old general army

[steph]

What skills i need for a character who was in the past a general for the dark lord army. I make a game in the Turakian age 275 years after the death of Kal-Turak and one of the player want to play a kind of half-infernal and half-elf with a great longivity who in the Black War ( Kal_turak vs the world) he was a general............and now he is a mercenary in a ravaged world divided in city state............i need help for the basic skills of a standard general
excuse my english
not my first language
stef

[assault]

What skills i need for a character who was in the past a general for the dark lord army.

How sophisticated is the army? Is it capable of doing anything more sophisticated than "form a line, then charge the enemy"?

In any case, I would tend to build a character who was a combination of warrior and politician. I wouldn't go for much in the way of technical skills - Tactics would be about it. Most of what he would be able to do would be to lead troops, and convince subordinates to cooperate, rather than compete.

[steph]

humm yes is army is sophisticated the player in question thing is character like this: half spawn and half maximus ( gladiator movie) for sure the army of kal-turak is sophisticated and organised with tehnical weapon like catapult and also some war black magic.........
hope i am clear stef

[assault]

the army of kal-turak is sophisticated and organised with tehnical weapon like catapult and also some war black magic.........

Fair enough.

I still probably wouldn't get too carried away with the skills. PS: General and KS: Warfare would probably do. The rest would be "normal" stuff like Tactics, Oratory and so on.

Alternatively, you could take a look at the Packages for military characters in, say, Pulp Hero. (Checking quickly myself...) They're nothing special: KSs and PSs, plus some Perks (Rank, Contacts...).

Or just go with a couple of the various noble warrior packages and options from FH.

Whatever floats your boat.

[Lawnmower Boy]

Operating heavy weapons is a more likely skill for a general than, say, specialist weapons. More importantly, running an army is the same as running any large enterprise, so the basic package of managerial skills are required. How about PS: Accounting, Civil Engineering; Persuasion, Seduction, System Operation (large agricultural estate. The list can be extended. What do you think a successful manager should be able to do?

[CourtFool]

I would probably just go with PS: Army General and KS: Darklord's Army just to keep things simple.

[assault]

Operating heavy weapons is a more likely skill for a general than, say, specialist weapons. More importantly, running an army is the same as running any large enterprise, so the basic package of managerial skills are required. How about PS: Accounting, Civil Engineering; Persuasion, Seduction, System Operation (large agricultural estate. The list can be extended. What do you think a successful manager should be able to do?

I think it is unlikely that he would know much about heavy weapons, accounting or civil engineering. Those are lower class skills.

[Markdoc]

I think it is unlikely that he would know much about heavy weapons, accounting or civil engineering. Those are lower class skills.

Yep. They're the sort of thing you hire or shanghai specialists for.

What he is likely to have are good skills in tactics, strategy, combat (even if he doesn't fight much himself anymore) and KS's for other generals, royal/noble families, historical battles, famous heroes and AK: for the lands where he (or famous generals of the past) operated. In addition, a solid KS for his own army and/or armies of his area ("See those pointy helmets on the cavalry over there? Lancers from Arusha. Good fighters, but undisciplined. Send some archers out to see if you can tempt them into charging over that swampy ground") Oh, and a good score in PS: General, plus decent PRE-based skills (oratory, persuasion, etc).

cheers, Mark

[Vestnik]

Maybe some superskills to rally troops? A small Aid to Presence and maybe OCV and DCV, Area Effect, Incantations, No Range? I like that sort of thing for building Legendary General types.

[sbarron]

I've always liked HERO because we could get so specific in situations like this. To me, PS: General 14- seems soooo bland. Here's the kind of things I'd be willing to blow some points on if it were my character...

KS: Seige Warfare
KS: Seige Engines
KS: Cavalry Warfare
KS: Military Formations
KS: Biological Warfare
KS: Guerilla Warfare
KS: Military Logistics
etc...

Most likely these skills would never matter in play. But, for me, having a list of actually skills for the character is way more helpful for my roleplaying than PS: General and KS: Warfare. And it will only cost 5-10 points.

It encourages me to think up stuff like...

"Ah yes, I remember the city of Helfig well. See that tower? During our seige of this city in the spring of '43...you know, during the Tordjor uprisings...the Helfigers put a Drakine wizard up there that raked our seige engines for weeks. One of our archers finally winged him, which allowed us breach the gate. Lucky for him I never found him."

"Funny, I can never remember his name..."

[CourtFool]

Exactly why I am planning on using Skill Multipliers from The Ultimate Skill in my next campaign and forcing the players to take 10-15 points worth of Background Skills.

[Markdoc]

Exactly why I am planning on using Skill Multipliers from The Ultimate Skill in my next campaign and forcing the players to take 10-15 points worth of Background Skills.

