BTB Daemon Prince!

Hey guys our marauder player has gathered all the artefacts and his leader has changed into a daemon prince, but we haven't finished the campaign yet!
Why?
he's hired Ippan Shu to keep his Campaign Points down so he can run amok with the Prince for a while.
consequently all our players have a few questions.

Bringing the Daemon prince down;
It states in the Daemon prince rules that when the Prince is taken OOA you roll on Serious Injuries immediately and if it dies it drops the artefacts otherwise its just OOA, keeping the Artefacts on it.
a few players think the Daemon prince acts like the scourge of the realms "Duel to the Death" objective, if its taken OOA you roll for serious injuries and if it doesn't die it gets a wound back and keeps going, fighting and getting taken OOA untill you roll a death on the serious injuries table.
I just want to double check its the first way; one OOA, one serious injuries roll, then its gone?

Also as its in the match, could a player use a rabbits foot to reroll the Death roll on the Serious injury table?

Taking the Artefacts;
if the Artefacts are taken from the Daemon prince (say through the heist?) does it change back to a regular warrior?
it doesnt seem to say anyway, I assume it remains a Daemon Prince, just minus one Artefact?
theoretically this way another scion could gain all the artefacts and turn into a second Daemon Prince (very slim chance of this haha, the campaign would surely end before then).

Thanks for your help guys haha

I think that Ippan Shu needs to have a rule restricting him from being hired from any chaos warband. However, it sounds like fun what your Marauders player is doing and fun is always the goal.  

BTB wrote:

When taken out of actionthe Daemon Prince will not automatically drop the Chaos Artefacts. Instead roll for Serious Injuries immediately. If the Prince dies, place markers for the artefacts.

Here are the rules for anyone who is not familiar. My two cents are that the Daemon Prince gets taken Out of Action and removed from battle. However, unlike a normal warrior that will drop Chaos Artefacts when taken OOA the Daemon Prince will only drop the Chaos Artefacts if it dies. Therefore the roll on the Serious Injury Table is done immediately just to check this scenario. The Daemon Prince does not hang around in the battle if it rolls a result other than death.

Also, yeah I agree that the warrior would remain a Daemon Prince even if it has lost one of the Chaos Artefacts. The transformation is complete once all four Chaos Artefacts are acquired.

Thanks for the reply man, yeah Ippan shu really shouldn't work for Chaos but the marauders are technically a human warband and no one really argued, a few more rounds of the campaign and a chance to fight a Daemon Prince won everyone over haha. Anyway thanks for the confirmation

No, Marauders of Chaos are not meant to count as "human", I'm pretty sure.

In swords of the empire it lists them as a human warband as well as a cult of Chaos;

Quote :

Human warbands will include any warp-touched
gangs and renegade warbands that are composed of
human warriors by majority. This might include
Cults of Chaos, Marauders of Chaos, Outlaws and
Bandits.

But Swords of the Empire was written after BTB so it could be an over sight.

Well Werekin and Cianty should know for sure but it does sound like a mistake to me.

Sounds like the Deamon Prince is a power house and may be causing some minor problems with game blance. So I say yes to the rabbits foot making a reroll on the serious injury table if a death is rolled. Just to even up the odds a bit. A roll is a roll....

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Also as its in the match, could a player use a rabbits foot to reroll the Death roll on the Serious injury table?

Is that what this question meant? I couldn't figure out what "its" was or what "the match" was. I am blissfully unaware of the Daemon Prince rules, but wouldn't using the Rabbit's Foot to avoid death also apply to the Daemon Prince? Either way its a house rule, since Rabbits Feet can't normally be used to avoid death, so its really up to the group playing. They seem likely to allow anything.   

If you are looking for a vote to bolster one side or the other in a dispute, I will vote no.   

Quote :

This might include Cults of Chaos, Marauders of Chaos, Outlaws and
Bandits.

What counts as a "Cults of Chaos" warband? Or is there a Cults of Chaos warband?

Quote :

Well werekin and cianty should know for sure but it does sound like a mistake to me.

This has the makings of one of those 'well Dad said' discussions. Could be fun.

