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My group is about to embark on a campaign and we've been kicking around ideas to provide incentive for players to come up with their own Warlords. I've looked around for various methods of doing this (like the SkaredCast campaign rules), but none of the really popped out as being A- fun or B- balanced. I very much like the idea of creating unique HQ's, so I'm interested in what's out there. Has anyone created or used a system that they felt worked for this?

We had a system for a campaign i was in where if you ran an HQ in 3 games, and he survived all 3, he earned an xp point, which was used to roll on a unique, player approved upgrade table. They ranged in boosts from EW to Soulblaze attacks, +1 to invuln, to gaining an orbital bombardment. HQ's could earn up to 3 upgrades, and were worth an additional point to kill in game per upgrade if you could put a strong one down.

I ended up with a Necron Overlord, wiho gained FNP, EW and Preferred Enemy (All)...but thats what the dice gods wanted i guess.

It worked pretty well overall, and the XP was only gained by your warlord.
It was fun, but there was some abuse by Tyranids, with MC's gaining some insane buffs.

 iGuy91 wrote:
We had a system for a campaign i was in where if you ran an HQ in 3 games, and he survived all 3, he earned an xp point, which was used to roll on a unique, player approved upgrade table. They ranged in boosts from EW to Soulblaze attacks, +1 to invuln, to gaining an orbital bombardment. HQ's could earn up to 3 upgrades, and were worth an additional point to kill in game per upgrade if you could put a strong one down.

I ended up with a Necron Overlord, wiho gained FNP, EW and Preferred Enemy (All)...but thats what the dice gods wanted i guess.

It worked pretty well overall, and the XP was only gained by your warlord.
It was fun, but there was some abuse by Tyranids, with MC's gaining some insane buffs.

Interesting. Did he have to survive 3 consecutive games? From my perspective it sounds like a lot, but I guess that sort of thing should be used sparingly. You all must've played quite a bit.

I'm interested in possibly recreating some of the army-altering rules that lead people to take SC's in the first place. In my own (limited) experience, the most exhaustively ubiquitous SCs are the ones with big army wide rules like Khan, Baron, Coteaz, etc....Some factions are more dependent on those than others, and I'd like to be fair with them in mind. Necron Overlords are great, but if you're playing Dark Angels not taking a named dude is going to hit you pretty hard.

He survived 9 consecutive games, getting 1 upgrade per 3 games, randomly rolled.

We didn't allow named SC's just because we wanted to add rules and make our own.. A lot of those rules were minor army benefits.

One way that would help could also be that you get to chose your warlord trait with your army instead of rolling, however the trait is permanent and does not change game-to-game (to prevent abuse). iGuy91's one seems pretty good as well

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
One way that would help could also be that you get to chose your warlord trait with your army instead of rolling, however the trait is permanent and does not change game-to-game (to prevent abuse). iGuy91's one seems pretty good as well

Yes I certainly agree. I like the making up your own stuff though. THANK YOU, CITIZENS.

Sometimes you can look at what an equivalently geared HQ would be priced wise to figure out the points values of the named special character's buffs, if you want to let people use those same altered rules.

You could modify Blood in the Baflands fantasy character rules for 40k so it would be something like.

Your character may take one relic/signature system/whatever the section in your book is for free (including those of named characters) and they get one USR for free (limit it to a list though).

Maybe your HQs could roll on the Chaos boon chart after every battle they survive. Ignoring daemon Prince and Spawn Rolls?

 Krellnus wrote:
You could modify Blood in the Baflands fantasy character rules for 40k so it would be something like.

Your character may take one relic/signature system/whatever the section in your book is for free (including those of named characters) and they get one USR for free (limit it to a list though).

Interesting. I'll look into that book. Could be slightly problematic though, as not all relics are created equal. I'd much rather have Lysander's Fist of Dorn than...pretty much any weapon. But I mean hey it's a campaign, you have to trust people to keep it fluffy, nahmeen?

I played in a campaign where you pick a trait for your warlord, for all games in the campaign, and rolled on a chart for three buffs. I ended up with a chaos lord with fear, a melta gun, and a power sword with re-rolls to hit and wound. We dubbed it the blade of awesome. It was.

I feel like Relics should just provide buffs beyond 'Become a badass in Close Combat/Supa-DAKKA/Harder to kill.' Being able to build generic HQs who actually provide SC-style buffs would be nice.

 Colpicklejar wrote:
, but if you're playing Dark Angels not taking a named dude is going to hit you pretty hard.

really? I use the Librarian as my only HQ in smaller games and do pretty well.

Well, I'm messing around with Artifacts of that Nature, right now I am messing around with a Suit of Terminator Armor for my Iron Warriors, Grants the ability to take Basilisks as troop Choices, includes a Teleport Homer and a Nuncio Vox.

Random dice charts.

Roll 2D6. Have a D6 that corresponds to the result of that D6.

6 or less is bad, 7+ is good and 11+ is omgwtf

So, rolling 2D6 you roll 2, you'd then roll an extra D6 - maybe a one could be "the character "benefits" from the swarms rule"

While rolling a 12, getting an extra D6 and rolling a 6 could be "the character benefits from the Eternal warrior special rule"

It's fun, random and everyone gets different characters. Plus, you have 66 potential boons!

What about the old upgrade charts from Necromunda? With a little modification, they could work. You could also use the injury tables as well and expand the upgrades to your Sergents/Ui's/Exarchs etc.

Noc

Huh. I do this already anyway. Just make my own characters.

If memory serves imperial armour 12 (?) has campaign rules which allow for upgradable commanders. Combine that with the squad leader rules from kill team and you're set. Slightly higher end generic HQ units that can get better as the campaign progresses. Heck, I'm going to be in a campaign here soon that does just that. I'm tempted to see if the guys running it will be ok with bringing in the kill-team squad leader stuff to -all- squads, because we all have that one sergeant who does awesome like 5 games in a row. His awesomeness should be reflected

We've done two systems in our campaigns.

The first is simple, but not that balanced (though it is funny). Essentially, we have a D66 table of boosts (and a few penalties). At the end of each game, the winner rolls twice on this table, and chooses a result. The loser rolls once and must stick with that result, be it good or bad.

The second is an XP idea, similar to one mentioned. It's balanced, works well, but is quite complicated. Essentially, your Warlord has a Level. He starts at Lvl1, and needs 3 XP to level up to Lvl2, another 6 to Lvl3 and another 10 to reach Lvl4, which was the highest Level. Each time you levelled up, you rolled a D6 on a table of bonuses (all good this time), with the table being different (and better) for each level you gained. XP was gained for surviving the whole game, slaying other peoples' warlords, killing 10 normal enemy models (big stuff counted as extra iirc) as well as a variety of other stuff. If I remember rightly, there were other things for Warlords that can have a big impact on a game, without directly doing damage, such as Farseers. There was also talk of changing the XP needed to level up based on how "OP" your Warlord, but we decided this would make an already complicated system even more so.

Hope this gives you some ideas