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So, I'm always thinking about wargame design (don't expect a brilliant game from me in the near future though), and I wondered, does it add to the game to have ordinary human-sized individuals who are extremely powerful? It seems most war games have units like sorcerers or people who can call in orbital strikes or whatever who wield the same or greater power as a much larger unit, such as a tank or something. But would it detract from the game if these characters didn't exist? If the most powerful units were just the biggest heaviest pieces on the board?

What are your thoughts, oh Dakkaites? Please, philosophize and humorize (more of the former) at will.

I like having powerful individuals. It really adds to the feel of an army, having such a strong centerpiece. I mean, if a Spase Marien (hurr!) army didn't have its powerful captains, librarians, and chaplains, it'd be pretty boring.

I'd say they're worth it just for the fun and cool factor.

Uh, necromunda? That's 'real' people, average joe types, isn't it?

Powerful individuals instead of just "powerful = you are a big monster" does, if nothing more, add variety. That by itself is worth having them, in my opinion.

The rule of cool states that powerful individuals are necessary. Just how powerful relative to the norm is up to the designer.

I think the problem with the GW archetype of characters is that they fall too easily into herohammer. Either they end up so powerful that you have to take them or so grossly overcosted that they're never worth it.

What characters should do (IMHO) is add variety, not power.

For example, an engineer should not be intrinsically tougher and stronger than the troops around him, but should give synergy that makes it easier for troops with them to destroy fortifications. Sergeants should allow their troops to react faster to events on the battlefield, whilst higher commanders should make it easier to bring up reserves or synchronise attacks.

Now all of this is not to say that you shouldn't have uber-hard CC characters, but even they shouldn't be able to overwhelm entire units on their own (trust me, I speak from many years of CC fighting, no matter how good you are individually, any more than 5 opponents and you're completely screwed... )

Hope this gives you some food for thought.

C_C

Unless you are Bruce Lee.

Because this game works around heroic stories and narrative creation. You remove the heroic or evil characters, and you're left with a sterile game with shoddy rules.

For example, we tested a list that was all Falcons and Fire Prisms. Nothing else. Just 6 Falcons and 3 Fire Prisms. List worked well, got trounced in one game and then half-killed in another. A successful test for the Eldar 'Armoured Company'. But it was boring. It was sterile.

Why?

There was no great leader. It was just a bunch of tanks coldy moving forward destroying things (or being destroyed in a lot of cases). So yes, power individuals are necessary for this game. Without them we wouldn't be able to yell "For the Emperor", "Death to the False Emperor" or "WAAAAAAAGGGHHH!!!!!".

I like the take LotR and WotR have on heroic characters. They are important to the game, and are strong in combat, but not invincible. Even a single Goblin can take down Aragorn if its lucky enough, and that's plausible.

However, the real value of heroes in the games is on their psychological and leadership impact on the troops. The biggest impact on a strong hero is in getting his troops into the right place at the right time and on making sure they stay there.

That more convincingly models the "real world" while still being heroic enough to provide fun and entertainment.

A game where a single human can take out a major battle tank while armed only with a small fruit knife is silly to my tastes, and one of the reason I stay away from über characters in any game I play.

I can see some people enjoy the idea of being a supra-mage and watching legion after legion die beneath your spells or whatever, but for me it just is a step too far.

I must say they are 100% needed and LOVED.

Quic though, yes otR has them but they are pre-built with rules and wargear and that detracts from the fun in my book abit.

These individuals are a key part of the game, killing that raging canifex despit all odds, or that lone sergant firing his plamsa pistol on the last turn killing the warboss.

Those are the movie moments that i really love.

It really depends on my army.

For my Chaos, I have plenty of heroic individuals: my Berzerker Champion, my CSM aspiring champions, my Dreadnought, that I've spent lots of time modeling to be really cool, and they've had their fair share of heroic moments in games that I often feel like I wish I didn't have to take an HQ.

For my Eldar... well honestly they just feel like a bunch of faceless xenos, and including Maugan Ra gives me a badass to root for and I honestly feel like I have more fun playing my Eldar when I include him in my list.

No, not need at all. They're a ton of fun in 40K, but I'm certainly not missing them in FoW. They've also got heroes in FoW, but they're icing not cake, and I've never used them.

I think it depends on the setting for the game, really.

If I was playing a game based on very gritty, realistic modern military it would be weird if I found any sort of characters more powerful than highly-trained special forces types... And even then, these types should be vulnerable to head shots and such because they live int he real world.

if it was more "Modern Military as seen by Michael Bay" I'd accept more extreme characters. The Special Ops team might have 4-5 specialists that are nigh-invulnerable, the world revolves around them, they never worry about head shots, and they can each pull off special moves that break the game rules and/or laws of physics.