For the rabbit's foot question, I think he meant with players in general. When a player has a hero roll "death" during serious injury roll, he wanted to know if that player could use the rabbit's foot to re roll on the serious injury table again. For the most part I'm not 100% sure if you can or not but given that in his game, someone has a deamon prince and is using a bit of a loophole to keep him longer then he should and therefore might upsetting the balance of the game so I suggest that the players could use the rabbit's foot to re roll "death" on serious injury table to help counter balance the deamon prince. May not be much, but it could help out a little bit. I think its fair.

Von Kurst wrote:

Quote :

Also as its in the match, could a player use a rabbits foot to reroll the Death roll on the Serious injury table?

Is that what this question meant?  I couldn't figure out what "its" was or what "the match" was.  I am blissfully unaware of the Daemon Prince rules, but wouldn't using the Rabbit's Foot to avoid death also apply to the Daemon Prince?  Either way its a house rule, since Rabbits Feet can't normally be used to avoid death, so its really up to the group playing.  They seem likely to allow anything.   

If you are looking for a vote to bolster one side or the other in a dispute, I will vote no.   

I agree on this point.

Quote :

This might include Cults of Chaos, Marauders of Chaos, Outlaws and
Bandits.

Quote :

What counts as a "Cults of Chaos" warband?  Or is there a Cults of Chaos warband?

I believe this refers to the Possessed and the Carnival and similar "cult" based warbands.

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Well werekin and cianty should know for sure but it does sound like a mistake to me.

Quote :

This has the makings of one of those 'well Dad said' discussions.  Could be fun.

Oh come on! Since those two guys are active here and had a hand and a foot in the making of BTB and the Swords of the Empire compilation I believe their views should hold some merit.

Damn I hate using the quote feature, it never works properly for me  

Quote :

Oh come on! Since those two guys are active here and had a hand and a foot in the making of BTB and the Swords of the Empire compilation I believe their views should hold some merit.

Whoa tiger! I'm sorry if I offended you or the other gentlemen, but I did not realize my words would throw doubt on the merit of their opinions.

Sorry my friend. I wasn't offended, just got caught up in the argument. I apologize for overreacting there, my bad.

No worries. I tripped myself up trying to be clever. I was referring to this post, catachanfrog replying to a post by werekin:

cianty wrote:

catachanfrog wrote:

I know that Cianty's initial answer was "no" but it still bothers me that having (not yet) heretics in their clutches, the only thing WH can do is to sell them.  

LOL! That's like asking pop after mum's answer wasn't satisfactory.   

From January or so. Oh well.

Hehe I hadn't seen that one. Now I get your comment

Woah lots of comments haha.
I apologise I should have referenced the rules I was referring to.

In regards to the Rabbits Foot, I’m aware that it cannot be used to reroll Serious Injuries as that is post game, and they can only be used for Exploration post game.

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Rabbit's Foot
The rabbit's foot is a symbol of good luck and often worn about the neck on a thin cord of leather by superstitious warriors. A rabbit's foot allows the warrior wearing it to re-roll one dice during the battle. If not used in the battle, it can be used to re-roll one dice during the Exploration phase, providing the hero is able to search through the ruins.

But the Daemon Prince is a bit different in the fact that his serious injury is rolled during the game, as soon as he is taken OOA;

Quote :

When taken out of action the Daemon Prince will not automatically drop the Chaos Artefacts. Instead roll for Serious Injuries immediately. If the Prince dies, place markers for the artefacts.

Letting him reroll his serious injury with a rabbits foot as it happened during the game isn’t exactly fair, he’s hard enough to kill as it is haha.

The Cults of Chaos I was referring to is one of the Warband Categories used in Swords of the Empire that dictates which Hired Sword a warband can hire;

Quote :

WARBAND CATERGORIES
The most common mercenary retinues around the
Empire are those from Marienburg, Middenheim,
Reikland, Ostland, Averland and the various other
Imperial provinces. Mercenaries also include the
much sought after Kislevites, Estalians, Tileans,
Arabians, Norse, Pirates and Pit Fighters.

