“Til Death” option for Hero characters.

[Indirik]

Regarding forcing someone to kill you, when you attack someone with lethal force you /are/ basically saying: "defend yourself or die". It is not "execute me while I'm unarmed", but "use self-defense if you want to live". It is something every Hero is doing every time, though with very slight chances of death. What would be the problem? If the other player's unit is set to Defensive or Normal and you are at peace with him, you will have to be the aggressor (your fault), if it is set to Aggressive or Murderous then he /was/ picking up a potentially lethally (to the other) fight.

You could use the same logic to argue that every character should be able to die in every battle. "You're going into battle, of course you could die." But actual in-game trials have shown that this is not a good option that players simply don't want.

I personally don't like the idea that some other player could decide that my character will kill them, without my consent. What if I don't want to kill them? What if I want to capture them? What if I specifically instruct my soldiers to take him alive? Is that RP not as valid as someone else saying they want their character to fight to the death? What makes their choice more valid than mine?

Sorry, I maintain my original position. If you get to choose when to not have your character die, i.e. not be a Hero subclass, then I get to choose when I want my character to not kill yours. You don't get to make that choice for me. And that's what it's all about.

[De-Legro]

I think that placing the restriction of "no fame points gained by this action" would be pretty much ok.

Regarding forcing someone to kill you, when you attack someone with lethal force you /are/ basically saying: "defend yourself or die". It is not "execute me while I'm unarmed", but "use self-defense if you want to live". It is something every Hero is doing every time, though with very slight chances of death. What would be the problem? If the other player's unit is set to Defensive or Normal and you are at peace with him, you will have to be the aggressor (your fault), if it is set to Aggressive or Murderous then he /was/ picking up a potentially lethally (to the other) fight.

Don't you think?

You miss the point, because this almost guarantees the Hero will die, it could be used to provide motive for wars extra. Basically you could create throw away heroes to try and influence the political and diplomatic game via this. I am sure people can think of other ways to make this almost certain death work in their favour as well.

[De-Legro]

“Til Death” option for Hero characters.

Heroes are the only characters that can die in Battle, and on very few occasions they get to recruit locals and raise region morale. They can’t do police work or civil work if I understand it correctly, and get only marginal unit advantages. (Does their Swordskill even add to the unit CS anymore?). This is why I propose they get an additional option. A “No retreat, no surrender” option in their Unit settings.

Let’s say this raises the chance of the Hero dying to something nearer 90%-95% (since in BM you apparently can never have certainty over anything, though I would also be in favour of a total 100%), with the very slight chance that instead of dying they are just Critically Wounded.

There are plenty of times in actual Medieval History when Knights fought without retreat and died doing so, which seems like the very epitome of what a hero should be.
(See Sir Geoffroi de Charny at Poitiers, Sir Simon de Montfort at Evesham. etc).

Sure, you’d have to calculate what their unit would do, perhaps almost every man retreats when the unit reaches the values for when they would usually retreat, and only the Hero and a few other men as a close personal bodyguard stay the field and ultimately die alongside them. (When a Hero dies the unit disappears anyway, so if 5 men staying the field for that little bit longer swings a battle then .. well .. all the more fame to the dead Hero, epic roleplay etc.) I can’t imagine that would be too hard to implement.

So as well as making Heroes that little bit more interesting and desirable it also allows players to .. dispose, of a character they otherwise have no other use for. I had Sextus do a one-man-cavalry-charge against the besiegers in Valkyrja before Averoth fell, and then roleplayed he simply “disappeared”. Had I had the option to actually have him die in that battle it would have been much more appropriate. (but then .. maybe he did ;p) The fact Heroes are otherwise useless is the reason I’ve never played one. Their abilities are seemingly so rare to enact they’re the only character class that has almost no reward for a binding-subclass, save for the slight chance the character might die. And then it’s just a termination of the character, a one-off and often not very consequential end.

It’s better than simply having to “Retire” a character, or suddenly having them spontaneously die. This doesn’t make the game any “easier” like so many other suggestions, doesn’t over-power or give any real advantage to a character, save for letting a player enact a powerful roleplay before sending their character to what would hopefully be their glorious demise in battle.

Thoughts, comments, criticisms, the usual -

Not every class is designed to be equal in the mechanics of the game. Heroes are largely a RP class, you create them because you want to RP being a hero. We don't need to have a stack of them running around, in fact the rarity of heroes due to the fact they don't add particular attractive game mechanics ensures they stay special within the game RP. The more heroes we have running around, the more diluted the title Hero becomes.

[Bedwyr]

What about giving Heroes the ability to set retreat percentage to 100%, and giving them a flat bonus to whatever value makes troops break (morale?)?

I can see Heroes inspiring their men to fight to the death more frequently.

[Gustav Kuriga]

The only reason I even want fame is to get more noble character slots. If you just give all the character slots that people would get from fame when the player starts out instead, I think there would be a lot less fame whoring. It would just become a statistic, fun to compare, but not effecting a players experience of Battlemaster. Right now it has a huge effect, namely how many characters you can have at once, giving people a big motive for fame whoring.

