This is a scenario I’ve run for Mr. Wargaming of the Joy of Wargaming. He’s done me some favors in the past, now is time to help him out. Mr. Wargaming generated an AD&D 1e encounter and shopped it out to save some time. Mr. Wargaming provided the general location and orders of battle to me. I had another player (rdubs) generate the battle map and initial orders for the Trolls. Battle wasn’t so long that more orders for the trolls were needed.

Scenario: Wolflands, Trolls v. Mooks

Bad Guys: Three Trolls

Good Guys: Twenty Light Foot, Ten Archers, Thirty Heavy Foot.

Location 200-yard Hex in marsh with river flowing SW.

Encounter Distance: rolled 10”.

Battlefield Map Created by the Troll Player (RDUBS) featuring a bridge across the river.

I ruled the Heavy Foot was 1-6 rounds behind the LF and Archers. Rolled a 3 for arriving at the end of turn 3.

Setup: Trolls set up with two trolls at the east end of the bridge and one troll on the west end of the bridge.

Setup: LF and Archers at south board edge 10” from the trolls.

I go through the scenario round by round but if you want to skip to the chase, one troll is killed at significant loss to archers and light foot. Scroll down if you are more interested in after action discussion.

Round 1:

Troll player orders, Trolls 1 & 2 to charge archers, Troll 3 to move up half move.

Mook orders: Archers and LF1 to maintain distance and fire arrows. LF2 to move around the trees to gain LOS.

I ruled that charge is acceptable only along the path indicated on the battle map. Other movement in the marsh is at half speed with no charges allowed.

Trolls charging automatically gain initiative. Their movement rate is 12”, so are able to preempt the archer’s fire.

Troll 1 hits Longbowmen with Claw/Claw/Bit and Troll 2 hits Claw/Claw – total 31 damage, 4 archers down & 1 wounded.

LF1 fires into the melee and misses.

LF2 moves and fires at approaching Troll#3 and misses.

Archers attack trolls with their swords, rolls a 2  & misses.

LT of Archers attacks Troll #1 with his sword and hits for 6 damage.

Round 2:

Orders: Troll 3 to move to attack LF2. Trolls 1 & 2 continued attack on the archers. LF1 to fire arrows. LF2 to fire arrows or attack with the sword if initiative is lost. LT of archers continue attack on Troll#1

Initiative: Trolls roll a 4, mooks roll a 3. Trolls go first.

Troll 3 attacks LF2, hits with a claw/bite, total 12 damage (two men down)

Trolls 1&2 attack the archers, all attacks hit for a total of 42hp, the archers are wiped out.

LF1 fires arrows at Troll 2 but misses.

LF 2 engages Troll 3 with the sword, rolls 18 to hit. 4 hp damage x 8 = 32 hp so Troll 3 is down.

Lt of Archers attacks Troll 1 and hits (with a 20), does 4 points damage.

Round 3:

Orders: Trolls 1&2 turn to attack Lt of Archers. LF1 move to engage trolls with sword.LF2 move to engage trolls from the rear. Lt of Archers continue attacking Troll 1.

Initiative: Trolls roll a 2, Mooks roll a 6, Mooks go first.

LF1 move to attack with swords but miss.

Lt of Archers hit Troll 1 for 4 hp.

LF2 move to engage trolls from the rear but miss.

Troll 1 attacks Lt of Archers and hits with a Claw/Bite for 12 hp damage. Lt of Archers is still up.

Troll 2 attacks LF1 and hits with Claw/Bite for 10 hp total.

Morale rolls. LF rolls morale at +5 and gets a 79. 79-50=29 resulting in disengage/retreat.

Trolls roll morale at +5 and, unluckily roll a 93. 93-86=7 resulting in Fallback/fighting retreat.

Heavy Foot arrives at board edge.

Round 4:

Orders: LF 1 to disengage West. LF2 to retreat directly away from trolls. Trolls fall back toward the bridge but will attack target available. Lt of Archers retreat East.

Initiative: Trolls rolls 1, Mooks roll 6.

Trolls 1&2 attack disengaging LF2. They hit with Claw/bite and one Claw for a total of 21 damage (three more LF down and another wounded).

Heavy Foot move up. Troll 1 regenerates 3 hp.

Round 5:

Orders: LF1&2 continue to disengage. Trolls 1&2 continue falling back while attacking opportune targets. HF to move up to engage. Lt of Archers to light torch.

Initiative, Trolls roll 6, Mooks roll 4. Trolls win.

Trolls 1&2 attack retreating LF2, all attacks hit, total 35 damage. LF2 eliminated.

Heavy Foot is not in range to attack the trolls.

