As I mentioned in part 1 of this series, Kimber and I ran a second playtest of To the Mercy of the Enemy for Forts & Frontiers on Saturday, February 2 at our club, Metropolitan Wargamers. Our group of seven playtesters spanned three generations and ran the gamut from dedicated miniature wargamer to avid board wargamer to old school D&D player.

The previous post in this series focused on how to give GMs and players the tools that they need to bring 17th and 18th century North America alive at the table through the concept of “Wandering History”.

This post focuses on rules for running skirmishes involving a couple dozen figures per side in a manner that feels consistent with the rest of the play experience, while also streamlining so things don’t bog down. This involves bringing D&D 5e core mechanics like d20 to-hit rolls, advantage/disadvantage, and saving throws to the table along with the Forts & Frontiers concept of degrees of success and failure.

Kimber and I tossed a few initial ideas back and forth and then did a good deal playtesting to see how it all worked at the table. We compared our results throughout with results from systems we like such as This Very Ground, Muskets & Tomahawks, and Brother Against Brother.

After a lot of discussion and tweaking, here’s what we came up with:

Groups and Units

• Groups are made up of 1 to 3 figures.
• Units are made up of 2 to 4 groups.
• On its turn, a unit can take 2 actions. These actions include moving, double moving, shooting, making a melee attack, reloading (2 actions), and readying an action.
• Units that ready an action can take 1 action after an enemy unit in line of sight moves or shoots.
• Figures in a unit must adhere to unit cohesion by all occupying a roughly circular area with a diameter of a units Move (usually 15’ / 6”).

Player Characters

• Player characters can act on their own or as part of a group.
• Player characters acting as a part of a group must adhere to unit cohesion as described above. These player characters cannot be targeted individually.

Initiative

• Initiative is determined for both a player’s unit and player character by rolling 1d20 and adding the Dexterity bonus of the unit or player character (whichever is higher) with the highest number going first.

Target Numbers

There are three main target numbers needed for skirmishes — Shoot and Attack. They are calculated as follows:

• Shooting attack target number (Shoot) = 15 (Medium Task Difficulty) - Dexterity bonus - Proficiency bonus.
• Melee attack target number (Attack) = 15 (Medium Task Difficulty) - Strength bonus - Proficiency bonus.
• Shooting and melee defense target number (Defend)  = 15 (Medium Task Difficulty) - Dexterity bonus - Proficiency bonus
• Morale target number (Morale) = 15 (Medium Task Difficulty) - Wisdom Bonus - Proficiency bonus if applicable (e.g. regular troops)

Advantage / Disadvantage and Modifiers

Shooting attacks on figures...

• within 15’ / 3” are made at advantage.
• at greater than normal range (usually 60’ / 12”) are made at disadvantage.
• in dim light (e.g. dusk or dawn) are made at disadvantage.
• in light cover (e.g. light woods, wooden fences) are made at -2 to the to hit roll.
• in heavy cover (e.g. dense woods, stone walls) are made at -5 to the to hit roll.

Shooting

• The attacking player rolls 1d20 for every 1 to 3 figures, applying advantage / disadvantage and modifiers as necessary.
• If the result is greater than or equal to Shoot (as calculated above), 1 shot hits. If the roll is greater by 5, 2 shots hit. If a natural 20 is rolled, 3 shots hit.
• A player cannot score more hits than figures in each group of 1 to 3.
• The defending player rolls 1d20 for each hit.
• For each result that is less than Defend (as calculated above), a figure is removed as a casualty.

Melee

• The attacking player must use 1 of his actions to move all or part of a unit into base to base contact with any enemy unit.
• Both players roll 1d20 for every 1 to 3 figures, applying advantage / disadvantage and modifiers as necessary.
• If the result is greater than or equal to Attack (as calculated above), 1 attack hits. If the roll is greater by 5, 2 attacks hit. If a natural 20 is rolled, 3 attacks hit.
• A player cannot score more hits than figures in each group of 1 to 3.
• Both players roll 1d20 for each hit.
• For each result that is less than Defend (as calculated above), a figure is removed as a casualty.

Morale

• A unit makes a Morale check when it suffers its first casualty and again when it is reduced to half of its original size.
• The defending player rolls 1d20. If a player character is within 15’ / 3” of the unit, the roll is made at advantage.
• If the result is less than Morale (as calculated above), the unit moves its full movement away from the enemy. If a player character is within 15’ / 3” of the unit, that character can use their full movement to move away from the enemy as swell. If the result is a natural 1, the unit routes and is removed from the table.

After writing all that down (and filling in the holes as I went), I realized that this is much more comprehensive than I first thought. I also realized there is a lot more work to be done (troop quality, volley fire, etc.)  if we plan to use this as a stand-alone skirmish system. But, for bringing skirmish encounters into Forts & Frontiers, these rules work well and flow more or less seamlessly from single figure to multiple figure per player.

As always, we’d love to hear from you. Let us know what you think about these d20 skirmish rules over on Facebook or Twitter.