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Archives of Nethys

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Battlecry!

How to Have a War

Source Battlecry! pg. 199
Having decided what kind of story you want to tell, the next step is to figure out how exactly you are going to run the game—and that, in turn, means deciding what kind of war you are dealing with and where the protagonists fit into the war.

What Kind of War?

Source Battlecry! pg. 199
When making a war campaign, it helps to have a fairly good idea of how the war is going to operate—wars may appear to be chaotic and wild, but they usually have their own internal logic. The simplest way of doing this is to take an existing historical war and translate it to Golarion. Replace technology for magic, swap around some names, and call it good. This has the advantage of providing a wealth of existing material and inspiration, though it can occasionally leave some logical hiccups during the translation process. Additionally, when translating a historic war to Golarion, be aware that your players could have personal or historical ties to these wars. You should consult players before using this method.

Alternatively, one can build a war from the ground up. Preindustrial wars generally fell into one of two very broad categories, depending on the goals and abilities of the participants.

Raiding warfare is warfare about chasing people away. In this kind of warfare, relatively small groups of combatants make their approach by way of stealth and speed, aiming at some kind of lightly defended target (a supply depot, a herd of cattle, an unsuspecting village, and so on). They strike quickly, inflicting harm on the enemy, perhaps steal some resources or supplies, and then retreat before a serious defense can be mounted. In the long run, the goal is to make it too difficult or dangerous for the enemy to stay in an area so they leave you be.

When all goes well, few raiders die, though if the attackers are discovered, an ambush can wipe out an entire raid. It also doesn’t need a lot of expensive or difficult-to-acquire weaponry or siege equipment. This style of warfare is thus commonly practiced by insurgents, guerrillas, or terrorists, but also by groups of bandits or raiders, and by various nomadic, pastoralist peoples.

Golarion, of course, is a fantasy setting, and so one can imagine some innovations on the venerable raiding formula. For one, raids might come from odd or unexpected angles. Perhaps the raiders come bubbling up from the Darklands, or step over from another plane, or arrive on the backs of hippogriffs before flying away. Discovering how a raid is done can make for an entertaining mystery for the heroes.

Magic and native supernatural abilities can give raiders the kind of resources one usually needs a fully equipped national army for—imagine, say, the offensive abilities of a raid of giants. Raiding involves relatively small numbers, so one high-level character or monster can take on immense military significance, personalizing what is otherwise an impersonal genre of storytelling.

Siege warfare is about taking and holding key locations. These are usually military, administrative, and supply centers, though in Golarion this could also be places of mystical significance. Such places are defended by walls and citadels and large numbers of soldiers that make raids impossible, and so the way to overcome it is to bring enough soldiers, usually escorting some manner of lumbering siege equipment, to the enemy citadel. The enemy, in turn, will either wait in their fortress, or if they think they can win, will march their own army out to meet you in open battle before anyone reaches the fortress (and in so doing minimize the damage you deal to their territory).

This kind of warfare is expensive and can involve tens of thousands of soldiers, many of whom will inevitably die. A typical preindustrial army will usually be about twenty to thirty thousand soldiers, with big ones going as high as sixty thousand, though these are very rough numbers. As a result, this kind of warfare is almost entirely the realm of organized states, countries with generals and uniforms and so forth.

Even then, siege-based wars rarely last long. Unlike raid-based warfare, which can last for decades of low intensity fighting, maintaining big armies in the field is just too expensive for anyone to do indefinitely. Thus, most wars like this last only a couple of years, ending either in victory for one side or in mutual exhaustion, in which case everyone takes a decade or so to rebuild their strength to try again.

Fantastic siege-based warfare will usually incorporate magic in a significant fashion. One way to do so is to replace the expensive and unwieldy siege equipment with an archmage or a cadre of sorcerers who will knock down the castle walls, usually with some dramatic ritual that is opposed by the defenders’ own wizards. The entire army, thus, is tasked with defending the ritualists and occupying the territory if they’re successful.

