"Leader" units

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Ragnar
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Re: "Leader" units

Post by Ragnar » Fri Feb 14, 2014 2:58 pm

That sounds like a good idea. I like that the leader, and his bonus are optional, but still balanced. I see how that could be used to enhance the story.

If the leader is a minifig on the field, what would he do the rest of the time? Clap for the other minifigs as they charge?

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Re: "Leader" units

Post by Quantumsurfer » Fri Feb 14, 2014 3:02 pm

stubby wrote:In fact I might take the Epic Speech and turn it into a "Yes, But" mechanic.
This is quickly becoming a central mechanic to your game and I love it. It's just inherently more interesting. Hence my thoughts on the whole story tags and Kanon thing.

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Re: "Leader" units

Post by stubby » Fri Feb 14, 2014 6:01 pm

Ragnar wrote:That sounds like a good idea. I like that the leader, and his bonus are optional, but still balanced. I see how that could be used to enhance the story.

If the leader is a minifig on the field, what would he do the rest of the time? Clap for the other minifigs as they charge?
The Epic Speech would be once-per-game, but sacrificing units as Scapegoats could be every turn. Otherwise I'm not sure.

They also serve a purpose as a focus for enemy attacks. Chess, for example, would be much less interesting without a leader unit on each side.

The other option is to allow Heroes to have inspirational speeches after all, but force them to follow the once-per-game Epic Speech rules. That way players would take them seriously and you wouldn't get these piddling bullshit "+1" to everybody's move" feats.
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Re: "Leader" units

Post by IVhorseman » Fri Feb 14, 2014 8:59 pm

stubby wrote:They also serve a purpose as a focus for enemy attacks. Chess, for example, would be much less interesting without a leader unit on each side.
Idea: you lose if your leader dies

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Re: "Leader" units

Post by Battlegrinder » Sat Feb 15, 2014 10:17 am

IVhorseman wrote:
stubby wrote:They also serve a purpose as a focus for enemy attacks. Chess, for example, would be much less interesting without a leader unit on each side.
Idea: you lose if your leader dies
I can see some circumstances where that's a good idea, but for the average battle, maybe not. having the battle revolve around killing one guy who stands way away from the fighting running his mouth does doesn't seem very Brikwarsy.

My suggestion would be that each time an enemy hero/leader is killed, the leader of the army that killed him gets to make another speech, with some other bonus if the leader himself gets the kill. This would encourage people to both go after enemy leaders, and to keep their own leaders in the fighting.

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Re: "Leader" units

Post by Nimja » Sat Feb 15, 2014 10:57 am

Or maybe. If the leader dies, all his allies become scared and have a chance of running away in terror.
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Re: "Leader" units

Post by Quantumsurfer » Sat Feb 15, 2014 11:01 am

Battlegrinder wrote:My suggestion would be that each time an enemy hero/leader is killed, the leader of the army that killed him gets to make another speech, with some other bonus if the leader himself gets the kill. This would encourage people to both go after enemy leaders, and to keep their own leaders in the fighting.
I kind of like this.
Nimja wrote: If the leader dies, all his allies become scared and have a chance of running away in terror.
I can't help but think that a leader's death would inspire minifigs rather than demoralize them. It seems like each new death is an opportunity for a hearty chuckle.

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Re: "Leader" units

Post by Theblackdog » Tue Feb 25, 2014 1:53 am

One of the main problems I see with this idea is fluff-related. Looking at many of the armies on this forum, a lot of our armies' heroes *ARE* the leaders of their respective factions, or at least that faction's military. Think Warhead, the Shadowscythe, Kaiser Klaus, or Bob the Unbuilder. What's more, these guys are well-defined characters rather than the anonymous generic heroes that the rulebook talks about.

I'd say that instead of a ker-Speech table you pick from every battle, we work army-wide bonuses into character design. So a particularly aggressive leader like Warhead might give his troops offense at the expense of defense, while a more cunning leader like Siri would give her troops extra movement or defense. This idea also has the bonus of giving people more opportunity to customize their heroes.
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Re: "Leader" units

Post by Battlegrinder » Wed Feb 26, 2014 2:35 pm

Theblackdog wrote:One of the main problems I see with this idea is fluff-related. Looking at many of the armies on this forum, a lot of our armies' heroes *ARE* the leaders of their respective factions, or at least that faction's military. Think Warhead, the Shadowscythe, Kaiser Klaus, or Bob the Unbuilder. What's more, these guys are well-defined characters rather than the anonymous generic heroes that the rulebook talks about.

I'd say that instead of a ker-Speech table you pick from every battle, we work army-wide bonuses into character design. So a particularly aggressive leader like Warhead might give his troops offense at the expense of defense, while a more cunning leader like Siri would give her troops extra movement or defense. This idea also has the bonus of giving people more opportunity to customize their heroes.
I'd like to point out that while Warhead might be the the leader of the Immortals, he's not the only leader. When setting up a battle, you could easily have Warhead take command of a detachment of Imperial troops as the Hero, while that formations usual commander takes on the role of leader (or vice versa). And I don't think there's any reason why the hero and leader have to be separate minifigs anyway.

