolf-- not to mention the logistical difficulites of getting mounts there in the first place. But again, you answered that question too.

[Glocknal]

Something to consider about the forest is that this battle happened l;ike 2200 years before present day. Im sure the TNanshi forest was a less mature place than it is in present day avlis. Thee could of been significantly less undergrowth, dead vegitation and tree size would of been much smaller too.

Glok

[Nob]

The Mongol's were mainly heavy calvary so they would do poorly in a forest. If they had been light calvary they would not have had much impact as the fuedal knights would have rode them under. This was still at the point in time where the knight was the ultimate weapon of war.

Two thirds of the Mongolian forces at Liegnitz were light cavalry archers rather than heavy cavalry. The composition of their forces was primarily ranged(and often is said to be one of the reasons why the Europeans overcommitted, they simply didn't see the Mongolian cavalry as a threat to their war chargers as the Mongols had significantly smaller horses which nonetheless were hardier) The fact that mongols had weaponry with a 300yd range and weighted arrows to most accurately pierce armor or kill horses at said range was one of their greatest tactical advantages.

The greatest advantage though the mongols had over the Europeans was how they were organized and through their signalling practices which made them that much more effective in massed ranged attacks.

Heavy cavalry really wasn't a viable weapon period, as Crecy in 1346, Poitiers in 1356 and Agincourt in 1415 would demonstrate quite painfully to the French, and Liegnitz did for the Poles.

Strangely enough the actual time period where heavy cavalry was its most effective is the early gunpowder age, right after the English abandoned the longbow.(Somewhat paradoxial that warfare would actually devolve for a period, though that's essentially what bore things like pikemen into the 18th century.) The actual full fledged death of cavalry of course doesn't start till the advent of automatic weapons in the mid 19th century with the gatling gun and then completely disappearing after machine guns show up on the battlefield.

[Spell Singer]

The mongols biggest advantage was in command and control. The fact that the Europeans could not bring them to combat was also the problem, it was the same with fighting in the Holy Land. Look at how much a relatively small number of troops accomplished and then as the muslims adapted new tactics the same troops became less effective.

On missile weapons:
Penetrating armor at 300 y with a composite bow was impossible, you can not fire an arrow flat trajectory that far...that is a 45 degree angled shot. A longbow at Agincourt could not penetrate the knights armor, not as they were used. In fact hitting with a bow at 300 y is pretty much impossible, if you do hit what you were aiming at it is luck not skill. You are firing blind volleys at that stage. Armor was tested by firing a crossbow at it at close range, the armor was designed to deflect most arrows. The casaulties in this case will be the horses not the knights. Why the french lost at Agincourt is an open question so far I have read various reasons: lack of command and control and the english longbow (the common held view), the english outnumbered them (which is what they way they behaved suggests according to Delbr?ck) and their moral broke (Keagen "The Face of Battle") due to poor choice in tactics. Which one of the three is correct if any of them are I can not judge. Both Keagen and Delbr?ck make good arguements for their positions.

The only thing that stops a calvary charge is disciplined troops, with spears and pikes helping a lot. The Mongols used their superior command and control to simply ride away from the knights firing backwards as they did so (disciplined troops). A heavy calvary unit can charge only so many times and once exhausted is not a threat. But heaven help anything that isn't a spear wall and is caught by one. Nothing back then stops 2 tonne of horse and steel but a wall of spears that the horse will not enter.

But heavy calvary is a weapon and is no better than the people wielding it. When they are incompentent then what do you expect? In the book "A distant Mirror" there is a wonderful description of the battle against the Turks that the Duc de Couisey particpated in. Why did the French Knights loose? Because the dunderhead 18 year old who was in command did not listen to the Marchall of France and de Couisey who had just a few days earlier executed a perfectly planned battle and wiped out an advance guard of turkish troops. He persistantly ignored their advice to stop and rest the horses and let himself be surrounded. At which point on exhausted horses the heavly calvary is just useless.

I did the same damn sort of thing the mongols did using Spanish Jietes playing Midievel Total War one time...just had the javelin throwing light calvary ride up throw spears and ride away...the heavies charged and then I had the lights charge away and a second group starting throwing javelins into the knights from the rear...eventually the heavies were exhausted from charging back and forth and my infantry moved in for the kill. But if I had NOT done that that single group of 40 heavy calvary would have destroyed my entire army of 600 men or so.

