IKRPG characters on the wartable...

[Josh-o-Lantern]

Now, before you tell me WHY this wont work, I am very much aware of the mechanical NIGHTMARE this would present, but either way...

How cool would it be if there was some form of conversion available to turn your battle worn adventurer into a special issue mercenary to be fielded with your army? Find a few short cuts to rebalance abilities into point values for your brainchild to play in friendly games.

I have less than zero hope for this being a reality, but it's just what I've been thinking about for the last few days and felt like sharing.

[Lanz]

It would be very cool. I also don't see it being an impossibility. It wouldn't be tournament legal, most likely, but neither are League models. I could see something akin to that 'allowing' players to make their own characters for Warmachine.

Indeed, league could be a fine example. League rules could allow for IKRPG characters to be made following special perameters for each faction, which allows you to, ultimately make a 'custom solo' for your faction just for the league. The perimeters would let them keep the balance more in-check, and ensure the model fits the faction.

[StJason]

In theory, it should be quite possible: Many of the stats are straight port-overs.

The issue will be the loss of granularity. Quick, what is Stryker's military history score? How good is he at baking a cake? Many people will feel a bit off-put by having their carefully-crafted character be stripped of half of their abilities to be put on the table top.

[leo_neil316]

Ugh, no. No special snowflakes in my wargames please.

[captainspud]

Ugh, no. No special snowflakes in my wargames please.

This.

10char

[Aerendghast]

I'm pretty sure Stryker is quite good at baking cakes.

[J. Beatnik]

Since they've already revealed that they will be using the 2d6+stat method for resolution, my hope is that you can seamlessly switch between the Tabletop RPG and the miniatures game. Characters would be like super solos with multiple boxes but able to use their special abilities as star actions. Conversion to the miniatures game would make scaling up (and streamlining) combat to a larger level relatively easy. At the same time, its very easy to scale down the miniatures game into tabletop by just opening up the amount of actions you can do. Weapon locks, slams, and other power attacks make combat exciting and add options for characters. Also, you could easily make a way for War Room to organize PC info into an easy to read card format.

I think it would be daft of Privateer to have all the great fluff of the books, a great miniatures system of combat resolution, and an upcoming RPG and not tie them all together and make them compatible.

[jdripley]

My view on this is that it's not about playing the wargame with your super soldier, it's about being able to run a mass combat easier. I don't know how many of you have played DnD 3.5, but running a mass combat is a nightmare for the DM. You basically have to make all of the enemies stupidly bad to give the PC's a chance, then throw in a few enemies that are actually a threat. But, you've still got to keep track of the stats for all of those NPCs on the battlefield. 4th Edition DnD had little minion people with a rule that as soon as you hit them they're dead, regardless of damage rolled, and Warmachine does basically the same thing with their 1 hitbox soldiers.

My guess is that even if there are no rules for this, it'll be fairly easy to homebrew.

[Blackraine]

I like this idea mostly because I wanted to have a campaign in which the playgroup alternated between playing a two or three sessions of the RPG and playing a Warmachine game, the outcome of which would have impacts on the RPG story. I had been thinking they would simply control an army or two that was somehow acquainted with their characters (or, better yet, would blindly choose one side or the other without yet knowing how the two sides would impact their RPG characters), but being able to put their actual characters on the battlefield would be pretty cool too... it'd be a great way to handle mass battles.

[Siskey]

Having read NQ42, it seems like the stats have been created in such a way to be extremely portable. Stuff like MAT, RAT, DEF, ARM etc are all derived stats, which it seems to me would make for a streamlined experience. I agree with you all that it will make mass combat that bit easier, particularly for people familiar with the wargame. It could make for some fun story-based campaigns, I love the idea of running an RPG session in conjunction with a wargame campaign, where the characters intrude on a battlefield and have to get to some objective before two huge armies destroy the entire area.

What I'm particularly excited about is how easy it will be to port rules from the wargame into the RPG, basically every Forces book becomes a Monster Manual!

[Blackraine]

Having read NQ42, it seems like the stats have been created in such a way to be extremely portable. Stuff like MAT, RAT, DEF, ARM etc are all derived stats, which it seems to me would make for a streamlined experience. I agree with you all that it will make mass combat that bit easier, particularly for people familiar with the wargame. It could make for some fun story-based campaigns, I love the idea of running an RPG session in conjunction with a wargame campaign, where the characters intrude on a battlefield and have to get to some objective before two huge armies destroy the entire area.