Another trope that comes up often in these kinds of stories is that of the keystone army—that is to say, a supernatural army, often undead, that’s held together by the magic of a single sorcerous power. Remove that key figure, kill the evil lich or banish the demon, and the army disintegrates. In terms of storytelling, this can have the advantage of personalizing the conflict further, and shifting the narrative to a place where the player characters can influence the course of the war. Now, they need not defeat tens of thousands of soldiers. They just need to kill one wizard, if a powerful one. That said, this shift can come with the loss of some more traditional military storytelling, so one should be cautious about using it.

Where Are the Heroes?

Source Battlecry! pg. 200
Having decided what kind of war you want, the next important step is figuring out what exactly the protagonists are doing and where they fit into the military hierarchy. Military theorists sometimes divide war into three layers: strategy, operations, and tactics.

All three levels of military practice are important, and it’s fairly common for success at one level to be undone by failure somewhere else. A brilliant victory in battle is meaningless if the underlying strategy is flawed or misguided, and a genius operation can still be undone if the troops lose the actual fight. Even if the heroes do their part flawlessly, things can still unravel due to others’ actions. Whether this will happen, and how often, is important for setting the tone and something to make clear to the players early on.

Strategy: This is the upper level, where kings and generals decide whether to have a war in the first place, what they hope to gain, how, and what resources they can allocate to the job. For instance, suppose Her Infernal Majestrix, Queen Abrogail Thrune II, determines to reconquer Ravounel. In consultation with her advisors, she decides on a campaign of coastal raids followed by two armies entering the country from different angles before converging on Kintargo, and she decides that she can spare three legions and a detachment of the Chelaxian navy for the task.

Although it’s unlikely for a low-level party to have strategic input into a large war, inherited positions or special means of influence make it possible. For smaller countries, a group of player characters could easily form its rulers and most powerful weapon. Even without formal rank, the strategic input of more powerful characters may become necessary as their group’s power approaches that of a general’s army.

Operations: This is the middle level and is about getting your army to the target specified by your strategy, preferably without running out of food or ammunition, getting lost, or getting ambushed along the way. Operations is the unglamorous but necessary work that takes up most of military leadership’s time, and it requires making a hundred decisions that shape the actual battlefield—forge ahead and risk arriving at the battle exhausted, or take a slower pace and give the enemy time to prepare? Take a shortcut through the fey-haunted swamps, or try to secure boats from the potentially hostile locals? Camp on the site of the ancient massacre, or risk attack by marching through the night? Operations are intimately concerned with questions of time and distance, balancing the conditions of their troops against the map and the timetable.

If the player characters are given command, then this is where they will generally find themselves. They have some forces at their disposal and play as officers, either as colleagues or allowing players interested in the details of managing operations to do so while others play to their own strengths. Their job is then to navigate a series of decisions and encounters to try and secure their objectives as efficiently as possible. Successful protagonists will take full advantage of their abilities, both mundane and supernatural, to assist their forces.

Tactics: The final level is about actually winning the battle. In Pathfinder, this is going to usually be the province of regular combat or the variants in this book. If the player characters exist mostly at the tactical level, then by virtue of having access to player character abilities (such as magic, animal companions, and so forth), they are probably the equivalent of commandos or special forces. They could be a designated military unit (likely called scouts or similar) or might simply be their commanding officer’s favorite troubleshooters. In either case, the campaign takes the form of a series of interconnected vignettes, where each session the heroes are given a new mission to accomplish—an advance must be scouted, a bridge sabotaged, a spy captured, a war crime investigated.

Often, as the heroes accomplish task after task, they’re rewarded with commendations, medals, and promotions, and might find themselves sliding into ever more complex missions until they’re given command of their own forces. This model has the advantage of letting the earlier, vignette-style campaign act as an extended tutorial for independent command, introducing the players gradually to the setting, the story, and the challenges of military operations.