40k and Warmachine are both int he latter category. Flames of War is more in the former, and it's a scale with multiple steps: I'd put my own favorite, Heavy Gear, somewhere in the middle as it focuses on the mecha as 'giant infantrymen' in an otherwise gritty setting, but there's some setting preferences for over-the-top heroics and such, especially if the setting ideas of duelists and sucha re involved.

captain.gordino wrote:What are your thoughts, oh Dakkaites? Please, philosophize and humorize (more of the former) at will.

I think it is important to understand what makes a Hero. Perhaps it is glory, but what is glorious? Glorious things are dramatic moments, intense trials, reversals of fate. The real heros (ficticious or otherwise) are really normal men who triumphed in dire circumstances. For a 40k analogy:

Is it glorious when a Demon prince kills a squad of marines?
When Lysander wipes out a squad of gaunts?
When Obliterators destroy a tank?
When an Ork unit dies in a barrage of artillery fire?
When fearless plague marines overun a position?

No, of course not, those are high powered elements, doing what is expected, that's average for them! What is glorious? The more memorable situations are beating the ods with common models where:

An imperial Guardsmen kills a character with a las rifle!
When a Guardian kills a carnifex with a lucky toss in CC and lives!
When a unit of dire avengers holds up Berzerkers or genestealers for 4 turns in CC before dying!
When a Tau unit below strength rallies and stays at their objective!

Glorious moments in games don't have to come from having "Murderous Killgear Supreme Bling Lord of the Roxxor" slaughtering entire armies. They come from exceptional rare moments where common models excel and beat the ods.

Obviously I don't think the Dramatis Personae are needed at all, in fact I think it makes games feel cheap and gimmicky the higher that dial is set. Thats why I use to really like the IG codex, where the biggest model was WS4 S3 T3 SV5, a pretty normal man. Winning with that was heroic!

However I will admit, this is a personal taste, and taking the heros out of warhammer would certainly affect the 'soul' of the game. It's just a different paradigm.

I've played great games with both heroes and without. I think it really just depends what the designer is going for.

Warmachine and Hordes probably epitomize the idea of hero centric play, right down to the "if the hero dies, you loose." And they are considered by many to be great games.

WHFB and 40k also strongly focused on heroic characters (lords on Dragons, Force Commanders, Special Characters, etc.).

However there are other great war games that do not. A couple quick examples that spring to mind include Battlelore, Memoir 44, and Flames of War. All play great with no heroes. (ok, well Flames of War SOMETIMES let's you sneak in a famous character here or there, but it is rare.)

If you're trying game design without heroes, I'd give one of the games I mentioned above a try and see how they handle it.

H.B.M.C. wrote:Because this game works around heroic stories and narrative creation. You remove the heroic or evil characters, and you're left with a sterile game with shoddy rules.

For example, we tested a list that was all Falcons and Fire Prisms. Nothing else. Just 6 Falcons and 3 Fire Prisms. List worked well, got trounced in one game and then half-killed in another. A successful test for the Eldar 'Armoured Company'. But it was boring. It was sterile.

Why?

There was no great leader. It was just a bunch of tanks coldy moving forward destroying things (or being destroyed in a lot of cases). So yes, power individuals are necessary for this game. Without them we wouldn't be able to yell "For the Emperor", "Death to the False Emperor" or "WAAAAAAAGGGHHH!!!!!".

Blah. When I still played, I kind of imagined that my Tau were just doing their job, as GIs, not trying to be heroes. Just professionals in their line of work, not bucking for medals. The team is more important than the individual. Everyone wants to go home.

But would it detract from the game if these characters didn't exist? If the most powerful units were just the biggest heaviest pieces on the board?

The Tau and IG have done well so far without the need for character-types. Even without the heroic characters, space marines can still be copycat starship troopers. Just professionals doing their job, on the bounce.

I think both Augustus and HBMC hit is on either side of the head.

You don't necessarily need killing machines, but you need characters, and there are a few ways of doing this.

Think of a war movie. Zulu, for example, because hey, Michael Caine in his 20's. You have the core characters around whom the story revolves. The two Lieutentants who argue over who gets to command, Colour Sgt Brom with the muscles, Hook the loafing criminal, the cool Swiss guy with the bum leg who uses his crutch as a weapon, two or three other guys whose names also elude me, and then 75 or so "Men in red jackets". And 4000 Zulus.
Now, the named characters are interesting because they are recognizable and distinct from each other. You know who they are even if you can't recall their name based on what they do and some discernable feature (big moustache, special hat, blond hair, whatever.) You need these things to keep track of who they are, and track their exploits. In doing, you become aware of them, and then decide if you want them to live or die, get the girl (or the calf) and things like that. The other guys in red coats are just body count.

