A behind the screen look at how my clan Chaos campaign will be run. Feel free to skip this, but if you were curious on how to build up Honor this is how its calculated in the free rulebook, and my minor tweaks to the costs as I dont like math in the 1000s. (I only have 10 fingers after all!) This modification of the chaos campaign system changes warchest points to 'Honor Points' better fitting the clan campaign narrative.
Chaos Campaign Warchest Points to Clan Honor Points: These are mostly the same, so the free book Chaos Campaign Succession Wars will provide more detail than you'll ever need on how a Warchest system works.
Base Rules summary right from the book. Each person starts with a ¾ pilot and any mech of their choice. You also start with 1000 points on the player side. You spend points to fix/buy mechs, and heal/replace mechwarriors. You also spend points to increase your skill or buy the special pilot abilities on your pilot card. Each battle also requires you to spend points, but if you win you gain more points then you spend. For example, it costs 300 points to take the “Assault” fight, but if you win you gain 600 points. This means if you lose a bunch of fights, you wont be able to repair your mechs. You can go into debt, so the game isnt over if you run out of points, you just wont have the extra points to upgrade pilots and such. The battles themselves are balanced, meaning if you all take assault mechs you will face enough points to challenge you—there is no penalty for taking lighter mechs this way.
My changes: First, I divide all points by 100, as its less book keeping. Next, instead of 1000 (10 in my system) points combined for all 5 mechs in a Clan star, each player gets 200 (2) points, and manages their points individually. The clans care more for personal honor than if their unit does well—furthermore they cant share points! Also, if new players come in, its easy to add them as they get there own points and wont interfere with anything the other players are saving up/in debt for.
From the Book: Repairing a mech's armor costs tonnage, fixing structure costs tonnage x2, buying a new mech costs tonnage*10, reloads cost 5 per ton of ammo, a new 4/5 warrior costs 30, healing a warrior costs 100 per box (so keeping veteran pilots healthy is much more expensive then using new pilots), gunnery skill costs 200, piloting skill costs 150, and special pilot abilities is the cost on the card*100.
In my system, since I divide everything by 100 and round normally.
Repairing armor on a mech 45 tons or less=free. Repairing armor on a mech 50 tons or more=1 point. (There is a reason to take light mechs!)
Reparing structure on a 20 ton mech=free, 25-70 tons=1 point, 75-100=2 points
Reloading=free (such a tiny cost doesnt factor much)
Purchasing a new mech=tonnage/10 (so a Clan Firefly at 30 tons=3 points).
Purchasing elementals=1 point
Hire new warrior=free (but they start at 4/ 5 instead of ¾)
Heal a warrior=1 point per box
Spend to train in Gunnery or Piloting=2 points
Buy special pilot abilities on the card=Card point cost.
Selling a mech=half the cost to buy, minus the repair costs. Inner sphere mechs are worth half but cost half to fix.
(Salvage selling quick math: 50-145 tons of IS mechs=+1 point. +1 point per each 100 after this. This factors in repairs)
Elementals, as they cost only 1, still sell for 1 at half cost due to rounding (on purpose), and are free to repair. As long as you fight with honor, you can always buy elementals to fight in and sell them back at cost, so no one is ever hurt by taking elementals--in fact they are a great way to build up honor!
Walkthrough using the campaign demo games played to show how the battletech chaos campaign works (using my values)
First scenario: Trial of Position. 0 Points to enter scenario (a normal WP cost would be 100 for the whole group; I divide by 100, further divided by how many people since each person tracks their own points = .33 cost per 3 players, rounded to 0 each)
Modifiers: Fought with Strict Honor +1 point (+100 WP in normal Chaos Campaign, but I award this individually).
Individual Objectives: Destroy 2 units +1 point. Destroy 3 units +2 points. -1 point if destroyed.
The attacker can end the battle during any end phase.
End of first Scenario Tally:
Turkina Player: 2 (start) +1 (Fought with Honor) +1 (Defeated 2 mechs)=4 points. -1 point to fix armor on 95 ton mech=3 points.
Marauder IIC player: 2 (start) +1 (Fought with Honor), -1 point to fix armor on 85 ton mech=2 points
Kingfisher Player: 2 (start) +1 (Fought with Honor) -1 (Mech Destroyed)=2 points, -1 point to buy Elemental for next fight, Total 1 point.
Scenario 2, meeting engagement. Destroy at least half the enemy. Dont lose half your forces. No salvage.
0 Cost for Scenario, +1 Fought with Strict Honor. +1 if Scenario won, 0 for draw, -1 for loss.
Turkinia Player: 3 (start) +2 (win with Honor) -1 (armor repair on 95 ton mech)=4 points. I dont remember if the Turkinia took structure damage in any fight—if it did, -2 points to repair internal damage.
