Number of Characters?

[Galadrin]

While I was reading the 3rd edition rulebook and the armies book, I was surprised to see how many characters were used in the example armies. It seems that there is nearly one character model per full rank and file unit of infantry or cavalry. For instance, in the sample scenario "Forenrond's Last Stand," the Elf forces have 4 heroes and 5 units. The Orcs have 8 heroes and 9 units. Similarly, the sample army in the Armies book has 8 heroes and 11 units.

Certainly we never played like this in my group... we rarely had more than one or two characters. Is this how people did it back in the day? Compare, for instance, this conversion of the Forenrond scenario to the latest edition of Warhammer (which only has two characters per side): http://warhammerscenarios.net/2011/07/0 ... ast-stand/

Extra characters certainly boosts the potential killing power of a unit (which is low in 3rd edition, due to the fewer attacks and harder to-hit numbers compared to later editions). The Armies book takes it for granted that a hero in every unit "makes tactical sense." We always thought it was a waste of points, and that it was better to get another solid rank of infantry (typically the same point cost as a hero). What do you think?

I'm considering a house rule to encourage our group to try out the "lots of characters" play style. Basically, Heroes generate command points like Wizard Magic Levels (one for Level 5 and 10, two for Level 15, three for Level 20 etc) and the army general generates an extra command point. At the beginning of any turn, if you have more units on the table than command points, you must select which units are not covered (from those without characters leading them, ideally). For the rest of the turn, those units suffer from indecision and hesitation on the battlefield (that is, they suffer from Stupidity for the turn). This seems to result in a similar number of heroes to run an army, and punishes the death of an army general.

 

[Dreamfish]

Currently we're playing a remote gaming WFB3 game called "The Bridge over the River Chai" which features 8 to 9 heroes in each of the 2700 point armies. I believe this is quite normal for WFB3 armies.

Having leaders in units offer a lot of tactical advantage. For example, units without leaders cannot perform complex manoeuvres and can only perform one free simple manoeuvre, whereas units with leaders can perfrom up to three simple manoeuvres or one complex manoeuvre. Units with leaders are also less likely to rout, panic or fear when having a strong leader and/or general around. This is especially true for Orcs & Goblins armies. Units which are broken in combat cause 12" panic to surrounding units. Your entire army could run off the table before you even started, the remote game "The Shadow of Koles Lorr" is a good example of this. Furthermore, big infantry units with low ld, cl values are more likely to rout, for example when losing 25% to missile fire, or charged by feared enemies.

I like your command point system. Let us know how it turned out.

 

[Zhu Bajie]

We generally had 3 or 4 characters, mostly champions (lvl 5) with perhaps one Major Hero (lvl 25) or Wizard serving as a general.

The unit leader doesn't have to be a character, it's just a normal troop given the job, so there isn't any tactical advantage in spending points on characters. Standards (+1 damage for the whole front rank) or musicians (+1 Ld for manouvers) are often better value than a character. There is an advantage if one side has a large allocation of points to characters, and the other little, when personal challenges are issued, but there are other advantages in having a much larger body of troops to harrass and block the enemy.

Goblinoids are a special case (as are undead) - it's often cheaper to have a Goblin unit lead by an Half-Orc (Ld 7 for 5pts vs. Goblin lvl 25 Hero for 65pts.) although this is based on the house-rule that the Ld bonus = Leaders Ld - Troop Ld, which is evident from the stats but not strictly BtB.

 

[Erny]

We always had a similar number of characters as you described from the book. I guess we didn't think to do otherwise but also they were the personalities of the army the story for me fitted round the characters. Perhaps because I came straight from RPGs with no wargaming experience our games were just RPGs with the characters taking the place of PCs.

 

[Dreamfish]

The unit leader doesn't have to be a character, it's just a normal troop given the job, so there isn't any tactical advantage in spending points on characters.

True and pointwise you're probably right in being better off with large infantry units, but as Enry already pointed out. Without characters you lose some of that personality.

The remote games we played wouldn't be the same if we didn't include characters. Of couse, we could have used normal troopers as leaders and give them the special names, but you would know he's just a normal trooper. It's a personal preference and strictly speaking you don't need characters, but I believe they're crucial to the game. I realise this has nothing to do with the question whether or not characters add "tactical advantage" to the game, but maybe it does answer why the WF3 armies had so much characters?

Back in the day we used to play with the unit profiles as they appeared on the back of the box sets. I believe they're 2nd edition. Each unit would have a hero and a champion. I don't know why exactly, but somehow we used the same principle with the 3rd edition rules. Important units would have two characters each. In later editions this was brought back to one hero and eventually back to a simple upgrade.

 

[Thantsants]

I was always influenced by the Regiments of Renown model like Dreamfish - particularly Ruglud's Armoured Orcs as it was the first I laid hands on.

Like Erny too I enjoyed building mobs around Goblin and Orc Champions and heores and boy does there LD bonus come in handy with the plethora of Ld and animosity tests that you are often forced to roll - or not as has recently been the case!

The command points system you've come up with sounds good.

On a slightly different tack, I always liked the idea of passing hand written notes between the generals of large allied forces to represent orders being sent down the line by runners.

 

[Zhu Bajie]

The unit leader doesn't have to be a character, it's just a normal troop given the job, so there isn't any tactical advantage in spending points on characters.

True and pointwise you're probably right in being better off with large infantry units, but as Enry already pointed out. Without characters you lose some of that personality.

