Hello all! This article will describe the two new systems this mod introduces for rolling characters in Battle Brothers.
Inspiration
I was introduced to this lovely game shortly before Warriors of the North came out, and fell in love with it. It is a fantastic strategy game that keeps me coming back over and over again.
I realized fairly early on that because of the way that because of the way the character backgrounds work, hiring for the lategame eventually boils down to rounding out the roster with characters from a select few backgrounds.
I made a post back then about this and some ideas I had for making the system fresh again.
https://www.reddit.com/r/BattleBrothers/comments/bap7zw/looking_for_playtesters_for_background_balance/
Obviously with the advent of the Indom/Adrenaline/QH nerfs and the introduction of throwing/0stam builds making more backgrounds viable than ever before, the exact subset of backgrounds that are "usable" has expanded quite a bit.
What is a Character Background?
Character backgrounds differentiate brothers. A brother's background basically determines the following:
- Daily wage
- Hiring/tryout cost
- Starting gear
- Where they can be hired from
- How they interact with events
- What events they add to the event pool
- Excluded Traits
- Excluded Talents (stats they cannot have stars in)
- Special abilities exclusive to the background (ex: Witchhunter having extra resolve against mind control checks)
- Most importantly, starting stats. Depending on the character background, a brother rolls for each starting stat on a range.
What Makes a Background "Good"?
In a game where stats are king, one big determining factor (arguably THE determining factor) is what a brother rolls his starting stats on. After all, every brother gets rolls on the same system for leveling up from 1-11. A brother that starts off better will in all likelihood end up better.
Let's use the Cripple, Apprentice, and Hedge Knight to illustrate this effect.
I'll link their starting stats via the handy dandy wiki:
https://battlebrothers.fandom.com/wiki/Apprentice_(Background)
https://battlebrothers.fandom.com/wiki/Cripple_(Background)
https://battlebrothers.fandom.com/wiki/Hedge_Knight_(Background)
The Cripple is one of the worst backgrounds in the game, only usable very early game when you need a cheap warm body. An Apprentice is decidedly average, while the Hedge Knight is the premier background in terms of states. It is immediately evident why this is; the Hedge Knight begins with so many more stat points! For example, if you level HP every single time from level 1-11 with no talent stars, you will gain 30 HP. Looking at the average starting HP on a Cripple (40), we can see that even if we take HP every single time our brother might not even reach the average starting HP of a Hedge Knight (67.5). All those rolls we spend on the Cripple's HP are rolls that we are spending on other stats for our Hedge Knight.
Of course, I'd be loathe to completely disregard the other defining qualities of the backgrounds. Some backgrounds like Cultists or Monks have unique qualities or many events that might make them worth keeping on the team. However, historically even the Monk, who has lots of great events, doesn't really translate well into the lategame compared to the sheer power of a Hedge Knight.
How do "Bad" Backgrounds Compete with "Good Backgrounds"?
The three main angles backgrounds with worse stats compete against the premier backgrounds are as follows:
- Cost
- Availability
- Events
A vast majority of backgrounds are just going to be worse stat wise and liabilities in late game combat. The only way most of them truly offset this is simply by being cheaper and more available. Indeed, depending on how you play your campaign may even end before min-maxing stats even becomes relevant, in which case just about any background is usable. However, if we ARE min-maxing, this is exactly what perpetuates the problem that hiring most backgrounds is pointless once we reach mid-late game...we already know beforehand many of these brothers are not worth investing in.
That being said, There ARE some backgrounds that can be worth their salt lategame, despite being cheap and having generally worse stats. Examples of these include the Brawler, Farmhand, Poacher, Wildman, and Lumberjack. What exactly is so great about these backgrounds? It is because they have benefits of having low cost and relatively high availability, while passing certain stat thresholds that make them usable lategame. Brawlers have great HP, a decent melee attack range, and are cheap as hell. Poachers consistently roll a serviceable Ranged Skill between 47-49, which with talent stars in the right place can easily make a cheap elite archer. The other three backgrounds I mentioned have great stamina and decent melee capabilities while remaining quite inexpensive.
