Experience with Hired guns cost exl. gear

[UnderhiveBerzerker]

Greeting fellow underhive scum

I am starting an new campaign and want to get Hired guns on the board, but the high cost makes them unplayable IMO.

my plan is to house rule that an gang only pays the base cost for the mercenary and not the gear that he is equiped with.
e.g. Bounty hunter costs 80 cr and comes with 130 cr gear included

Has anyone in the community play with something like this, and if yes, that was your experience ? too strong, broken, ok or still lackluster

cheers and hail the emperor of man

 

[ten_kage]

in my group we are playing like this now, but at the moment nobody shose to take them yet

 

[Norngahl]

Hired guns are unplayable, just because you have to pay for their equippment. It's like- pay me to fight for you a single game and also pay for the equippment I use and I will take with me after the battle.

Question is, which is not completly clear for me, if you have to pay for the eqippment just for the first time (because you hire the fighter you have already armed and made a card for) or if you have to pay for his equippment again and again. If you just have to pay for the weapons as an initial cost he might be okay if you take him for a specialised job (for example as a sniper or as a suicide bomber), as he never get's any injury roll and you can literally just throw him into the meat grinder not caring about the outcome.

If you have to pay for it again and again, there is propably only 1 playable hired gun- the hive scum with a max 10 point item to use as coup de grace boy, opening sacrifical lamb, prostitute for any shitty job and so on.

Especially as you might be f*cked if your opponet forces you into a scenario with random ganger selection.

 

[UnderhiveBerzerker]

@Norngahl i agree with most things regarding hired guns, that's the reason for the house rules

Shouldn't hired guns be expendable?

 

[SumpRat]

Hired guns are unplayable, just because you have to pay for their equippment. It's like- pay me to fight for you a single game and also pay for the equippment I use and I will take with me after the battle.

Question is, which is not completly clear for me, if you have to pay for the eqippment just for the first time (because you hire the fighter you have already armed and made a card for) or if you have to pay for his equippment again and again. If you just have to pay for the weapons as an initial cost he might be okay if you take him for a specialised job (for example as a sniper or as a suicide bomber), as he never get's any injury roll and you can literally just throw him into the meat grinder not caring about the outcome.

If you have to pay for it again and again, there is propably only 1 playable hired gun- the hive scum with a max 10 point item to use as coup de grace boy, opening sacrifical lamb, prostitute for any shitty job and so on.

Especially as you might be f*cked if your opponet forces you into a scenario with random ganger selection.

We assumed Hired Guns are in addition to random selection, which makes them a little more useful. Only taking 3 gangers? Take these 5 scum with you! Kind of thing.

 

[Jlove]

Planning a campaign myself and think I'll house rule that a gang pays 15% of the hired gun's value before each game.
Not sure yet though if 15% is a fair figure...

 

[UnderhiveBerzerker]

Planning a campaign myself and think I'll house rule that a gang pays 15% of the hired gun's value before each game.
Not sure yet though if 15% is a fair figure...

Not really IMO, an Hive scum with a Boltgun (85 cr) would cost 13 creds

 

[Jlove]

Not really IMO, an Hive scum with a Boltgun (85 cr) would cost 13 creds

Did you ever play old necro? Hired guns were a set fee (15cr for a scum) which was 20% of their supposed rating. You then got to choose from a set weapons list and got a number of advances at recruitment stage.

There was little to stop a player spamming hired guns from inception but the drawback to this is that they don't gain xp, potentially held back the rest of the gang from advancing due to better stats and had to be paid after every game if you want them to stick around.

Generally they were used to fill a niche gap in your gangs abilities so would only normally see 1 or 2 in a gang

 

[Vonvilkee]

Money is easier to come by in this edition so having hired guns that cheap feels wrong.

I'm considering hire fee plus a percentage of the gear they show up with.

 

[Jlove]

Money is easier to come by in this edition so having hired guns that cheap feels wrong.

I'm considering hire fee plus a percentage of the gear they show up with.

I feel that they need to be fairly cheap to encourage people to use them, but I'm willing to concede that 15-20% may be too much. What kind of cost would you think is reasonable?

 

[UnderhiveBerzerker]

Did you ever play old necro?

Yeah, loads actually…
Creds in N17 are alot easier to come by than old munda, also they hired guns had specific loadouts before, now you can tailor them more to your playstyle.

but yes, they should be fairly cheap, without becoming broken, an hard balance to get right

 

[Vonvilkee]

Looking back at the costs again I'm thinking the printed hire fee plus 10% of equipment cost.

Let the player set the price to an extent.

Hive scum are 30 creds and roughly ganger that is pretty cheap. Need some one to fill in for recovery but not grow the gang? Perfect fit.

Bounty hunters are champion like so 80 creds again nice price point.

It was really the equipment thing that shot them dead on arrival. 10% (round up to nearest 5 creds) I feel makes you think about the gear but let's them fill a temporary hole in the roster.

 

[Galtarr]

If I get to arbitrate a campaign I'd consider having hired guns available some kind of blind bid system. With a fixed/limited number available at any one time. That way if no one else bids you could get them quite cheaply, or someone else could steal them off you by upping the bid between games. Not sure about the details but reckon it would be a better way for them to work.