On to the "Til Death" option, I would like this. It would give more weight to me RP'ing Gustav Kuriga as having near-suicidal faith in Allison Kabrinski, and secondarily the Blood Stars (yes, he puts her above the Blood Stars, though he'll never admit it).

[De-Legro]

The only reason I even want fame is to get more noble character slots. If you just give all the character slots that people would get from fame when the player starts out instead, I think there would be a lot less fame whoring. It would just become a statistic, fun to compare, but not effecting a players experience of Battlemaster. Right now it has a huge effect, namely how many characters you can have at once, giving people a big motive for fame whoring.

On to the "Til Death" option, I would like this. It would give more weight to me RP'ing Gustav Kuriga as having near-suicidal faith in Allison Kabrinski, and secondarily the Blood Stars (yes, he puts her above the Blood Stars, though he'll never admit it).

There was plenty of fame chasing long before fame was tied to the character slots.

[egamma]

You miss the point, because this almost guarantees the Hero will die, it could be used to provide motive for wars extra. Basically you could create throw away heroes to try and influence the political and diplomatic game via this. I am sure people can think of other ways to make this almost certain death work in their favour as well.

It would make characters even less important than they are now: "oh, there goes another hero!"

[JPierreD]

Hmm, true.

[Revan]

Family fame is largely unimportant from what I've seen.

Oh, bless ;-) It's the little things. Having more fame than families established around the same time as yours means your successful and powerful and people know that. Getting oodles of fame means no-one can ask your young nobles to mix with peasants or other sordid things: people the world over know your blood bleeds blue without your even saying a word. New nobles in your house start with a little bit more honour and prestige than your standard younglings. Not to mention that others respect you simply for the name. It lends weight because they know all members of that House have a stellar upbringing and can be relied upon in the best and worst of times. Fame is wonderful. The game within a game every one of us ought be playing ;-)

Thoughts, comments, criticisms, the usual -

I'm of the Heroes are for roleplay faction here. In the early days of my playing all those years ago, I had three characters that I made heroes at the same time as each other. This was in early 2005. One character was killed in battle quite soon after. A second was killed later on in the year in farcical circumstances. The third, Malice, still lives today. I'd be lying if I said I hadn't considered just pushing 'delete' on him once or twice for similar reasons of dead realms and wanting a new start with someone new. I can't tell you how glad I am I've kept at it because I've enjoyed some very good times since.

I don't want to cut Malice' tale short or to take that final battle away from him. I have, if anything, enjoyed the slow descent in to decrepitude where Malice' greatest glories are behind him and each battle gives another minor wound that sees him longer with the healers. Makes for some interesting RP when I get the time and where once players got to know Malice as this dashing young General with a penchant for a good drink, now they meet an old bitter has-been living in the past.

I don't think any other class gets across the passage of time, of ageing even as close as well as the Hero class where you can no longer make the journey's to battle as easily, your skills start to whither, your hours become ever more precious and harder to use for even basic martial tasks like foraging battlefields or scouting, leave alone using hero skills. The hero class should be perfectly preserved as is. Stage management of one's death should not be allowed. It's better for the atmosphere and you can't abuse any of it, only live with it.

[Alpha]

I don't like this option. I can't see it being used for anything but an attempt at getting the hero fame.

That being said I'd like to see heroes get  a few more class specific options, or perks.  A unit morale bonus would be nice, and perhaps decreasing the chance of routing in battle since the hero is there fighting too. I can't really say because I don't  know what they have now.

[Sypher]

What about giving Heroes the ability to set retreat percentage to 100%, and giving them a flat bonus to whatever value makes troops break (morale?)?

I can see Heroes inspiring their men to fight to the death more frequently.

I like both these ideas.

For the retreat % that is tied to the character's leadership skill right? So maybe just a flat bonus to the max percentage they can set. I would still want it connected to their leadership skill at least somewhat, rather than letting a hero with hardly any leadership skill be able to command his troops to fight to the death.

[egamma]

I like both these ideas.

For the retreat % that is tied to the character's leadership skill right? So maybe just a flat bonus to the max percentage they can set. I would still want it connected to their leadership skill at least somewhat, rather than letting a hero with hardly any leadership skill be able to command his troops to fight to the death.

Yes, a 15% max and min retreat percentage bump would be cool.

[Shenron]

Heres an idea. You get allowed the "certain death" option after you've gotten all the hero fame

[Darksun]

Heres an idea. You get allowed the "certain death" option after you've gotten all the hero fame

Ohhh - that's a good point. Do we have the ability to do these kind of checks?

IG, your family has a history of legendary heroes so the descendent generations have a greater likelihood of trying to emulate their fallen forefathers.

[Indirik]

Ohhh - that's a good point. Do we have the ability to do these kind of checks?

Yes.

IG, your family has a history of legendary heroes so the descendent generations have a greater likelihood of trying to emulate their fallen forefathers.

No thanks. You still haven't solved any of the other problems that this would cause. The fame is the least important, though most obvious, of them.