Units – Soulforge Adventures

A local military company arrives and pledges service to the PC. These soldiers are usually from nearby kingdoms that recently suffered a defeat in battle, or they served a noble who was overthrown, and they’re hoping that pledging service to you will lead to long term employment and new victories.

Your character still has to pay the upkeep for these units, but you don’t need to pay the cost to recruit them. Units recruited in this way have the same ancestry as the owner of the stronghold. Attracted flying units are typically riding griffons or giant eagles, at the GM’s discretion.

Anatomy of a Unit

Your army is made up of units. Each unit has a card with stats, and its status is tracked with a casualty die. Let’s take a look at a typical unit card.

Ironheart Defenders
Aefvennen Seasoned
Medium Infantry
			COST: 470
ATTACK:	+4	DEFENSE:	14
POWER:	+3	TOUGHNESS:	13
MORALE:	+4	SIZE:	1d6
TRAITS
Made of Sterner Stuff Enemy battle magic has disadvantage on Power Checks. That Just Made Them Angry. While diminished, this unit has advantage on attack checks. Enemy Power checks against this unit have disadvantage.
ORDERS
Stand Your Ground! Once per battle, for the next round all successful enemy Power checks against this unit must be rerolled.

Every unit has an evocative name. The Ironheart Defenders. The Blood Moon Infantry. The 7th Imperial Legion. These names are purely flavor. Our Ironheart Defenders have the following keywords: aefvennen (ancestry), seasoned (experience), medium (equipment), and infantry (type). Each keyword has an associated chart showing you which bonuses you get from each keyword.

Any ancestry you find in the core rules, any species or monster, could be fielded as a unit. Our sample unit is of aefvennen ancestry, which determines its basic stats.

Experience describes both how much fighting the unit has seen and how well trained they are. The levels of experience are:

Green: Soldiers with any training, but who have seen no action. Levies who survive a battle automatically convert into green infantry.
Regular: Normal soldiers. A unit of volunteers who’ve been well trained by seasoned commanders can begin as regular, and a typical large army is mostly composed of regular units.
Seasoned: Troops who’ve seen more than one battle and lived to tell the tale. Well versed in warfare, probably been exposed to stuff that really challenged their morale, like battle magic.
Veteran: Troops who have seen several battles and know what to expect in warfare. They are resilient and versed in tactics used to break morale.
Elite: Soldiers who haven’t just seen a lot of battle and survived, but have trained and executed complex maneuvers under extraordinary conditions. Elite troops require a degree of flexibility in thinking and improvisation rarely found in normal soldiers, even veterans.
Super-elite: The most highly trained and battle-hardened units. These are typically shock troops, orders of knights on horseback. Small units capable of surviving for long periods behind enemy lines.

Experience affects a unit’s Attack (their ability to successfully execute an offensive maneuver) as well as their Toughness (their ability to withstand a successful attack without taking casualties). But mostly a unit’s experience affects their Morale: their ability to withstand punishment and endure confusion on the battlefield without becoming afraid or—just as bad—getting so disorganized that they can no longer fight effectively.

Our Ironheart Defenders are seasoned, which means they are not only well trained, but they’ve served in combat and survived. But there are three more levels of experience above that!

How heavily armed and armored is the unit? The ranks are:

Light: Leather or no armor. Some troops are lightly armored because they’re peasants. Some are lightly armored because it grants them greater mobility, allowing them to be deployed quickly into a distant battle.
Medium: Hide or a chain shirt.
Heavy: Breastplate and shield, or chain mail. Maybe ring mail—we don’t get really picky about exactly where each armor combo falls on this scale.
Super-heavy: Full plate mail, heavy weapons, and the training to use them effectively.

Equipment grants bonuses to the unit’s Power (the effectiveness of their weapons) and Defense (their ability to prevent an attack from being successful).

Our Ironheart Defenders have medium equipment, which means they’re probably wearing chain shirts, which is pretty typical for aefvennen units. They don’t like wearing light armor.

What kind of unit is this? How does it fight? More than any of the other keywords, type defines the unit and affects all of its stats. It also defines which units are legal targets.

