Office 2007 and later offer several ways to quickly change the font. If you specify the font as "+Heading" for your headings, the style they actually display will depend on your selection at Home tab | Change Styles | Fonts.

As far as "Style based on" is concerned, if you copy a style that is based on the Normal style into your document, the settings for Normal in the target document will determine the formatting of the copied style. (Note that if you have explicitly changed a setting, such as the font, in a style A which is based on a style B, A will no longer reflect changes made to the font in B.)

__________________
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP

Microsoft 365 apps for business
Windows 11 Professional