In "UA: When Armies Clash", how is damage dealt to solos and PCs?

Question

I was looking over "Unearthed Arcana: When Armies Clash", and one thing strikes me as odd.

The rules in the PDF state (on p. 1 of the PDF):

A stand uses the statistics [...] of the creatures within the stand.

and (on p. 7 of the PDF):

Apply damage to a stands hit point's as though it were an individual creature.

Which makes sense. Essentially, 10 soldiers with 10 hit points who each deal 5 damage can be simplified to 1 unit with 10 unit hit points that deals 5 unit damage.

However, this reasoning does not make sense when units attack solos. RAW seems to say that a unit of 10 soldiers deals exactly the same amount of damage to a solo as one soldier would.

Is there something that I am missing in the rules?

Answer 1

You're not missing anything.

Under "Attack" in the "Battle Actions" section (on p. 4 of the PDF), it says:

Attacks between units work the same as in the standard combat rules, except as described here.

So in lieu of any other rules, a stand attacking a solo essentially deals a tenth of their normal damage, while a solo attacking a stand basically deals ten times their normal damage.

I can't comment on whether this was intentional, but that's the way the system functions.

Mike Mearls, the author of this UA, kind of addressed this in a March 2015 tweet (responding to a question about the interaction between stands and solos):

how do stands and solos interact? Should a solo seem just as powerful as 10 comparable CR creatures?

the idea is that a solo is a notable figure who has a big effect on the battle - Aragorn or Legolas in the LOTR movies.