Levies: Unsoldiers. Levies have no experience level and always have no equipment. They are peasants forced to fight by cruel masters, or willing to fight to defend their land. They’re basically crap at everything, but they perform a critical function: they absorb casualties, allowing your better-trained units to keep fighting longer. If they survive, they can become green infantry! Levies usually disband after a couple days’ battles. They do not stick around for weeks waiting to fight—they have farms to tend. Once they disband, you must convince them to fight all over again. You cannot pay upkeep to maintain them as a standing army.
Infantry: The meat (possibly literally, depending on whom you’re fighting) and potatoes of your army. Very limited in whom they can attack.
Archers: Typically archers. Could be javelin throwers if you’re talking Bronze Age dudes. Can basically attack anyone.
Cavalry: Highly mobile troops deployed to flank the enemy and hit them where they’re not defended.
Flying: Flying units! That’s right!
Fortifications: Keeps, towers, and temples are all fortifications, but so too can a hill or a wall be one. Any terrain feature one side can defend or occupy. Typically, defending a fortification grants the defending units a Morale bonus.
Siege Engines: Typically catapults and trebuchets, but also monsters like treants, if pressed into service.

Our aefvennen are infantry, which is pretty typical for them. Aefvennen have an aversion to riding on anything taller than them and tend to consider most missile weapons cowardly. Now that we know what Aefvennen Seasoned Medium Infantry is—a unit of aefvenneb, on foot, carrying medium gear, who’ve seen a lot of battle—let’s look at what their stats mean.

How big, in numbers, is your unit? This is the unit’s Size, which is represented by a casualty die placed on its unit card. New units begin battle with their casualty die on its highest face (e.g., 6 for a d6, 8 for a d8). A unit’s die is decremented—reduced by one—each time it fails a Morale check and each time an attacker succeeds on a Power check against it. Your army only has one card for a given unit. So if your army has a lot of Regular Heavy Human Infantry, to pick a random example, you won’t have several cards all with the same stats. Instead, that unit gets a larger casualty die. The largest casualty die is a d12, which represents a very large unit8 that can suffer many casualties before it breaks or is slaughtered.

When your unit attacks an enemy unit, you roll a d20 and add your unit’s Attack. To succeed on the attack, the result of your roll must equal or exceed the enemy’s Defense, a measure of both the quality of their gear and their relevant training.

If your unit succeeds on its attack, it’s time to see whether your unit is strong enough, and well-trained enough, to inflict meaningful casualties. Any successful attack will have some consequences, but when you’re dealing with hundreds of soldiers, one or two of them dying isn’t significant. Toughness represents both their literal physical toughness and the quality of their gear. A successful Power check against a unit means they will suffer enough casualties to decrement the casualty die and, depending on the shape the unit is in, this may cause a Morale check!

Morale is a unit’s most important stat, since lots of things in battle can prompt a Morale check. Unit abilities or battle magic that forces a Morale check will list the DC in the text of the ability or spell. If your unit is diminished, just taking casualties can prompt a Morale check. Failing a Morale check decrements the unit’s casualty die. As far as your unit’s effectiveness is concerned, there’s no difference between losing morale and losing soldiers.

Your character will be attacked many times over the course of an encounter. Some attacks miss, some hit. The same is true for the units in your army. A hit does not always mean your character dies, though. Each attack roll begets a damage roll, and it is only after many successful attack rolls and many damage rolls that your character finally drops. The same is true for the units in your army. But because A: you are already playing a character with hit points and doing math every time you take damage and B: you’re maybe running several units at once, we do not burden you with doing math over and over again for your character and all your units. Instead, a successful attack check against a unit prompts a Power check, in which the attacking unit checks to see “Was the strength of our attack enough to overcome the enemy’s Toughness?” A common reaction to this system is “Why are there two attack rolls?” There aren’t! There’s one attack roll and one damage roll. There’s just no math associated with the damage roll.

Creating Units

Using the following rules, you can build your own units. Start by picking a row from each of the following charts. As you go, write down the total for each stat (Power, Toughness, etc.) on a blank unit template. Remember that levies have no equipment rating or experience rating. They’re just levies.

