Teela is the Captain of the Eternian Guard and the Blue Power Ranger is a specially chosen defender of good.
The two doing battle would be interesting. While the Power Rangers are often depicted as an over-the-top children’s show, the Blue Ranger is trained in karate. Teela is trained with all kinds of weaponry.
So who wins? The Blue Ranger has more armor but Teela is a better fighter. In the end, I think that ends up as the determining factor here.
The D&D game is clearly rooted in the medieval warfare tradition.
Soldiers wear chain-mail or plate armor, and they wield weapons such as swords and bows.
Knights gallop across the battlefield on horses, and catapults bombard castle walls.
Yet, the presence of fantastic creatures and magic supports a more modern kind of warfare, in which flying creatures provide air support, soldiers use camouflage or magic to hide themselves from enemies, and spells that affect a large area can devastate clusters of troops.
It’s useful to think of D&D warfare as a continuum with historical medieval warfare on one end and modern warfare on the other end.
Before you take your D&D game to the battlefield, decide where on that continuum you want your battles to be.
HISTORICAL WARFARE
Medieval armies marched in rank and file for a simple reason.
In a world without radios, accurate maps, and global positioning systems, marching in one organized group was the only way to make sure every soldier made it to the battlefield and followed orders once there.
Amid the din of battle, soldiers have to be able to hear the shouted orders of their commanders, so they couldn’t spread out very much.
Because historical armies marched in rows and columns, obtaining cover and concealment is next to impossible.
Battlefields are often large plains, because only in such places can each general stay in contact with the army’s units.
Camouflage isn’t an issue, so armies wear colorful uniforms and carry standards identifying their unit to make it easy to tell friend from foe.
Generals send runners with new orders to units, and because the units are easy to identify and reach, those orders are likely to reach subordinate commanders.
Catapults are the only artillery weapons, and they’re rare sights except during castle sieges.
Horse-mounted cavalry was a powerful force on the battlefield, because it could reach the critical ground in a battle quickly.
The high walls and arrow slits of a castle provide excellent protect for the defending army; a siege against a well-supplied stronghold can go on for years.
The biggest advantage to historical warfare is that it feels properly epic, with row after row of grim-faced soldiers marching in lockstep toward the enemy.
Castles and knights are central to battles in the medieval tradition, and unit tactics respect the difficulties of communication, navigation, and command.
Historical warfare doesn’t always interact well with magic or monsters.
A single fireball can devastate large groups of marching troops, and high-CR monsters can wade through column after column of foot soldiers with impunity.
Traditional castles are hard to defend against enemies who can fly or teleport.
If you want your D&D battles to include a strong historical element, use medieval strategy to bolster the effectiveness of soldiers in formation.
Have soldiers prepare for spells that affect a large area by thinning out their ranks with the disperse maneuver.
Make flying creatures and monsters with magical abilities rare on the battlefield.
Historical Tactics
Soldiers marching in rows and columns commonly employ the following techniques to increase their effectiveness on the battlefield.
Arrow Volley: If at least ten archers are in a contiguous group (each one adjacent to at least one other), they can loose a high, arcing volley of arrows as a full-round action.
Rather than aiming at a specific target, they concentrate their arrows in a specific area, hoping to hit whatever’s there.
Because they fire in such a high arc, they can ignore any concealment and cover that’s not essentially a roof.
The commander of the archers (generally an officer, war-master or veteran soldier) makes a special attack roll using only his or her base attack bonus, and the appropriate ability modifier.
If the attack hits, arrows land in the target squares, which must have the same shape as the archers in the group.
For example, if two rows of five archers each hit with an arrow volley, arrows land in a two-square by five-square area.
If the arrow volley misses its intended target, it still lands somewhere. The Dungeon Master may roll or chose where these arrows may fall.
Any creature in a square where an arrow lands must succeed on a DC 15 Dexterity Saving Throw or take damage from the arrow.
Because each arrow expends much of its energy getting to the high point in its flight, an archer’s bonus doesn’t apply to the damage roll even if the archer is wielding a particular bow.
Set for Charge: A halberd, spear, trident, or pike can be set against a charge as a readied action.
If a charging foe moves into a threatened square, the soldier who set against the charge makes an attack (with the charging foe taking a –2 penalty to AC) that deals double damage on a successful hit.
If a non-charging foe moves into a threatened square, the soldier who set against the charge can still make an attack but won’t deal double damage.
A formation can have spears, tridents, halberds, or pikes in the first rank and long weapons,which have reach, in the second row to get double coverage on the squares just in front of the formation.
In such a case, the charging creatures gain a +4 bonus to Armor Class against the long weapons in the second row because the soldiers in the front row give the charging creatures cover.
Phalanx: A formation of soldiers advancing under a hail of ranged attacks may raise their shields to protect themselves at the cost of speed and attack capability.
To do this, the soldiers all take a full action.
Soldiers on the outer edge of the formation gain a +4 bonus to Armor Class and ones on the inside gain a +8 bonus.
Disperse: If soldiers in rank-and-file formation are concerned about spells that affect a large area, they sometimes advance at their speed every round, then ready an action in order to disperse if they hear a command to do so.
The commander, and sometimes scouts deployed ahead of the formation, can ready an action to give the disperse command if they see a spellcaster or monster that might be about to use such a spell.
When a formation disperses, soldiers on its perimeter make a single move away from the center of the formation, and everyone else moves to a space not adjacent to any other soldier.
This dispersal can help to reduce the casualties from a fireball, meteor swarm, or other spell that affects a large area.
This tactic is effective, but it comes with a cost: The formation can’t move twice its speed each round.
