A deeper bench

[Chosen Warrior]

I was thinking that encouraging all teams to eventually build up 16 players might make BB seem more like a real sport: most team sports are played with plenty of substitutes. This might make developing players specifically for offense or defense more common and we'd see real "offensive lines" and "defensive lines", and some less used skills might come in to play more often on these specialized players.

The do this I'd house rule that only the 11 most valuable players, the "starting lineup", would count at full value towards the teams TV. The rest, the substitutes, would count less seeing that they have less of an impact on the game since they won't be on the pitch as much.

I'd probably allow inducing star players over the 16 player limit with this change. Maybe mercenaries as well, but at 16 players you ought to have all your positionals on the team already and plenty of linemen too so I'm not sure they'd be needed as much.

Two questions:

1) A percentage based discount (half?) or a straight discount (20k,30k?) on the benched players? I think percentage would be better, since pretty much the point why I would like this would be to see more skilled substitutes, and a straight discount would mean skills come at a full price.

2) Who would benefit from deeper benches/how would it change team balance? Bashing and fouling wouldn't give a numbers advantage for the whole match as much, just for a specific drive. But there'd be plenty of bodies available to try and foul that specific special someone (=wardancer) off the field. Gobbos and halflings would lose their "more where that came from" advantage but they're lower tier teams anyway.

[harroguk]

Gobbos and halflings would lose their "more where that came from" advantage but they're lower tier teams anyway.

Same goes for Vamps but if you are writing off teams simply because they are a lower tier then it probably doesnt matter anyway.

I thought the point of the Tier 3 teams was to give experienced coaches a way of artificially handicapping themselves (As well as purely for fun obviously) If you remove these teams, which you effectively do by the above rules, then you remove this handicapping system.

[mattgslater]

We've played around with this. One thing we've considered is to deduct a cumulative 10k from the TV add of players beyond #12 (after all, every team takes 12+ men at peak, and most teams have one or more pairs of one-way starters, like a retriever and a kicker or something). So, your TV modifier would be:
12 or fewer players: As-is.
13 players: -10k
14 players: -30k
15 players: -60k
16 players: -100k

Yes, this favors stunty teams, but not by much: after all, they need roster spots for stars. Ogres are the one exception, and an Ogre team with 6 Ogres and 10 snotlings essentially gets its bench comped in TV. I don't think this is a big deal. A Halfling team that wants one spot for Deeproot or Willow gets its last player for free, as does a team with 40k linemen and no accounting for underdogs.