Sorry for being long winded but it isn't a weapon that wins battles it is how it is used that does so. Todays battlefields are dominated by tanks, but that does not mean that infantry cannot defeat them. Nor the fact that they can be defeated mean that they are not the dominant weapon. The same is true of the knight. When used properly they dominated the battlefield when ill used they did not. The same sort of thing can be said about the Roman Legion come to think about it. They were the dominant weapon of classical warfare but they still managed to get defeated by Parthian Horse Archers and German Warriors. Yet I never see the sort of comments leveled at Knights leveled at them.

Still knights stopped being the most crucial part of battles more or less when the swiss pikemen showed up. Disciplined infantry can generally speaking always defeat calvary...or neutralize them.

Calvary in Napoleonic times was also decisive but generally only once you broke the moral of the enemy and they turned and ran. That was when you let the calvary go...it also forced the infantry to form squares which were vulurable to artillary fire.

I probably should check what is available in Amazon on the late midievel period. My memories of the mongol invasion battles is damned vague and likely I am confusing them with the late roman ones anyway.

Back to D&D...

Taking liberties is fine, people do it all the time on the Starfire list when describing battles I even do it when it helps the story along. But it is best to avoid violating the rules blatently.

As for how to mix D&D magic and combat. My advice would be to tone down the numbers of mages involved. You have 3000 mages out of a force of 30,000 that is 10%. Even if the numbers were 60,000 that is still far far too many. Even if you say only 1% are realy powerful that is still 30 lvl 15+ mages. D&D lacks the spells that you need to actually have large scale combat with mages involved. There is no "Shield of the Regiment" or whatever. Getting caught by two lightening bolts cast by the minimum level that can cast them will kill or seriously weaken most Lvl 5 fighters...5-10d6 vrs 5d10.

For the battles to not end up being: the mages destroy everything but the other mages and then duel each other... you need to limit the number of mages. The Orcs should have had no more than 30 of them in that battle and even that is a lot....so 15 mages would make more sense and only 1 or 2 that were very powerful. That way you can talk about armies being relevant otherwise they are not. A single powerful sorcerer could destroy an army of hundreds of thousands if you had access to the full spells from PnP...(flying and improved invisiblity would be the key two). Its either that or create specific mass formation protection spells. Whenever I see this sort of thing done well you have the mages countering one another (in essence they are taken out of the equation).

Also there is no real need to use silence since if the first arrows that hit were simple lighening or fireball arrows the effect would have been the same. The mages could do nothing to stop the arrows anyway so why introduce a rules violation?

The battle description is done well otherwise. Maybe look at the rules that were published at some stage for mass combat for typical mage ratios and then scale those back even more as Avlis is magic poor. Also look at how you can have the magic do something specific...for example if the 200 pixies had each one killed a regimental commander or whatever (gone invisible...flew in...and then magic missile x5 five times) you can give them a key role without them requiring they kill many things (as you did with the dryads by having them animate the trees...i hope this makes sense...you gave them a key point in the battle by having the magic do something unique rather than just destructive). But frankly you need to cut down the number of mages by orders of magnitude.

[Spell Singer]

The mongols biggest advantage was in command and control. The fact that the Europeans could not bring them to combat was also the problem, it was the same with fighting in the Holy Land. Look at how much a relatively small number of troops accomplished and then as the muslims adapted new tactics the same troops became less effective.

On missile weapons:
Penetrating armor at 300 y with a composite bow was impossible, you can not fire an arrow flat trajectory that far...that is a 45 degree angled shot. A longbow at Agincourt could not penetrate the knights armor, not as they were used. In fact hitting with a bow at 300 y is pretty much impossible, if you do hit what you were aiming at it is luck not skill. You are firing blind volleys at that stage. Armor was tested by firing a crossbow at it at close range, the armor was designed to deflect most arrows. The casaulties in this case will be the horses not the knights. Why the french lost at Agincourt is an open question so far I have read various reasons: lack of command and control and the english longbow (the common held view), the english outnumbered them (which is what they way they behaved suggests according to Delbr?ck) and their moral broke (Keagen "The Face of Battle") due to poor choice in tactics. Which one of the three is correct if any of them are I can not judge. Both Keagen and Delbr?ck make good arguements for their positions.

The only thing that stops a calvary charge is disciplined troops, with spears and pikes helping a lot. The Mongols used their superior command and control to simply ride away from the knights firing backwards as they did so (disciplined troops). A heavy calvary unit can charge only so many times and once exhausted is not a threat. But heaven help anything that isn't a spear wall and is caught by one. Nothing back then stops 2 tonne of horse and steel but a wall of spears that the horse will not enter.