What are skill multipliers?

cheers, Mark

[Lawnmower Boy]

"Lower class skills." Okay, that's it, I'm opening a can of spam
Ever been to Vienna and seen the Maria Theresa Memorial? The Empress-Queen is supported by the various generals who supported her in her great wars. Two of them are from a single campaign, Ludwig Khevenhuller [blah blah noble titles] and Count Traun. This was the big campaign, the one where the French, backing the Bavarians who were fighting to annex the Austrian crown lands and take over the Imperial title, were pushed right back out of Germany temporarily in 1743/44. Eventually Paris had to beg Frederick the Great to come back into the war, getting its hands thoroughly dirty and guaranteeing that Maria Theresa's husband would be elected the next Holy Roman Emperor, which mattered a whole lot more at the time than you might realise.
Never heard of the campaign? Not surprising given how it played out.
What did they do? Simple: Khevenhuller materialised an army out of thin air and trumped the Bavarians by suddenly appearing with it in the middle of Bavaria in a winter campaign.Then he went on to the bank of the Rhine and posed in a threatening way. And died, so Traun got to finish the campaign.
Traun's problem was simple: he had to make Paris, then pursuing its own strategic objectives, pay attention and get Louis XV down to French Lorraine with his army, thereby putting _political_ pressure on Paris. So he had to cross the Rhine. But it is a wide river with plenty of fortifications on the French side and a small covering army. He could hardly dislocate French foreign policy by "leaking" across. He had to land like a thunderbolt.
Which he did. Traun's generalship consisted of organising one heck of a floating bridge across the Rhine and getting his army across quickly. And then, when the French army did come down on him from the front and the Prussians (in a general sense) from behind, he astonished military observers further by recrossing back to Germany quickly enough to save the day.
That's right. These great generals made their names by finding uniforms, recruits and money, feeding an army through a winter march, building a big bridge, and marching an army across said bridge faster than anyone expected. By doing so they forced the political resolution to the war that Vienna was looking for.
That's it. While there was plenty of fighting, there was not a single battle, not a single moment when Traun or Khevenhuller were asked to do "aristocratic," or "high class" things like identify some heraldry or lead a cavalry charge.
I know you might say that there must have been some anonymous lower class people doing all the work, but if you go through the Vienna war archives, you will find the documents and letters these men wrote and read. They were _not_ figureheads.

[Gawain]

"Lower class skills." Okay, that's it, I'm opening a can of spam
Ever been to Vienna and seen the Maria Theresa Memorial? The Empress-Queen is supported by the various generals who supported her in her great wars. Two of them are from a single campaign, Ludwig Khevenhuller [blah blah noble titles] and Count Traun. This was the big campaign, the one where the French, backing the Bavarians who were fighting to annex the Austrian crown lands and take over the Imperial title, were pushed right back out of Germany temporarily in 1743/44. Eventually Paris had to beg Frederick the Great to come back into the war, getting its hands thoroughly dirty and guaranteeing that Maria Theresa's husband would be elected the next Holy Roman Emperor, which mattered a whole lot more at the time than you might realise.
Never heard of the campaign? Not surprising given how it played out.
What did they do? Simple: Khevenhuller materialised an army out of thin air and trumped the Bavarians by suddenly appearing with it in the middle of Bavaria in a winter campaign.Then he went on to the bank of the Rhine and posed in a threatening way. And died, so Traun got to finish the campaign.
Traun's problem was simple: he had to make Paris, then pursuing its own strategic objectives, pay attention and get Louis XV down to French Lorraine with his army, thereby putting _political_ pressure on Paris. So he had to cross the Rhine. But it is a wide river with plenty of fortifications on the French side and a small covering army. He could hardly dislocate French foreign policy by "leaking" across. He had to land like a thunderbolt.
Which he did. Traun's generalship consisted of organising one heck of a floating bridge across the Rhine and getting his army across quickly. And then, when the French army did come down on him from the front and the Prussians (in a general sense) from behind, he astonished military observers further by recrossing back to Germany quickly enough to save the day.
That's right. These great generals made their names by finding uniforms, recruits and money, feeding an army through a winter march, building a big bridge, and marching an army across said bridge faster than anyone expected. By doing so they forced the political resolution to the war that Vienna was looking for.
That's it. While there was plenty of fighting, there was not a single battle, not a single moment when Traun or Khevenhuller were asked to do "aristocratic," or "high class" things like identify some heraldry or lead a cavalry charge.
I know you might say that there must have been some anonymous lower class people doing all the work, but if you go through the Vienna war archives, you will find the documents and letters these men wrote and read. They were _not_ figureheads.

Rep'd for knowing your history.

[Markdoc]

I know you might say that there must have been some anonymous lower class people doing all the work, but if you go through the Vienna war archives, you will find the documents and letters these men wrote and read. They were _not_ figureheads.

All fair enough, and what we would expect for a good general. But when you look at the skills for which the comment was made, it's appropriate. I could be wrong, but I doubt that Khevenhuller or Traun knew how to cast a cannon or cut a tree up into planks. It's even reasonable to suppose that they knew little about accounting (a common enough failing among the landed gentry of the time). An aristocratic general is likely instead to have gunners, engineers and a secretary on staff precisely to handle those things.

What you describe is brilliant tactics and strategy, combined with a shrewd knowledge of politics and geography and (most likely) a good knowledge of their own and opposing forces. You don't need to know how to build a bridge to know that a bridge *here* will enable you to cross without immediate opposition - nor will knowing how to build a bridge, tell you anything about where to build it for maximum military effect.

cheers, Mark