The Group combat system is this way for precisely the same reason professional, high-end sports teams don't or can't use amateur, teenage players on the team, unless said teens happened to be almost miraculously good. However the quality of shoes used propably doesn't matter as much here as equipment does in ArM terms.
I don't see any problem with requiring them to be witin 5 point in all stats. After all why not simply fork out for an expensive armour for the single guy who happens to be Tough and use him as Vanguard. Then his shirt clad comrades will also benefit from his huge Soak, no?
I think Group Combat works fine in its simplicity. But if you design a Companion with the sole purpose of having a huge Leadership to better utilize the sum of the group's combat abilities, AND you have the dosh to give them full mail, kite shields and longswords...Ouch! That is bordering on being broken.
After some thought, I think dumbing down the group to be within +5 of each other is the best solution. That way, you avoid the group of 4 peasants+paragon knight running around with +20 attacks with pitchforks. But you also allow that same knight to lead the peasants into heroic combat after giving a valiant speech about how those darn magi will "never take our FREEDOM!"
The use of Stat+Ability for purposes of the +5 would also work but I think the above solution is the simplest.
They've been "fighting ... for years on crusade"; so, it is hard to see how they could have radically different combat Ability Scores. Sure maybe some have relevant Puissant / Affinity Virtues, but that is only a small bonus --- and the person most likely to have that (the knight) is sinking XP into Leadership (and maybe other areas), which the others probably aren't doing.
In terms of characteristics, the human range is -3 to +3, but the range for combat relevant statistics, for successful "professional" soldier sorts? That is likely to be only +0 to +3 --- maybe even narrower.
If the knight can afford exceptional weapons, it is difficult to see why he wouldn't equip his retainers with exceptional (or at least good) weapons too. The knight might have more bling on his weapons. But in terms of being good in a practical sense, I don't see why he would skimp on his retainers.
So if the knight has Ability 9, a warhammer +6 and Dex +4, 19
Squires Ability 7, short swords +3, Dex +3, 13
Soldiers Ability 5, short spears +2, Dex +0, 7
Bummer...
Yes it´s on the extreme side as it´s a made up example, but it´s not a "strange" setup. And it´s certainly more likely than not that the soldiers wont be within 5 of the knight.
It is "strange". This is just three random characters. The context was "fighting as a unit for years on crusade".
So why do they:
a) have such a weird mixture of weapons,
b) how has the knight has somehow earned 3x the weapon XP of the soldiers, and in Great Weapon --- he presumably should have a Single Weapon Ability too, and Leadership. Where is all his XP coming from, and why are the others not earning it?
c) this knight has a superhuman characteristic, which is hardly "normal".
Looking at the turb of my current saga, there are over a dozen fighters covering roughly a 30 year age range with Atk Scores ranging from about +11 to +14. The ones at the low end are actually the knightly leader sorts. Because while the knights do have some good characteristics and handy Virtues, they have also been sinking XP into high Leadership, both Single and Great Weapon, and a few other significant Ability Scores (and are starting to be penalised by Aging too).
I am with Richard Love here. I found the same IMS, even if we had no knights around, but thegns
I have never noticed this problem before since we do not use the Ars combat system (homebrew system for us with weapons being +0 for everything except damage), but it sounds weird.
So you cannot replace casualties in your group with recruits If you have a veteran unit (high end WS, 8+) your fresh recruits will not be able to operate with you as a unit for a while since their WS will be too low to work with you.
Still, these are extreme cases and it is a rule that you can ditch without much problems anyway.
That you cannot replace veterans with recruits is a situation often remarked on in literature (in all ends of historical - fantasy range). It will take some seasons of training to "break in the new kid". That is a nice possibility for stories. Otherwise you just gloss over it and after a year the recruit is catching up.
I agree that ditching the rule is easy, but I have forgotten about the rule, and it has some horrible effects. The strength of a trained group with a PC combat monster as the vanguard is really too much...
That you cannot replace veterans with recruits is a situation often remarked on in literature (in all ends of historical - fantasy range). It will take some seasons of training to "break in the new kid". That is a nice possibility for stories. Otherwise you just gloss over it and after a year the recruit is catching up.
I agree that ditching the rule is easy, but I have forgotten about the rule, and it has some horrible effects. The strength of a trained group with a PC combat monster as the vanguard is really too much...
That you cannot replace veterans with recruits is a situation often remarked on in literature (in all ends of historical - fantasy range). It will take some seasons of training to "break in the new kid". That is a nice possibility for stories. Otherwise you just gloss over it and after a year the recruit is catching up.
I agree that ditching the rule is easy, but I have forgotten about the rule, and it has some horrible effects. The strength of a trained group with a PC combat monster as the vanguard is really too much...
That you cannot replace veterans with recruits is a situation often remarked on in literature (in all ends of historical - fantasy range). It will take some seasons of training to "break in the new kid". That is a nice possibility for stories. Otherwise you just gloss over it and after a year the recruit is catching up.
I agree that ditching the rule is easy, but I have forgotten about the rule, and it has some horrible effects. The strength of a trained group with a PC combat monster as the vanguard is really too much...
Huh? Did you have a sudden need to boost your post count in a hurry?
No seriously, the need to crash train a new recruit to make up for lost veterans is a potential source for stories and should not be neglected for the Turb.