Defense and Toughness both start at 10.

Step One: Ancestry

Choose an ancestry below and add its stat bonuses to the unit card. Then find the traits of the unit’s ancestry on the next table and add them to the unit card.

As an example, a Aefvennen unit would begin with +3 Attack, +1 Power, +1 Defense, +1 Toughness and +1 Morale.

Ancestry	Attack	Power	Defense	Toughness	Morale	Traits
Aefvennen	+3	+1	+1	+1	+2	Stalwart
Anireth	+2	0	0	0	+1	Eternal
Dragonborn	+2	+2	+1	+1	+1	Courageous
Dreadrot	-1	0	+2	+2	+2	Horrify
Duskling	+1	-1	+1	-1	+1	–
Eladrin	+2	0	0	0	+1	Eternal
Farrow	+2	0	0	0	+1	Frenzy
Gremlin	-2	0	+1	+2	+2	Horrify
Hanxo	+2	0	0	0	+1	Frenzy
Humans	+2	0	0	0	+1	Courageous
Krampus	0	+2	0	+2	+1	Brutal
Lyvar	+1	-1	+1	-1	+1	–
Murder Crow	+2	-1	-1	+2	+3	Horrify
Nyctara	0	+2	0	+2	0	Twisting Roots
Raigo	-1	-1	+2	-1	0	–
Rilkan	+2	0	0	0	+1	Courageous
Rizadrin	+2	0	0	0	+1	Martial
Shadar-kai	+2	0	0	0	+1	Eternal
Skarn	+2	0	0	0	+1	Courageous
Skorne	+2	0	0	+1	+3	Bred For War, Brutal
Soulless	-1	0	+2	+2	0	Mindless

Unit Ancestry Table

Name	Description	Cost
Amphibious	This unit does not suffer terrain penalties for fighting in water or on land.	50
Bred For War	This unit cannot be diminished, and cannot have disadvantage on Morale checks.	100
Brutal	This unit inflicts 2 casualties on a successful Power check.	200
Courageous	Once per battle, this unit can choose to succeed on a Morale check it just failed.	50
Eternal	This unit cannot be horrified, and it always succeeds on Morale checks to attack undead and fiends.	50
Frenzy	If this unit diminishes an enemy unit, it immediately makes a free attack against that unit.	50
Horrify	If this unit inflicts a casualty on an enemy unit, that unit must make a DC 15 Morale check. Failure exhausts the unit.	200
Martial	If this unit succeeds on a Power check and its size is greater than the defending unit, it inflicts 2 casualties.	100
Mindless	This unit cannot fail Morale checks.	100
Regenerate	When this unit refreshes, increment its casualty die. This trait ceases to function if the unit suffers a casualty from battle magic.	200
Ravenous	While any enemy unit is diminished, this unit can spend a round feeding on the corpses to increment their casualty die.	50
Hurl Rocks	If this unit succeeds on an Attack check, it inflicts 2 casualties. against fortifications, it inflicts 1d6 casualties.	250
Savage	This unit has advantage on the first Attack check it makes each battle.	50
Stalwart	Enemy battle magic has disadvantage on Power checks against this unit.	50
Twisting Roots	As an action, this unit can sap the walls of a fortification. Siege units have advantage on Power checks against sapped fortifications.	200
Undead	Green and regular troops must pass a Morale check to attack this unit. Each enemy unit need only do this once.	50

Unit Traits

Level	Attack	Toughness	Morale
Green	0	0	0
Regular	+1	+1	+1
Seasoned	+1	+1	+2
Veteran	+1	+1	+3
Elite	+2	+2	+4
Super-Elite	+2	+2	+5

Unit Experience

Equipment	Power	Defense
Light	+1	+1
Medium	+2	+2
Heavy	+4	+4
Super-Heavy	+6	+6

Unit Equipment

Type	Attack	Power	Defense	Toughness	Morale	Cost Modifier
Flying	0	0	0	0	+3	2x
Archers	0	+1	0	0	+1	1.75x
Cavalry	+1	+1	0	0	+2	1.5x
Levies	0	0	0	0	-1	.75x
Infantry	0	0	+1	+1	0	1x
Siege Engine	+1	+1	0	+1	0	1.5x

Unit Type

Step Two: Experience

Next, choose an experience level and add the bonuses listed to the unit’s card.

