Scalemail

Rules for Medieval Miniatures Using the 4th

Edition Rule Set for Dungeons and Dragons
by
CJ Lewis
Welcome to Scalemail! Scalemail is
a rule set add-on for the 4th edition
rule set of Dungeons and Dragons,
designed for large-scale campaigns
and skirmish battles. Played more as
a strategy game than a role playing
game, Scalemail could be used as a
recreation of certain events in
fictional (or non-fictional!) historical
situations or as a game to play on a
rainy day (when actual D&D is not
possible).
What Scalemail seeks to
achieve is a platform for campaigns
on a national scale in the world of
Dungeons and Dragons. With these
rules, we hope that you can gather a
few friends together and, through
role-play or mere whim, declare war
on each other and settle it—with
swords and sorcery, of course.
To play this game, you will
need to have the Player’s Handbook
from Wizards of the Coast’s
Dungeons and Dragons 4th edition
set. Contained in its pages will be
the rules for how combat works
exactly and how classes work (for
those lucky moments where a hero
joins your cause!). In that former
case, you may want to have the
Player’s Handbook 2 and any other
books for 4th edition that contain
classes if you choose to allow them
into your game. Additionally, you
may need other books appropriate
for the game (Monster Manual for
appropriate monsters, Dungeon
Master’s Guide for traps and the
know-how, the Power books for each
of the different power sources, etc.)
but in the end, the game is your
game and how you play is the best
way to play it for your group.
You will need a large dry-
erase (or wet-erase) mat for staging
skirmishes and battles. This mat
should use 1”x1” squares and should
be a large size (33 squares by 44
squares comes to mind). Lastly,
you’ll need miniatures to represent
troops on the
battlefield. This is easily the
hardest (and most expensive part!)
of any role-playing/war gaming
tabletop. Fortunately, you can use
anything to represent units on a
battlefield, assuming you have
groups of different things to tell unit
from unit (to tell the difference
between knights and archers,
goblins and elves, etc.) Coins are
appropriate: if you have a large
change jar, you can use a marker to
write a unit’s designation on coins
(A1-5 for a unit of knights, B1-5 for a
unit of archers, and so on and so
forth).
What I’ve found to work is
small 1” wooden tokens available at
most craft stores and then marking
designations on them (though it is
humorous to spend your unit of
mages for a bottle of soda). Marking
a unit’s designation (using the same
convention as above) makes it easy
to keep a unit together on the
battlefield and easier to
micromanage on the fly. If you’re
able, buy 120 tokens for each side
(or more if you plan on having
armies clash in three/four way
battles). If you can buy different
colors for each side, that makes it
even better, e.g. 120 blue tokens for
one side, 120 red tokens for the
other side.
 However, if you’ve got the
money, you can buy loads and loads
of pewter miniatures to represent
units.
-Unit Composition
In Scalemail, units are usually
comprised of five figures. For
example, a unit of level 1 warriors
has five physical miniatures on the
field. A unit works off the same
Initiative and work together as a
group to hold safe points, launch
attacks, or anything the player needs
them to do to insure victory in the
skirmish.
Each figure in the unit is
generated using the regular
Dungeon Master’s Guide monster
rules (DMG, pg 184). Use the
appropriate role for the unit and
generate the monster and the unit is
good to go, with certain exceptions.
(If you’re not patient enough,
different units will be provided later in
the book.) Instead of each figure
having their own hit point value, the
unit is considered to have a total hit
point pool. For example, if a one
figure of five has 30 hit points, then
the collective unit has a hit point pool
of 150.
The unit can withstand 150
points of damage before being wiped
off the battlefield completely. The
entire unit is considered to share the
hit point pool. However, take note of
each figure “individual” hit point
value. When a unit collectively
suffers that amount of damage, take
the last unit hit off the field. If multiple
figures in the unit is hit and the
individual hit point value is
accumulated, the attacker gets to
choose which unit is destroyed.
Example: A unit of warriors
have a hit point pool of 150, with
each warrior having 30 hit points. On
one turn, one of the figures takes 36
damage from a deadly blow. The hit
point pool goes to 114 from 150.
Having accumulated 30 points, the
unit last hit is taken off the field.
Additionally, a unit all acts on
one initiative round. Take the lowest
initiative score (though for smooth
game play, each figure should be
identical in a group) and use that
when they join the battle.
Aside from that, battle runs
just as it does in D&D 4th edition.
Pre-Campaign
Scalemail is usually played as
a war game. If this is the case, then
use the rules ahead.
At the beginning of the
campaign, the world is mapped out.
Cities, mountains, plains, forests,
and all other terrains are sketched
out on a piece of paper. This paper
should have 1”x1” squares, known
as “quadrants.” Each quadrant
should have terrain marked within it.
For villages and cities, they should
have one quadrant designated to
them. For metropolises, this can be
done in different ways. For especially
large metropolises, they could
theoretically represent a 3x3
quadrant space. If your players are
good with it, you can do this for each
city or just each capital. This is to
represent an invading force entering fairness (but what war has ever been
a city and slowly battling inward. fair?)
By the time the overworld
Now this can be done in a map is completed, each player
multitude of ways. The map could be should agree with its layout.
copied from a previous source with
1”x1” quadrants laid over it, to
recreate a war or scenario.
Alternately, each side could be
exactly the same to insure absolute

EXAMPLE MAP
After the map has been of points to spend on their beginning
assembled and the players agree to forces. For a standard game, an
play it, each side is given a number amount of points equal to 100 is
good enough; it allows each side to
buy plenty of cheap units, a few very
well-skilled units, or a mix of the two.
Though, the amount of points at the
beginning of the game should be up
to the players and agreed to on all
sides. This is especially so if
recreating scenarios.

After units have been bought,

each side picks a sphere of
influence. For a standard campaign,
this shouldn’t be a large space on
the map. It should be big enough to
situate their units on the map. Again,
if the game is striving towards
recreating a scenario, make the
sphere of influence appropriate for
each side.