These backgrounds are good to hire at all points in the game because we know that with some luck they could be strong characters even in the lategame, with the additional benefits of being cheaper, more storied, more unique and thematic, etc.
How to make Backgrounds Worth Hiring
The key to make more backgrounds worth hiring is to expand on the dimensions that make backgrounds unique and worth taking to the lategame. The discussion in the previous section purely covered a stats to cost analysis. The existing talent star system helps lower tier backgrounds a bit because the cheaper backgrounds have better chance to get stars that improve their stats meaningfully. The trait system does the same, but unfortunately higher tier backgrounds are more likely to have desirable traits than lower tier backgrounds (by way of their trait exclusion lists).
To make cheaper backgrounds more worth hiring, it is beneficial to introduce systems that leverage the main advantage of cheaper backgrounds....they're cheap. This brings us to the meat of the article (whew); the two new systems introduced by this mod.
What are the Two New Systems Introduced by this Mod?
The first system is the concept of "Standout Stats". Essentially, depending on the character background being hired, there is an X% chance for certain stat rolls to be on a better stat range instead of the default range.
For example, an Apprentice rolls on 47-57 for Melee Attack by default. With the standout stat system, Apprentices have a 6% chance to instead roll on 53-63 on Melee Attack. The standout stat distributions are unique to each background! What this means is that the stats affected, the new range for the stat, and the percentage chance of triggering the new range is all unique to the background.
This leverages the fact that cheaper backgrounds are more available the same way that the talent star system does it. I can hire an Apprentice for 150 crowns, a pittance compared to the thousands of crowns I need to shell out for Swordmasters, Hedge Knights, and Sellswords. With this new system, if I roll well on talent stars, traits, and standout stats, then I could potentially land an Apprentice that is very much worth taking to lategame. It won't happen very often, but throughout the course of a campaign I have the option to roll tons of Apprentices, and if I can get a viable lategame Apprentice in 20 or so Apprentice hires (only 3000 crowns spent) then fishing for Apprentices is suddenly a much more appealing prospect.
Notice that in a vast majority of cases, Apprentices are NOT going to be the same tier as Hedge Knights. In fact, as the author of the mod the chance of an Apprentice being on par with a good Hedge Knight is still minimal. What it DOES mean is that Apprentices now have the capability to be very good lategame characters. The whole idea is to make these backgrounds worth rolling on for more of the lifetime of the campaign.
The second system is the concept of "Starting Perks by Background". This works in a very similar way as the standout stat system. With this system, depending on the brother's background he might begin with some perks unlocked. The perks that a background can begin with and the chance of each perk being awarded is, once again, unique to the background!
For example an Apprentice will always begin with the Student perk unlocked (which is very powerful, because it is an XP boost AND a totally free perk upon reaching 11) and has a 15% chance of beginning with Gifted. A Caravan Hand will begin with Bags and Belts, and Sellswords have a chance of having a weapon mastery.
This once again leverages the fact that cheaper backgrounds can be hired more often. An extra perk is very, very strong, and if a character rolls multiple perks on their list they can be quite strong in a unique way. In fact, depending on what background you hire and which starting perks you are lucky enough to get, you can try entirely new builds that are not possible on any other background!
Tack on the new events as part of this mod, and the selection process for your roster should become more interesting than ever, and hiring brothers should be a more fun an exciting affair for more of the game.
So, in the end, stronger, more expensive backgrounds will still be consistently great hires. However, with the new systems and events there should be more diamonds to be found in the rough, and brighter diamonds indeed.
An I have encountered in my various playthroughs is a Caravan Hand that rolled Bags and Belts, Gifted, and maxrolled Fatigue on a the standout range, and close to maxrolled Melee Defense on the standout range. Without evening factoring stars, the chance of encountering a bro like this in the wild is around 1/1000! More importantly, no other background would look like the Caravan Hand I had, so truly the guy was someone unique that I was proud to take
I hope you guys enjoy this mod. It has been a passion project of mine off and on for a long time, and I am quite proud of the work I've put towards it. Have fun playing Battle Brothers!
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