D@W heroic forays and characters with BR

The destiny of my players baronage is hanging in the balance as their meager force is fighting against a more experienced group of riders with their wicked leader.

Now the question is: How does it work if they want to use an heroic foray to eliminate some opposition when the strongest characters on both sides also use their BR (calculated as exotic units) in the conflict between the armies?

 Normally the leader of the other side could interfere when they engage a part of the enemy army right? But what if the leader is worth BR as well?

I am not an Autarch, but as I recall the rules, the opposing leader is only part of the foray if they also stake a heroic foray on the same battle turn.

Since the Judge picks units up to the BR staked, if you so desired, you could simply have the enemy leader answer their challenge, if the BR was appropriate. Alternately, you could have the enemy leader also foray, and use the rules for a double opposing foray (summary: everyone’s in trouble when that happens).

Hhm. Pg 71 does say that during a foray "The Judge should select foes for the foray from among the
units and heroes of the opposing army."

which implies you can drag out an enemy hero based on his or her BR alongside an enemy unit (or not) without that enemy hero doing it's own counter-foray, though it kinda feels like the two situations should be mutually exclusive - either the PCs foray against regular units or the opposing heros foray against each other. (and a hero with over 3 BR can't be staked in this manner anyway)

A hero isn't necessarily staking itself, so it's BR doesn't count for the foray calculation. You could just ignore hero BR when resolving the composition of the foray, and the enemy leader can join or not as per the usual rules.

 

Theoretically, though, a pure hero vs hero foray is a foray where 0 BR was staked on either side, which gets to Aryxymaraki's comment about it ending up a personal challenge.

 

What's the BRs of everyone involved? Is the leader an outlier?

 

personal advice: alwais use the battle rules, they feel so much more like a battle betwen armies, and leave good room for heroic moments.

well that goes without saying :P

True but the army of my players consisted of:

28 Light Infantry
15 Bowmen
17 Militia
8 Crossbowmen
15 heavy cavalry
2 medium catapult 1
1 heavy catapult 1
 

 plus various allies so using the battle rules was not an option for me. It was already a stretch using the BR calculations...

This was the BR of the people involved:
NPCs:
AP 3.5 BR
Cleric 3 BR
 
Players:
Spellsword 2.5 BR
Fighter Henchmen 2 BR
Vaultguard Henchmen 0.5 BR
 
 
There were of course much more PCs and Henchmen involved but these were the only ones with usable BR. In the end I would have ignored the BR of the leaders and had the bad guys enter the foray alongside their troops but things turned out differently on the table anyway.
 
They decided to retreat as they had no ground troops left besides the characters mentioned above and 3 hippogryphs while the enemy still had some cavlary. Only one hippogryph was lost in the retreat and they made it back into their little keep alive before sneaking out under various invisibility spells and decimating the remaining enemies with fireballs and paralysis wands.
 
I am quite glad of this outcome though, as this certainly was an important milestone for the remaining two groups in my campaign. The army of Heinrich was a major source of grievance and pain in the last year and this victory made sure that things in the barony wont take an even worse turn, as hilarious as it might haven been for me...
 
On the other hand: The main bad guy escaped thanks to a great saving throw and his invisiblity ring, so I am sure my players can enjoy some more of his shenanigans in the future. :D 

If only there had been another potential ally in the area with, say, another 100 troops.... ;-)

Yea, preferably one who had not accepted Heinrich as their liege lord before... :p