But heavy calvary is a weapon and is no better than the people wielding it. When they are incompentent then what do you expect? In the book "A distant Mirror" there is a wonderful description of the battle against the Turks that the Duc de Couisey particpated in. Why did the French Knights loose? Because the dunderhead 18 year old who was in command did not listen to the Marchall of France and de Couisey who had just a few days earlier executed a perfectly planned battle and wiped out an advance guard of turkish troops. He persistantly ignored their advice to stop and rest the horses and let himself be surrounded. At which point on exhausted horses the heavly calvary is just useless.

I did the same damn sort of thing the mongols did using Spanish Jietes playing Midievel Total War one time...just had the javelin throwing light calvary ride up throw spears and ride away...the heavies charged and then I had the lights charge away and a second group starting throwing javelins into the knights from the rear...eventually the heavies were exhausted from charging back and forth and my infantry moved in for the kill. But if I had NOT done that that single group of 40 heavy calvary would have destroyed my entire army of 600 men or so.

Sorry for being long winded but it isn't a weapon that wins battles it is how it is used that does so. Todays battlefields are dominated by tanks, but that does not mean that infantry cannot defeat them. Nor the fact that they can be defeated mean that they are not the dominant weapon. The same is true of the knight. When used properly they dominated the battlefield when ill used they did not. The same sort of thing can be said about the Roman Legion come to think about it. They were the dominant weapon of classical warfare but they still managed to get defeated by Parthian Horse Archers and German Warriors. Yet I never see the sort of comments leveled at Knights leveled at them.

Still knights stopped being the most crucial part of battles more or less when the swiss pikemen showed up. Disciplined infantry can generally speaking always defeat calvary...or neutralize them.

Calvary in Napoleonic times was also decisive but generally only once you broke the moral of the enemy and they turned and ran. That was when you let the calvary go...it also forced the infantry to form squares which were vulurable to artillary fire.

I probably should check what is available in Amazon on the late midievel period. My memories of the mongol invasion battles is damned vague and likely I am confusing them with the late roman ones anyway.

Back to D&D...

Taking liberties is fine, people do it all the time on the Starfire list when describing battles I even do it when it helps the story along. But it is best to avoid violating the rules blatently.

As for how to mix D&D magic and combat. My advice would be to tone down the numbers of mages involved. You have 3000 mages out of a force of 30,000 that is 10%. Even if the numbers were 60,000 that is still far far too many. Even if you say only 1% are realy powerful that is still 30 lvl 15+ mages. D&D lacks the spells that you need to actually have large scale combat with mages involved. There is no "Shield of the Regiment" or whatever. Getting caught by two lightening bolts cast by the minimum level that can cast them will kill or seriously weaken most Lvl 5 fighters...5-10d6 vrs 5d10.

For the battles to not end up being: the mages destroy everything but the other mages and then duel each other... you need to limit the number of mages. The Orcs should have had no more than 30 of them in that battle and even that is a lot....so 15 mages would make more sense and only 1 or 2 that were very powerful. That way you can talk about armies being relevant otherwise they are not. A single powerful sorcerer could destroy an army of hundreds of thousands if you had access to the full spells from PnP...(flying and improved invisiblity would be the key two). Its either that or create specific mass formation protection spells. Whenever I see this sort of thing done well you have the mages countering one another (in essence they are taken out of the equation).

Also there is no real need to use silence since if the first arrows that hit were simple lighening or fireball arrows the effect would have been the same. The mages could do nothing to stop the arrows anyway so why introduce a rules violation?

The battle description is done well otherwise. Maybe look at the rules that were published at some stage for mass combat for typical mage ratios and then scale those back even more as Avlis is magic poor. Also look at how you can have the magic do something specific...for example if the 200 pixies had each one killed a regimental commander or whatever (gone invisible...flew in...and then magic missile x5 five times) you can give them a key role without them requiring they kill many things (as you did with the dryads by having them animate the trees...i hope this makes sense...you gave them a key point in the battle by having the magic do something unique rather than just destructive). But frankly you need to cut down the number of mages by orders of magnitude.

[Tangleroot]

I like the way magic and battlefield combat are mixed in Steven Erikson's books. Yeah, those mages really chew up the infantry.. Too bad the books degenerate to a more and more longwinded crap as the series progresses.. Anyone know if the latest one is ANY good?