Last time I talked about my Smoke & Steel idea; a campaign focused around only fighters that are heavily customized. I'm thinking of taking the complete opposite route for Warband, and making it extremely simple and rules light. The whole point of the game will, pretty much be wargaming, but with more possible granularity. I, personally, think it would be fun to start off with a low level, single character, and work his way up to a captain, war chief, and maybe one day king.
Currently I'm thinking of using OD&D as a basis, and stripping out pretty much all of the fantasy aspects, and a few rules. I think first ability scores can go. I'm thinking there wont be any 0 level characters, everyone starts of as a 1st level character, with a single hit dice. This way player characters wont be any different than NPCs. Normally this would looked at as a bad thing, but in this case, it's about your war-band (hence the name).
I'd use a singular saving throw, as sort of catch all for any non-weapon based attacks. In that regard I'd go with a single saving throw, like Swords & Wizardry. I'd also use Ascending Armor class, since that fits my combat system from the last post. +1 to hit per level, or per 1/2 level might work pretty well.
For experience I'm definitely thinking 100xp per hit die. Since it will only be human on human fighting (for the most part), this works out pretty well. It's simple, and there probably won't be very many special abilities for encountered enemies. Since everyone would be a fighter, there would only need to be one experience progression, either starting at 2,000 or 1,000 (depending on the mood of the game). This means only 10 to 20 kills to get to next level, which I think would work really well for a very military oriented game. I wouldn't give straight gold for experience, but I would probably offer training on a 1 for 1 basis.
I don't think feats, as they currently work, would go well with large scale combat. I usually adjudicate combat maneuvers anyway, so I could do that for duels and smaller skirmishes. I do think something like AD&D's weapon proficiencies could work well with mass combat; simple +1's to weapons. After all plenty of military units drill to be proficient with their commonly used weapons. There's also room for some minor maneuver like abilities, like "Shield Bash": where you could add your shield's bonus "to hit" or damage, instead of defense (or in addition too).
I was originally very for a large and long armament list, because I feel that was OD&D's original way of letting you customize fighters. Though historically not many units were uniformly armed, instead similar weapons were grouped together. I'm thinking a large list for Player Characters and "Heroes", and simply a "weapon type" equivalent list for units: Polearms, Small Weapons, Medium Weapons, etc... I'm also thinking instead of rolling for damage with units, you'd just have an "average rating". For example a 1d6 spear would have an average rating of "3", and you'd just multiply that by the number of men that hit (using the previously mentioned combat system).
If I do go with a more simplistic system for mass units, I might even consider leaning closer towards the OD&D model, at least in some ways. I think the Hero representing multiple men system would be really helpful. That could determine number of attacks, or something similar. A level vs Armor Class type, and Weapons vs Armor Type systems could be incorporated easily this way too.
Just some ideas. I might ask to play this soon with the wife, and maybe get it all down.
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