That gets related in a wargame by having special models. If your army is just 100 clone IG fellows, you are unlikely to feel attached to one in particular. If you have a Sgt with some distinguishing feature, or a Commissar or something, you can pick them out, name them, and keep track of them in your mind. They become something you are concerned with, as opposed to just another plastic dude.

Now, as to the special stats, that is where you get into gameplay/reality vs narrative. Commissar Driscoll of the 94th Cadians is now known to you, due largely to his large red coat and powerfist, whatever. You can make him the focus of your story in the game. However, even though in your mind he is a conquering hero of the Impirium(!) he is still going to get spanked by 2-3 orks if
he doesn't have better stats than a sgt. in game play terms, resulting in a dissonance between the HERO OF THE IMPERIUM in your mind, and the SACK OF BLEEDING MEAT on the table top. So you add some to the stats to help ensure that he is more likely to end up on top in such situations, as befitting his fluff.

I think these two things are largely unrelated, except that we tend to pay attention to things that perform well, and expect things that draw attention to perform well. My Cannoness, for example, gained the name "Cannoness Cammomile the Mild" due to her getting routinely smashed in CC. She didn't get squished any more or less than other characters, or entire units (I HATE berserkers) but since she was fancy looking, I expected more.
Conversely, my buddy's berserker Skull Champ who, after having his entire squad shot down by Tau, proceeded to slaughter a crisis suit team, and then another firewarrior team single handedly has earned himself a fancy trophy rack and the appellation "Sgt Peacock". His peer with the power fist, however, still goes anonymous.

So getting back to the original question, no, you don't NEED super powerful individuals, so long as there is some manner of distinguishing individual persona's for the players to create stories around. In HBMC's example, I suspect if the player of the Eldar airforce had painted the tanks in a unique fashion with different callsigns or something (think Top Gun) and thus was able to pay attention to the exploits of each tank as opposed to a nameless peice of wraithbone, he probably would have enjoyed it more. In the opposite direction, an army of 10 Abbadabbadoon clones would quickly become dull as they were all indistinguishable.

Edit: I should have said "individual OR group persona's, depending on the scale". If one is playing a small scale (10-100 figure) game like 40k, it is the individuals that stand out. In a larger scale game like Epic or say WW2 "micro armor" differing unit organizations can have the aspects of persona. Gaunt's Ghosts, Sharpe's Rifles... or some other unit or battallion group that is differentiable from others (I am drawing a blank otherwise). Just so long as you can distinguish between "guy or group of guys X" and "guy or group of guys Y" you can have that feeling of character. Building it into the rules helps goad your players into creating the distinctions, but they can also do it on their own with effort and planning.

Yeah, heroes are necesary. They give a focus for the army, a bit of flavour. Emotion tends to be a major part of the reason people make purchases, and in general heroes are easier to get emotional about than troops.

As much as I enjoyed AT-43, I missed having heroes. In that game, leaders are most important for their morals factor, and giving their units more tactical flexibilty. Unless you purchase a special Character, they do not add any measure of firepower.

To take it a step further, characters should be customizable. Again, comparing At-43 to 40k, it's less fun when you have to buy a character "as-is". Half the fun of designing an army list is finding an effective or just plain colourful mix of weapons and gear to personalize the character which often represents the player on the board.

The fact that we paint and push little plastic men around the board suggests we like to asscociate with the models, otherwise we'd use checkers or paper squares to represent armies. Characters are the ultimate extension of this association.

Characters, ala 40k and Fantasy, help to provide an over arching theme for the force.

For example, the IG Fleet Master blokey. Very tasty little guy this. Interferes with enemy reinforcements, and aids yours. Against certain armies, or indeed players, which favour deepstrike, this little chap gives you a real edge. After all, the Imperial Guard rely almost entirely on using their superior numbers to overwhelm the enemy, so the -1/+1 to reserve rolls helps you along this route nicely, making it more likely your enemy turns up in convenient bitesized chunks, and you have some additional firepower to make the most of it.

Artillery bloke is also kind of useful. Choosing him means you might need one less piece of Artillery, allowing you even more infantry or battle tanks, without skimping on the death from above.

Of course, there is a system for choosing your army, and like every single system ever devised, it is of course open to abuse. But the antics of the few who actively seek to abuse the system should not mean the system is abandoned. It will happen regardless!

