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Archives of Nethys

Archives of Nethys

Pathfinder RPG (1st Edition) Pathfinder RPG (2nd Edition) Starfinder RPG

Rules Index | GM Screen | Player's Guide
Battlecry! / How to Have a 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.