 

[Thorgor]

Mordheim did something interesting with Hired swords by separating hire fee and upkeep: you paid about 40% of the fighter's worth upfront and then had to pay around 15% after each game to keep them around. They also gained experience and advancements the same as henchmen.
This made both taking them for the temporary power spike and keeping them afterwards worth considering.

Something similar could work with hired guns. For instance a bounty hunter with 50c worth of equipment would cost 50c to hire (0.4*(80+50)) and 20c (0.15*(80+50)) to keep from one battle to the next.

 

[Cyreth]

Mordheim did something interesting with Hired swords by separating hire fee and upkeep: you paid about 40% of the fighter's worth upfront and that had to pay around 15% after each game to keep them around. They also gained experience and advancements the same as henchmen.
This made them both taking them for the temporary power spike and keeping them afterwards worth considering.

Something similar could work with hired gain. For instance a bounty hunter with 50c worth of equipment would cost 50c to hire (0.4*(80+50)) and 20c (0.15*(80+50)) to keep from one battle to the next.

I have also toyed with the idea of using a system more like the one from Mordheim. I'd like it if Bounty Hunters and Hive Scum could stay longer with your gang by making them cheaper to rehire/keep. But since it's the Underhive, I'd probably add an element of randomness, so that there is a, say, 10% chance that a Bounty Hunter leaves your gang, even if he has already been paid. You could also give your enemy the option to outbid you during a game, resulting in Hive Scum or a Bounty Hunter changing sides (maybe throw in a Leadership test to create more uses for the least useful attribute).
I haven't implemented this yet, though, because I'm still thinking about ways to give Bounty Hunters specific goals -- as soon as they'd reach their goal, they'd leave the gang (but that could take several games).

 

[SoothSayer]

From my experience bounty hunters are superstars, you use them for super important missions and one-offs. Like the end of a cycle match where you arent' worried about left cash and need powerful hero units. I wish this wasn't the case as I really like many of the bounty hunters and their models and idea.

Hired guns are just throw away troops. I didnt see any reason ever to use them till I ran into some probamtic matches where I was at a huge disadvantage and didn't want to lose good or useful units. So I hired 3 hired guns, gave them pistols and use them as sacrafical lambs and bullet magnets for my more vested gangers and champions. Basically I used them as throw away juves. And it worked for me there, but outside of that, I cant really see a good use for them other than those odd circumstances where you just might need a throw in a couple extra bodies for some odd reason.

 

[UnderhiveBerzerker]

Mordheim did something interesting with Hired swords by separating hire fee and upkeep: you paid about 40% of the fighter's worth upfront and that had to pay around 15% after each game to keep them around. They also gained experience and advancements the same as henchmen.
This made them both taking them for the temporary power spike and keeping them afterwards worth considering.

Something similar could work with hired gain. For instance a bounty hunter with 50c worth of equipment would cost 50c to hire (0.4*(80+50)) and 20c (0.15*(80+50)) to keep from one battle to the next.

I think i try running with this model. it also opens up for experienced hired guns traveling between gangs. however i would rule that advances gain by Hired guns, does not increase their cost.

My motivation for using hired guns would be "rule of cool" and the possibility to create an model that is special from that i am currently painting.

 

[UnderhiveBerzerker]

Hello fellow citizen
I am starting an small dominion campaign up with some friends. going to test alternative cost for hired guns as discussed.

An gang only pays the recruit cost and then pays an upkeep in the following prebattle step 1 for the next battles.

Captured Hired guns will automatically be sold to the guilders and the equipment are sold with them
They dont suffer lasting injuries of any kind
They dont gain XP

//------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hive Scum
Recruit cost: 30
Max Equipment cost : 60
Max rarity: 8
Total cr/Upkeep 30+/10, 50+/15, 70+/20
Weapon slots 3
Category Pistol, Basic, Close combat (No wargear!)

//------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bounty Hunter

Recruit cost: 80
Max Equipment cost : 150
Max rarity: 10
Total cr/Upkeep 80+/20, 130+/35, 180+/45​

Weapon slots 5 (max 1 unwieldy)
Category All
//------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I will give an update about how it turns out

 

[sumpthing]

I've been thinking about making a pool of hired guns for anyone in the campaign to use, pay 50creds when hiring and you roll a d6 or d10 or whatever and that's the hire gun that turns up. Some will be worth more than this, others less. "Ah not dirty one armed Vince again"

 

[Zugg Zugg]

I was thinking a similar thing for my campaign. Put them on the ganger experience track excluding specialist. Or you could make a rule where the specialist roll means they've decided to officially be part of your gang becoming a ganger without the upkeep fee.

I like the idea of the scummers leveling up and sticking around. I also like the idea of them leaving your gang after being taken out of action and being hireable by another gang after they've recovered.

I'd also like the hangers on to be a bit more part of the action. Like you only get their ability if they were with your gang. And also they can level up using the ganger exp chart but their equipment is fixed.
There would be exceptions. Perhaps the rest time hanger ons, like the sloppers, don't need to be there for you to get the bonus.