On Being a Good General: Tactics and Strategy

[Sevatuan]

So I'm curious about this.


In the Pre-Exalted Storyteller books, there was a 'Leadership' skill. There was also a lot more room to add 'Custom' skills to any given character.


Exalted does not have that built in - which is fine. It keeps down skill-bloat.


So how does one handle a character's knowedge of battlefield strategy? The core Exalted book indicates the 'Leadership' itself is handle via a Performance roll. I dig this, partially. This covers the spectacle of battlefield command (The Leader's morale-building speech before the fight).


But what about actual knowledge of Troop Movement, use of terrain and weather, movement of resources, rationing supplies. Analyzing enemy movement and countering them. Analyzing troop strength. Recognizing the plan has gone sour and recovering from it.


Bureacracy handles the 'administrative' portions of command, but, again, not the actual 'in the trenches' knowledge that is important to it.


Lore? Strategy and Tactics really is basically the art of looking at all the major battles to come before and seeing who came out the winner and determining what they had that the other guy didn't.  High Ground is Good. Horses vs Infantry is good. Flanking is good. Lore seems to be the default 'requires some sort of learning to perform' skill, but somehow it doesn't seem right.


Thoughts?

 

[MikeOQuinn]

I'll start by simply linking this, as it's going to come up sooner or later: TSJ's Tactics Thread


Also, I'll mention that there's a section on mass combat in the Player's Guide, though I've not read too much about it.


Core rules, I'd say that the skill is based on the information you want to gather. Pretty much, I'll rule that if you role-play it out, unless it's a huge violation of your character (in the "That mute just spoke!" sort of way), I'll let it stand as your character having multiple facets and interests, some of which just don't fit on a character sheet. This means that, should you be rolling in a tactical situation, it's likely that you're looking for advice or, at the least, more knowledge than has been given to you thus far.


A successful Lore roll (Int or Wits, depending on the situation) would net you advice about how to use some facet of the situation better (terrain, troop deployment, trick tactics, etc)


Bureacracy does, indeed, handle the administrative portions of command, both how to interact with troop leaders and the like, and how to make sure that everyone gets paid ontime. It would also provide you with information as to who should lead a certain charge, who could be trusted to carry plans, and who would know the terrain best, in order to provide advice.


Presence, as indicated, affects tactics once you get to the nitty-gritty: combat. If you've given your troops a rousing sendoff, they're more likely to succeed.

 

[Dracogryff]

I've always personally believed that strategy and tactics at least are very viable unter the Lore skill. Reacting on the field, well, if you don't like Lore on a battlefield, perhaps their actual combat skill (wits+melee to react to the counteroffensive in time)?


There is also the Craft skill, War, if you prefer. It's a canon Exalted craft skill (First and Forsaken has it) and it could become your catch-all for anything that doesn't seem to be able to be workable under any other skill. So, strategy, tactics, planning, and other such could fall under this Craft instead of Lore.


All in all, I merely use Lore and ignore the Craft (War) idea, but that doesn't mean it doesn't work just as well. I tend to use Lore because I tend to view Lore as something of your understanding of how things work in the real world. This isn't a good way of putting it, but I can't seem to find a better wording. I'll try to expand. Lore, to me, is more than your 'book knowledge.' It's your ability to look at what you have learned from books, and then apply it to the situation at hand. If you are a person who has studied the tactics of successful generals and their strategies in battle extensively and worked to understand the reasoning behind why their strategies worked, I don't see why you can't use your Lore skill to make battlefield strategies. But that is just me. Craft (War) is just as usable as lore for such a thing, so it mostly depends on what you like better, I suppose.

 

[MikeOQuinn]

(wits+melee to react to the counteroffensive in time)?

I wouldn't use a combat skill to decide this unless you're the one physically countering the counteroffensive.

There is also the Craft skill, War, if you prefer. It's a canon Exalted craft skill (First and Forsaken has it) and it could become your catch-all for anything that doesn't seem to be able to be workable under any other skill. So, strategy, tactics, planning, and other such could fall under this Craft instead of Lore.

War also makes a perfectly acceptable speciality for Lore, a concept that I had not thought about, but am increasingly more pleased with.