Generally speaking, player characters won’t be regular grunts, or at least not for very long. Past the first couple of levels, most protagonists have too many abilities for it to make sense to use them as cannon fodder—though an initial adventure or two as foot soldiers until they’re noticed by high command can do a lot to set the tone of a campaign.

What Do the Heroes Do?

Source Battlecry! pg. 201
All this theory is well and good, but what does it look like in practice? Below are lists of possible situations that player characters might find themselves in, subdivided by the protagonists’ place in the war. They’re numbered so you can roll them for inspiration, but remember to always give yourself time to adapt it to the situation and tone.

Although the tables are split, feel free to poach from other tables, with whatever adjustment seems appropriate. If the tactical-level problem is that the heroes are lost, then the operational-level problem is that some of the protagonists’ soldiers have gotten themselves lost. On the other hand, tactical heroes wouldn’t be asked to solve a strategic problem, hearing about it in rumors that underline the changing tides of war.

Similarly, the protagonists aren’t the only ones who run into difficulties. What on one side is a daring raid can be the other side’s cat and mouse game to hold off stealthy attackers.

Strategic

d10 Situation
1The enemy has begun to tame new beasts of war, whether flying or simply more dangerous animals.
2 You have news that your army is about to be pinched between two individually smaller forces. Can you reach them with news and reinforcements quickly enough to break the encirclement?
3 The river is an important natural boundary during this fight, but also the home of naiads and other aquatic fey. What can you offer to win their assistance?
4 The latest skirmish was a feint by the enemy command! But where's the real attack going to come from?
5 Stories are spreading of atrocities committed by your troops. Although they might be exaggerated for political effect, there's likely some kernel of truth.
6 The enemy general seems prepared for your every move. Is it luck, spies in your ranks, or some form of divination you must counteract?
7 If your spies are correct, an enemy dignitary is moving through the area incognito. This is an opportunity you won't get again.
8 An enemy soldier is spoken of in whispers, claiming that they're invincible. Can you put the lie to their claim before the morale of your forces is chipped away further?
9 An enemy soldier surrendered, claiming they wish to provide information. Even if their desire is genuine, can we be certain they were not deceived themselves?
10 The fighting, or locals tired of being caught in the middle of it, has awakened something moldering in an ancient barrow. Its power is beyond anything the soldiers on either side can handle.

Operational

d10 Situation
1Your mounts are deeply unhappy about something. You don't know why, and you don't have time to deal with this right now, but you might not have a choice.
2 Defending against raids is bad enough. Defending against raiders on hippogriffs, wyverns, or other flying creatures? Far worse
3 Turns out there's an old smuggler's tunnel near the front lines. The possibilities for sabotage are limitless, though there's the question of why the tunnel was abandoned in the first place.
4 The prisoner transfer could be a trap. Everyone expects it to be a trap. But it might provide your only opportunity to get your people back.
5 An old soothsayer claims that to fight tomorrow is to invite tragedy. Even if they have no special insight, their words are shaking the soldiers’ morale.
6 Soldiers keep disappearing in the night, but it's up to you to determine if they're deserters or being dragged off.
7 You have these lovingly prepared false documents to lead the enemy raiders into an ambush. Now how do you get it to them without them suspecting anything?
8 You don’t know what was in the water, but half the army is out of the fight. Someone needs to fool or stall the enemy until your troops are back in fighting shape.
9 The new engineer that the general hired knows his stuff, but the list of components he needs is positively morbid. What kind of siege engine needs corpse hair?
10 The wizards can turn the tide of battle, provided your forces can hold this place of power until the ritual is complete.

