An actual design thread :O
So basically there is, I think, a group of what could be termed "warband games", most prominent among which is Mount & Blade but also Heroes of Might & Magic is arguably similar, as is Flash's bounty, Caravaneer, etc. What these games all share is a single core character who collects a group of minions around them - the minions are not fellow heroes, so it's not an adventuring party, and a lot of the game is about managing your party through a mix of combat & quests (and in some cases other things like trading).
Now, one of the common problems in this genre, I think, is what you do with heroes. HOMM and Flash's bounty both have heroes as essentially immortal, or tied to their army - they don't have upkeep or desertion or anything, so that's one way of doing it. Having a killable hero is potentially more fun and gives you an obvious endgame condition, but it's hard to balance that for risk - it can seem very random to just get a game over when a really powerful enemy decides to make a bee-line for your leader and disembowels them without so much as a by your leave. On the other hand, "grievous injury chart" type things can get really dull as heroes keep getting knocked back stat-wise when you want to build them up.
What do you all think the best solutions are to this one? Killable heroes, woundable heroes, or immortal heroes?