D&D 1E Determining Mercenary/Hireling HPs for Castle Guard and Ship crew.

howandwhy99 said:

This is part of the reason why AD&D is so well made. You don't need to roll until you need to know.

Calculate your list of supported army types. Make sure you have a city or town which can support all of the food and weapons and supplies your army needs in the castle. List all amounts of all kept resources and NPCs by class type, which includes monsters. You do not need to roll hit dice, they will all average out to equal. This is how D&D is balanced for many things, by die averages. If you add creatures with different ability score averages, like a constitution of a giant, then you will need to increase the average hit die, including pluses, or any other attributes unique to that unit. The point is here, the hit dice average out, so units are treated without rolling individual hit points.

Click to expand...

santosud37 said:

(...)
I am wondering if Constitution scores needed to be added?
(...)

Click to expand...

santosud37 said:

I am building the castle for my Arch Duke and need to have the wall guard for security. I guess I will use the Fighter D10 x Lvl and Cavalier D12 x Lvl.
I am wondering if Constitution scores needed to be added?

Thanks in Advance,
David

Click to expand...

howandwhy99 said:

As long as your troops are human they will average to 10.5 (3d6) so no Con hp modifier is applied. If you are using a different Ability Score roll for NPCs per their class or some other selection, then use its averaged result. If you have other races intermixed, check for unit Ability Score averages and apply modifiers from the averages as needed.

Units usually share weapon type. If enemies are using a lower damage type than a D10 (your Ftrs) or D12 (your Cavs), the units will not be destroyed upon striking (all other scales being equal: 10/unit. 20/unit, etc). The unit may likely need to roll for Morale after losing over half their hp unless it has over 1HD (a non-standard human unit). If they don't break, treat their current HD as <1, the remainder. They would die from another hit.

I would advise using some men-at-arms troops instead if all Ftrs and Cavs, if only to understand the human baseline HD. They also are limited by weapon and armor type - making troop prep simple at the expense of weapon changes in the field.

Click to expand...

santosud37 said:

I am building a Castle and have ships to man with 1000s of hirelings, wall guard, ship crews, and later on expert hirelings for expert workers. I have Sergeants, Lieutenants, Captains and Generals/Admirals included as F0-F8 and Cavaliers for the Horsemen from Unearthed Arcana.
How do I determine the HPs for all of this and do I need to determine Constitution for each group of troop types for getting more accurate HPs? In the past I just rolled for whater class dice HPs. However, I did not add any Constitution bonuses. What is the best way since there r no clear rules on this that I have been able to find?

Thank You in Advance,
David

Click to expand...

howandwhy99 said:

As long as your troops are human they will average to 10.5 (3d6) so no Con hp modifier is applied. If you are using a different Ability Score roll for NPCs per their class or some other selection, then use its averaged result. If you have other races intermixed, check for unit Ability Score averages and apply modifiers from the averages as needed.

Units usually share weapon type. If enemies are using a lower damage type than a D10 (your Ftrs) or D12 (your Cavs), the units will not be destroyed upon striking (all other scales being equal: 10/unit. 20/unit, etc). The unit may likely need to roll for Morale after losing over half their hp unless it has over 1HD (a non-standard human unit). If they don't break, treat their current HD as <1, the remainder. They would die from another hit.

I would advise using some men-at-arms troops instead if all Ftrs and Cavs, if only to understand the human baseline HD. They also are limited by weapon and armor type - making troop prep simple at the expense of weapon changes in the field.

Click to expand...

Hriston said:

The DMG, p 30, under "Mercenary Soldier:", states, "regular soldiers are 0 level men-at-arms with 4-7 hit points each." This subsumes any Constitution bonus to hit points (the range for normal men being 1-6 hp), so you don't need Constitution scores for these characters and can simply assign an average of 5.5 hp or roll 1d4 + 3 for individuals to obtain a final number of hit points.

If, for some reason, you want to determine Constitution scores for your 0-level characters, DMG, p 11, gives the following:

​

General Characters: Roll 3d6 for each ability as usual, but use average scoring by considering any 1 as a 3 and any 6 as a 4.​

This gives an average score of 10.5 with a range of 6-15 to which should be added the +3 Constitution bonus for "Mercenary (level 0)" given on p 100, which also states these characters have "4 minimum hit points". The average Constitution for your regular troops therefore would be 13.5 with a range of 9-18 (+1 for dwarves and halflings (p 100)).

For your leveled fighter characters, DMG, p 11, states:

Special Characters, Including Henchmen: Roll 3d6 as for general characters, but allow the full range (3-18) except in the ability or abilities which are germane to his or her profession, i.e. strength for fighters, etc. For all such abilities either use one of the determination methods used for player characters or add +1 to each die of the 3 rolled which scores under 6.​

Since the only ability germane to fighters (ie their prime requisite) is Strength, this leaves Constitution to be determined by a 3d6 roll to which should be added the +1 Constitution bonus for fighter NPCs from p 100. [Eta: Also of note is the minimum Constitution for fighters is 7, so rolls from 3 to 5 would need to be discarded (about 4.63% of rolls). This gives an average Constitution of about 11.78 with a range of 7-18 unless they are dwarves, halflings, or half-orcs for whom 19 is possible.

Since PHB, p 12, gives no bonus to hit points for the average score (11.78), I think you're fine rolling 1d10 or simply assuming 5.5 hp per fighter level, but technically the above adjustments actually produce an average bonus of about +0.34 hp, so you could give your fighters something like 5.8 or even 6 hp per level if you wanted to take Constitution into consideration.]

Click to expand...