Garrisons for domains and settlements - shared or separate?

Hi folks,

Nice easy question today (I assume).

Let’s say I have a Civilized domain requiring that I spend 2gp/family on the garrison. Let’s also say I have a settlement in said domain, which also requires 2gp/family to be spent on the garrison.

My questions:
For the purpose of calculating domain garrison (e.g. the first requirement), do I include the settlement’s population, or would the requirement be more appropriately called “rural garrison requirements”?

Further to that, if the first garrison cost for my Civilized domain does include the settlement’s population, so I then need to go and spend more on the Urban Settlement Expenses table?

As a side note, am I correct in understanding these costs are optional so far as I could choose not to provide a garrison (and very quickly suffer low morale, or at least make them happy by lowering taxes and throwing festivals) (Not sustainable, one suspects, but I’m speaking hypothetically).

Lastly, as I correct in assuming that I can count that band of mercenaries I just hired as my garrison? E.g. it doesn’t need to be some special “garrison force” raised specifically as a garrison, it just needs to be a mob of troops that can generally be trusted to look after the joint.

You garrison each separately. So for instance, a Civilized domain of 1,000 families with a 500 family settlement would have a domain garrison of 2,000gp and a settlement garrison of 1,000gp.

You are correct that costs are optional, yes.

You are correct that the garrison is whatever set of troops you decide it is, yes. Essentially the rules say “as a domain/settlement ruler, if you are not spending at least X gp per month defending your domain/settlement, you will face problems.” But how you spend it is up to you.

I usually use settlement garrisons to represent the likes of the Praetorian Guard, Urban Cohort, and Vigiles Urbani of Rome, the Beefeaters of London, or generally any city watch. But the specifics will vary from campaign to campaign.

You know, in a cost-cutting and AWESOME synergy, it occurs to me that one could appoint a wizard hench as your garrison. Henches demand high monthly wages, so they can protect a lot of families, but a wizard could spend his free time on research or crafting.

Sheriff Dresden has a nice ring to it. (Sure, a cleric could run a congregation and get divine power and craft items for a discount while making everyone like you because your domain comes with healthcare, but WIZARD JUSTICE is obviously the most interesting option)

Until someone realizes that your garrison is a single wizard and invades.

I’d apply the penalty for ‘garrison not present while being invaded’ for the entire garrison at that point, until the invading army was defeated. Because no matter where he is, there’s somewhere he’s not.

(Of course, if he is a high-level wizard who has transformed himself into something that can fly and is immune to normal weapons, well, he would probably actually work as a garrison. That’s more in the vein of ‘dragon as garrison’, though.)

I would definitely count a garrison mage who was studying as a missing garrison, since if they’re researching they’re not patrolling.

My second objection would be that a Henchman mage is being paid for many abilities that have nothing to do with effectiveness at being a garrison.

This actually make me think the best way to specify a garrison requirement would be to do it by Battle Rating, rather than GP cost. I wonder if there’s a fairly consistent ratio between them for standard mercenaries?

You mean something like this?

Individual BR can be used to estimate an appropriate wage. For most creatures, monthly wages approximately equal their individual battle rating multiplied by 720. However, creatures which demand expensive supplies are paid less; decrease monthly wage by 1gp for each gp by which the creature’s monthly supply cost is in excess of 2gp. You may round values below 40gp to the nearest 3gp, and round values above 40gp to the nearest 5gp. - DAW: Battles, p.95

Yeah, that’ll do it. I must admit I haven’t really read Battles, since I don’t intend to model mass combat in that much detail.

i’m in the same boat, most of my interest was in campaigns rather than battles

But…but…Battles is AWESOME…

To be fair, Campaigns is also really awesome.

Or you can be a cleric and use your oodles of “free” troops to garrison. The average cleric receives enough troops to garrison a realm of ~2,000 families, which is a fair-sized duchy.

Jard and James K, I want you gentlemen to know that I just emailed a $5 coupon for D@W: Complete to EVERY person on DriveThruRPG who bought either Battles or Campaigns but not the other book or Complete. This intolerable lack of usage of the complete set couldn’t be tolerated.

I sent 3,270 emails and it’s all your fault. So there.

You know, I did actually buy the complete set.

Haha. Oh well. You probably didn’t get an email then. :stuck_out_tongue:

I love this.

YOU WILL ENJOY ALL OF MY PRODUCT.

Like a grandmother making sure you take too much of the chocolate chip and the oatmeal cookies home.

That’s totally how my mother was. She’d be proud of me.

As did I. I didn’t give battles as thorough a reading as campaigns, but I do have both :slight_smile:

I’m beginning to think I was the only one who was super excited about battles!

No, you’re not alone.

We’ll have to set up some sort of online-tournament-club thing. Get some more scenarios in the mix, etc.