In out new Rhine saga I went to great pains to create a Companion to act as fightin' buddy of our School of Ramius Flambeau, in order for the the two to match.
Because they´re a knight, some squires and a couple of soldiers?
While you may find squires and knight using the same weapon, it´s unlikely the soldiers would use the same.
Because he started out with far higher score(he likely started out with even more than 3x XP) and because he´s always in the fighting. Soldiers tend to die off far more often and get replaced, squires tend to do all the tasks that needs doing.
Do i need to quote myself?
Yes it´s on the extreme side as it´s a made up example, but it´s not a "strange" setup.
My point was that even without going beyond what is quite possible, even using only Attack value alone i could still manage to force their values beyond +-5.
If you want, you can change the knight to using a longsword+heater shield, then he only needs +3 in Quickness and you´re STILL looking at the lone knight, a group of squires and a group of soldiers.
Still a perfectly possible result.
Either way, the knight is very unlikely to group with the soldiers.
I think by deconstructing mine and others examples, the point is being missed, or at least we are speaking at cross-purposes.
I could have said "for a year." I could have noted that the highest bonus (the knight) has slightly better equipment, is slightly stronger and more agile, and is more skilled with his weapon - he is older than his squires and has significantly more experience.
Point is, if you don't agree with any of the posited scenarios, ok, but I'm sure you can create your own if you stretch your imagination. And once you have a group (not in the rules sense, just as a word) of fighters outside of +5, then, find some way to get them down to the acceptable value.
In my above example, the knight could discard his exceptional quality weapon and go with the more standard fare of his underlings, and now suddenly they can form a RAW group and get a big bonus? Or, perhaps the knight can take a flaw that lowers his characteristic. So the knight becomes clumsier and suddenly is able to lead the group?
This oddity is why I proposed decoupling groups from trained status. Maybe peasants with pitchforks should get a big bonus, if they have trained under an exceptional leader for a season, and are now led into combat by that leader. I would expect that to be a very unlikely scenario in my campaign. Peasants have work to do, little time for an entire season of drilling. And exceptional leaders would probably be training and leading mercenary companies and royal hosts, not peasants.
I'd just say that any superior fighters within the group must restrain themselves (i.e. lower their totals to be within the 5-point range) so that they can fight effectively as part of the group.
So, while the knight would not be at his top capacity for mayhem, the group would be. Any bonus given up by the knight would be made up by the better group. If not, then he might prefer to go "lone wolf".
I'm on shaky ground here, but around this period I thought that the nobles (that is the knights) would not even consider fighting alongside the rabble (that is everyone else). And much the same was the deal with mercenaries, soldiers and militia (armed peasants). So it would indeed be a very strange group (or as it's called in the rule book: a Covenant turb ).
It is very likely that a group with strong differences in effective skill (or Combat Total, as the rule book says) would fight well together. Either the best would need to not use all of their techniques to the full effect (lowering their skill, which I don't think there are any good rules for) or they will probably do stuff the worst participants can't follow.
I think the rule maps the spread of the medieval armies (as I understand them) very well. It more or less enforces the segregation into groups of equals that the social structures enforced. No big bonus for the Knight to fight with the riff-raff, but a substantial one to fight with his peers. And this matches well with my (not very enlightened) view of the time. How many stories are there about the Black Knight leading his band of well trained robbers in formation? He'll go one on one vs. the White Knight while the squires and city guard take on the robbers.
In a high fantasy game I see no purpose with the limit. It will make for extremely efficient groups, but that is more in sync with the high fantasy setting than it is with the medieval setting.
This might be the solution I'm looking for. I'm afraid it would lead to over-focusing on the numbers and would slow things down as players and storyguides would have to pause to run the numbers to figure out which formation was more advantageous. But I guess that wouldn't come up all that frequently.
The example of a group that loses a member and gains a new recruit who isn't up to snuff is great. They would have two choices:
A) Leave the new guy out. They would roll as a group, gaining the trained bonus. This would probably be the case for agressive groups that don't want to be held back. Even if they spend seasons in training together, if he continues to lag behind, he would continue to roll seperately. They might decide to focus on teaching him rather than training themselves.
B) After one or more seasons of training together, they might reduce to meet him. This would let him get the group bonus, so even if his contribution to the group bonus wasn't enough to make up for the dumbing down, it might be used by defensive groups that want to help the new guy survive.
When I compare the melee grogs in the main rulebook, the only ones that can't be in groups together is the Berserker with anyone else, because his damage bonus is so much higher than the other grogs and the Tough Guy and The Specialist, because The Specialist is so much better than the Tough Guy at attacking. None of the other combinations have any trouble, and The Knight template fits into groups without the Berserker as well.
The optimal combination of grogs with everyone working together to fight as teams requires some thought, but it does not seem as difficult as some are making it out to be. The fact that the Turb Captain has to consider which grogs should be grouped together in order to maximize their fighting prowess seems realistic to me, and that complexity is a feature, not a bug.
Yes, but i do believe one of my earlier points was the fact that fighting together as a group is a matter of having trained together or trained the same way, very much NOT a matter of respective skill levels or what kind of weapon is used(but it´s easier to train a group with the same weapons).
and there is the concept that once you have trained together you know each others weaknesses. Hans is a little slow so put him in the middle of the line. Lars is quicker so have him on the corner of the square to take more attacks.
).