I dunno, Kaleb Daark and a horde of rubbish henchmen with improvised weapons is just as characterful an army as an stately regimented High Elves with each unit having an identical minor-hero leading it. Hmm. Reminicing about my wood elf Major Hero with Arrows of True Flight picking off the Dwarf general whilst loaded up with It's definitely a role-playing thing having one real Hero character and the rest as lesser minions. Ah what munchkins we were!

 

[weazil]

This is a very interesting discussion - thanks for raising this.

I like and support your idea about more characters, so its interesting that your group is deeply suspicious of them. I wonder what the reasons for that are - is this because of the 'cost' of characters? Or are there concerns about there power and potential 'imbalance'?

Assuming the 1st, I'd tell your group that they're not bound by the army lists. Assuming there is some sort of narrative around the game, you could build the narrative around a set of characters and then just give them to the army for 'free' - no points cost. So, if you imagine a role playing type of party (wizard, thief, fighter, etc) that might one day head up an army, you could name them and equip them as you might think they would look (so maybe no armour or light armour for the thief, but a big magic sword for the barbarian - you decide) . Essentially, the way you organise the game would be 2000 pts + arbitrary characters whose presence can be explained and role played.

Looking at the 2nd concern, around the power of characters, one of the house rules that Dreamfish and I put in for the remote games we've played is that you can only kill what you're in base to base contact with. This essentially cancels out this idea that you 'wade' into the unit and kill as many figures as you have attacks.

What this serves to do is reduce the power of characters in mass combat scenarios - they'll be really good at killing the 2 or 3 figures they can touch, but they'll still only be able to kill 2 or 3 figures. This should compel players to use heroes as heroes - if you want to maximise on their combat ability, get them to fight other characters or large monsters - exactly how a fantasy hero would behave. If you don't do that, then they simply serve as the leaders they ought to be.

A final note on leaders - bear in mind that Leadership is only used for some dice rolls - as mentioned above the Cool stat is used for panic. Most of the characters don't have as good a progression on their Cool as they do on their Leadership, meaning its quite hard (expensive?) to get heroes who can keep your army from panicking. Dreamfish already mentioned the effect of Panic in the Shadow of Koles Lorr - the dwarves won because the orcs panicked. I can confirm this - in my last 3rd ed game a few weeks ago, I was playing high elves - but they were relatively character light (due to a strict army list compliance / points value match I'd imposed on myself) - although they acquitted themselves well, they ultimately panicked and ran off the board. I needed higher 'Cool' characters to keep them in line.

Anway, my 2 cents.

 

[Galadrin]

Weazil, I very much like the "arbitrary" approach to assigning characters (and even armies) according to scenarios and not just competitive point values. I think ultimately that is what we will end up doing, or at least I hope so.

On looking at the rules a bit more, I would actually guess that adding characters to units does provide a tactical advantage, as the editor seems to suggest in Warhammer Armies. We always assumed another rank of infantry was better than a low level character, but a level 5 hero has +1 WS, S, I and A which greatly increase the killing power (and thus combat result bonus) of the unit. Add a magical sword and, for about the cost of another rank of infantry, the hero is suddenly very dangerous. True, those two ranks of infantry give a +2 combat result bonus, but that quickly drops to +1 once a single casualty drops a model from the last rank and it only goes downhill from there. A hero not only adds combat resolution by causing casualties, those casualties reduce the enemies ability to strike back. Per the rules, his high initiative means that he is likely to kill any adjacent opponent, thus keeping him fairly safe in melee.

I think your rule with Dreamfish is basically spot on and substantiated by the WFB3 rulebook itself. It comes up in the combat section ("casualties occur only among those individuals engaged in close combat, normally the front rank", page 64) and again in the leader section (which actually diagrams what you are referring to, page 75). Heroes certainly can fall in combat, but without an opposing character model to challenge them, they would have to miss with all their attacks in close combat and then (with baited breath) the opposing player can march his little underdog trooper up to the menacing hero and take his to-hit roll. I agree though, the bigger hero you get, the more he is wasted on netting one or two wounds for combat results each round of melee. True heroes are best used doing something heroic.

Panic is hard to protect against, but that is probably intentional. If you are taking panic tests, then you have likely been outwitted by the enemy's tactics. You can always bolster unit leadership to try to reman steadfast through lost rounds of combat. It's difficult to bolster unit cool to protect against the panic of a timely flank charge.

 

[Zhu Bajie]

True heroes are best used doing something heroic.

Like wading though ranks of infantry and slaughtering them all.

 

[Dreamfish]

I would like to point out another interesting house rule that stimulates the use of characters.

Break Tests
First introduced in the 4th/5th edition, the difference between the winner’s combat result score and the loser's is added to the test result. If the total is greater than the unit's leadership (Ld) value, the unit is broken and routs.

Units with high Ld values are less likely to break in combat. Combat results do not affect the rout test and because of this, combat between units with high Ld values can take up a lot of turns to resolve. A unit could end up fighting 3 or 2 remaining troopers, whether you just killed the leader, and/or slaughtered 50% of his unit does not matter as long as they pass the Ld test. Combat results do affect the rout test when applying the above house rule. Suddenly, having a character around to boost the Ld value, becomes far more important.

For example, a Dwarf unit with a Level 20 character lose a combat round by 3 points. Having lost 25% of their original unit strength requires them to pass a rout test. The test would be: 9 (ld) +3 (leader's ld bonus) -3 (result) = 1 x 2D6 <= 9. The character Ld bonus cancels out the negative combat result. In the second round combat the Dwarf unit loses again and their leader is killed. Now the test would be: 9 (ld) -3 (result) = 1 x 2D6 <= 6. The unit is more likely to rout. So, strong characters help the unit to overcome their fears and help them continue to fight.