Step Three: Equipment

Now do the same thing with equipment.

Step Four: Type

And then type. Levies and cavalry both have traits listed below that can be added to their unit card if you want to make it easier to remember during battle. Cavalry units gain Charge and can engage.

Charge: Cannot use while engaged. A Charge is an attack with advantage on the Attack check. It inflicts 2 casualties on a successful Power check. The charging unit is then engaged with the defending unit and must make a DC 13 Morale check to disengage. Levies are always diminished.

Step Five: Size

Choose a size. This can dramatically affect the unit’s final cost.

Size	Cost Modifier
1d4	0.66x
1d6	1x
1d8	1.33x
1d10	1.66x
1d12	2x

Unit Size

Step Six: Calculating Cost

Now that you’ve filled out the unit card with all its stats, it’s time to calculate its cost. This can be the literal cost to buy the unit in gold pieces, in the case of mercenaries, or just the cost used to balance encounters and calculate upkeep.

First, add up the bonuses to Attack, Power, Defense, and Toughness, and add double the total bonus to Morale.

Then, multiply this total by the Cost Modifier from the unit’s type, and then multiply it by its Cost Modifier from Size. Multiply this result by 10.

Add the cost of all the traits of the unit’s ancestry. Finally, add a flat 30 points.

This sounds more complex than it is. For instance, let’s take a unit of Elite Heavy Aefvennen Infantry.

Rockbreakers

Aefvennen Elite

Heavy Infantry

COST: 470

ATTACK: +6 DEFENSE: 15

POWER: +6 TOUGHNESS: 13

MORALE: +8 SIZE: 1d6

TRAITS

Stalwart Enemy battle magic has disadvantage on Power checks against this unit

The total of its Attack, Power, Defense, and Toughness bonuses is 20 (6 + 6 + 5 + 3). Adding double the unit’s Morale bonus to this gives 36 (20 + (8 × 2)). This result is multiplied by 1 because they’re infantry (that’s easy), and then by 1 again because they’re Size 1d6, so we’re still at 36.

We multiply that whole thing by 10 to get 360.11 Then we add the cost of all their traits, which is 50 (the cost of Stalwart) plus another 30 for a
total of 440.

Rockbreakers
Aefvennen Elite
Heavy Infantry
			COST: 470
ATTACK:	+6	DEFENSE:	15
POWER:	+6	TOUGHNESS:	13
MORALE:	+8	SIZE:	1d6
TRAITS
Stalwart Enemy battle magic has disadvantage on Power checks against this unit

Mercenaries

Mercenaries are troops loyal only to the coin you pay them. Any units bought with gold are mercenaries. Their cost is equal to their unit cost, but their upkeep is double that of a normal unit.

Ancestry and Attitude

You can buy units with the same ancestry as your character with no extra cost. However, units from other cultures have their own attitude toward working for a puny human, or treacherous elf, or whatever your character’s ancestry might be, as described on the chart below.

Attitude Chart

Below is an example Attitude chart, one designed to reflect the common biases the classic fantasy ancestries have toward each other.

The chart is mirrored across the diagonal, so you can use it in either direction. Find your character’s ancestry in either a row or a column, and then index it against the ancestry of the unit you wish to buy.

Allied (A): This unit has its normal cost to buy and upkeep.

Friendly (F): This unit costs 25% more to buy and upkeep.

Neutral (N): This unit costs 50% more to buy and upkeep.

Hostile (H): You cannot buy this unit.

