An Army of One: Waffle's Guide to Killer Generals
Kobal's guide about generals is very good, but there's more to the story -- another way to develop strong commanders, taking a very different route. You may have heard stories about them: generals whose whole armies were killed, who routed the entire remaining enemy force singlehandedly. Generals who charge with a roar against impossible odds. Generals who can take a ballista bolt to the sternum and laugh it off.
You, too, can have such generals.
Here's the basics:
1) Start with a hale and hearty chap; Healthy (+2 Hit Points), In Good Health (+4 Hit Points), and Bastion of Health (+6 Hit Points, increases the chance of having children) are the ones you want. These are starter traits, so you may want to pick these guys out for special training when you notice the trait.
2) You have a certain chance of picking up Fine Armour (+4 Hit Points) whenever your governor ends his turn in a settlement with an Armorer or better. Watch out for Ornamental Armour (+1 Authority, -2 Hit Points) which appears under the same conditions. Fine Armour and Ornamental Armour are mutually exclusive, and can't be transferred. If you've got an eye on a Sith Lord general, having at least one Armorer nearby is a must.
3) Look for traits and ancilliaries that increase your general's movement rate and line of sight. Successful ambushes have a chance of providing the Scout traits (Adopts Scouting, Adept Scout, Reconaissance Expert) which improve line of sight. Repeatedly ending a turn with all the general's movement points exhausted will build up traits like Energetic and Logistician that make you move faster overland. The idea is to be able to see and move over long distances and strike hard, since lone generals aren't suited to taking on whole armies at a time. It also makes your ambushes more deadly, since you can choose a wider array of ambush sites on any given turn.
4) If your general personally kills 6 or more soldiers in one fight, he has a 10% chance of aquiring a swordbearer (+1 Hit Points). If your general kills that many soldiers and loses more than 80% of his Hit Points, he has a 15% chance of acquiring a shieldbearer (+2 Hit Points). Losing more than 30% of his Hit Points in battle gives him a 30% chance of becoming a Berserker, and increases his Scarred level (+2 Hit Points every time, to a maximum of +8 with Brutally Scarred). Killing lots of units makes him more likely to become Brave, and makes him Fierce in Battle. If Fierce in Battle and a Berserker, losing 30% of his Hit Points makes him Crazy in Battle (+2 Hit Points, +2 Command when attacking, -2 Command when defending, +2 morale for all troops on the battlefield). The moral: pick a small stack and go in swinging. Do it often, and make sure your general's tabard gets bloody. The more troops he kills, the more likely he is to get the traits you want; Bravery becomes more likely when he kills, 7,8,9, and 10+ troops in a battle. This is why it's important to have a long line of sight and lots of movement points -- you want to hit small stacks as soon as they appear, before they merge with larger forces. Rebel mobs are ideal.
5) Become Dreaded. Chivalry increases your troops' morale, but that's a nonissue for you because you'll quickly become a Brave Berserker who's Crazy in Battle (+9 morale for all troops on the battlefield when you reach the top of those three chains alone!) Your Traits give confidence to your boyos, your Dread terrifies the enemy and you'll rapidly acquire command stars from all the fighting. It's like having maximum Dread and maximum Chivalry at the same time.
As far as I know, the maximum number of bonus Hit Points a general can have, without unique ancilliaries, is 27. The general starts out with at least 9 Hit Points (the Hypochondriac trait gives the general -8 Hit Points) meaning that a general with all those bonuses has a mininum of 36 Hit Points -- practically a stack by himself. A very mean stack, considering the general's other combat traits. And less vulnerable than a whole stack, too, since the enemy won't be able to bring more than a small fraction of their stack's power to bear on a single dude at any given time. Suppose one unit can be surrounded by eight other units and attacked at once; your general could be hit by at most 8 enemies, whereas a stack of 36 1-HP fighters could be hit by at most 288 enemies. So the effective size of the stack fighting your general is much smaller than the number on the unit card, allowing a Sith Lord General to come out ahead against comically overwhelming odds. This is especially true when he has high Dread, since the enemy will rout faster when they've sustained many casualties.
Note that certain historical figures and crusader relics can drive your Hit Point total even higher, into the forties or even fifties if by some chance your Sith Lord has got them all at once.
"Well enough", you might say, "but when are the circumstances to make such a general ever going to arise?" It all depends on how you manage settlements. Keep a town always simmering on the edge of armed revolution. Make your Sith Lord the governor. Pretty quickly, little rebel stacks will appear. Send in your boy and have fun. Governing persistently rebellious provinces will give him the "disciplinarian" trait too, which increases unrest and leads to more rebels. Score!
Remember that you're not interested in making this chap the world's best administrator: you want him to kill folks by the dozen, not shake their hands. Let him cut his teeth on revolting peasants, then throw him into enemy territory and see if he survives in the wild.
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Originally Posted by Rebellious Waffle
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