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Feb 27, 2013 -- 4:16AM, cheethorne wrote:

Feb 26, 2013 -- 11:00PM, Vikingkingq wrote:

Let's work out the math. 10 men out of a village of 600. Well, there's going to be around 300 males period

Why only include men? D&D is a game with total gender equality and nothing in the rules would suggest that women would automatically be excluded from the militia.

Feb 26, 2013 -- 11:00PM, Vikingkingq wrote:

say 18% of those are of military age, all of the sudden 18% of them are dead.

Wait a minute, how did you get to 18%? We were talking about a militia of 30 people from a community of 600, of which only 10 are killed by the giant (well, assuming dead, some of them might just be in negative hit points, but not actually dead), which means the militia is only 5% of the total population and the casualties are only 1.67% of the population. Now, if the militia were 18% of the total population, wouldn't that make it 108 people? Wouldn't that mean that the chances of losing more than a couple of people against the hill giant are a lot lower (assuming access to ranged weapons)?
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To be fair, D&D the game has total gender equality but a lot of its settings don't. Also, it makes for easier comparisons to the real world, because historically men have been the sole or predominant gender in armies. 

18% is the percent of the population you'd expect to be between 16-25 in a medieval society (rough estimate from various studies of parish records), which is what people use for "military age" - i.e, fully physically developed but less likely to be supporting a family, eligible to be drafted. It's the population you're drawing from to form up the militia. 

So a militia of 30 is actually inordinantly large for a village this size, as people have pointed out, and if it's following the gender norms of many settings and their real world historical counterparts in terms of technological and social organization, it's quite a substantial proportion of the military-age male population.

10 dead represent a 30% fatality rate for the militia, but they also represent 9% of the military age population of both genders or 18% if the militia follows the gender norms of many settings and the real world historical counterparts. 

Such a loss today would be equivalent to the loss of 3.87 million young people of either gender, or 3.97 million young men if the militia is exclusively male, in a single battle.

Now imagine that we had a group of heroes (probably a couple thousand strong if we're going by strict proportionality) who could fight the same battle and survive, saving the lives of that many people. They would be national heroes, known the world over. There would be huge political fights about sending in the regular military into a conflict rather than calling upon these elite adventurers. 


 

Feb 27, 2013 -- 2:20AM, Kalex_the_Omen wrote:

Exactly.  I'm not saying we should all be weeping over the loss of 10 imaginary people, but in trying to at least emulate a real world it should be clear the impact is tragic to the other imaginary people or our imaginary example town.  Thus the heroes who come in and obviate the need for those 10 deaths are truly the heroic saviors of the town and needed in those places where they can have such an impact.  The posters here like cheethorne and Haldrik are taking too omnicient a view of the world I think in saying that the towns "off stage" who can take care of this situation, albiet at devistating personal cost, without the heroes somehow cheapen the hero status of the PCs.  I just don't think that is even remotely the case.

Wait. Why are you dragging my name into this? I havent commented on mass combat at all.

For the record, the description of the mass combat seems fine, with town militias taking down Hill Giants. But there isnt enough detail about the mechanics to comment. 

Mar 1, 2013 -- 4:01PM, Zardnaar wrote:

 Hill giants were swiss cheesed by militia in 1st and 2d ed as bows fired twice a round. It would be a little harder in 3.5 but wnough mooks with bows= dead giant.

If we give the militia regular longbows, it takes about 23 hits to take down a hill giant. The Hill Giant's AC is 20, unfortunately, which means that they'll hit it only very rarely. A double-moving hill giant moves 60 feet in a round, which is over half of the longbow's range increment. I think it's safe to say that you'd need a lot of archers to take out the giant before it closes range. Once it does close range, you're losing 1-3 Militiamen each round, but due to flanking and the ability to add a stat to damage with their melee weapons, the Militiamen also begin to hurt the giant a lot faster.