I'm slightly in favor of the "hero/leader influences the army" mechanic you suggest, but in all honestly I think that since most people have already used custom stats and whatnot to tweak and personalize their armies, the rule wouldn't get much use. I think having a version of that rule that applies to the hero's squad/retinue/bodyguards might work out much better. Since those squads tend to be a focal point of the action, any changes the hero makes to the squad's stats will have a noticeable impact on the battle.

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Re: "Leader" units

Post by stubby » Wed Feb 26, 2014 4:59 pm

Battlegrinder wrote:I'm slightly in favor of the "hero/leader influences the army" mechanic you suggest, but in all honestly I think that since most people have already used custom stats and whatnot to tweak and personalize their armies, the rule wouldn't get much use. I think having a version of that rule that applies to the hero's squad/retinue/bodyguards might work out much better. Since those squads tend to be a focal point of the action, any changes the hero makes to the squad's stats will have a noticeable impact on the battle.
My new thinking is that there should be a Hero specialty and a Leader specialty, and you can make a minifig who's both a Hero and a Leader if he fills both functions.

Using custom stats to tweak your army is about the baseline nature of your army. Using a Leader to change your tactical disposition in the middle of a battle is about reacting to the events of a specific battle.

In fact, it might be interesting to make the Leader's Inspiration ability dependent on the losses you've suffered. Like, the first time one of your minifigs is killed by an Enemy, put a d6 next to your Leader with the "1" facing up. From then on, every turn on which one of your minifigs dies, raise the number on the Leader d6 by one. When you're ready to Inspire the troops, the die shows the number of Leader Points you can spend.

I'm also thinking more about how the deaths of these Ego characters should affect the rest of the troops. I'm still not sure about the death of a Leader, but I think there's something cool about declaring a deliberate Hero's Death - making your hero voluntarily do something dramatic and epic and probably fatal, and just deciding beforehand that he's going to die regardless of whatever the dice say, and giving everyone a big bonus as a result. Like when
Spoiler
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Emmet kills himself
at the end of the LEGO Movie.

And then later you can retkon him back to life however you like if you want; "I was only pretending to die" or "hell didn't want me so the devil sent me back" or "we have the technology to fix him" or whatever.
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Re: "Leader" units

Post by Theblackdog » Wed Feb 26, 2014 5:35 pm

A Hero's Death could just count as an automatic Critical Success on a Stupendous Feat roll. I'd make sure to specify that it's double-super-permadeath, because I know of some players who'd place an entire squad of Medix in an AV5 transport within walking distance so they could spam this at will.
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Re: "Leader" units

Post by Battlegrinder » Wed Feb 26, 2014 6:06 pm

Theblackdog wrote:A Hero's Death could just count as an automatic Critical Success on a Stupendous Feat roll. I'd make sure to specify that it's double-super-permadeath, because I know of some players who'd place an entire squad of Medix in an AV5 transport within walking distance so they could spam this at will.
I agree with you about the "dead for the rest of the battle" part, but not the "automatic success". Getting a guaranteed success on a feat role (plus the bonus from the hero's heroic sacrifice) is too powerful a benefit, even in trade for the hero's life. I recall that several HQ units in 40k have a "on death, pick an enemy and fuck his shit up" rule, and the 1d4chan tactics pages usually suggest using them as a suicide unit (and 40k is game where bad things happen to you when your HQ dies). Its very risky to attach bonus to a units death, because it makes getting them killed a viable tactic rather than something to be avoided.
Stubby wrote:Using custom stats to tweak your army is about the baseline nature of your army. Using a Leader to change your tactical disposition in the middle of a battle is about reacting to the events of a specific battle.
I agree. I was meaning to say that having a hero/leader alter an army's stats just by taking the field (rather than using a feat or speech) was probably pointless or counter-productive.

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Re: "Leader" units

Post by Theblackdog » Wed Feb 26, 2014 7:20 pm

A critical success feat is pretty run-of-the-mill for Brikwars battles anyway, so I don't think it'd be as big an issue as the Tau Ethereals were.

On a related note -- Leader units in Warmachine have a 'feat' which basically supercharges their army in some unique way for one turn, once per game. I was wondering if that would be a good idea for Brikwars leaders as well. Of course, it would make Leaders more or less expendable after they used their speech. Warmachine gets around this by saying that killing the leader gives the other team an instant victory. We could say that each leader has to have an 'anti-feat' that debuffs their army on the turn they die, or that killing an enemy leader allows you to apply their feat to your army that turn.
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Re: "Leader" units

Post by Quantumsurfer » Wed Feb 26, 2014 7:26 pm

There's something about placing the survival of a unit, especially that of a big damn hero, above the potential for bullshit hilarity that just rubs me the wrong way. It comes back to the whole Heroic Feat argument in the first place. Who cares if it's broken? Of course it's broken. Was it fun? Did it make everyone playing laugh and cheer? Fuck it, then, that's awesome. You could always just not include it if you wanted to have a more serious battle. (I guess. I have the sense that it could be turned to legitimately serious purposes and retain its awesomeness). Folks who use their Heroes as suicide units in non-funny and ignominious ways, just to get a tactical bonus, have clearly missed the point.

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Re: "Leader" units

Post by Theblackdog » Thu Feb 27, 2014 12:52 am

Quantumsurfer wrote:Folks who use their Heroes as suicide units in non-funny and ignominious ways, just to get a tactical bonus, have clearly missed the point.
This. ALWAYS this, and I'm sorry that I forgot about it in my last post.
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