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Unlike ordinary races, Lizard men are produced in large quantities through a special facility called Birth Pool. This is a pond of Magic Bioplasma, where adult Lizard men are constantly emerged from it. These Lizard men have complete knowledge, personality and fighting skills from birth, and dont need any training and growth process. They are powerful professional soldiers, hunters, craftsmen or spellcasters.

In this case, why didn't the Lizard Man mass produce an overwhelming number of population and army and destroy any enemies with easy?

Its been awhile since I read Lizardmen lore, but I was always under the impression that the Spawning Pools were pre-planned by the Old Ones, but with the coming of Chaos and the Old Ones death/departure, the plans are disrupted or not understood by their surviving servants. Spawnings would happen seemingly randomly, or they'd be foretold by certain portents but only a few could understand/predict them.

I'm fairly certain it wasn't something the Lizardmen could control, otherwise they would've kept on respawning their armies while doing their best to follow through with the Old Ones plans.

Another aspect can be food and supplies. Just birthing an army is one thing, but those lizardmen need food, water, living space, tools, clothes, equipment. A mobile army needs all that on the move.

So the bigger the army the more land you need, the more farms, the more non-military population you need to support that military.

Expansionist campaigns can work well with that approach, but can also become an administrative nightmare and collapse in on themselves if they grow too quickly or if they are missmanaged or have growth pains or if they simply hit boundaries and can't expand for a long time.



You also have to consider social aspects too, these aren't mindless slaves in a computer game. These are living, breathing, thinking creatures. So you have to consider the social side of how the people will respond to a mass breeding for war. War exhaustion is a real thing.



So there are many barriers toward simply using it as a means to produce an infinite army before you even touch on the limitations of the spawning pools themselves and what limits there are directly to prevent them being used to spawn an infinite army of lizardwarriors

nm

it appears there are spawning times, and those are provided by dictat.
The Slann call for new spawnings and do so in their own timing, and likely related to cosmic signs..

Lizardmen evidently don't just breed, though there may be some exception for regular spawnings of skinks. Saurus and Kroxigor appear on auspicious timings and there may be restrictions to general population surges.

There may also be a huge food investment needed to grow a spawning of higher lizardman forms. The lizardmen don't seem to have much in the way of agriculture and may struggle to find enough food for large batches of growing saurus. Reptiles are food efficient once grown but take a lot of energy to grow. If populations growth is batched this could cause a real problem in an urbanised hunter gatherer society..

this varies based on edition, but as i remember it from the last edition, the spawning pools are not controlled by the Slann, and don't produce new lizardmen on command. each pool births on its own schedule, and what it produces is not known in advance. the Slann believe the pools operate according to the master plan of the old ones, and can sometimes predict when and what the pools will produce, but can be surprised (usually taken to be a sign of a threat to the master plan.)

some pools are prolific, producing new warriors, skinks, and kroxigors regularly and in great numbers, others lay dormant for long periods of time. likewise some pool have only ever produced one type of lizardman, while others aren't specific, though each spawning is always of a single type per pool. the pools have even spawned non-lizardman creatures at times, such as cold ones.

no pools have produced slann since the old ones fell, which is why there are so few left. and most of those are from the last spawning, and none from the earliest spawning survived. (unless you count the mummy of Lord kroak, who was the eldest of the first spawning), and only a handful of the 2nd spawning remaining (like Lord Mazdamundi). most of the slann are from the 3rd, 4th, and 5th spawnings. (only 5 generations were birthed before the old ones fell, and they were fairly young when it happened.)

mithril2098 wrote:
this varies based on edition, but as i remember it from the last edition, the spawning pools are not controlled by the Slann, and don't produce new lizardmen on command. each pool births on its own schedule, and what it produces is not known in advance. the Slann believe the pools operate according to the master plan of the old ones, and can sometimes predict when and what the pools will produce, but can be surprised (usually taken to be a sign of a threat to the master plan.)

I first remember Slann ordaining spawnings from 5th. This was still not controllable, sometimes you got several units, sometimes you got only one Saurus, who was destined for greatness.

GW were not consistent with their fluff, and wrote whatever was kewl at the time and promptly ignored what they wrote afterwards. If it was kewler for the afternoon to switch around how saurus grew, then that was changed with no prior reference. GW do not do scale, there are enough soldiers to do what the plot requires.

Because it would ruin a fantasy wargaming setting with many varied factions if one wiped out the rest