As part of a protracted project I've given myself to develop a combat simulator for dragon warriors, I've been doing some work in trusty old Excel VBA to get my coding thoughts in order. I'm sharing one of my works in progress for anybody who is interested.
FIGHT! is a little spreadsheet where you can plug in a force of (identical) agressors on one side and a single defender on the other, then run through as many battles as you want to to get some idea of routine outcomes of the matchup. The spreadsheet is the spiritual successor to one I devised a few years ago with a similar goal, but which could only deal with duels.
Attached is a graph showing information from one of my first tests on the nearly-completed tool.
The scenario is this: A master knight, 12th Rank, with expert parry but otherwise stock-standard, and armed with +1 plate armour and a +1 sword plus a regular shield, is facing off against skeletons. These are normal skeletons per the bestiary, wielding halberds and unarmoured.
There were a total of 90 types of encounter (with 1 to 30 skeletons, and either six-on-one, three-on-one, or one at a time versus the knight to represent the three classic tactical scenarios from the rulebook) and each encounter simulated 10,000 individual battles. Each battle was finished once either all the skeletons were destroyed or the knight was killed. The curves are a bit bumpy because even at 10,000 battles per encounter, there's still quite a bit of variability in battle outcomes.
The chart shows one of the stats that the tool is capable of returning, specifically the Knight's average likelihood of being killed in the encounter. We can see that for up to 4 skeletons, the knight pretty much always wins, even if he is surrounded. After that though, things change rapidly. For the six-on-one fights, the knight's unprotected rear gives us a terrifying hockey stick of defeat, culminating in total skeleton victory (TSV. I've trademarked it now, nobody may use that term without my permission) at 11-to-one. For three-on-one the curve is much gentler, and even with 30 skeletons piling in on the knight, he still wins through in a tiny percentage of battles. The knight's best outlook is to be found when fighting the skeletons one at a time. Even when he's outnumbered 30-to-one he still survives over 60% of the battles.
For my next simulation, I'll be looking at endless mobs of naked unarmed halflings attacking the mightiest warrior in history. In the meantime, I'm happy to take requests for scenarios to run through the tool.
Cheers,
-Kyle
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