[Phase 3] The Knight of Greenhill [Act 1]

[OOC: in the name of expediency is it ok to outline a general plan and then have the narrator crunch numbers? Given work and parenting back and forth posting and planning for a mass combat may well be beyond me, at least in a timely fashion.

Additional: any possibility of having a go at a Taunt role to push Ser Morgan Greenhill in to trial by combat given the discrepancy in strength, particularly if Roland promises his men/family safe passage~? What kind of TN would I need to hit please?]

[OOC: I'll try to hit this over the next few days...]

[OOC: COVID-19 drama somewhat disrupted me, will make another attempt tomorrow... Thanks to Mikel for helping with some OOC ideas.]

-Enemy archers will have readied an action to open fire (which they can do at 200 yards), so whenever someone gets within range, it's on.
-Ser Morgan will likely have the opportunity to decide himself what part of the walls to defend and against whom, most NPC commanders have preferred to attach themselves to an archery unit (If so, he probably will force Roland to fight his way through other units first, but if the archery unit does gets itself into melee, the Brackens are probably done for).
-Defenders might possibly do things like abandon the walls if attackers assault in more places than they can cover and retreat someplace where terrain prevents flanking.
-Experience indicates that named knights vs unnamed troopers tend to short-circuit everything (especially on squad scale) unless event has specifically designed hero action components with added difficulty, so might want to largely avoid that.
-Note that filling the moat in one place allows either a ram to be brought to the gate or ladders/grapnels to be brought to a segment of the wall (only one squad can scale that segment at a time).

Tactical considerations:
8 melee squads (or 10 if archers do this also, but it might be better to have them shoot at the defenders) means 8 (10) wagons can be brought over in one wave and fill out 4(5) narrow passages from which the walls can be scaled, that's, I think that if a unit is also dragging along ladders, it slows down the speed from 40 to 30,
5 or 7 turns of pushing.
2 turns of filling.
1 round of moving to wall and start scaling.
-Round where fighting attacks potentially may begin.

So it would be 8 (grapnels) or 10 (ladders) rounds of own units taking archery fire.

Alternative strategy might be 6 units pushing wagons, 3 units carrying ladders and 1 in reserve. Or 4 units pushing wagons, 2 units carrying ladders and 4 in reserve (2 of which can be archers shooting at defenders), reserves can have ladders of their own. This would take 8 rounds before there's a chance of fighting attacks being made, this strategy would allow ladder carriers to cross without having to take all that much archery fire. Might want some of the reserve pushing extra wagons in case defenders decides to target them instead of units.

Up until at least round 9, the only rollings would be archery and morale (potentially), so Roland can just do 10 command rolls with orders as to who's supposed to do what. Including standing orders as to whether squads that gets disorganized are to make the reform action (which will slow down wagons, but the alternative could be that they're routed which is more of a snag, might be less of an issue if there's reserves to take their place). If instructions are straightforward, the NPC in charge of a unit can carry them on autonomously (narrator can roll everything):
For example: Unit A and B: Push wagons to section 1, fill the moat, Unit A goes over wall first, Unit B goes over second, take reform action when disorganized. That's easy enough for a sargeant to understand what he's supposed to do. If circumstances dictate that B should go over first, then we'd need player rollings again, but for streamlined chaotic realism, that probably only happens if unit A needs to do the reform action instead of scaling the walls or something like that.
Archery unit: Fire on archers or random melee unit (Realistically not really possible to make out who's who from that far away).

At some point, things are likely to require something else than autopilot.

Amended warfare rules from experience (since some things needs tweaking, and I'm partially treating these missions as playtests):
-Higher Ground benefits are +1b, +1 damage. (So pretty much all attacks against units not having managed to take the walls).
-Defenders have marksmanship 3 (or more) when throwing stones, stones ignores AR.
-Hold the line has no effect.
-Shield Wall is broken when trying to scale walls, and will cut the speed at which wagons may be pushed by half.
-Defeating 1 unnamed NPC deals 1 damage to his unit.
-Incendiary Arrows are at -1D, but deals normal damage.

That would mostly be an argument for doing the same amendments at Pennytree methinks, some of them where added in (like shieldwall=half speed) there.

Actually, the archers on the walls got a pretty big damage boost (+2) in Daeron's scene, that one also had special mechanics to make the mass of mooks much more dangerous to go toe to toe with. Mikel's scene is where everything got short-circuited when named knights started to go up against anonymous mooks, but that was partly due to an ad-hoc rule of each individual being cut down dealing 5 damage (following the logic of them being 1/5 of a unit), no higher ground to be considered there.

The change to incendiary arrows is primarily motivated by the realization that the way they're written atm makes them 100% useless for what they're primarily for.

Hold the line gets outsized effects with the low attack dices that are in play, it will drag everything out. Shield Wall is mostly, how does that make sense when you're climbing ladders anyway?

After sleeping things over and some new elements brought up in the discussion thread (putting together OP+revisions), main new things:
-Removing the need for the wagons unless you want to also be able to bring up the ram.
-Avoid the possibility of doing 8 fighting units with ladders against 3 on the walls, as that would take away most of the advantage of having a wall, they should have enough men to hold it.
-Doing something with morale and conditions, because that's just going to yield massive headaches otherwise.

Battlefield conditions:
-Both sides have access to incendiary arrows.
-Desperate Grounds: Defenders does not suffer the penalties from disorganized/routed, a unit does not count as routed for victory conditions if it does not retreat.
-Victory Conditions: Defenders yield if all units have the routed condition (or worse) or if Ser Morgan is killed, captured or yields.
-Each squad consists of 40 men (or 20 men and horses).

Defenses:
-Defenders mans a High Palisade with battlements atop a steep slope, palisade gate behind a trench (with drawbridge).
-There are three sections of the wall, one squad may attempt to scale a section at a time, while one squad may attempt to defend a section at a time.
-A squad defending a section of a wall may drop stones on any squad adjacent to it, they cannot do this if a fighting attack was made against it in the previous round.
-Attackers have access to ladders, Grapnels and small rams in ample supplies.
-Attackers may cross the moat using wagons filled with shrubs and stones (treated as capped rams, but units cannot gain cover from them), two wagons required to create a narrow passage across the moat (Greater Action to push the wagon's contents in, second action must be made in a later warfare round). This allows battering down the gate with rams.
-A squad must use a greater action to push a wagon 40 yards.
-Both sides may access incendiary arrows.

Amended/clarifications for warfare rules:
-Higher Ground benefits are +1b, +1 damage. (So pretty much all attacks against units not having managed to take the walls).
-Hold the line has no effect.
-Shield Wall is broken when trying to scale walls, and will cut the speed at which wagons may be pushed by half.
-Defeating 1 unnamed NPC deals 1 damage to his unit.
-Incendiary Arrows are at -1D, but deals normal damage.
-If a unit manning the wall is routed, but does not withdraw, it will still block the path for any unit attempting to scale, but does no longer gain the benefit of cover or higher ground.

Morale and Unit Conditions:
Disorganized: -1D to everything, +3 TN for orders, reform action removes both.
Routed: -1D to everything +3 TN for orders (doesn't stack with disorganized), reform action overrides the unit's autonomous action (which will be to run) this round only.
CyB can be done as a lesser action if the first lesser action was a reform.
Only way to improve condition is to restore health.
-Commander cannot leave standing orders for reform, disorganized/routed units acts as below unless specifically ordered
-Units will generally autonomously take the reform action when disorganized and always break and run unless successfully ordered to reform.
-A unit can only reform once per round.