XP and the post battle sequence

During the post battle sequence you get 2D6 xp to hire experienced models to replace those lost, or add to an existing xp'd henchmen group. Something our gaming group saw is that the maximum xp for Henchmen is 14, 2 above the maximum you can roll which lead to the situation where an experienced enough henchmen group could no longer be expanded or have its losses replaced. After much discussion we decided that the XP you roll for new hiring is only used/needed for the purchase of heroes, to purchase a new hero you must roll enough xp, representing the limited availability of such experienced men/monster/whathaveyou.

Has anyone else chosen a different solution? Is the xp poll something that you're group has done away with? Once a henchmen group gets enough 13 or 14 xp can you no longer hire new members for that group?

I'm just curious what others thoughts were on the

Quote :

new recruits and existing henchmen groups

You may add new recruits to existing Henchman groups. If the group is relatively inexperienced, you will have no difficulty in finding raw recruits to add to their numbers. But more experienced gnarled veterans are not so keen on letting novice warriors join them – and quite rightly so! Between each battle, roll 2D6: this represents the experience of the warriors currently available for hire. You can hire as many warriors as you wish, as long as their combined Experience does not exceed your dice roll. For example, if you rolled 7, you could add a single warrior to a Henchman group with 7 Experience points, or two warriors to a Henchman group with 3 Experience points, or any combination thereof. Disregard any excess Experience points.

I am sorry I missed that discussion it must have been quite involved to reach a conclusion so far outside of the scope and intention of the rule discussed.

This is a re-post from a previous topic but it follows the discussions we had regarding the rule.

I actually don't think the use of Henchmen is consistent through the paragraph , Its only used thrice, once at the beginning, and twice the example in the end. The remainder of the time it refers to "warriors" which is what got me thinking applied to more that just henchmen. Usually when the rule book references "warriors" it refers to both henchmen and heroes. That precept is common through out the entire rulebook, warriors refers to any model from a warband. But I also agree that the beginning sentence " You may add new recruits to existing Henchman groups" clearly moves the direction of the rules to henchmen. But it also seemed a little odd to me that reciting a new hero will be easier, (and possibly cheaper) than recruiting a henchmen.

For example, a champion, and a swordsmen from a human warband cost the same, x gc if you want to hire a new champion it costs x, there is no roll to find him, he will not get the advances for his 8 xp with, while a henchmen with the same amount of xp, 8 in this case, will cost x+16 cg to recruit, will have advances earned by the group, and you must successfully roll enough xp to hire him. (I edited this section as our gaming group lets warriors who start with xp to gain advances, which is not a core rule)

While I agree that the paragraph is clearly geared towards henchmen, when I thought of my example it seemed that applying it only to henchmen creates a large loophole for the recruitment of heroes

I've always used RAW and applied it only to henchmen groups. It does mean you can't hire new henchmen when they are above 12 xp, but I've rarely seen henchmen groups get that high, and I like that they become a valuable resource since you can't replace them.

Having to roll xp for heroes seems punishing to warbands who get unlucky with hero deaths. Heroes are the lifeblood of a warband, and if you lose one or two and can't rehire them due to unlucky rolls, you're at a serious disadvantage.

In particular, some heroes have 12 xp to begin with so would be very hard to replace. And how would you handle recruiting a new Vampire? They have 20 xp so you could never recruit one. Same goes for some of the orc heroes, who I believe have 15 xp.

I'll grant that lore wise, it doesn't make a ton of sense that it only applies to henchmen, but I think applying the xp rolling rules to hero recruitment would be detrimental to balance.

Part of our reasoning was that most heroes that start with 12 xp are spell casters or prayer users. Something uncommon around the Warhammer world. We thought that the city of Mordheim wouldn't have a a large population of either so recruiting a new one would be difficult. And part of this was the rules preventing hiring of a new leader, you can never find an experienced enough warrior to join your warband because the would be leading one on their own. Hes earned his stripes and isn't going to take orders from some green horn.

I posted this in the other thread too...

The heading is also "new recruits and existing henchmen groups" making the rules only apply to henchmen groups.

Hiring henchmen is easy. Hiring henchmen who haven't died and who have experience is hard. They are cannon fodder after all.

Glad I dont play Orcs in your group....

Remember it also states you pay 2 GC pr xp, so now a champion dont cost the same as a swordman, but 16 GC extra.

RationalLemming wrote:

The heading is also "new recruits and existing henchmen groups" making the rules only apply to henchmen groups.