 

[Heaven's Thunder Hammer]

I personally have adopted the "Tactics" skill myself. I got rid of the Brawl skill and now everything is a Martial Art. I replaced Brawl with Tactics.


TSJ's write up on tactics is quite good, I highly recomend it.

 

[Jakk Bey]

TSJ got me to evaluate the Ability sets, and I use something a little different than his Tactics Ability.


In my games, I give the Dawn Caste Warfare--which is the nuts and bolts running of a campaign, from where to set up tents and the latrines, to setting up ambushes, siege machinery placement, reading troop movements, and all the rest of the goodies.  In my games, it's comparable to the Larceny Ability in its scope, but for soldiers, not thieves. It does away with Brawl and Martial Arts which gets condensed down to a single Ability, Fight.  Fight combines Brawl and Martial Arts, because I don't really see the need to have both--but that's another thread there.


I did lift a few of TSJ's Charms, and altered a few others for this set. I'll be submitting my Modernis Mundi setting in a few weeks, all edited and with some other goodies for Mystech Modifications--right now, I'm digesting the Alchemicals book and looking at what might work better, if there are things that I should add to the setting, or if I need to leave the damn thing alone, and just not worry about it too much.

 

[MikeOQuinn]

Awesome, Jakk. Looking forward to seeing it.

 

[Jakk Bey]

Haku has been kind enough to host the draft here if you want to check it out early. Most of the Warfare rules are there if you want to check them out early.


*hugs and kisses to Hak for being a sweetie*

 

[Haku1]

Haku has been kind enough to host the draft here if you want to check it out early. Most of the Warfare rules are there if you want to check them out early.
*hugs and kisses to Hak for being a sweetie*

You're welcome...


But yeah... it's only some webspace on a geo-cities account. Not much... really.

 

[Jakk Bey]

Take a compliment for being a good egg, dammit.

 

[Haku1]

Take a compliment for being a good egg' date=' dammit.[/quote']
Haha... I dodge compliments like... a sidereal dodges being pinned with the blame for something that they shouldn't have done. ^_-

 

[Forn Clakes]

All in all, I merely use Lore and ignore the Craft (War) idea, but that doesn't mean it doesn't work just as well.

I too use Lore instead of Craft (War), since I view all Craft abilities as manufacturing and working with inanimate materials.


I havn't got a clue what to do with Craft (Fate) though.


~FC.

 

[MikeOQuinn]

I havn't got a clue what to do with Craft (Fate) though.
~FC.

You're right... Fate seems too - living, breathing, writhing, alive, primordial - to be a craftable material.

 

[MikeOQuinn]

From this thread:

* First of all, Brawl and Martial Arts have been combined, as have Endurance and Resistance. There are two new abilities: War, which is all about strategy and tactics and sees use in the mass combat system; and Integrity, which is about resisting persuasion and is important to the new social interaction system.
<snip second bullet>


* Combat has seen some big changes. Turns are gone; they've been replaced with a system of "ticks," where different maneuvers take slightly different lengths of time to complete. (Another effect of this is that you only have to roll for initiative once, at the beginning of combat.) Instead of rolling Dodge, you get a fixed Defense Value -- when using a charm, however, you roll dice and add successes to this.

Combat in general, either one-on-one or en masse, should see some interesting revisions when this releases.


Damn, and I was just getting a good library built up. Now, we're going to see a whole new line of them. Damn WW for wanting to make money!

 

[Persell]

Slightly off-topic comment


I find large battles equally thrilling and hard to handle in-game. For me it is not so much the number crunching (never been good at that or cared much for it anyway) or game mechanics as it is describing what actually happens in a battle. What parts should be focused on and what should just be ignored? How much of the battle should be described before the session gets boring? These things have really bugged me, as I like the idea of my group leading armies. Lacking any good first hand knowledge I have turned to fiction, instead, and have to recommend Colleen McCullough's The Song of Troy as an excellent source of inspiration. She describes the extremely large battles of the Illiad in a capturing and inspiring manner and the protagonists are furthermore prime material for solar exalted characters. Do read it!