Human warbands will include any warp-touched
gangs and renegade warbands that are composed of
human warriors by majority. This might include
Cults of Chaos, Marauders of Chaos, Outlaws and
Bandits.

Followers of Chaos include Cult of the Possessed,
Carnival of Chaos and any other Cults of Chaos,
plus Beastmen, Marauders of Chaos, Norse, and
Chaos Dwarfs. Skaven and Dark Elves are not
counted amongst Chaos warbands.

Elf warbands do not include Dark Elves and Dwarf
warbands do not include Chaos Dwarfs.

Any warband which includes a Vampire, a
Necromancer or a Liche is considered to be an
Undead warband.

It actually refers to them  as Followers of Chaos so I apologise for the confusion, though it does list call the category "Cults of Chaos" in other places

Quote :

May be Hired: Any warband except Skaven,
Beastmen, Undead, Orcs & Goblins, Possessed,
Carnival of Chaos and other Cults of Chaos may hire
a Beast Hunter.

And finally I’ll list Ippan Shu’s “may be hired” for reference;

Quote :

May be Hired: Any warband which includes Humans
or Elves, including Battle Monks, may hire Ippan Shu,
not including Dark Elves, Outlaws and Bandits.

I hope this clears things up a bit, sorry again dudes.

Don't worry you are forgiven, especially if you post more often.  Aipha and Seikilos seem to have run out of questions, so you're the only game in town.   

Thank you for posting the relevant rules

I must admit that I love that Bandits, which include a priest, may not hire Ippan Shu, but chaos or undead can, at least by the rules as written.   

Its really hard to consider ALL possibilities when writing rules, especially since, as the author, you know exactly how the rule should work.  I'm often surprised when my players seize on words or concepts that I had not considered at all important or relevant.

Haha Yeah exactly, I have many players that pull crazy interpretations out of no where, and have been playing that rule their way for so long it's hard to change.

But yeah as you said, when writing a rule it's so hard to think of all the ways it can be interpreted and how it interacts with all the other rules affecting it.

It makes no sense that Ippan would work for chaos, and clearly wasn't intended to but we allowed it so as to prolong the campaign, maybe the great monk was finnaly corrupted haha

Von Kurst wrote:

Don't worry you are forgiven, especially if you post more often.  Aipha and Seikilos seem to have run out of questions, so you're the only game in town.  

Sorry, Von Kurst!

Yes, I have run a bit out of questions, since I'm not playing too much at the moment (exams and have fallen a bit for the Game of Thrones Boardgame). However, I'm going to play today, and I'm still following the threads every now and then!  

(And sorry for total off-topic )

It always depends on the author's perspective when it comes to terms like "human warbands". I do think that this phrase is a good way of categorizing good-aligned human-based warbands such as adventurers, sisters, witch hunters, averlanders, etc. In my eyes, these are what should be considered "human warbands".

Granted, the Cult of the Possessed has a totally human warband leader and a lot of human henchmen. Norse and Chaos Marauders are also "human" - they're definately no daemons (yet!). But these humans are all corrupted, tainted and evil.

Often times the phrase "human warbands" is used to describe human good-aligned warbands (from Empire to Bretonnia) and to describe who and what will work for these people. I find this in contrast to a phrase such as "all dwarfs" which is usually used to described their physical nature and the rules that go along with this - because this includes both good aligned and evil dwarfs (Chaos Dwarfs). For humans the phrase never really focuses on the physical nature of a human (because "human" is always default and therefore doesn't need to be addressed).

With all this in mind, I find it hard to really settle on what is a human warband and what is not. I think I would not consider Chaos Marauders a human warband. But Stu as the author of Swords of Empire can very well consider them human and write the phrase with that intention. Today, I wouldn't dare to officially say if Chaos Marauders should be considered human or not because I cannot overview the consequences this has with regards to access of hired swords, misc equipment and special rules of all kinds in the various publications (official or unofficial). All I know is that if you stick with "no humans" you are on the safe side and don't accidently give access to things that should not be possible.
To any rules author I'd recommend: It's also always safe to explicitly include unofficial warbands in your rules if you really want them to be included - if only to make your intention clear to the reader so that it can be easily interpreted and extended to new warbands/fractions/characters that appear later on.