+1

But to answer your question... My group plays this a ONLY applying to henchmen, but we ALWAYS forget the extra 2 GC pr xp.

-Skavenslayer

On this thread you seem to be presenting your idea more as a house rule rather than a rule interpretation.

It it not a house rule that I find appealing, but if it works for your group that's great.

As far as other approaches to the idea of recruiting experienced henchmen or limiting access to heroes, the Mordheim campaign rules include the Exploration roll (333) Prisoners:

Mordheim rulebook, p. 96 wrote:

Other warbands can escort the prisoners out of the city. For their trouble, they are rewarded with 2D6 gc. In addition, one of the prisoners decides he wishes to join the warband. If you can afford to equip the new recruit with weapons and armour, you may add a new Henchman to any of your human Henchman groups (with the same stats as the rest of the group, even if they have already accumulated experience).

Prisoners doesn't appear in the settings Empire in Flames, Lustria: Cities of Gold or Khemri: Land of the Dead; but similar entries can be found in the Relics of the Crusades setting and the Sartosa Pirate Isle setting. My group quite likes Prisoners. We have house ruled it to include non-human Good warbands as well.

In the Relics and Sartosa settings the freed prisoners may be of any race or alignment (although I believe Sartosa limits the base cost of a warrior to 35 gc.) Our group has amended the exploration tables we use in Lustrian and Arabyan campaigns to include similar rules. Note that in this way most warbands can recruit warriors with more than 12 experience through Exploration.

As far as limiting access to heroes the Khemri: Land of the Dead campaign included supply source rules. (These rules are only found on the original Khemri website. The TC Khemri rules omitted the supply source table despite including all the campaign rules dependent on its use.) The supply source table could result in a warband being lost, which would mean that it could not trade at all and could not recruit any henchmen or heroes. Or the warband could trade at the cheating merchant or the nomads at the well who have no heroes available but can replace up to 3 henchmen. Both the nomads and the merchant will charge a 25% markup in addition to other restrictions. Finally the warband may get lucky and trade at a Town or find an oasis with a Caravan. Both of these options allow the warband to as per the normal trading rules in Mordheim.

I quite like the supply source idea and have included it in any campaign not set in an urban area.

@Skavenslayer: Well that part of the rules, paying extra 2 cg per xp is in the same section "New recruits and existing henchmen groups" So, as you say the whole section only applies to henchmen, (as I agree), why are you now applying this one part apply to heroes?

Nowhere else is paying for experience mentioned when recruiting a new model to a warband.

@Von Kurst: I see you point that this has become more of a house rule, but my logic was this: How can heroes, the best of the best, be easier to hire then henchmen, the rabble, to find and hire? While from a game mechanics perspective I can see why it makes sense; heroes are necessary for income, exploration and rare item finding, from a fluf/logic perspective it threw me for a loop.

@everyone: Thanks for the inputs, this is been something that our group is still currently discussing.

If you need a flufflogic reason, how about this one: Henchmen must be paid a market value the more they have been alive. Heroes are volunteering for stuff all the time, so you only have to pay for their initial purchase cost.

Either that, or you could assume that the price of the extra xp is included in their purchase price already, since only henchmen can be purchased with a different amount of starting xp.

Kinda hard to answer when you edit your posts, but you did compare the champion and swordmen, wanting to make a XP roll for heroes aswell, I was just saying if you think the rule apply to heroes aswell, might use all of it (ofcourse now you agree it only apply to henchmen)

-Skavenslayer

0 experience henchmen are common. Experienced heroes (except captains) are common (perhaps a little odd). Very experienced henchmen are relatively rare (cannon fodder that keep suriving...).

-Michael

Experienced heroes aren't rare when you're the guy in charge of sending off people to the damned city of Mordheim for special missions. If I'm the guy in charge of the army or the Eshin war-master picking amongst the best heroes to go off, then yeah, sending people across the world might cost a hefty amount of gold...

...but once they're there? Now they're getting henchmen. "Just some dude" is cheap and easy. However, even if I have lots of money, trying to find somebody who is as good as this warrior whose been fighting by my side for a few weeks? That's going to cost dozen, maybe two dozen extra gold if I can even find him.

But this one henchmen who has been here all these months, whose prowess is nearly that of my personal retinue of heroes? There just aren't any henchmen out there that good - you need to look for Hired Swords or Dramatis Personae.

You know. People with names.