Time of Heroes

What do people think of a variant or setting where every model is a hero?

I was thinking more along the lines of 10-12 models and while some are obviously better (Leader, Shaman/mage, champions etc.) the others still use hero exp and hero injuries.

The hero/henchmen thing makes sense for Mordheim and such, but this could be fun for a whole campaign based around it. It would make most sense in a narrative and story driven campaign.

Hired swords could come in two varieties then, cheap expendable henchmen variety and then the specialist units we currently have.

The warband would be a core group of warriors sent on a mission, like a quest to hunt down 8 magical keys each linked with a wind of magic in order to prevent/enable the release of a greater daemon. Hiring new heroes or replacing one of these men would be difficult if they died, but hiring mercenaries to fill out your ranks before a hard fight or specialist units would be rather easy.

lol you're creating a new thread for each idea we have on the previous one ;P

I am trying to keep the various threads focused. If my making of new threads is a problem someone let me know.

How would you handle starting experience points? If you start captain-heroes with 20, champion-heroes with 8 to 11, etc., but "grunt" heroes with zero, then in no time at all the grunts will be superior to the leader/special types.

I suppose you could start the captain, etc., at zero experience as well, although that change would certainly affect how powerful your top-end models would become.

There will also be the occasional balance issue - like Rieklander marksmen-heroes with blunderbusses are quite likely going to advance very quickly.

Kay, my 2 cents:

Max warband size - 10 (for most)

1 Leader - No change
0-3 Champion / Elite - +10gc, +3 exp (Note: this means human warbands can take +1 champion. Warbands that already have 3 "elite" heroes [norse, skaven], do not get a 4th. Likewise, warbands with 2 SUPER tough elites stay at 0-2 [ex. possessed])
0+ Warriors - +5gc, +6 exp
0+ Yougbloods - as normal.

Support
0-10 Support - slaves or animals that fatten the ranks. You may have up 10, OR, may take the ranks to 15 models in your warband. This is an exception to the rule that you can't have more than 10 models in your warband.

This means the "default" / 0 exp setting is a youngblood - with -1 WS, BS, Ld, and 0 experience. Another over that costs lightly more, and gets more exp. (thus, there's a reason to get youngbloods instead of warriors, and vice verse.

How this would look with Humans:

1 Leader - 60 gc, 20 exp - five skill lists
0-3 Champions - 45 gc, 11 exp - three skill lists
0+ Warriors - 30gc, 8 exp - two skill lists
0+ Youngbloods - 15gc, 8 exp - two skill lists

0-10 Slaves - 10gc, cannot gain exp

Exploration: You'd still roll 1D6 per "hero" not taken out of action, but cannot roll more than 6 if you lost/drew, and 7 if you won. This means you have a little leeway for losing guys, and you will roll LOTS of Exploration dice.

To balance, the stone/treasures you find is nearly halved. Ex:

1-9 1
9-16 2
16-21 3

and so on.


Blunderbuss: well, if it's set in a pre-Sigmar time, there'd be NO crossbows or blackpowder weapons... the only missile weapons would be thrown or types of bows. Also imagine no heavy armor, with the exception of elder race hired swords and rare finds.

OOooooo, so this proposal is specific to the pre-SIgmar campaign people are talking about?

We had a little campaign where four of us were basically running a single warband, but each of us could recruit our warriors for the warband from any "good"(ish) warband. We could recruit one hero and two henchmen each, with 250 g.c. to spend. So, the g.c. value at the start was 1,000, but we only had four heroes and eight henchmen. One of the things we said was that any henchman that rolled "The Lad's Got Talent" earned the promotion - we could have any number of heroes, ultimately. Never more than six could roll search dice.

So this setup - or a variation of it - might obtain Balrog's general goal (everyone is a hero, or almost everyone is) without requiring a lot of other tweaks, like nerfing blunderbusses or messing with starting experience for "real" heroes. If you want to insure that the henchmen are promoted a bit more rapidly, allow them a +1 on their roll for each improvement roll they make beyond the first one until they earn their promotion. This way the "original "heroes (including young bloods) are valuable since they are, at least potentially, earning additional experience while the promising henchmen are henching.

(I think Styrofoamking's idea might well work, but it seems more complicated and requires more tinkering with the rules for warbands).

If you are the one that posted about that mini-campaign then it is what gave me the idea!

But I was intending it for a seperate special setting or full mod of the warband rosters. I like Styro's versions. Nice simple and easy to implement.

Yes, I think Styro has been putting together all we said very well and made it look waaay more reasonable and realistic
plus if this is set in pre SIgmar times it would be great as civilisation was at its very start and there would be small groups of men struggling for survival in the forests, taming animals and all

- leonemaster

I think that you would have to do it like Blood Bowl and have no starting exp, then maybe spread-out the increases a little more.