home

Author Topic: Merging Captains and Engineers.  (Read 3986 times)

Offline MagicJuggler

  • Members
  • Posts: 420
Merging Captains and Engineers.
« on: December 23, 2009, 12:12:23 AM »
This may sound like heresy, but I believe the Captain and Engineer would be better merged into the same unit type. Right now we have Wizards, Priests, Captains...and Engineers. And the last choice is relatively redundant. With many of the more recent armybooks anyway, we have our "Fighter; Caster; Special" set of heroes, be it Masters/Sorceresses/Death Hags for Dark Elves, Chieftans/Warlocks/Assassins for Skaven, Saurus/Slaan/Skinks for Lizardmen...really Chaos seems to buck the trend...With Empire, we have our Captain/Wizard/Warriorpriest combo, while the Engineer does not get invited to their parties.

With prior discussions, we had expressed interest in making the Empire Captain your "down-to-earth" type, having abilities that did not correspond with magical prowess, or religious blessings, but instead the result of superior training, better equipment, etc. So why not merge the Engineer and Captain/General (And merge the Templar Grandmaster into the mix, while we're at it)? Put assorted "The Imperial College" abilities into the greater list of non-magic upgrades the Captain/General can take?

Offline Davido

  • Members
  • Posts: 537
Re: Merging Captains and Engineers.
« Reply #1 on: January 09, 2010, 08:29:20 AM »
so would you take magic items away from the captain and give him the engineering weapons instead. Or would he get to take both.

If we were going to make captains engineers we would have to make some engineering close combat weapons. A jackhammer maybe.

I suppose you could let the captain take 50 pts of magic weapons or 50pts of enginering toys.

could be interesting but i think bs 5 hochland rifles would be a tad over the top, then again we could just give the whole army ASF, or hatred, or re-rolls to panic, or off board artillery .
Yay my rocket battery finally killed something.What do you mean those are my halberdiers.

Offline Obi

  • Members
  • Posts: 6225
  • Rest in peace Nate
Re: Merging Captains and Engineers.
« Reply #2 on: January 09, 2010, 09:08:27 AM »
We already have BS5 HLRs- just take outriders.

I am wondering too though- do you want the character to take 50 points of either one like Davido suggested? Because that makes more sense to me. We can also take the engineer as an upgrade, like the BSB (only cheaper). I think the real reason why no one takes the engineer is the lack of fighting capability and leadership boost though. So I think we may need to tackle that, which we could do by merging him with captains.

Wow, great circle :eusa_wall:

So pretty much, I think that we should increase the engineers fighting skill and Ld, be it by merging him with captains or putting him as an upgrade for it.
Hello Athiuen and welcome to the Back Table.

caveat lector
I killed a duck with a spear, can't read train timetables though
"To be is to do"-Socrates;
"To do is to be"-Sartre;
"Do Be Do Be Do"-Sinatra

Offline MagicJuggler

  • Members
  • Posts: 420
Re: Merging Captains and Engineers.
« Reply #3 on: January 09, 2010, 07:25:09 PM »
The alternate idea was to consider Engineering toys as something similar to the Skaven "Scavenge Pile." Relatively crazy toys that generally don't find  their ways into the rank and file. So as something that Captains/Generals could take, as well as Outrider Champions (Inner Circle Praeceptors could take magic items instead). Of course, the normal 25/50/100 pt limits on either would vary by champion/hero/lord status.

So it would be:
Most characters+praeceptors=Magic Items only
Outrider Champions=Engineering College Only
Captains/Generals=Both, but from same point total.

Alternately, since we were talking about  general training upgrades for captains, such as skills allowing scout/killing blow, etc, we could instead allow Invention as well.


The idea in question is this:
Outrider Champions can get one Invention. Heroes can get only one as well, unless they take the "Imperial Engineer" Skill (which confers normal Master Engineer bonuses), which allows more items to be taken, according to normal limits (so no having more than 2 melee weapons, etc).

The other other alternate option would be to treat them as Magic Items instead, (the way Skaven treats Doomrockets/Deathglobes/etc) with an "Engineer-only" tag or so.

Which of these sounds most sane?

Offline stareso

  • Members
  • Posts: 502
Re: Merging Captains and Engineers.
« Reply #4 on: February 25, 2010, 03:51:33 PM »
I like the way you are thinking, and these ideas should be merged in the empire captain sticky. There it is suggested that the captain can purchase various upgrades and thus excel at a particular role. Kind of like the engineer idea you are talking about.

Although my objection is an engineer with a captain's stat-line. I can't imagine a captain trained as a martial officer to be equalled by a scholar/inventor in his combat skills. So possibly one could couple stat boosts to captain upgrades, and maintain a lower, basic, stat-line for the bare-bones guy. An engineer could get a boost to BS, and get access to your 'imperial college' goodies (nice one), and a warrior/leader could get WS/S/A/Ld bonuses and/or special rules and/or equipment. Obviously the new engineer would have to have some other beneficial affects on the army (maybe allow a unit of outriders/a mortar as core for example) or he wouldn't be any better than he is now.

Still liking the train of thought!

Offline kk14

  • Members
  • Posts: 554
Re: Merging Captains and Engineers.
« Reply #5 on: February 26, 2010, 06:29:22 PM »
I too like the train of thought, and merging the engineer with the captain 'paths' we are considering makes sense. That said, I don't know if merging the Captain with the Engineer will fit either one's fluff/role.

I also worry about engineers with a Captain stat line.

Some more thinking to do.
If you can't convince the voters to accept your view, and you take to the gun, you are by definition anti-American.

Veni, Vidi, domum meum redire volo.