[AEG][Mearls] Empire

[drnuncheon]

Does AEG have its own forums somewhere for their 'one-word' series? I have a couple of questions for Mike Mearls regarding Empire, and if he doesn't see them here I'd like to post them there.

First off - superb book. I wish there had been more realm management and less mass battle, but only because I already own Cry Havoc - still, I'll probably wind up taking the best of both books and combining it into my own Frankenstein mass combat system.

I did have a couple of questions though:

In the barony scale, a population unit is roughly 100 people. When you use the 'muster soldiers' action, you can turn one population unit into a Medium-sized unit of 150 soldiers. This disrepancy doesn't exist at the kingdom level (a population of 1000 people turns into a unit of 750) or the empire level (10,000 people yields only 1500 soldiers). Was this an oversight, or are the extra 50 people coming from somewhere? (left over from when someone on the empire scale formed a unit, perhaps?)

In the realm management section, the core classes all get various benefits at levels 5, 10, 15, and 20. How did you handle multiclassed characters and PrCs? I've got a fighter/wizard with levels in spellsword and eldritch knight in my game - right now I'm letting him pick which class his spellsword and eldritch knight levels apply to for calculating the benefits.

Last, do all hills and mountains have mineral resources of some kind (in addition to stone)? That's what it seems like based on the text, but that also seems kind of unlikely.

That's all for now. Thanks!

 

[mearls]

In the barony scale, a population unit is roughly 100 people. When you use the 'muster soldiers' action, you can turn one population unit into a Medium-sized unit of 150 soldiers. This disrepancy doesn't exist at the kingdom level (a population of 1000 people turns into a unit of 750) or the empire level (10,000 people yields only 1500 soldiers). Was this an oversight, or are the extra 50 people coming from somewhere? (left over from when someone on the empire scale formed a unit, perhaps?)

----> Ohhh... that's a sticky one. I don't have a copy of the book, and files have been backed up to my other machine, but off the top of my head if the unit scale is that FUBARed with respect to the population size, I'd cut down the unit sizes by 2/3rds or so. I was actually pretty worried about giving exact numbers for a few things because of messed up logic like that. The basic idea is that 1 pop unit --> 1 Medium-size military unit. IIRC, you can alter the numbers without messing too much up. Alternatively, have the population units produce Small units instead.

In the realm management section, the core classes all get various benefits at levels 5, 10, 15, and 20. How did you handle multiclassed characters and PrCs? I've got a fighter/wizard with levels in spellsword and eldritch knight in my game - right now I'm letting him pick which class his spellsword and eldritch knight levels apply to for calculating the benefits.

----> That sounds like a good idea, and it's what I'd do. Either allow the player to decide, or pick the core class that's closest to the PrC's basic concept.

Last, do all hills and mountains have mineral resources of some kind (in addition to stone)? That's what it seems like based on the text, but that also seems kind of unlikely.

----> Honestly, I can't remember. Mountains should produce minerals, and I think hills may have produced a fractional amount (2 hills = 1 mineral) but off the top of my head I can't remember. I am almost 100% sure that mountains should make minerals, though.

Sorry I don't have a clearer memory. I wrote Empire about 7 months ago, and it's a bit foggy.

Hope that helps!