Points systems?

[John McBride]

As a long-time player and now an occasional writer of fantasy rules, especially for mass combat, I am curious as to what folks think, and what they prefer in regard to a points system to (theoretically) balance armies. (The BEST thing is to do a campaign in which armies are what they are within a context of strategic limits — but campaigns are a LOT of work.)

First edition PRIDE OF LIONS had a pretty basic point system that left out a lot of stuff, basically by finessing the issue with a decree such as “each army gets one magic user, an army commander, and two sub-commanders.  If it is equal, it need not be points costed.

Second edition has a far more extensive points system, but of course the more complex the system, the more exploitable loopholes. Plus the inevitable problems:

How do you cost units in a rock/paper/scissor relationship?  On average rock is 50% effective, but that is a meaningless average that never actually applies: rock is 100% effective against scissors and 0% effective against paper. Everything depends on battlefield context, and how do you cost that?

How do you cost something that has a small chance of exerting a very LARGE effect? (e.g. Bard the Bowman taking down Smaug with a single shot to his one vulnerable spot)  It’s probably poor GAME design to include such, but fantasy literature is filled with such situations. If there is a small but not zero chance an enemy mage can take out your top commander with a spirit attack (Saruman versus Theoden) do you spend the points for a guardian angel bodyguard? Or just resign yourself to losing the battle if the die roll goes very badly against you? Again, best handled in the context of a campaign, but . . .

No doubt others can suggest other limitations to a points system.

But most of us use them and even enjoy them anyway. Because we are rules lawyers and see it as a way to secure an advantage over opponents who don’t obsess with points the way we do? Or is it the joy of creating/designing the “perfect army”?

What have been your experiences with points systems, and what do you like and dislike in them?

[Rhoderic]

I’m gradually moving away from points systems in my rules preferences. It’s kind of a big sacrifice to make as it essentially means not even trying to make games balanced in the sense of either side having a 50-50 chance of winning (whereas with a points system you’re at least trying, even if you fail), but I don’t really mind these days. It’s all about the narrative to me. Rick Priestley got that thing right with Black Powder and Hail Caesar (before the army list supplements).

I don’t care for the idea of each player being allotted the same number of “slots” for specific categories of characters or other army elements, with no leeway for variation between armies. With your example of the one magic user, one commander and two sub-commanders (if it were in a generic ruleset that purported to allow players to invent their own factions) I’d be badly hampered if for instance I wanted to copy the Tower faction from that classic gold-standard PC game Heroes of Might and Magic 3 – a faction themed around ivory-tower wizards and their magical servants. Such an army should naturally have a high proportion of magic users among its characters. I can’t comment on Pride of Lions as I haven’t played or read it, and from what I understand it’s not a generic ruleset, but I’ve seen the same sort of slot system used in other rulesets and in those cases I’ve disliked it.

There’s something to be said for the Priority Level system of the previous edition of Heavy Gear Blitz. You would build your force not only to a Threat Value (army points by another name) but also a Priority Level which you normally were allowed to choose yourself unless it was dictated by a special scenario. A higher PL force could take more elite units and had more support choices (airstrikes and the like) but also had to perform better in terms of victory objectives and victory points in order to win. Unfortunately it clashed with the TV system and made army building overly complex, so they’ve removed it from the latest rules overhaul, but in a game without points values it might have more relevance. That said, I’m also moving away from victory points-based gameplay. Without victory points a PL system would be rather difficult to implement.

Regarding points costing with a rock-paper-scissors relationship, I imagine some sort of “relativity modifier” for determining victory conditions might work. A mainly-rock army would have to work harder to count a trouncing of a mainly-scissors army as a true victory, because it has a natural advantage and therefore expectations ought to be higher. This solution is not directly to do with points costs (other than having the point values of different units determine what is a “mainly-rock army” and so forth), but I think it helps when you integrate points cost systems into a wider system that also accounts for victory conditions. It’s not something I personally would bother with, but there are other gamers who consider this sort of rules design to be perfection. During the previous edition of Heavy Gear Blitz this kind of rules design issues came up quite frequently in the Dream Pod 9 forum. Everyone had their own idea of how army-building quantifiers and victory quantifiers should integrate and relate to each other in order for the game to be “perfectly balanced”.

[Norm S]

I like historical scenarios and so in most regards the broad decisions of what should be present are already made. The scenario designer then needs to look for some balance and that can be done by tweaking the order of battle or putting in parameters such as length of game or special victory conditions or adjusting morale levels or terrain density etc – so a lot can be done without a purchase points list.

I thinks points make an interesting guide, but too often can be hi-jacked by the gamer looking for the perfect or killer army.

I have just played a battle from a campaign that I am doing. The attacker was without armour, but the defender was lucky to get a reinforcement of armour just before the battle. The attacker had to get over an unfordable river via a bridge, so some mech would have helped – anyway, the way the campaign was playing out, it just didn’t happen that way. It was almost a foregone conclusion that the attack would fail, but the game was played anyway. There was a lot of terrain, so who knows, maybe the attacking infantry might have pulled the rabbit out of the hat.