Marauder IIC player: 2 (start) +2 (won with Honor)-3 (mech destroyed and 30 ton Firefly C Purchased)=1 point
Elemental Player: 1 (start) +2 (won with Honor)+1 (selling elementals (worth 1, sell for half rounding up)=4 points, can buy up to a 40 ton mech with 4 honor points.
Clan had 136 PV vs 109 PV Enemy. Players lost 61 points (so above half of 136), counting scenario as a win.
A note on withdrawals. Under strict honor (for the +1 point) a unit never falls back. On one hand, you can ignore the forced withdrawal rules so you can keep fighting instead of being forced to retreat. On the other hand, since you cant retreat you cant save damaged mechs, and must fight until destroyed—causing you to have to replace your mechs that you could have saved if you didnt follow honor.
Skill advancement: In a normal chaos campaign, since they tend to only have a few games, you can skill up after every battle. Since I plan on playing many games in the campaign, I am using both the campaign costs to skill up/get promoted, as well as using XP to slow down progression. You get 1 XP for every scenario you play, plus 1 person gets 1 bonus XP each session for MVP/most kills/most epic moment/GM discression. For example: Session 0, Mechwarrior Inara defeated 2 opponents and earned Star Commander status in the Turkina, so got 2 xp for the Trial of Position scenario + MVP, and 1 xp for the meeting engagement. Per the rulebook, it takes 8 XP to upgrade gunnery, 4 XP for piloting; in addition to the book XP uses, I have 6 XP for +1 initiative, and 10 XP for +1 Edge. So Mechwarrior Inara can upgrade gunnery after getting 5 more XP, and spending 2 Honor Points.
Edge: After completing their first session, each player gets 1 edge point per battle. This allows any roll made by the player, or against the player, to be re rolled. This Edge is best used to force head shots and critical hits from destroying a player early on thanks to a lucky shot, so they aren't out of the game on turn 1. Edge is more powerful than the special pilot ability “Lucky” from the campaign operations book, but you can have both so long as you don't reroll a reroll.
Finally, a note about special pilot abilities. These are very powerful skills and feats that make a player mechwarrior the stuff of legend. Battletech's chaos campaign rightly cautions handing out SPA's too easily as they are not balanced by any point costs after the initial purchase (as long as you keep your pilot alive haha!).
In campaign operations, a 4/5 pilot can have up to 2 points max in SPAs. A veteran or elite (¾ or 2/3) can have up to 4 points in SPAs. A Legendary pilot (skill ½ or better) can have up to 6 points in SPAs.
So Inara, the pilot on the card of the Turkina, has a 4 cost SPA on the pilot card. All the initial pilots start at skill 3 /4 (we played Inara at 4 /4, but that 1 time mistake was for the best as the clan side outnumbered the IS side as it was), so Inara who should be 3 /4 skill at the start of the campaign can buy the 4 point abilities on her card once she saves up enough Honor points.
Next Mission example:
Breakthrough! Following the success of the lighting assault during the meeting engagement against the enemy inner sphere forces, the Clan Forces push though to press their advantage.
Track cost: -1 point each player
Option A: Crusader Aggression, -1 point. The player can choose to win initiative 1 time at any point, after seeing all initiative rolls, as they hound the fleeing Inner Sphere forces.
Option B: Warden Caution, +1 point. The player must spend 1 extra MP to enter any terrain, wary of ambush.
Option (All): Strict Honor, +1 point. The player maintains Strict Honor
Forces: The defender (GM) has only 80% of the Battle-value of the attacker.
Objectives:
Push Through (Individual): Move off the defenders map edge by turn 10: +1 point.
Hold the Field (Group): Destroy all defenders. Salvage all kills to sell for points.
Special Rules: Fire for effect (declare and fire weapons at same time), Individual Initiative, Forced Withdrawal.
Note to players: The 2 Objectives are not exclusive if you can kill all the enemies and still make it off the board, but you need to kill at least 50 tons of salvageable mechs to get a +1 score on the Hold the Field objective (and 150 tons for +2), so if you have killed less then 50 tons I recommend exiting the defenders edge on turn 10 for the Push Through objective.
Sample OPFOR: If the players bring a 3/4 Turkinia, a 3/4 Firefly C, and a 3/4 Uller, that puts them at 7k BV. If someone else pops in to play, thats probably another 2k BV. 80% of 7k BV is 2 ICE Packrats with 1 ton of infantry squads each, a LL mobile headquarters, a plainsman hovertank, a Wasp 3m, Wolfhound 1B, Crab 20, and Warhammer 6k (Olesko) which is my new fav Warhammer variant. If someone else shows up, Ill have a Cicada 2A and Dragon 5K to balance forces with.