This disadvantage may expose the formation to more danger, either from ranged attacks or from melee attacks made by enemies that overtake the soldiers.
MODERN-INSPIRED WARFARE
It’s not hard to imagine a different means of waging war.
By replacing technology with magic and monsters, D&D armies can employ tactics and techniques that wouldn’t be out of place on the 21st-century battlefield.
A band of elf rangers might hug the tree line on the edge of the forest, seeking concealment and cover among the trees.
Every squad of soldiers might have a cleric to act as medic, a rogue sniper, and a sorcerer to provide fire support with lightning bolts.
Dragons can provide combat air patrols.
Teleporting monsters function as paratroopers, suddenly appearing behind enemy lines or seizing important objectives.
Message spells can provide instantaneous communication between battlefield commanders.
Powerful monsters and magic rule the modern-inspired battlefield.
Giants and other big monsters are the D&D equivalent of tanks: fast, frightening, and built to absorb a lot of punishment.
Low-level foot soldiers tend to dig in, relying on cover and concealment to protect them.
Foot soldiers also disperse more widely and use ranged attacks more often; even twenty 1st-level warriors can’t bring down a giant in melee, but they can wear it down with arrows, and if they’re spread out, the giant won’t kill more than a few of them each round.
Castles and other strongholds are harder to defend, especially against an enemy who can fly, teleport, or use magic to turn your fortress walls to mud.
Thus, underground strongholds (dungeons, in other words) are popular, because they can’t be attacked from above, and enemies who don’t know their layouts can’t teleport into them.
The advantage of modern-inspired warfare is that it’s familiar to players, and it rewards smart tactics and the tools that mid-level to high-level characters have at their disposal.
The Dungeon Master can take material from countless war movies and real-life battles for adventure ideas.
Combat has a great deal of variety because the warfare embraces fantastic monsters and powerful spells.
Modern-inspired warfare can be very deadly to low-level characters because the battlefield is rich with powerful monsters and magic.
A single fireball that deals 8d6 points of damage kills almost every 1st-level character, as does a frost giant marauding through the front lines.
A modern-style battle also lacks some of the grandeur of a historical set-piece battle.
To an observer, the modern-inspired battlefield is a seemingly deserted place; everyone is dug in or hiding, because standing out in the open makes you an inviting target.
Modern-Inspired Tactics
Magic, monsters, and high-level characters can combine in all sorts of clever ways on the battlefield.
The following tactics are representative of warfare in a high-fantasy battle in the modern style.
Aerial Recon: Giant eagles have Keen Sight, so they make excellent scouts, circling the battlefield at great altitude to watch troop movements.
A giant eagle can fly higher than 300 feet still and have a better than even chance of spotting a creature or approaching unit.
Unless the creatures on the ground are specifically scanning the sky for the giant eagle, it takes a high DC Perception Check to notice the eagle at that height.
Clerical Medics: For under 1/10th the price of a suit of full plate armor, a 1st-level cleric can be equipped with a fully functioning spell scroll of cure wounds.
Such a cleric typically prepares bless (to use before battle) and sanctuary to keep himself or herself safe while they run, scrolls in hand, from wounded soldier to wounded soldier.
Fire Support: A squad of infantry often includes one or more spellcasters who can bring arcane firepower to bear on the battle.
A high-level mage, for example, can cast a great variety of spells and have plenty of spells in reserve to protect themselves.
Equip him or her with a wand of magic missile and a few scrolls of fireball, and you have the magical equivalent of a machine gun and rocket launcher—and it costs less to equip the sorcerer than a typical knight in plate armor.
Specialized Troops: Triton make effective marines; they can establish a beachhead in enemy territory by swimming ashore at night and slaughtering the coastal guard, and they can swarm a ship at anchor, attacking the crew or simply bull rushing them off the deck to be eaten by waiting sharks.
Bard can use dimension door once per day to instantly move up to 300 feet, so they can function as paratroopers of a sort and seize key objectives in advance of the main army.
Blitzkrieg: With a speed of 50 feet, winter wolves are as fast as all but the fastest horses.
They have a strong melee attack and a breath weapon that’s effective against massed troops, so winter wolves can often punch a hole in a defensive line that slower troops can then exploit.
Behind Enemy Lines: A team of bards can easily slip behind enemy lines by using invisibility or alter self.
Once in the enemy rear, they can use detect thoughts or suggestion to gather intelligence and use an animal familiar to report what they have learned back to headquarters.
Fantasy Warfare: Classic SmackDown Superstars vs. SmackDown LIVE Superstars
We live in an age of dream matches — John Cena vs. The Rock, Brock Lesnar vs. Goldberg and Batman vs. Superman. But what if we could hop in the DeLorean with Einstein and mix and match icons of the recent past to take on rising legends of today? The SmackDown brand has always been a fixture for surging Superstars and surefire Hall of Famers. Because of this, WWE.com pit classic SmackDown stars from roughly the first 10 years of the Blue Brand against those of SmackDown LIVE today and let the WWE Universe decide who would come out on top!
SmackDown’s Eddie Guerrero vs. SmackDown LIVE’s Dean Ambrose
To become the heart and soul of the SmackDown brand you need a certain level of heart, enthusiasm and drive. In 2004, Eddie Guerrero was unquestionably the heart of Team Blue when he became WWE Champion by defeating Brock Lesnar in an incredible upset. Dean Ambrose also acquired that label when he entered SmackDown LIVE’s New Era as WWE Champion himself. It’s anybody’s guess as to who would come out on top in this fantasy matchup. The only guarantee is Guerrero’s belief in lying, cheating and stealing pressed up against The Lunatic Fringe’s unpredictable nature would produce a heart-racing result.