They didn’t, but part of the fun of that battle was that the attackers had to know when to call the attack off and then extract themselves from the field, so that they could preserve their strength for the next battle. Special rules meant that if a force voluntarily retreat off the board within the first 35 minutes (game clock time) then they would count as routed and not be available for the next battle, so these nuances added to play and tactics – so in effect it was an unbalanced game that was a lot of fun for both sides – but I know not every player would be happy with that style of play.

[Patrice]

Points system allow more diversity, but are not a guarantee of exact balance; they just prevent players to unbalance the game.

In my own campaigns and rules I ignored the (previously established) points system for some years, and it worked for some times, then we had to reintroduce them because players were raising huge unbalanced armies (although it’s not really a competitive game, but).

John McBride wrote:

How do you cost units in a rock/paper/scissor relationship? On average rock is 50% effective, but that is a meaningless average that never actually applies: rock is 100% effective against scissors and 0% effective against paper. Everything depends on battlefield context, and how do you cost that?

IMO they should have sthe same cost. But then, if the Rock king must fight a Paper army, he would be well inspired to recruit some Scissor auxiliaries; either the game organizer plans them for him, or you allow off-table diplomacy and he must buy them from the Scissor king.

John McBride wrote:

How do you cost something that has a small chance of exerting a very LARGE effect? (e.g. Bard the Bowman taking down Smaug with a single shot to his one vulnerable spot) It’s probably poor GAME design to include such, but fantasy literature is filled with such situations.

I think that you should have a (very small) chance to take out anything (“it works only if you have one chance on a million” wrote Terry Pratchett in his books about the dragons). Otherwise the game has no interest.

John McBride wrote:

If there is a small but not zero chance an enemy mage can take out your top commander with a spirit attack (Saruman versus Theoden) do you spend the points for a guardian angel bodyguard? Or just resign yourself to losing the battle if the die roll goes very badly against you?

This is the player’s choice…

http://www.argad-bzh.fr/argad/en.html
https://www.anargader.net/

[John McBride]

When I raised some of these issues on another forum, years ago, someone commented that 1000 points of Scythians sweep away 1000 points of ballista which destroy 1000 points of city walls that sneer at 1000 points of Scythians.

PRIDE is generic for anyone who wants such.  I actually played in a great Poke-man game at Historicon, several years ago, in which a guy has used PRIDE’s mechanisms with Pokeman armies he had put together.  Generic and also pretty modular; you can use what you like.

I absolutely agree that designed (and playtested!) scenarios are the best. But of course they require someone to do that.

I’ll have to check out HEAVY GEAR BLITZ. The Priority Level sounds interesting.

[ds615]

The simple answer is that point systems work great for letting people get together without large amounts of coordination. “Hey, bring a 75,000 point army next week” is a lot easier than arranging TO&E sheets or sending out list of figures and units for a scenario.

The simple obverse is that they are easily exploited by some, and can actually turn into a mini-game of their own.  This is easily avoided by simply not playing with people like that, but it’s not always that easy.

The “best” point systems are the ones that build up as a figure or unit cost.  As in, how much does it cost to raise a unit like this one?  Rather than trying to place a value on what a unit can do, the value is noted for the expense of having such a thing.  In other words, the system doesn’t care how effective a bowman is compared to a knight, only how much it would cost (in fictional money) to include them in your ranks.  This should, in theory, generate “normal armies” with the majority being lesser quality troops simply because it’s cheaper than buying better trained or equipped troops.  Which seems right to me.

This being the Fantasy forum though, I have no idea how you would go about pricing some units.  What’s the cost of training an housing a dragon, relative to training and housing a unit of twenty spearmen?  What about a griffon?  Is the cost of training, feeding, and housing a spearmen unit more, less, or the same if the spearmen are animated dead?   You may not need to train a mummy, but what are the upkeep costs of keeping one around?  Lots of odd little issues there.

In general, we do use points when planning large games for the simplicity of doing so, but we prefer scenarios or campaign generated forces.  Lately we’ve even been using randomly generated forces and found those to be quite fun.

 

[John McBride]

Completely agree about the usefulness in getting people together — and trying to avoid rules lawyers!

I think one has to choose between points based on battlefield effectiveness versus cost of raising a unit. Expensive does not necessarily equal effective.  Best example would be a militia unit raised from among the skilled technicians of your armament factory. You might put them into a battle in the direst of emergencies, but the cost would be off the charts. But they probably would not be very good fighters — at least very green.

The griffons of Wyldewood and Mountain Home feed themselves by hunting, but there is certainly a cost in training them, simply in terms of finding riders and then taking time to develop tactics.  But at least they do not require expensive aviation fuel.

Their scarcity is not due to expense but to their status as PREDATORS; a given area will only support so many.

In PRIDE I wanted battles mostly to be decided by a clash of battle lines, so I deliberately made line infantry units cheap in points. A skirmishing light cavalry unit is extremely valuable, but you can get two to three line infantry for the same points. And a solid, deep, wide battle line is extremely valuable too!

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