This is pretty similar to a thread I was about to start, one discussing synergy etc. I'll start it anyways as I feel there is enough difference in the discussions to merit it!

Good thread btw!

BrookM wrote:Unless you are Bruce Lee.

It's sad that my mind immediately went there before I saw your post.

As for the glorious moments comment, I have to agree. I remember being in a Heroclix tourney forever ago and watching the final game come down to Wonder Woman vs. Con Artist (basically a mini made to look like a generic streetwalker witha minor probability-altering thing on the first click). Wonder Woman Critically failed her attack, and the Con artist Critically hit. Street Hooker killed Wonder Woman, and it was hillarious. I think for characters it will depend on what they're supposed to be for their respective power. Kharn is essentially a beefed up Berzerker, so in my mind he should have +1 WS, +1 I and +2 A at most, and he should be about 60 points. It seems to me a special Space Marine is still a Space Marine, and should only be slightly better. I think the 40k view on leaders is weird anyway (hey, fearless leader, why don't you slaughter those scouts unprotected? Thanks!).

RussWakelin wrote: I've played great games with both heroes and without. I think it really just depends what the designer is going for.

...

However there are other great war games that do not. A couple quick examples that spring to mind include Battlelore, Memoir 44, and Flames of War. All play great with no heroes. (ok, well Flames of War SOMETIMES let's you sneak in a famous character here or there, but it is rare.)

I think that hits a key point of the discussion; historical games rarely use overpowered heroes. They are generally there for morale and leadership.

Fantasy and sci-fi need the heroes with Big Guns. They are generally there for more dice.

And Big Hats. GW knows that the bigger the hat, the more powerful the hero.

Have none of you fools seen DieHard?

I think it just depends on the type of game you are playing. Any game that incorporates magical, fantasy, or sci-fi needs to have those unusual special characters. It adds the fiction element to the game. That is why I enjoy them. If you want to just deal with human engagement, try looking at Advanced Squad Leader (ASL). That game deals with real troop movement and wartime conditions very well. The rules are extreme, but they create a very real experience.

Cannerus_The_Unbearable wrote:

BrookM wrote:Unless you are Bruce Lee.

It's sad that my mind immediately went there before I saw your post.

As for the glorious moments comment, I have to agree. I remember being in a Heroclix tourney forever ago and watching the final game come down to Wonder Woman vs. Con Artist (basically a mini made to look like a generic streetwalker witha minor probability-altering thing on the first click). Wonder Woman Critically failed her attack, and the Con artist Critically hit. Street Hooker killed Wonder Woman, and it was hillarious. I think for characters it will depend on what they're supposed to be for their respective power. Kharn is essentially a beefed up Berzerker, so in my mind he should have +1 WS, +1 I and +2 A at most, and he should be about 60 points. It seems to me a special Space Marine is still a Space Marine, and should only be slightly better. I think the 40k view on leaders is weird anyway (hey, fearless leader, why don't you slaughter those scouts unprotected? Thanks!).

Yes this is the issue with 40k characters, to ad to our points. Whats wrong with 40k characters is they don't really draw much of a distinction between great leaders and and great fighters. Great leaders inspire and enable other men to succeed, they craft a situation, not necesarily go out and deal directly with the bad guys.

I think 5th edition has done a bit better job with a little of that, powers like Master Strategist, and Chapter Tactics illustrate this well, the characters that have them are not necesarily there to fight directly, but their presence is considerably important, and actually playing the game to keep them alive because of it is a great situation! Thats why I think the "best" characters in 40k are Korsarro Khan, Pedro Kantor, Eldraad Ulthuan, Ethereals, and Autarchs, they have strategic value beyond an item they carry or how much they can lay the smackdown. In fact some of these characters are not much in melee or shooting, but can have a significant impact on a game when they are present! You want to keep them alive!

That's heroic, I think they are the best compromise between "Brother Knight Lord Captain Smackdownicus of the Imperial Crushitizers" and Faceless leader # 2,987,134.

IMO the perfect characters codices of all time were the V4 rules for Tau and Imperial Guard! Times change.

namegoeshere wrote:Have none of you fools seen DieHard?

Give us some credit, they even know about Die Hard in Japan...

captain.gordino wrote:So, I'm always thinking about wargame design (don't expect a brilliant game from me in the near future though), and I wondered, does it add to the game to have ordinary human-sized individuals who are extremely powerful? It seems most war games have units like sorcerers or people who can call in orbital strikes or whatever who wield the same or greater power as a much larger unit, such as a tank or something. But would it detract from the game if these characters didn't exist? If the most powerful units were just the biggest heaviest pieces on the board?

What are your thoughts, oh Dakkaites? Please, philosophize and humorize (more of the former) at will.