Troll one regenerated 3hp.

Round 6:

Trolls 1&2 continue their retreat across the bridge. Troll 1 regenerates 3 hp.

Lt of Archers burns Troll 3 remains just in time as regeneration would begin this round.

Battle Ends.

Heavy Foot holds the bridge.

Trolls 1& 2 have retreated off the map.

Unit of ten archers entirely wiped out.

One man survives of LF #2.

LF#1 has one man killed and one wounded.

Lt of Archers has taken 12 (out of 14) hp damage but survives.

I totally forget about the attacks from my sergeants of archers and light foot. They might have made a difference but probably not a lot.

Now, there are a few things to discuss. First, there are the rulings I made. There are 1) the path allows full moves; 2) the marsh halves movement. AD&D 1e rules are a bit vague on how to run movement through a marsh. The rules do address vessels moving through marshes. Vessels have their movement reduced down to a quarter or a half depending on vessel type. But what about on foot? This could mean no foot movement allowed. Or, it may be that the rules on silent on it. I decided to take a look at the venerable Chainmail rules. Chainmail halves movement in marshes — good enough for me.

The path. Jon, never mentioned a path. But RDUBs’s map shows a path. I could have ruled that that was merely an aesthetic feature rather than changing movement rates. If I had ruled that the path was still to be treated as marsh, then a couple things would have happened. First, it would have taken two rounds for the trolls to reach the archers. This would have allowed a round is missile fire before the melee. It also would have allowed more movement by the Light Foot prior to melee. It’s something, but given how difficult it is for 0-level mooks to hit the trolls, it might not have helped too much. Yet, it’s still a chance and a decent volley of arrows might take one troll down. Second, movement in marshes forestalls charging. So, no charging bonus for the trolls when they do get to the archers. Conversely, no charging means no change of armor class during the charge. So, this might be a wash. Still, the change of needing a 15 to hit instead of a 17 is significant. Upshot, losing charging probably is better for trolls because they are likely to hit the poorly armored mooks in any case. Unless, they get unlucky and arrows take one troll down on the approach.

But wait there are more things to discuss, like scaling, hit points, and morale.

I scaled my units at 10:1. So, a ten man unit of light foot hits or misses on a single roll. But the trolls I kept at 1:1. Under the troll Monster Manual entry it notes they have three attacks (claw/claw/bite) and they can spread those attacks among three different targets. Other multiple attack creatures (a lion for example) must carry out all their attacks on a single creature. So trolls have a big advantage when attacking low or zero level opponents they can potentially take out three opponents per round. For comparison a Hill Giant has greater hit dice and does more damage per attack but is limited to a single opponent. For the giant this is a real disadvantage when attacking massed 0-level dudes. The maximum damage a troll can do is 28 hp/round (5-8/5-8/2-12). The maximum damage a hill giant can do is 16 hp/round (2-16). For zero level mercenaries with 4-7 hp, both the giant and the troll have a good chance of killing one outright with every hit. But the the troll could kill three men per round to the giants one. For an average mercenary with 6 hp a maximum damage roll would theoretically take out four men but would need to be truncated to the trolls maximum of three. In practice, I never had to truncate the trolls damage because they either missed a few attacks or rolled low for damage.

For the scaled mooks a similar question arises. The unit is ten men. When facing a single troll how many men can attack the troll? The troll is large. Normally for similarly sized characters the maximum is six opponents can attack another creature. The rule in the DMG (p.69) says that for medium creatures attacking a large creature a maximum of eight can attack. I totally forgot this but got lucky because LF2 had already lost two men. But one should note that Light Foot are not allowed to operate in close order. Now, the AD&D rules do not say what the effect of this is but it also notes that Heavy Foot are allowed to use close order. Usually, this means that light foot must be spread out to some degree and thus naturally fewer light foot troops will be engaging opponent troop base to base when using miniatures. I wasn’t using miniatures but chits, so I probably should have ruled that something less than the full amount could attack. This isn’t that unusual, often it’s ruled that front rank only can attack in melee (unless possibly the rear rank has polearms). In this case, it was a scrum in a swamp with no expected formation, I gave the full numbers to the LF. It’s fine, but a different decision might have meant Troll 3 did not go down so easily.

