Thursday 2 April 2015

Oldhammer Warband Creator

Well, I haven't had much time for painting, but at least I've managed to get something gaming related done.

Now, like many of you I'm sure, I tend to daydream and plot what projects to work on next and what to paint up or collect in the future, and one of the driving factors behind my purchases are chaos warbands. I was also concerned that my, completely amateur, programming skills were getting rather rusty, so what better project could there be than making a warband generator for WFRP3?

My goal was that the program should create a warband with the click of a button and that it should have a number of settings to allow you to customise the output. It should follow the rules laid out in Slaves to Darkness and Lost and the Damned as closely as possible.

The project was completed in an Excel workbook with lots of VBA and some tables carefully copied from the source books. There is a lot more I could do to work on it, but I've decided it's stable enough to release into the wild for now - although there's always the temptation to just keep adding little features forever!

Please note that for it to work, the file will need to be downloaded and macros will need to be enabled.

You can find the Download Link here.
(Now on it's own page!)

A sample output using the Lost and the Damned rules

First, a disclaimer. This program hasn't had a whole lot of testing and you may find bugs in it, particularly typos in unit statistics and Attribute/Gift/Item names. If you spot any then please let me know so I can squish them.

I've tried to follow the rules in the relevant books as closely as possible, but they are occasionally difficult to follow or confusing. So, again, if anything looks out of place then don't hesitate to tell me.

  • The default settings are heavily based on Orlyggs Warband Creation post in that Retinue size is based on Hero level and all Heroes start with two attributes as standard. Note that there is no limit to how many Attributes can be beneficial or harmful.
  • Retinue, Attribute, Gift and Item counts overwrite these default settings but are still modified by Marks of the Gods. Set Attributes to 0 if you want characters to just receive their basic attribute from their Mark of the God.
  • Slaves to Darkness Wizards, Warriors and Sorcerers have been given an Attribute each to make things more interesting.
  • Statistic changes from Gifts, Attributes and Items are not calculated.
  • Retinue additions from Gifts, Attributes and Items are not calculated.
  • Monsters are always assumed to be their lowest level.
  • Race Override (Other) doesn't work with Level Override unless Class Override is also set.
  • Hero characters have their statistics randomly generated as per the WFB3 rulebook.
  • The racial warbands (Beastmen, Centaurs, Dragon Ogres and Minotaurs) from Lost and the Damned haven't been included, but might be in the future.
  • Attributes that are generated from Chaos Gifts are noted as "Attribute Name" "Gift"
  • As per Lost and the Damned rules, if you roll up a Hero as part of your retinue then he'll often be more powerful than your main character!
  • The code is rather lacking in comments at the moment and hasn't been optimised much. I'll be working on this over the next few days.
  • The single most time consuming feature was writing rules for the 10% chance for a single Minotaur from a group of one or more to be upgraded to a hero of a random level with a random chance of a random amount of attributes...

I hope you enjoy using this productivity-destruction tool as much as I've enjoyed writing it!

12 comments:

  1. Thats great!! I'm giving a try right now! Thanks so much ;)

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    1. I hope it works okay for you, let me know if you have any problems or have any suggestions for features. :)

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  2. Is it possible to run on my iPad?!?

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    1. Hi Cedric, I don't think iOS supports macro enabled workbooks sadly. :(

      If this is popular then I'll try and make a web-app version instead that you'll hopefully be able to access using a mobile device like a tablet.

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  3. Peter, this is one massively excellent tool here, I could play all day rolling bands !
    Thanks you so very much for the time spent !

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    Replies
    1. Glad you are having fun with it. Hopefully it'll inspire a few creative painting and modelling projects. :)

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  4. Excellent work Peter, just as if I need another way to play with rolling up war bands! Fancy a war bands game at BOYL using this?

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    1. I absolutely do!

      My Khorne warband is basically finished, so I've been looking for something new to sink my teeth into. Having BOYL to work towards would be a great motivator.

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  5. I hope Human Wizard 15 is good, as the only infantry he brought with him were 2 dwarves and 2 goblins. That's not a warband, that's a street gang...

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    Replies
    1. And the next guy only brought 3 wolves!

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    2. One of my favourite results so far has been a Furry, Multiple-headed Level 5 Dwarven Hero with his trusty Orc sidekick and a mighty 19 wolves!

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