Grim Schneider

AD&D Troop Promotion

Troop Promotions

The PCs you field and the troops you field in AD&D operate under different distinct expectations. And the rules even dictate that troops are incapable of advancing in level.

It doesn't make a lot of sense that military promotions would be impossible for your troops though.

In the Medieval milieu promotions above rank and file would happen in two distinct ways.

1) Nobility: being born into nobility would give you both access to training and usually automatic rank

2) Survival: before common military schools and modern armies, surviving through a series of battles would prove your prowess as a warrior. And if you managed not to piss off your local lord in the process it would be likely to eventually gain you military recognition.

How to merge these ideas with AD&D

Assumptions

1) Roughly 10% of enlisted men will survive enough fights to become serjeants

2) Roughly 5% of men will survive long enough to become lieutenants

3) We're ignoring retirements

4) We're ignoring nobility for lieutenants and serjeants

5) We're ignoring people become serjeants and not being promoted afterwards

6) Being a survivor means you actually showed up to the next battle, so death, injuries that prevented further fighting, and refusal to fight again keep you out of the survivors buckets

Survival method

1) Use Old Lords of Wonder and Ruin rules to calculate casualties and morale

2) Imagine a troop of 100 men vs an evenly matched enemy unit

3) They'll trade blows evenly, so no need for morale calculations until Excess Casualties is reached

4) The battle ends at one of the two casualty thresholds (33%-considered victory or 66%-considered defeat)

5) The morale target will be rolling a 7 or higher on 2d6

6) Morale failure happens ~41.666% of time leaving you with 66% of your troops

7) Morale success happens ~58.333% of the time leaving you with 33% of your troops

1st Battle Survivors: 41.666% of the time 66 survive 58.333% of the time 33 survive

Expected number of survivors is 46.750

[0.41666x66 + 0.58333x33 = 27.500+19.250 = 46.750]

This also give us an expected number of survivors from each battle of 46.750% since we started with a force of 100 fighting men

Now we can quickly calculate how many battles would occur before we have a serjeant candidate. All we have to do is keep multiplying the survivors of each round by 46.750% until we have 10% of the original total surviving.

Analysis

At first it might seem that the advancement is too fast. Keep in mind though, only 10% of men in the first battle were able to come out of the 3rd battle. And this is only if we give the highest number of survivors from each significant battle. Setting a number of battles survived where your men came back to fight again is a decent way to think of how military promotions would happen outside of requiring your soldiers to go on adventures. It might make sense that 3rd level lieutenants or captain positions are only given to minor nobles or men of extreme distinction.

Comparison with Adventurers

Military battle field experience is very different from what our PCs go through on their adventures. Dungeons and high strangeness don't necessarily prepare you for leading large groups of men in formations into battle. Similarly grizzled battlefield veterans are poorly prepared for what your adventuring PCs go through. Their advancements in skill and rank can be handled separately.

Proposals

Experience points & Levels for adventuring.

Ranks for fighting men who are primarily in large scale battles.

Track the two separately.

Treat the level restrictions on serjeants, lieutenants and captains as meaning; can't gain PC levels.

Treat the Fighter level given for serjeants, lieutenants and captains as meaning; Fights on the battlefield as if he were a Fighter of level...