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Hoondatha
Great Reader
USA
2449 Posts |
 Posted - 02 Nov 2005 : 20:03:31
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Hi all. This question originally came up in the Sythilissan Empire and Amn thread, but frankly, that thread is leaving a bad taste in my mouth right now. So I thought I'd start up a new thread to address the question. I've copied it below.
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I'd like to turn again to the various armies. One thing I've always had trouble with in the Realms is figuring out how big is big. I can't find enough instances of hard numbers for the sizes of various armies to understand what a "large" force would be.
For example, how many soldiers can, say, Silverymoon field? Not just the regular army, but a "we need every man and woman who can wield a sword" call? Sembia? Cormyr? (well, ok, bad example, considering how many body blows that nation's taken recently) What about all the various city states? Compare this number to their "regular" army. The Riders of Mistledale are a couple hundred strong, at extreme need, how many at least semi-trained people could Mistledale field?
And how big does an opposing army have to be to be considered large? 5,000? 10,000? 50,000? It doesn't help that this is all relative, and that it was left vague to give individual DM's leeway. A threat to Nesme would not be a threat to Waterdeep, and it took the Tuigan to scare Thay.
All that said, I'd appreciate any numbers estimates on any of the issues I just brought up. How would you run it in your campaign? Even a range of estimates would help.
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Doggedly converting 3e back to what D&D should be...
Sigh... And now 4e as well. |
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Kentinal
Great Reader
4689 Posts |
Posted - 02 Nov 2005 : 20:17:53
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Hmm, The community calcalators based on DMG indicate that active Guard/Watch is 1 percent of population and a militia of 5 percent of the population can be drafted. So in one way you have an answer. If a community or region is big so is the army.
I do not recall what numbers have been associated with a "big" army such a term often is in the eyes of the bholder. A thorp with a total fighting force of pergaps 50 would consider an professional army of 200 big. Odds are Waterdeep would consider a 200 man army a minor irritation. Big should more be applied to using overwhelming force rather then the actual size of the army. |
"Small beings can have small wisdom," the dragon said. "And small wise beings are better than small fools. Listen: Wisdom is caring for afterwards."
"Caring for afterwards ...? Ker repeated this without understanding.
"After action, afterwards," the dragon said. "Choose the afterwards first, then the action. Fools choose action first."
"Judgement" copyright 2003 by Elizabeth Moon |
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Hoondatha
Great Reader
USA
2449 Posts |
Posted - 02 Nov 2005 : 23:16:57
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I agree that what is considered a threat is entirely relative, both in the size of the target and the make-up of both armies (it takes fewer giants to be a "big" force than, say, kobolds).
What I'm trying to come up with are benchmarks specific to the Realms, because I have the sneaking suspicion that in my own games I'm tilting things too far towards the "way too big" side of the scale. And this is made worse by the fact that I'm off at grad school and away from virtually all of my books. |
Doggedly converting 3e back to what D&D should be...
Sigh... And now 4e as well. |
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Darkheyr
Learned Scribe
264 Posts |
Posted - 03 Nov 2005 : 07:10:41
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| Citadel Adbar has withstood orc hordes of size 100'000 and larger at times, and was able to field (I think) up to 15000 dwarven warriors, out of a population of 35000. But then, thats dwarves :) And they needed about 2 weeks to do that. 500 on active duty, 5000 within a day or two. |
silm.pw - A Neverwinter Nights Persistent World |
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How big is big?