What I'm particularly excited about is how easy it will be to port rules from the wargame into the RPG, basically every Forces book becomes a Monster Manual!

Yeah, I definitely like that last part. Now I've got entire books of pre-made NPC's! It took me 2 hours to make an NPC widowmaker in the old ruleset... now I can just port the stats more-or-less straight from my Khador book. I think I'm also going to start using some virtual table battlemats. One of the things that my players (and, indeed, myself) have consistently complained about is that the range of weapons means basically nothing in D&D unless it's super short range (like a throwing knife or something) because there just isn't enough physical space to represent the distance at which it matters that you took all those feats, gadgets, and spells (Far Shot, Scopes, etc) on your Vanar Liberator to make it shoot a mile and a half. While a cool character idea (and a bit min-max'ish), even things like longbows and military rifles seldom matter. I've tried messing with the grid a bit, like making each square count as 10' or 20', but then that just messes with the melee characters. A virtual mat that I can make 50x50 or 100x100 or something might help... that's the next thing I'm going to try.

[PG_Dalthoraz]

I know me my friend all want to make warcasters. Probably won't be a balanced party for ikrpg but we all play different factions and want to themed warcasters for our differen factions and play them in homebrew games. I think that would be fun.

[Whimper]

Oh, I'm sure you're not the only customers who will want to play an "All warcasters from different factions" party in the RPG. I wince at the thought.

[Siskey]

Yeah, I definitely like that last part. Now I've got entire books of pre-made NPC's! It took me 2 hours to make an NPC widowmaker in the old ruleset... now I can just port the stats more-or-less straight from my Khador book. I think I'm also going to start using some virtual table battlemats. One of the things that my players (and, indeed, myself) have consistently complained about is that the range of weapons means basically nothing in D&D unless it's super short range (like a throwing knife or something) because there just isn't enough physical space to represent the distance at which it matters that you took all those feats, gadgets, and spells (Far Shot, Scopes, etc) on your Vanar Liberator to make it shoot a mile and a half. While a cool character idea (and a bit min-max'ish), even things like longbows and military rifles seldom matter. I've tried messing with the grid a bit, like making each square count as 10' or 20', but then that just messes with the melee characters. A virtual mat that I can make 50x50 or 100x100 or something might help... that's the next thing I'm going to try.

Our GM for D&D liked to do combats in enormous spaces, he'd use the table itself as the battle mat, put terrain down and use inches instead of squares. It would work even better with a more streamlined system. He once ran a Star Wars fight against an AT-AT with the table as the AT-AT, which with the miniatures on the floor was about the right scale!

I had a thought today that the Forces books would make good inventories and spellbooks, but I've just had a flick through the Everblight book and the sample they gave in NQ of the Nyss Claymore is POW 6, while the wargame one is POW 4. Still, the spells should work well!

I know me my friend all want to make warcasters. Probably won't be a balanced party for ikrpg but we all play different factions and want to themed warcasters for our differen factions and play them in homebrew games. I think that would be fun.

That could be fun, I wonder what kind of experience level you'd have to get to be equivalent to even Prime warcasters?

[PG_Dalthoraz]

That could be fun, I wonder what kind of experience level you'd have to get to be equivalent to even Prime warcasters?

Yeah we were wondering that too. I'm getting really excited about IKRPG. I'm sure the forum will go crazy with people wanting to create there own warcaster/warlock for WM and Hordes.

[PG_Clutch]

Funny thing...IF the rules work out, plan on seeing a "Build a solo" event at Warmachine Weekend. More than likely it wont be until 2013 because we want to make sure everything can translate OK. This is the kind of crossover event we would like to do for some of the more casual events. This year expect pretty normal IK sessions, next year though...we promise to put the rules through the crucible and see what comes out!

[John of Arc]

I'd love to see something like this. I know me and some of my friends would love to use our IKRPG characters in our Warmachine armies in our casual games just for fun. As long as it's less official and more like a for-funsies rule in the back of the book, I think there's a lot of potential. Not only would I love to see a character I've created fighting for his nation on the tabletop (again, in a non-canon completely unofficial way) but it would make for some really easy mass combat scenarios. I think it would make for a really epic finish to a campaign to have the Cygnaran army fighting through the minions of some deranged Cryxian scientist to deliver you to his lair, at which point the game can switch back to the IKRPG- or if they fail, the game switches back to the RPG but with dire consequences.

