Small project to check the balance and best tactics in Mythic Bastionland by Chris McDowall

First of all Mythic Bastionland is an Into the Odd hack, both by Chris McDowall (check out his page here: https://www.bastionland.com/).

The Into the Odd mechanic is very light, forcing GMs to make decisions on the fly during sessions. Sometimes the improvised rules are good, sometimes they are bad. My main problem with light mechanics is balance. So I would like to see how the mechanics of Into the Odd and especially Mythic Bastionland work under different conditions.

In 1v1 the mechanic works perfectly fine. - Surprise attacks make a big difference. - When fighting simultaneously (e.g., duel) the draws are common

The bigger change for me was the mechanic for group combat - when multiple attacks are made against a single enemy, all attack dice are rolled, but only the highest one counts (p. 4). This has specific consequences for the logic of group combat: - A group of small enemies is a bit more dense than a single one. - attacking 1v1 all the time seems to be the most optimal, even if it is unintuitive and "unrealistic xD". - Big armor, big sword > big head count - Big monsters are even harder to kill

And all of this is fair and balanced; however, at the group/warband level, it seems odd to me that outflanking the enemy, which is the most basic tactic for winning in warfare, is now unoptimal. In a series of simulations, it turns out that a bonus to souronding (problably +d8) could balance it, but it is weirdly distributed - it helps in fights between small dmg groups or between groups with big armor.

My innitial sollution is to give the armor to all groups. A1 for Conscripts, and A2 for Mercenaries.

• 1.0 Working app and simulations for 1v1 and 2v2