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I just had a passing thought about what would happen if 40k had some way of allowing character units (anything from your HQs to sergeants of units) to gain bonuses as the game progressed. A friend I knew through a DnD group that I later introduced to 40k said that for every other character, or VP he/his unit scored, one could allocate another point to a characteristic on his statline. I had been thinking of a way to give generic HQs/sergeants a little more flavor via a system that allowed them to gain special rules in a manner similar to the way the 6th ed Kill Team rules gave USRs to every model in your army, essentially.

I have had other ideas, but they all seem too unwieldy and hard to balance against.

Does anyone else have experience with something like this?

Well you can only do this with friends who agree. There is no way you can do this with pick up games.

Me and my son have done something like this when we use to play but never got far with it. Basically you are making scenarios and playing a campaign and what the winner and losers did carry over to the next game. Never with stats but wounds and what not.

I like the idea if something heroic happened say a regular SM for example did something then maybe in the next game he gets a bonus or a new stat. Thing is, once he is dead, he is dead then. So can't be used or replaced then. Take the good with the bad.

It might be cool if they leveled up necromunda style. But then lost it all when they got pasted. The 40th millennium is most unforgiving.

Mad_Proctologist wrote:
It might be cool if they leveled up necromunda style. But then lost it all when they got pasted. The 40th millennium is most unforgiving.

This is just wasting time and rule complexity. Remember, 40k is the game where you can expect 90% of the winning army to be destroyed every game unless you're clubbing a baby seal and their first battleforce army. If character progression is lost when a character dies there's just no point in having it, no character will ever live long enough for that progression to be interesting.

Then again, loosing all wounds doesn't mean the unit or person is dead, just eliminated from the battle. They could be unconscious or just incapacitated and just can't take part of the battle anymore. Well that is the way it use to be. People just kept on thinking they are dead, so it stuck, and everyone is dead.

Maybe now with Forging the Narrative people don't just die all the time, some get knocked out, others are wounded so bad they are still alive but can't get up.

Yes to Davor.

Losing wounds means you are out of combat, blown a foot off, ran out of ammo or whatever.

They could do it like Mordhiem did. Even after the battle if you died something happened. maybe good or bad.

If I remember, I lost a character once. I rolled on the experience chart and he had some injury which kept him from weilding certain things. One was like your initiative went down by one because of an injury.

Good thought. I like it.

It doesn't work mid-battle, but then - DnD says you wait until the fight is over to level up, too.

Character progression in campaigns could be fun though. Gorkamorka probably has the most relevant post-battle system.

The waagh Ghazghkull supplement has a special mission called: The battle of Ghattana bay. Its about a bunch of walkers clashing into eachother. Each walker got the special rule called Dread aces. Which meant they all got the character unit type and whenever they defeated another walker in a challenge they would get to roll on a table :
Roll a D6
1 counter attack
2 +1 attack
3 +1WS/+1BS (controlling players choice)
4 preferred enemy (walkers)
5 Armourbane (melee weapons only)
6 tank hunters

I guess it would be relatively easy to create a mission special rule called: age of heroes or whatnot.
giving all characters/IC the ability to roll on a table (or a D66 table kinda like for champions of chaos) whenever they killed an enemy character or Scored a VP somehow.
I think the 4th ed rule book also ahd some rules for advancement, although they where meant for a campaign style game, so the advancement came after a battle.

Maybe create several tables, close combat, ranged, HQ, vehicles, walkers/monstrous creatures, special, faction specific, etc.
So an assault marine sergeant could choose to roll on, closecombat or the marine table. While a freebooter kaptin could roll on ranged, or the ork table.


The nice thing about creating a mission specifik rule like age of heroes would be that you could always choose (together with your opponent) if it should apply to your game or not. Or even if only one side should get the rule and the other side could get something else, if you where to play a more story based scenario.