There are plenty of classic wargames -- Panzerblitz, OGRE, Up Front -- without powerful individuals and they work fine.

Other wargames have generals or leaders who are important without being powerful -- Squad Leader, De Bellis Antiquitatis, Marechal de l'Empire -- in this kind of game the individual is usually a general and the fighting is done by the army.

The worst kind of wargames are the ones where the armies only exist to give the powerful individuals something other than each other to beat up. (That's why I stopped playing WHFB early on. There wasn't any point having any units except commanders and champions.)

You've touched upon an interesting subject here.

Both 40K and WFB are both 'Fantastical' in nature. Both are based on the tradition of telling great tales of epic quests and Battles. Powerful, blessed or just plain lucky individuals are always at the centre of these tales. If you consider the great epic Fantasies of our time almost all centre around a few key individuals:

Aragorn, Starbuck, Captain Sheridan, Captain Kirk, Pug, Druss the Axeman, Luke Skywalker, Paul Atradies, Johnny Rico…

Those are just a few off the top of my head. But what they have in common is that they are all single individuals around which massive events, involving millions, revolve.

Real Wars, aside from the Generals and Politian's, have few such key individuals. At least no one effects events on the scale as is often seen in fantasy. Even the Generals and Politian's are known only for their skills in diplomacy or leadership. There are no tales of Napoleon, Patton or Robert E Lee leading charges personally and butchering hundreds, taking barley a scratch, or being quasi-religious prophets.
Historical Wars where run by large actions involving hundreds of faceless individuals being lead and coordinated by their leaders.

Now whether you prefer one style of setting to the other in terms of your gaming is the difference between a Fantasy Gamer and a Historical one. But the GW's setting are very much Heroic Fantasy settings and as such the deeds of great individuals are paramount. Now this doesn’t mean that gamers should take special characters all the time or the Herohammer is a good thing. But characters do add flavour to the GW settings and games. Personally I like to name my generic characters in games of WFB or 40K. Often they are recurring characters who have their own little histories they form over your gaming lifespan.

For example my guard army had a plucky young lieutenant who got himself a promotion a few times after a particularly heroic victory. He basically ended up commanding my army later on. He was kind of based on people like Richard Sharpe or Dick Winters. After being caught in a battle cannon blast I modelled a bionic arm on the next incantation of his model. No special rules or anything. Just a little bit of flavour that made 40K that little bit more fun.

Of course OTT heroism really doesn’t have much of a place in historical gaming. FoW and it's 'Warriors' are about as close as you can get. However the great thing about the warriors is that they are not ubber killing machines and are as vulnerable to being shot as anyone else. Their special rules come in the form of skills which affect the units they command. Such as being able to re-roll tests for things like rallying or arriving on the board. It reflects their abilities as a commander rather than martial skills. That’s how characters should work in a game striving for realism but not a game like 40K or WFB.

BrookM wrote:Unless you are Bruce Lee.

Pfft, Bruce Lee has nothing on Leonidas.

As LuciusAR said, heroic individuals who always beat the odds are nothing new. They're in books, films, video games, and wargames. Even if they're only human, they have to be there because everyone likes a tale of grand heroism. Look at the Battle of Thermopylae; a relatively small number of Spartans and Greeks against God knows how many Persians. A lot of people like that story because it can really be visualised; it's why 300 was so successful. It took a well-known unrealistically heroic story and turned it into a fuckawesome action movie.

I can't speak for fantasy, but for 40k all "heroes" are also the HQ, where in reality this is not always the case. Just think of the story of Troy. Achillies was defiantly the "Hero" or champion, but he was not the leader. Someone mentioned a lack of hero's in flames of war, and while I am not familiar with the games system, I believe that there were and still are hero's in real world combat situations. It may be a common soldier that is a great shot. It may be a squad leader that makes the right decision at the right time. It may just be dumb luck. These people aren't hero's until they do that first heroic act, which might incidentally be their last, if they saved their whole squad if he jumped on the grenade.

But some wargames are supposed to be as much story as they are combat. So let's think of movies, war movies. They usually have a main character, or group of characters. What makes an interesting story? The protagonist triumphs of insurmountable odds=hero.
The purpose of the hero in wargames is to provide both an identifiable characters as well a particular individual to root for. In the same way that a sport team may represent the town that they are from, the hero represents the entire army. Their wargames strength is their individuality; something that makes them stand out from the rank and file. This idnetifiablility plus individuality helps create an attachment that gives the player an invested intrest in wining. It is no-longer just nameless, faceless drones dying, but Pvt Joker, Lt Dan, Cpl Hicks.