Heroes and Special Characters

Sorry if this has been asked before, i did a small search and didnt get anything so thought i would ask.

First of all hiya everyone im new to the forums, i was linked here after i asked about information on a warhammer mod, im delighted to have found you guys, the work here looks fantastic.

Although i havnt played warhammer for around 12 years im still hooked on anything that involves warhammer, i love my high elves!

Anyway back on topic just wondering if it would be possible to add special character solo units into the mod and if so is it something that will be included or has already been discussed.

Nothing would please me more than to have Prince Tyrion charging round the battlefield like a 1 man killing machine.

Is it possible to use single units in the Total war engine?

Sorry again if its already been discussed, keep up the great work!

Not possible. The best that can be done is using Special characters figures for generals and captain models, and using them as characters/ancillaries on the campaign map.

The main issue with the way MTW2 ( and all the other TW games ) does it's units means there is a minimum size for a unit. This is around 20 men. Nothing smaller. You can vary the units physical appearance, but this is a random selection...so if you made one special model...it would be repeated at least a couple of times.

Then..they would all have the same combat stats and effectiveness, so there would not be a 'hero' as such.

Ultimately, the best we could do is to make the general the 'hero' unit. In the campaign game, you can give these guys a 'bodyguard' which would ensure they were sitting in a unit of the best available troops... but they would still be a general unit not a hero.

The game dictates this..and there is no way we can get around it. Sad...but there we are.

That aside .... we plan to make sure that the mod doesn't suffer from the lack of this feature. Instead, we hope to see great armies of undead battling Orcs, hordes of undead facing massed ranks of Dwarves and hores of Chaos sweeping across the map. And LOTS of WAR!

Damn thats a shame, but thanks for explaining it, gutted.

Cheers though! the Generals in a squad could work nicely anyway i guess :)

Kingdoms expansion will add some flexibility.

I'm personally only grateful. I think very powerful heroes is a really silly idea since it removes a lot of the need for tactic savvy. It was the one thing that really annoyed me about Warhammer.

Yeah, one of the reasons I disliked MoC is that some heroes were able to litterally annihilate whole armies in a few seconds. At first, I thought "Cool, now that's a powerful Bright Wizard", but I quickly realized it totally screwed up the balance.

Hopefully, Warhammer game does not have to show powerful heroes, as Warhammer : Dark Omen and Warhammer : In the shadow of the Horned Rat proved (yeah, there was a few heroes, mostly spell casters, but they were not really powerfull). Morgan Bernhard was charismatic and interesting, while stuck in his unit and acting as any Total War general.

The thing is, considering normal Warhammer tabletop battles rarely have more than 200 men, the number of heroes would probably be just as exponential.

A 2500 point Chaos army might have one Exalted Champion on steed, one Aspiring Champion, 40 Chaos Warriors, 40 Marauders, 10 Chaos Knights and a chariot, which amounts to a regular/hero ratio of 50-1. If we bump that up to a Total War scale = say, 2,000 men = then that could mean that there could be 40 heroes in the army.

When you have an army of a few thousand men, having only 20 heroes doesn't seem particularly extreme.

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Originally Posted by Taranaich

The thing is, considering normal Warhammer tabletop battles rarely have more than 200 men, the number of heroes would probably be just as exponential.

A 2500 point Chaos army might have one Exalted Champion on steed, one Aspiring Champion, 40 Chaos Warriors, 40 Marauders, 10 Chaos Knights and a chariot, which amounts to a regular/hero ratio of 50-1. If we bump that up to a Total War scale = say, 2,000 men = then that could mean that there could be 40 heroes in the army.

When you have an army of a few thousand men, having only 20 heroes doesn't seem particularly extreme.

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And then you also need to take into account the practical bit of selling miniatures. Which is what the bussiness side of Warhammer table-top was really all about. Powerful heroes allowed not as rich kids to join in and play, even though large armies was more fun. Which off-course increased it's popularity and sold more miniatures for them. It was just a sales tactic. I think we're more true to the spirit of Warhammer if we don't emphasize on heroes as much. But this is very much just my humble opinion and there really is no right or wrong here, just degree of fun.

Of course, since Total War has the capacity for huge armies it would be silly to focus too much on small units like heroes. But at the same time, we don't have the same restrictions GW has regarding the cost of miniatures or points systems, so it might we worth thinking about expanding those horizons - though not to the extent of compromising Warhammer's integrity of course.

What we can't do, though, is make the heroes anything special in terms of abilities. Yes... you can bump up the stats to make them tougher and more effective in combat ... but that is all.

What you end up with is a unit that is just stronger..... and not a hero.

Generals can have abilities that bump up combat stats and morale for the whole unit, and have a major impact if they are killed in a battle. This fits just as well with the 'hero' concept. It's also easier to fit into the general concept of a hero.

You wouldn't band your heroes together in a single unit....but they would be leading troops into battle or fighting single combats. These options are limited in a TW game, which is about units combat not individuals. I think making heroes a unit detracts from what they are supposed to be.... and adds nothing in terms of what they are actually supposed to be.

huge armies no heroes is what your saying.:yes:

But really heroes are the life of warhammer, they give warhammer that extra special something :)

But its going to be cool either way, mass armies of warhammer will be good enough for me.