	Aefvennen	Anireth	Dragonborn	Dreadrot	Duskling	Eladrin	Farrow	Gremlin	Hanxo	Humans	Krampus	Lyvar	Murder Crow	Nyctara	Raigo	Rilkan	Rizadrin	Shadar-kai	Skarn	Skorne	Soulless
Aefvennen	–	H	N	H	N	N	N	H	N	N	N	N	H	N	N	N	N	N	N	H	H
Anireth	H	–	H	H	H	H	H	H	H	H	H	H	H	H	H	H	H	H	N	H	H
Dragonborn	+2	H	–	H	+1	N	N	H	N	N	N	N	H	N	N	N	N	N	N	H	H
Dreadrot	H	H	H	–	H	H	H	A	H	H	N	H	A	H	N	H	H	H	H	H	N
Duskling	+1	H	+1	H	–	N	N	H	N	N	N	N	H	N	N	N	N	N	N	H	H
Eladrin	+2	H	0	H	+1	–	N	H	N	N	N	N	H	F	N	N	N	H	N	H	H
Farrow	+2	H	0	H	+1	N	–	H	N	N	N	N	H	F	F	N	N	N	N	H	H
Gremlin	H	H	H	A	H	H	H	–	H	H	N	H	A	H	N	H	H	H	H	H	N
Hanxo	+2	H	0	H	+1			H	–	N	N	N	H	F	H	N	N	N	N	H	H
Humans	+2	H	0	H	+1	N	N	H	N	–	N	N	H	N	N	N	N	N	N	H	H
Krampus	0	H	0	N	+1	N	N	N	N	N	–	N	N	N	N	N	N	N	N	H	H
Lyvar	+1	H	+1	H	+1	N	N	H	N	N		–	H	N	N	N	N	N	N	H	H
Murder Crow	H	H	H	A	H	H	H	A	H	H	N	H	–	H	N	H	H	H	H	H	N
Nyctara	0	H	0	H	0	F	F	H	F	N	N	N	H	–	N	N	N	H	N	H	H
Raigo	-1	H	+2	N	0		F	N	H	N	N	N	N		–	N	N	N	N	H	H
Rilkan	N	H	N	H	N	N	N	H	N	N	N	N	H	N	N	–	N	N	N	H	H
Rizadrin	N	H	N	H	N	N	N	H	N	N	N	N	H	N	N	N	–	N	N	H	H
Shadar-kai	N	H	N	H	N	H	N	H	N	N	N	N	H	N	N	N	N	–	N	H	H
Skarn	N	H	N	H	N	N	N	H	N	N	N	N	H	N	N	N	N	N	–	H	H
Skorne	H	H	H	H	H	H	H	H	H	H	H	H	H	H	H	H	N	N	N	–	H
Soulless	H	H	H	N	H	H	H	N	H	H	H	H	N	H	H	H	N	N	N	H	–

Attitude Chart

Ambassadors

An ambassador allows you to buy units from their ancestry as though they were friendly. If the ambassador’s presence in your court leads to a formal alliance and a signed treaty, then units with that ancestry are treated as allied.

Unit Upkeep and Improvement

Depending on the scenario, the units you command may naturally disband after the battle, such as levies, or return to their homes, like a unit of elves who come to your aid in a time of dire need. But units you recruit from your stronghold or buy with cash require upkeep.

A unit must be paid a tenth its cost each season. Not all this cash goes into the soldier’s pocket—much of it is paying for food and training and repairing their gear.

A unit that has not been paid for a season suffers disadvantage on Morale checks. A unit that has not been paid for two seasons disbands.

Improving Equipment

A unit’s equipment (light, medium, heavy, super-heavy) can be improved once per season by paying gold pieces equal to the difference in cost between the new and old unit.

Improving Experience

A unit’s experience (regular, seasoned, etc.) can be improved by one level after they survive two battles without breaking morale or retreating. It takes a week of training at a keep (or at a barracks if you have a captain follower) and costs gold pieces equal to the difference between the new and old unit.

Improving Size

You can field several infantry units, or several cavalry units for instance, but you can only field one unit with identical keywords. You may fight a battle with Human Veteran Light Infantry and Eladrin Veteran Light Infantry, but not two units of Human Veteran Light Infantry.

If you roll on a follower chart and get an identical unit to one you already have, just increase the first unit’s size by one step.

Once per season, you can spend gold pieces to increase a unit’s size by one step. The cost is the difference in price between the old unit and the new unit.