Image credit: MegruliGuy
Need a party of soldiers to threaten your PCs’ hometown? Need a group of retainers for that noble that your PCs have wronged? Or perhaps your PCs want to hire a mercenary army to help them oppose the invasion of their kingdom and you need an easy way to create the army that they are able to recruit.
Here’s a free soldier/army generator for 5e Dungeons & Dragons and for the Low Fantasy Gaming system to make the creation of a customizable party of soldiers easy and fun!
Customize Your Bandits
It’s easy just to grab a stat block out of the Monster Manual. But if you want your soldiers to come to life at the table, it helps to fill in the little details that make each individual soldier in the party unique. Why are they working together? What are their goals? How ruthless are they and how far are they willing to go to get what they want?
- Backstory: The Maker’s Forge Foe Generator will create a backstory for your soldiers that you can tweak as needed to fit into the PC’s current situation. What battles have they been in recently? Are they reeling from a fight or looking for one? Are they tired and frustrated after a brutal defeat? What do they want? And most importantly: how does what they want conflict with what the PCs want?
- A name and vivid description: each soldier has a name that might be revealed during trade, negotiation, threats, or capture. And every soldier should be unique when you describe it to the PC that encounters them. Vivid description is the lifeblood of the roleplaying game. Man or woman? Distinguishing marks? What is she hiding from her allies? How loyal is he to the commander? What does this soldier want? And what is he prepared to do to get it?
- Weapons and hit points: soldiers will usually possess sturdy armor and use a variety of weapons and gear. And some soldiers are a lot tougher than others.
- A commander to lead them: most soldiers follow a chain of rigid command. These commanders may have their soldiers’ best interests at heart or may have their own ambitions and can be heedless of the lives under their command. What is the commander’s motivation for service? How does he treat those that serve him or fail to accomplish the mission objective?
- Veteran soldiers, stealthy scouts, archers, and conscripts: soldiers have specialist units among them, including archers to soften up the enemy before engaging with the infantry. Some units include veteran warriors that guide smaller units under command of the captain. Others include skilled scouts that travel ahead to locate the enemy or prevent ambushes. Other soldiers conscript commoners into their fight, most of whom can barely swing a sword.
- Loot: should the PCs defeat the soldiers, what gear, valuables, or previous bounty might they recover? What hints of further adventure might be lurking among the soldier’s possessions?
Foe Generator for 5e D&D and Low Fantasy Gaming
So what are you waiting for? Go use the Maker’s Forge Soldier Generator to get a jump-start on an army.
It does all the grunt work for you: stats, names, short descriptions, weapons, and HP for each soldier, and loot the soldiers are protecting.
All that’s left for you to do is to bring the soldiers’ goals into sharp conflict with the PCs and let the sparks fly!