[themocaw]

What I'm particularly excited about is how easy it will be to port rules from the wargame into the RPG, basically every Forces book becomes a Monster Manual!

"So you see the Blighted Nyss sorceress point at you and suddenly about a dozen dog-sized creatures that look vaguely like eyeless landsharks start racing towards you."

"You're using Shredder Spam against first level characters?"

[Blackraine]

"So you see the Blighted Nyss sorceress point at you and suddenly about a dozen dog-sized creatures that look vaguely like eyeless landsharks start racing towards you."

"You're using Shredder Spam against first level characters?"

I'm goin' easy on em. They're lucky I didn't pull out the Skarre Bomb!

[Siskey]

"So you see the Blighted Nyss sorceress point at you and suddenly about a dozen dog-sized creatures that look vaguely like eyeless landsharks start racing towards you."

"You're using Shredder Spam against first level characters?"

Man I think/hope Shredders would wreck their day. Something nice, although a little meta-gamey, would be to see people familiar with the wargame turning tail and running from a fight if something came up that was particularly fearsome!

By the looks of it, the player characters will have life spirals similar to warbeasts. How many hitpoints for a starting character, I wonder? If they go up against a unit of Trenchers are they going to get killed? These are the questions that demand answers!

[themocaw]

Man I think/hope Shredders would wreck their day. Something nice, although a little meta-gamey, would be to see people familiar with the wargame turning tail and running from a fight if something came up that was particularly fearsome!

Yeah, that's the main reason why I want crossover potential: so I can hear my players go "Oh, FFF---!" when I say things like:

"So you see a young elf woman with a long chain. She's flipping the chain from hand to hand and there's this long hooked blade at the end of it. . ."

"Two women jump down from the roof. They've both got long hair done up in a ponytail, and are wearing red bandannas to match their silk armor. So now you have four dagger attacks incoming, James. . ."

"What does it look like? Well. . . kind of like a huge trunkless elephant with four arms. It's got this big, stiff crest of hair on its back that looks kind of bronze-colored."

"The big, fat thing with the hose-gun waddles towards you. You have a moment to see it swell up before it explodes, spraying corrosive liquid all over the entire party. . ."

"So as the Menites drop to one knee and ignite their rocket launchers, you see a massive rain of explosive rockets arcing towards you, and you realize this is going to suck. . ."

[PG_Dalthoraz]

My hope is they will stat out some of the warcasters and other existing characters into NPCs for IKRPG, and I believe they might do it. I mean they are important individuals so I expect them to create some of them, like King Leto, Stryker, Nemo. I would probably expect to see some warjacks specked out too.

[Whimper]

My hope is that a single warbeast of any type is going to be enough to make a 1st level party scream and flee in terror.

[StJason]

My hope is that a single warbeast of any type is going to be enough to make a 1st level party scream and flee in terror.

aka the "WHFRPG" reaction. "A single goblin?? RUN AWAY! WE ARE SO HOSED!!!"

[Whimper]

Never played WH. But forget about shredder spam, a single shredder is a nasty and voracious foe with a number of advantages over a group of beginner adventurers. Same with a single gorax. A pair of argus nearly killed my party once. A troll eats 1st level parties for breakfast.

[Sosthenes]

aka the "WHFRPG" reaction. "A single goblin?? RUN AWAY! WE ARE SO HOSED!!!"

Unless you're a Naked Dwarf, of course.

[StJason]

Never played WH. But forget about shredder spam, a single shredder is a nasty and voracious foe with a number of advantages over a group of beginner adventurers. Same with a single gorax. A pair of argus nearly killed my party once. A troll eats 1st level parties for breakfast.

Depending on DMs, too. One of the times I ran Witchfire, during the chase after the Mayor, in the city library, three low-level (3rd vs. 7th level PCs) Inquisitors gave the players fits. The warrior one kept knocking bookshelves over on them, the thief would sneak up, backstab, then run away, and the mage plinked with spells and crossbow from up the stairs (grease spell is terrifying on stairs...). With the DM on their side, levels are more guideline then an accurate representation of challenge. (Plus, I wanted to wear down the PCs so they'd negotiate with the mayor rather then just blow through and zap with spells and sword...)