I’m unclear on how Heroic Forays work. It says that the BR staked determines the enemies fought, but doesn’t go into further detail- Does this mean that a hero who stakes 1 BR will attempt to fight a light infantry unit (120 men!) highhandedly? Fighting 120 men seems like it’d be extremely difficult!
Hello, Susan! That's exactly what it means.
A few notes, though:
1. The number of troops per point of BR will vary depending on the size of the engagement. In a platoon-sized engagement, 1 BR might equal 30 light infantry.
2. Heroes who are personally staking 1 BR better be bad-asses. A 10th level fighter with AC 10+ can expect to kill 5-10 light infantry per combat round while suffering only 1 hit every other round (assuming he's facing 10 foes per round, hitting on natural 20s). After 8 combat rounds, he'll likely have taken about 15-20 points of damage, but wiped out about half the light infantry and caused a morale check.
3. Characters with area of effect magic can of course deal with large masses of opponents quickly. A few fireballs or wands of paralyzation can make short work of a few BR.
4. The enemy may have elite troops (ogres or wolf riders) or enemy heroes, in which case the hero will likely be facing these instead of grunt light infantry. Such fights will be against tougher foes that are fewer in number. For example, if 60 Heavy Cavalry are BR 6, then BR 1 would be 10 Heavy Cavalry.
Alex:
4. The enemy may have elite troops (ogres or wolf riders) or enemy heroes, in which case the hero will likely be facing these instead of grunt light infantry. Such fights will be against tougher foes that are fewer in number. For example, if 60 Heavy Cavalry are BR 6, then BR 1 would be 10 Heavy Cavalry.
Is there anything encouraging this situation? Is it tactically better, or are GMs just more likely to want to fight with 10 enemies than 60+ for simplicity’s sake?
The inability of PCs to easily Cleave their opponents could make a significant difference.
Yes, but if you spread out your soldiers (you can only cleave if they are adjacent to each other) and mass-up ranged fire, things can get nasty.
?
Your response is a bit of a non-sequitur. You asked what the advantage might be, and I answered. Shall we now go back and forth with tactical counters to what the other suggests? I’ll see your missile troops, and raise you several PC spellcasters with area effect spells and a couple PC melee meatgrinders.
Can PCs influence who they foray against? “Let’s cut through their healers!” sorta thing? It seems like that’d be a really powerful thing, since Battle Rating doesn’t directly correspond to hero-killing, so you could take out high BR low-danger targets.
Ah, I think I’m beginning to understand the implications of the system. If both sides have Heroes (and they generally always will) then Foraying is very risky- If your party Forays for 1 BR, and they Foray for 0, then you’re fighting the enemy Heroes and a hundred spearmen.
Yes, at the Judge's discretion.
For example, if they say "we want to foray to the right wing to deal with the cavalry there", that would seem permissible. On the other hand, "we want to foray to the rear of the enemy formation to attack the soft-bellied slingers" would only make sense if they had a way to get to the rear of the enemy formation without being stopped or detected. Are they invisible? teleporting? etc.
It would also depend on the enemies counter-measures to such tactics. For example, if there were multiple low-level mages cycling through detect magic (or using a detect magic item) or the target was surrounded on all sides by densely-packed heavy infantry, approach, even with invisibility would be impossible. Also, if there were no gaps in the lines, battle might be joined before the heroes could sneak around the end and reach a commanding unit in the rear. However, in normal circumstances, an invisibility spell should get you where-ever you want.
I’m not sure how easy getting back to your own lines will be after your foray deep behind enemy lines, however. It is unlikely that you will have both the time and the spells to cloak your entire group again and at this point every active means available to detect invisible assassins will be deployed (as will volley-fire and area-of-effect attacks, if available). You may be surrounded or chased away from your lines depending on your position. I don’t know how this would play out in the game, however, but escaping after sneaking into the heart of the enemy should be harder than harassing the flanks.
Maybe it should force a minimum BR wager for more insulated targets, since they will have other guarding units nearby, and start the PCs away from their retreat map edge with enemies on multiple sides (including the PC retreat edge), making retreat more difficult?