Experience in WF armies

[IBBoard]

Do any of the other apps handle experience? And is there some general concept of experience that people think we can incorporate in to WarFoundry armies (i.e. the "user-made" side rather than races)?

I've got vague recollections of Mordheim and Gorkamorka experience mainly being a points-based system that let you buy skills. IIRC once your Henchman unit got enough experience you could up him to a Champion in Mordheim, which would be a bit more difficult to handle and would need some more detailed planning, but the general "some kind of points value" system seems to apply. From what I've seen the W40K system was quite similar as well (at least in 3rd/4th). I don't know what Warhammer has as the last version I saw the rulebook for was 5th!

[snowblizz]

Neither the core 40k and WHFB rules include the concept of experience any longer. Those were mostly considered in campaigns and all campaign rules have been cut out of the core rulebook. There are however some GW and other campaign systems which might use experience.

I checked Mordheim and what AB does is treat experience as a purchasable equipment option. That way replacing a more experienced henchman (which is more expensive) is automatically taken into consideration. I actually was playing around with the exact example you mention. AB uses a "Promoted!" option on a henchman, only available to a single model henchman "unit" to change the henchman into a hero level model with the same equipment and stats as the henchman already had.

The other thing with it, is that sometimes you need a secondary "point" system. Mordheim uses "Warband rating" calculated from the number of models and their experience.

Now I think (ie I've seen several who do) historical games uses the concept of raw, trained, experienced troops to a large degree. I don't know exactly how but I know I've seen it come up in FoW discussions. I read a bat rep where 1700p Soviets were facing 1200p Germans (but due randomly being fearless) they really amounted to a 3000p SS force. Now this wasn't a "roster creation problem" as such, and if you can only "buy" high morale troops in an appropriate army it might not come up at all.

A further use for this I could see are the various composition systems (but that's definitely something for a separate plugin).

Are there any concrete issues, you could in not too technical manner explain to me and I could check? I've got access to most GW rules, some of the WH historical rulebooks and most likely could check up or even ask for stuff like Warmachine and FoW. I know a few of those sad sad nerds who play other games beside GW stuff.

[IBBoard]

Anything we can get on non-GW stuff (or at least non-core stuff, which all plays quite similarly) would definitely be helpful Most of what we need is concrete case studies of "must be able to create an army like this for game system X", or in the case of some of GW's special rules then it is the race rather than the game system that complicates things.

I remember 40K 4th Edition (and probably 3rd) having experience as an "appendix", but I didn't realise they'd dropped it from the core rules. I guess it lets them sell things like Planetstrike with campaign/experience rules instead

Purchasable XP would be the alternative way of handling it, but seems quick hackish IMO. The only problem I can see with having it as a separate value is that some game systems may allow XP to be "spent" on skills (IIRC your Mordheim characters could get a skill every #XP). That'll need two "purchasing" systems running side-by-side. Not impossible, but an extra thing to take in to account.

A "promotion" option is all well and good, but it'd generally still keep them being called whatever their Henchman type was. I can't remember at the moment whether the upgrade actually changed their type or not.

We probably could have a secondary count such as "rating", but we'd need to plan how to make it sufficiently flexible. I can't remember whether Gorkamorka worked the same way. I had a vague recollection that it had some "teef" value that counted cost plus left over teef, or something.

In terms of the historical battle example, I'd almost be inclined to to treat that as either a special upgrade that doubles their points value (or whatever) or else a separate "experienced X" unit type (since presumably there can be other differences, such as stat lines in some cases). If nothing else then it's similar to what Warhammer does in balancing one-sided campaign battles by giving the smaller side bonuses. In general that's out of the scope of the roster creation.

I'm not sure what you mean by "composition systems", though