Domains at War Campaigns - Final Edits

Hello, Domains at Warfarers,
Our illustrious graphic designer, Carrie Keymel is in the home stretch. As she puts things into final layout, I wanted to share a few final changes that are happening for D@W: Campaigns based on playtesting.

Calamities: Losing a battle no longer counts as a calamity for a unit. Instead, the unit must itself be routed from the battle. If the unit’s army loses the battle, but it voluntarily withdraws, no loyalty roll is required.

Loyalty Rolls: “Immediate Attack” is now replaced with “Enmity”. “Betray” is now replaced with “Resignation”.
Enmity means that the mercenaries consider the character an enemy. They will immediately leave his service. If the character is personally vulnerable, the mercenaries may attack him or stage a coup. If the character is opposed by a strong enemy, they will seek employment with the enemy leader. Resignation means that the mercenaries leave the character’s service. If possible they will resign at an advantageous moment, such as right after being paid or reaching a safe stronghold, but in no circumstances will they risk a further battle or calamity.

Note that the combination of these two changes makes armies less fragile in the face of defeat on the field of battle. Under the prior mechanics, even a narrow defeat could wipe an army off the map through a cascade of unit loyalty rolls.

Heroic Forays: Two subtle changes have been made here. First, the heroes do not need to all fight in the same foray now. Instead they may fight in separate forays, if at the Judge’s discretion that better reflections the disposition of the heroes on the battlefield. For instance, if Marcus and Peristo are on the left wing, and Quintus and Balbus are on the right wing, that should be resolved with two different forays.

Secondly, a foray with heroes on both sides no longer results in BR loss only for the loser. Instead, each side loses units with a combined battle rating equal to the total BR their side lost in the foray. This was necessary because in playtest we were having massive casualties during forays that somehow didn’t get accounted for in the BRs.

Sounds valid.

Enmity was the way I was already taking ‘Immediate Attack’, based on the supporting text (next available opportunity, which I assumed would be a smart opportunity and thus may take a while, or turn itself into a plot hook)

Good, good. Yah, the revisions are all changes to the written rules to reflect how I was running the game in actual practice, and probably how others are too.

Occasionally what I write and what I do don’t match up, but I don’t realize it until I actually review what I’ve written in the final stages of editing…

It’s all looking great Alex! The rules just keep getting better and better.

And I love the hobgoblin/goblin army counter artwork. Awesome.