BTW Bwian a little off topic here but just wondered if you could create a mod and new armies for the game Warhammer Dark Omen, maybe you havnt played it but it was fantastic.
I would pay to have an update for that even though its a hundred years old i still love it :laugh4:

Don't know anything about modding Dark Omen. Not really something I have looked at. I know Mark of Chaos is pretty mod unfriendly .... I wanted to make some of th eallied armies playable...but you can't even get into the archive files to trawl about.

Anyway....that is rather off topic!

Back on topic ... I don't see any way to implement Heroes in a battlemap environment without really upsetting the way the game works. You end up creating an elite unit, not an elite warrior.

Would it be possible to represent semi-hero, elite type warriors as the officers of most units? That would allow for some differentiation in looks and officers are more durable than other soldiers in a unit, accurately representing some of the more unique unit types that aren't quite heroes.

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Originally Posted by Geoffrey S

Would it be possible to represent semi-hero, elite type warriors as the officers of most units? That would allow for some differentiation in looks and officers are more durable than other soldiers in a unit, accurately representing some of the more unique unit types that aren't quite heroes.

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Well, generals have a uniqe modell. But this is down to culture, right? And how many of those do we have available? What's the limit on number of available cultures in the game?

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Originally Posted by Bwian

What we can't do, though, is make the heroes anything special in terms of abilities. Yes... you can bump up the stats to make them tougher and more effective in combat ... but that is all.

What you end up with is a unit that is just stronger..... and not a hero.

Generals can have abilities that bump up combat stats and morale for the whole unit, and have a major impact if they are killed in a battle. This fits just as well with the 'hero' concept. It's also easier to fit into the general concept of a hero.

You wouldn't band your heroes together in a single unit....but they would be leading troops into battle or fighting single combats. These options are limited in a TW game, which is about units combat not individuals. I think making heroes a unit detracts from what they are supposed to be.... and adds nothing in terms of what they are actually supposed to be.

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if you guys use the kingdoms expansion heroes will have special abilities.

I though this thread was dead and buried, untill I saw your hero comment for Kingdoms, Dr Zoidberg. I did a quick search and found this:

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GS: Could you get into some of the general improvements and enhancements made to the core game? For instance, what's the deal with the new hero characters? Are these basically improved general units?

PS: There were many great men who became known as heroes during the Crusades: Richard the Lionhearted, Saladin, Nur ed-Din, and the like. We have represented the power and influence these men had by giving them unique special abilities. Each faction in the Crusades has a hero with a special ability that they can use during battle. Hero abilities include Richard's "Heart of the Lion," Saladin's "Righteousness of Faith," and Manuel of the Byzantine Empire's "Byzantine Politics." Each power has a different effect and can be used strategically to turn the tide of battle. For example, Byzantine Politics causes some of the enemy's units to succumb to infighting, resulting in a refusal to move for a period of time. Each hero also has a unique battle model that actually looks like his real-life counterpart, right down to Saladin's beard!

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This is shocking for vanila medieval, but perfect for Warhammer! There are plenty of uses for this, like if a unit has the Banner of The Horned Rat it could be activtaed to cause infighting among the enemy, or a High Elf spell that activates Righteousness of Faith. I wonder how many possible effects they have added into the expansion.

The units refusing to move sounds exactly like what we need for Orcs and Goblins. Anyone think this effect could be manipulated so that it was constantly running on an Orc unit, but only 'randomly' activated somehow?

No, I'd imagine they function the same way as other special abilities in the game, hardcoded flags either activated by a button like the plant stakes or always on like the standard or cause fear flag. If this is the case then the new abilitys, whatever they are, should only be given to troops which cause them in their natural state, not due to banners or such. The abilities wont be unrealistic according to CA so I wouldnt wet my pants about what can be done with them yet, looks like just morale effects. There wont be many of them either, just a handful of characters in one campaign, probably one per faction which would mean five.

The unique models looks like it might be interesting, this was featured in alexander and I've a suspicion the codes still there, the portrait part is used anyways. iirc the custom models for alexander were specified in descr_strat though so if its done the same way I dont think its of much use to us. They've stated the heros will only be available in one campaign and given its setting I'm inclined to think thats the way it'll be done again.

Besides nobodys said the mod is going to be based on kingdoms.

Btw general models are specified by factions not culture.

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Originally Posted by Casuir

Btw general models are specified by factions not culture.

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That's great to hear. That's one problem less.

As Casuir pointed out .... who says we are going to base hte mod on Kingdoms when it comes out.

I am always wary about switching work over to an 'add on' since there is a natural reducing of hte audience. Not everyone will buy Kingdoms, and I don't intend to force anyone to do so to play this mod.

If it brings some suberb improvements that solve our problems, then thats nice....but I will reserve judgement on that until the add on release. Meanwhile, this is a MTW2 mod, and will continue to be. Past experience with add-ons for CA game swould lead me to conclude that there will be no major code re-write...just a few extra features and bugfixes. A few specialist units might turn up...but they are usually pretty hard-coded and inflexible to mod with...so, lets not get over-excited.