Tactical

d10 Situation
1Speed is of the essence when sneaking through enemy lines. You have minutes or even less to bypass the guards before there’s an unpleasant reckoning.
2It's a good plan. One unit keeps the guards busy, the other nips around and hits the supply depot. Hammer and anvil. Only problem is, you're the anvil.
3Enemies have taken a strategic location, like a high point or the ford in a river. You don't have any orders, but waiting for them will give the enemy time to dig in.
4Your maps can’t change quickly enough to reflect the tides of war or they’d tell you that where you’ve been traveling is now behind enemy lines.
5Everything is on fire and it's not your fault this time. It's literally raining fire down upon you. You need to find out how the enemy is doing this and stop them, fast.
6Whether because of a spy in your ranks or sheer bad luck, your group is at the forefront of an ambush.
7Most raiders can be stymied by a stout palisade. The spirits lurking in the dark beyond your campfires, unfortunately, are not most raiders.
8The general has commanded you to hold the line, but the unit closest to yours has already broken.
9The first ones over the fortification’s wall stand to win great glory and even wealth.
10The general has a cunning plan. It actually seems more likely to lead you into the jaws of death, but you’re asked to make it seem cunning or die trying.

Onward to Victory (Points)!

Source Battlecry! pg. 202
The Victory Point subsystem is particularly well suited for war campaigns—it might not even need a change of name! Typically, you’ll want to use Victory Points when the characters have sufficient power or strategic pull to determine the outcome of the battle. Campaigns, especially about the futility or absurdity of war, should leave them out when the party can’t make the difference between victory and defeat.

Victory Points let you concretely show the group’s impact on another layer of the war. This is most often a tactical group’s impact on the operations level, with their contributions changing the fate of a particular battle, holding a key location, or even evacuating a city in time. But a group focused on building supply lines, gathering intelligence, or making strategic decisions might see their efforts (and the associated skill rolls) play out through Victory Points deciding battles they aren’t even present for.

Victory Point Scale: Wars can last for centuries or be over in a single day. So, it’s important to consider the speed at which you’re telling that story. An epic campaign can unfold in the bloody final days of a single siege, while months or years with shifting strategic goals can likewise pass in a few sessions.

Decide whether to use Victory Points and set the scale based on the time you expect it to take at the table. A series of raids to meet a strategic objective might play out as a quick encounter for the rulers of a large nation, while a tactical group might approach each raid as an adventure with its own total of Victory Points. But a longer scale is appropriate for those rulers if the process of cajoling allies to join the raids takes most of a session or they decide to lead from the front lines.

Using this structure can be a powerful tool for pacing and tone. If you’re presenting this war as a glorious endeavor, a vicious fighting retreat might be a long encounter with the PCs holding the line while their allies withdraw, accumulating Victory Points to potentially save everyone. But when focusing on the darkness of war, that retreat might stretch over an entire adventure with the Diminishing Victory Points variant, where each failure represents deaths on their grueling march to safety.

You may find yourself having to adjust this scale on the fly as players show you where their interest is. After all, the barbarian staying up to watch over the army’s camp doesn’t mean their player wants to spend hours fending off the soul-sucking boredom of standing guard and chasing down individual enemy scouts. And teleport can bring strategic personnel to the battlefield at a moment’s notice. Even after you’ve laid out the Victory Points subsystem for the players, keep in mind the barbarian’s watch might be better resolved by Perception checks, and a ruler’s Warfare Lore check might represent a battle with the enemy lieutenant.

Objectives: All sides of a battle are fighting for a reason. Even if one side’s strategic goal is complete destruction of their opponents, the fatalities of a given battle are typically in service of a more specific objective. Wanting to hold or take a location is common, as is stopping or delaying the movement of an opposing army. Even when death is a goal, it’s often an individual leader’s death rather than an entire army.

This is one of the reasons Victory Points can create a better representation of warfare than encounters alone. Just because the heroes hold a fortification or break the enemies’ morale doesn’t mean that the opposing army is wiped out to the last soldier. Although there are exceptions, most soldiers survive on both sides of the typical engagement.

It’s also worth considering these objectives on a tactical level. Even without Victory Points, this can help keep fights varied and interested, but it’s worth extra consideration when awarding points. Disrupting communications, incapacitating a general, or holding a bridge could all be worth Victory Points. Although all of them could be accomplished by wiping out swathes of enemy forces, keeping the focus on the objectives gives creative players a chance to reach them using fewer resources and ultimately contribute more to the final result.

