Marauders

May 31, 2025

A simple skirmish ruleset using Hit Dice, compatible with OSR games

Inspirations

• Middle-Earth Strategy Battle Game
• Original Dungeons & Dragons

Procedure

1. Declare spells
2. Initiative
3. Movement
4. Shooting
5. Attacking
6. Spellcasting
7. Morale

1. Declare Spells

Spells to be cast during the round are declared.
Spells cannot be cast in the same round as movement, and being hurt interrupts spellcasting.

2. Initiative

For each of the following phases, one side goes first and then the other side goes next.

A d6 is rolled for each side. The player who rolled highest can choose which side goes first for each and every phase.
Ties go to whoever did not have priority last round. Reroll ties in the first round.

3. Movement

Movement is based on armor:

Unarmored - Light: Long (Diagonal of a piece of card)
Medium: Medium (Long side of a piece of card)
Heavy: Short (Short side of a piece of card)

Movement into base-to-base contact initiates combat engagement.

Enemies that are engaged in combat can disengage unless the engagement started that round.
On disengaging, every enemy in base-to-base contact damage with 1 HD strength.

4. Shooting

Ranged shots act as damage of 1 HD strength, with a penalty of -1 to the damage roll.
If moving and shooting, there is an additional penalty of -1.

For each obstacle that is shot through, roll a d6. On a 1-3, it avoids the obstacle, on a 4-6, it hits the obstacle instead (If the obstacle is a unit, it gets damaged with 1 HD strength).

Shooting into melee causes a random target to be damaged.

5. Attacking

For each group of combatants joined base-to-base, total up the full initial HD of each side, rolling that amount of d6s per side.
Note that this means that if a 4 HD troll get injured to 2 HD, it still attacks with 4 HD.

The side with the highest d6 wins. If both sides are tied, the side with the most dice of the highest roll wins.
If both sides are still tied, both sides damage each other.

Damage is rolled with the strength of the full initial HD of the attacker’s side.

When damaging enemies, a unit may split up their HD between any models that they are base-to-base with.

6. Spellcasting

Any spells declared go off unless the spell-caster was hurt during this round or the spell was somehow interrupted in some other way.

7. Morale

Follow morale as per RPG ruleset.

Damage

The requirements to damage armor are as follows. Each d6 that passes deals 1 HD of damage.

Unarmored: 2+
Light: 3+
Medium: 4+
Heavy: 5+

Modifiers

Blinded: -1 Hit Die when attacking, ranged attacks are impossible.