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I do think that this phrase is a good way of categorizing good-aligned human-based warbands such as adventurers, sisters, witch hunters, averlanders, etc. In my eyes, these are what should be considered "human warbands".

For humans the phrase never really focuses on the physical nature of a human (because "human" is always default and therefore doesn't need to be addressed).

I totally, but respectfully disagree.  Your premise rests on incorrect language and is not logical.  To continue to use the word "human" as a rules short hand for 'good' leads us down a path that is  going to lead to confusion, since like dwarfs, some humans are not good.  Actually, the official rules use the word 'human' to refer to creatures that share the same maximum racial characteristics, "the physical nature of a human":

Mordheim Rule Book, p. 82 wrote:

HUMAN (Witch Hunters, Flagellants, Mercenaries, Dregs, Freelancers, Warlocks, Pit Fighters, Magisters, Darksouls, Mutants, Brethren, Warrior Priests,
Zealots, Sisters of Sigmar, etc.)

When describing who may hire a Hired Sword the rule book uses the terms Mercenaries, Witch Hunters and Sisters of Sigmar.  The term 'human warband' does not begin to be used as a short hand until 'unofficial' warbands and our fellow hobbyists enter the mix.  The Norse shaman may be hired by "Norse and human warbands" for example [TC#12, p. 16.].

Finally this particular discussion is off on an irrelevant tangent because the rule does not state that Ipan Shu may be hired by 'human' warbands.  It states--

Quote :

May be Hired: Any warband which includes Humans
or Elves, including Battle Monks, may hire Ippan Shu,
not including Dark Elves, Outlaws and Bandits. (Emphasis added)

The words "[a]ny warband which includes Humans" don't fit with your premise as you present it, but they do fit with the use of the word 'human' found in the rule book.  And with the interpretation of DicLombardi and his group since the Marauder warband does indeed contain "Humans".

A discussion of what is 'human' is not useful to the resolution of which warbands should or should not be hiring a character of good alignment.  Perhaps it would be more useful to develop a vocabulary which describes alignment such as "Any warband which includes Humans or Elves, including Battle Monks, may hire Ippan Shu, not including Dark Elves, or those warbands which are chaotic, include undead or are outside the law.  Or you could be more direct and say: "Any warband of good alignment which includes Humans or Elves, including Battle Monks, may hire Ippan Shu."

End of pedantry.  (For the night anyway.)  

Von Kurst wrote:

A discussion of what is 'human' is not useful to the resolution of which warbands should or should not be hiring a character of good alignment.  Perhaps it would be more useful to develop a vocabulary which describes alignment such as "Any warband which includes Humans or Elves, including Battle Monks, may hire Ippan Shu, not including Dark Elves, or those warbands which are chaotic, include undead or are outside the law.  Or you could be more direct and say: "Any warband of good alignment which includes Humans or Elves, including Battle Monks, may hire Ippan Shu."

End of pedantry.  (For the night anyway.)  

Please consider that phrase "outside the law" is veeery imprecise (ie. open for interpretation with argument that follows). The same with alignment.
Why not just:

"Any warband with Lure of fortune (excluding Chaos Dwarfs, Norse Explorers and Pirates), The Celestial Protectorate or The Damned Shall Burn! objective which includes Humans or Elves, may hire Ippan Shu."

Also WH can hire Norse Shaman which i think should not be.

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"Any warband with Lure of fortune (excluding Chaos Dwarfs, Norse Explorers and Pirates), The Celestial Protectorate or The Damned Shall Burn! objective which includes Humans or Elves, may hire Ippan Shu."

That's a great idea!

Hmm, I see. I do agree with everything you said there, Von Kurst.

Wouldn't it be the easiest to go with "good alignment" then? Although I do like the idea of connecting him to campaign objectives.

I too like catachanfrog's solution. I am not convinced that 'good alignment' is imprecise, but using the objectives is inspired.