Could you not represent a hero with a scaled down version of a catapult... and make the catapult crew weakened "bodyguards" to simulate his accompanying mob? :)

No ... catapults can be used as catapults, and that is it. They have no movement animations other than rolling wheels, and no bone structure that you can modify to make it otherwise. Additionally, you have to have a crew... with crew animations. It would take a massive amount of effort, animations, skeletons etc. just to try this, and I do not think the end result would give us anything worth the trouble.

Ultimately, the whole game is not geared to single people, other than generals. From what I can see of Kingdoms, the general is the 'hero' and they have worked so that this model has special combat stats. It would be a simple matter to make nice and chunky general models and adding them in to the units to look like proper leaders for the visual effect, but not having any particular combat stats other than the effect on the battle of a leader through normal traits.

Something which Broken Crescent has done that I think would be extremely cool here is taking the multiple body parts aspect to generals. They've made general models who have chain veils, masks and different faces and armour, which makes the generals into proper individuals when fighting battles with more than one family member.

I think this would be neat for Warhammer, so that if you bring your entire family to battle they'd at least look different rather than be clones of each other. This would be especially good for Chaos generals, who could have wings, tentacles, horns, claws and all manner of crazy body parts.

Well you can always use imagination to make special characters. In a sense every family member is a special character so why not have them as your own unique special characters. I still remember Richard the brave who had 10 command stars at the age of 22( no cheating) and held of hordes of tumurids at bay!:beam:

The way I see it is that, via using the TW system, you will make your own heroes who distinguish themselves in battle and they become characters through traits etc.

It's alot better than super units who destroy everything. Bwain can edit in traits that will raises the generals hit points through merit anyway to make them a little stronger, but not by default which should work alot better.

Well u can make them Special in the RP aspect.. like making more then 1 fine armour retinue so they would be one to each race or something of that sort.

I think we should get away from the impression that this mod is a one-to-one translation of the Warhammer tabletop to M2TW. In fact, the Total War games remind me far more of Warmaster, the "big" brother of Warhammer, since it aims to represent a far larger scale, where single persons don´t make much of a difference. It is set in the same universe, but takes a completely different (and, in my opinion far more fascinating) approach. To quote the rulebook (which is available for free at the Specialist Games website): "Warmaster isn´t about the troops´ ability to fight, but the general´s ability to command". I think that sums it up in one rather snappy sentence.

What the Warhammer universe gives us is the races, the troops and a solid backstory. We want the flavour of the tabletop game, the same balance and relative strengths etc.

Where we MUST deviate from the tabletop rules are in areas where the game engine cannot reproduce the tabletop game. Heroes are one such area. Magic another. We have thought through the issues and come up with solutions that allow us to get what we want without compromising hte game engine and leaving something that is just not 'right' in feel.

To me, Warhammer was about the spectacle of the troops, the mass of infantry on the table, and the challenge of war. We can reproduce all that, and make for something that works and is fun.

Effectively, as has been pointed out, the 'generals' are the heroes, and they get better with experience, traits increasing and so on. I think that will work well within the confines of the game engine, and give the right feel to the game.

Ciaran ... like the quote

There may be a possibility to add a herolike officer skin to elite spesializised units.
Flagelants culd get warrior priest of sigmar as a officer, Swordmasters of Hoeth culd get a High Elf mage to illustrate their bodyguard obligation to the white tower. same, the spesial faction units of chaos culd get each factions hero slots as officers.

This wuld only be cosmetical, as they wont be "true" heroes, but atleast this wuld allow heroes from the table game to take part in the tw battles..

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Originally Posted by Bwian

What we can't do, though, is make the heroes anything special in terms of abilities. Yes... you can bump up the stats to make them tougher and more effective in combat ... but that is all.

What you end up with is a unit that is just stronger..... and not a hero.

Generals can have abilities that bump up combat stats and morale for the whole unit, and have a major impact if they are killed in a battle. This fits just as well with the 'hero' concept. It's also easier to fit into the general concept of a hero.

You wouldn't band your heroes together in a single unit....but they would be leading troops into battle or fighting single combats. These options are limited in a TW game, which is about units combat not individuals. I think making heroes a unit detracts from what they are supposed to be.... and adds nothing in terms of what they are actually supposed to be.

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I don't want to sound like i'm saying this to Bwian or anything, but I think that just this should be done, at least until they have a working mod on their hands. other than obsessing about all the small detail's that they can do, such as giving general's varied appearances, or special banner's or ability's to make them fight amongst themselves. This is just wishfull thinking

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Originally Posted by Born in lust for blood

Well you can always use imagination to make special characters. In a sense every family member is a special character so why not have them as your own unique special characters. I still remember Richard the brave who had 10 command stars at the age of 22( no cheating) and held of hordes of tumurids at bay!:beam:

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Which is what Warhammer has always been about to a lot of gamers. Obviously there is a big market in the special characters but my regular group of gamers (sadly all moved on so I no longer get to play *sigh*) didn't really use them. We enjoyed creating our own narrative and our own "historical" characters. Something the Total War games are perfect for I think you'll agree!