Defeat: In times of war, no plan survives contact with the enemy. While the player characters can turn the tide of a battle or a war with Victory Points (they are the protagonists, after all), war is something bigger than just the heroes. Depending on the tone of your campaign, defeat might be a dreadful certainty or completely off the table, but putting it in the party’s hands raises the stakes.

Strategic or operational defeat can be tricky to present when the PCs are still able to fight. Focus on the actions of the NPCs around them, such as a commanding officer calling for a retreat or the common soldiers routing. It’s important to keep the players’ choices open, whether to retreat with their fellows, hold the line to assist the retreat, make one final valiant assault, or continue fighting in some other way.

Unlike tactical defeats that so often result in the party dead, larger-scale defeats can just move the campaign into a new stage. Failing to defend a city under siege means that characters who remain are now behind enemy lines, fighting more as a resistance cell than an army. Meanwhile, retreating means a chance to regroup, resupply, and recruit new allies with more focus on operational questions.

Being in Command

Source Battlecry! pg. 203
When the characters reach a point in their military career where they’re given command over soldiers of their own or if circumstances arise that require the characters take part in larger-scale battles, consider the new skirmish warfare subsystem.

This subsystem allows players to take control and act alongside troop creatures, usually in encounters against other troops and their leaders. These encounters function very similarly to standard encounters and can represent the tumult of armies clashing against each other. The section contains advice for GMs about creating and running such encounters. In addition, a plethora of troop stat blocks usable with this subsystem as both allies and enemies begins here. That section also includes a table of troop stat blocks found in other sources to date.

Skirmish encounters can be used alongside Victory Points to simulate a larger war; as the PCs complete or fail at certain objectives, they can lose or gain Victory Points. In addition, when certain Victory Point thresholds are met, perhaps the PCs gain command of more powerful troops or deepen their bonds with their current troop.

Downtime

Source Battlecry! pg. 203
Even the bloodiest wars don’t see constant battle after battle. Armies need time to march from place to place and, unless magic is involved, orders from high command aren’t always transmitted instantaneously to the leaders in the field. Soldiers need time to rest and recuperate or train for hardships to come. In each of these cases, characters involved in war might find themselves facing stretches of downtime. The following downtime activities might be flavored to match a war-focused campaign.

Earning Income: If the PCs are on a military’s payroll, they already see a steady income and will likely not need to perform jobs to gain extra cash, and they won’t have to worry about their cost of living. However, enterprising characters can still have a side hustle. A fighter could do a fellow soldier a favor and pick up their shift in the kitchen or cleaning latrines. A rogue could find ways to smuggle luxury items from a nearby city to the lower ranks. A druid could hire out their animal companion to move equipment between camps.

Long-Term Rest: Battlefields are dangerous and dirty. PCs returning from a mission may have suffered grievous wounds or caught some nasty disease. Most military camps will have a medic to assist with their recovery, though a PC might want to rely on another PC’s expertise (or magic). In either case, such healing takes time.

Retraining: Soldiers must always be at their best, and physical training is paramount to most militaries. When not directly fighting, a regiment might run for several miles or perform calisthenics as morning exercise. Such activity could serve as a background for PCs who wish to retrain feats, skills, and class features. Perhaps a wizard wants to increase their proficiency in Athletics in preparation for a long march. A barbarian might want to be able to better intimidate a large group of people in preparation for a siege. A bard might want to replace a spell in their repertoire that focuses more on dealing damage than healing.

Shopping and Crafting: A good army’s quartermaster should provide their soldiers with everything they need, but sometimes they can offer a little extra... for a price. PCs might also be campaigning near a friendly city, allowing them to purchase items as normal, though occasionally they might see a steep increase in prices due to low supply. Alternatively, an established military camp might provide a PC with tools or a workshop, usually in the form of a portable smithy, for them to be able to craft their own items.