Also, rolling once for block of men is faster but does change the dynamic of the game. For example the mooks need a 17 to hit the troll. So, four chances to hit out of twenty (4/20=0.2) or 20 percent chance to hit. For a maximum of 8 men attacking per round this means 8/5=1.6 hits per round. Assuming average damage (4.5 hp) that is 1.6*4.5=7.2 hp/round. If rolled once per block of ten that is one hit per every five rounds on average but you get the full eight hits, 8*4.5=36 hp. Pretty good chance of taking out a troll with one hit. But, back to individual rolls, 7.2*5 also equals 36 so the effect is the same? Or, is it? If you assume it takes the full five rounds to get that one hit, how many men will be left when the troll has a 75 percent chance per hit and can take out three men per round? Not many, unless the troll is very unlucky. Conversely, rolling individually, the mooks likely will at least do some damage to the troll before being taken out. In both cases, the mooks might get lucky on both to-hit and damage rolls and take the troll out early. Odds are against it though. Of course, even if the to-hits are rolled individually, the troll troll will still regenerate the damage quickly, unless there are sufficient mook units available to keep the pressure on them.

In this scenario, with the map presented to me, line of sight was fairly obscured meaning the mooks could never really concentrate their fire. Also, the marsh location, also meant the encounter range was relatively short as well. Not an ideal scenario to maximize archer effectiveness. Best case, with an encounter at 21″ and clear line of sight, it’s still not great. At 21″ it’s long range, so -5 to the roll. They still need a 17 to-hit, so 20-5=15 so the long bows cannot hit at long range. Trolls then move 12″ to range 9, this is medium range, -2 to hit. At medium 20-2 is 18. They need to roll a 19 or 20 to hit. That’s a ten percent chance to hit, not great. Then the third round, the troll is upon them and tearing the archers up. It looks to me that 0-level archers are not the tactic to beat trolls.

Let’s look at the heavy foot. The heavy foot is still zero-level so they still have the 17 to-hit, still 20% chance to hit. Still an average 36 hp damage over five rounds. But the heavy foot has the better armor class of four versus the light foots eight. The trolls odds of hitting is reduced to 60 percent from 75 percent. It’s a bit better. Over five rounds a troll will average 9 hits versus 11 hits. Odds are for both light and heavy foot (as armored in this scenario) the troll eliminate the unit as combat effective in well under five rounds.

Morale. The result of this battle hinged on morale. For the mooks, morale is calculated from the loyalty score of the troops based on their employers charisma and then modified by specific factors. I didn’t have their employers charisma, I could have bugged Jon for it but instead I just went with a base 50 percent. Most of the loyalty modifiers I also did not have the detail from Jon’s game to know. So, again I gave the mooks a base 50 percent just as monsters start with. Given these guys were relatively new hires an argument could have been made for lowering it a bit.

For the trolls I used the rule above. Fifty percent plus five percent per hit die above one and an additional one percent per bonus hp. Trolls are 6+6 hit dice so that sets their base morale at 50+(5*5)+6=81. I made a mistake in my actual game and gave them an additional 5 percent for the first hit die. Oops. Luckily, this error did not change the category of morale failure the trolls experienced. They rolled a 93. 93-86=7 and 93-81 is 12, both of which put them into the fall back fighting category. In the end though, that 93 roll turned the tide of the battle in favor of the mooks. If the trolls had stood and fought, well, the mooks likely would be missing quite a few more light foot for sure. And, while the heavy foot has a chance to prevail, it would not have been without significant cost.

The lesson here, unsurprisingly, is that sending 0-level mooks against trolls isn’t a great way to win unless you have 1) significant numerical advantage combined with 2) units of great morale. Because even if you have the numbers, units whose morale breaks is likely to affect the other units and send them fleeing as well. And, ideally, the troops are equipped with plate and shield (AC 2, changing the trolls to-hit number to 11). And, you want better weapons than spears and short swords.

Two-handed swords or lances from horseback. A heavy lance at the charge is 3-18×2 so 21 average damage at the charge (plus whatever attacks the horse makes). But even then the mooks still only have 4-7 hp so, are fragile to troll hits. The war horse may be a great advantage at the charge and can overbear the trolls, knock them off their feet (maybe) and forestall the troll attacks altogether. The reach of a lance would also ensure first chance to hit on the charge. Cavalry are very expensive to replace when a troll crunches one. For this scenario, cavalry in a swamp doesn’t look so great there either. There is no easy answer for trolls.

Ultimately, AD&D 1e battles are so dice dependent that it’s hard to say whether these changes would have turned the tide for one side or another. But, it would have been a different battle. The next marsh I might make different decisions. Rulings are rulings, made in the moment and not meant to be house rules. In another situation I might determine (or roll randomly) that THIS new marsh hinders movement more or less. Who knows? Gygax has recommended that people write down their rulings so as future games are consistent. Gygax has also warned that enough of this will warp the game until it is no longer AD&D. So, my advice is be wary of making an ad hoc ruling into a house rule. There may be good reasons to make a different decision at another time.