House Rules for parry

Hey all, just to let you guys know, me and my gaming group are re-typing out the mordheim rulebook minus the fluff, adding warbands, making changes according to erata and house rules etc.

Just a checking of opinions, one semi-major thing we're working on is parry rules (some people find it weird WS2 guys can parry a WS6 guy's attack, and not everyone fully understood the old 40k rules for parrying straight away). Thus far, we have it as swords (or anything with parry) granting either +1 to armour save or a 6+ ward save (with or without the shield, uncertain about that too...) and the buckler either granting a re-roll to the save (for the ward save if it's what's used) or adding plus +1 to it.

[This is our group's planned alternative to the +1 for hand weapon and shield, as our group was sort of split on the concept.]

Just curious as to gameplay wise what would most likely be best according to you guys?

EDIT: Forgot to mention in the case of parry being a ward save a model still wouldn't be able to "parry" an enemy striking with double the parry-er's strength.

We play with a separate parry roll that takes place after the attacker hits. Both the attacker and defender roll a d6 and add their WS. If the defender's score is higher than the attackers, the attack is parried. It might be a bit drastic, but we haven't had problems with it. Fights with swords just tend to take awhile.

When we remember it we just use the normal parry rules - I've never seen it as a problem to be honest!

WarbossKurgan wrote:

When we remember it we just use the normal parry rules - I've never seen it as a problem to be honest!

Ditto.

I'm with Kurgan and Cianty - never had a problem with the way the rule works to begin with.

The same for me, the parry rule seems fair to us

Never had any in-game issues with parry either, but it just doesn't seem very realistic (i know, it's mordheim!! but still..) that models with high ws (IE they hit on 3+) is easier to parry than models with low ws (IE hits on 6s).
We changed parry to make it as following:
"to hit roll + ws" vs. "parry roll + ws" = the higher roll either hits or parries, attacker wins ties ofc.

that worked out pretty good for us

MLP: that sounds good, I'm nicking it.

That bit seems okay Pwny, it's all the armour/ward saves that seem over complex (and still nothing to do with how good you are at swordsmanship!) I can understand replacing a single dice roll with a dice-off as that isn't much more complex and (as you say) more realistic.

I don't think we'll use it but that's why it's called a house rule!

The WS + Parry roll ruling is what the old 40k rules for parry were that I mentioned earlier, some of the group I play with just struggle to pick it up.

That's why we figured something like "6+ Ward save" or "1+ armour save" over "Get the higest to-hit roll add the hitters WS to it and have the defender roll a D6 and add his WS to it"...



(Off-topic, anyone know of a free-to-get adobe document creator program?)

Try typing "pdf995" into google.
That should lead you to a free pdf creator.

Cheers!!!

you can also download every adobe program for a free month's trial version, in which you can create everything you want... if you're creating your whole book, I suggest Indesign to collect all pages, and edit them to the right size etc. and than exporting it as a PDF It does take some getting used to and you will not need all the functions by far, but it is a great program once used to it...
If you have problems with it, there are plenty of tutorials online... or shoot me a question

I'm making my collection of Mordheim files in that very same program.

So:
a) "pdf995"
OR
b) "indesign"

Is either superior to the other? Adware, spyware, system requirements?

(And yes, this is a tad off-topic, sue me).

www.primopdf.com/ is okay. It's a print-driver, so when it's installed you click print, then select Primo as your printer.
I used it for ages before I bought the full version of Acrobat.

that might be a good one too yeah, probably easier to learn, as I assume you are allready using other text editors?

There's a bunch of such programs out there, make your pick and it should be ok...

Back on topic...

Fallen wrote:

The WS + Parry roll ruling is what the old 40k rules for parry were that I mentioned earlier, some of the group I play with just struggle to pick it up.

That's not how 40K did it actually! The 2nd ed rules (and Necromunda) had "Weapon Skill + 1D6 for each Attack, choosing the highest D6 result" for the resolution of the combat, and a simple "D6 roll higher than you opponents highest dice" for parry. I'll give an example so everyone knows what we are talking about:

Marine Hero: WS5 A3
Ork Boss: WS4 A3

Marine rolls 3,2,4
Ork rolls 1,2,6

The Ork has a sword and elects to parry the Marine's 4. The Ork rolls a 6 and successfully parries so the 4 is no longer counted.

This means the Ork scores 10 (WS4 + 6) and the Marine scores 8 (WS5 + 3). The Ork wins the combat by 2 so he causes 2 hits on the Marine, rolls to wound and armour saves follow as normal.

Fallen wrote:

That's why we figured something like "6+ Ward save" or "1+ armour save" over "Get the higest to-hit roll add the hitters WS to it and have the defender roll a D6 and add his WS to it"...

I still don't see how the ward/armour save is an improvement, since you said you didn't like the fact the normal Mordheim parry rules ignores the difference in WS.


Edited!

Polar Star wrote:

We play with a separate parry roll that takes place after the attacker hits. Both the attacker and defender roll a d6 and add their WS. If the defender's score is higher than the attackers, the attack is parried. It might be a bit drastic, but we haven't had problems with it. Fights with swords just tend to take awhile.

...
That's f*****g awesome! I am SO using this in my house rules!

Why not just apply the Add WS to the parry normal parry roll:
- I.e Champion w. WS4 rolls to hit, scores 4. Warrior w. WS3 parries and roles a 6 so
Champions score is 8, while Warriors score is 9. So the warrior managed to parry - this I guess is exactly what you meant, though I can't see why you shouldn't play it out at the same time as the normal parry, that is, after the first hit?

Still I do not find the parry rule that bad - It's nice with something evening out the WS difference a bit.
The Above rule would make high WS quite superior, and would probably lead to less Henchmen with sword and buckler, and more with club and knife. Why? Well for example if a WS4 scores a 5, there is no way for a WS3 to parry - so your chances to parry is quite knocked down, and I've found that you quite seldom get to parry anyways...
- Popmouth

Fallen wrote:

Wait... is a roll to wound required here?

Ooops! Yes, I missed that step out - sorry!

It should say "The Ork wins the combat by 2 so he causes 2 hits on the Marine"

Popmouth wrote:

Still I do not find the parry rule that bad - It's nice with something evening out the WS difference a bit.
The Above rule would make high WS quite superior, and would probably lead to less Henchmen with sword and buckler, and more with club and knife.

Exactly what we're avoiding sort of... the mechanics of to hit and to wound for warhammer games are already somewhat balanced enough. Making parrying even easier for higher WS models is just changing who benefits more from the rules for parry, kind of one extreme to the other.
And everyone having clubs and daggers on every single henchman in every single warband kinda takes away the flavour aspect of the game...

It's like eating mashed peas, every meal, every day for a whole year...

well, i generally give my youngbloods swords coz then they have an option to parry those (ws 3 vs ws 2) 3's might give them that little bit to survive

Replacing the parry role with an armor save is easy, but it doesn't make sense. The only think I can think of is for parry to mean that the parrying warrior makes an attack role, if he hits, then the hit against him is parried. This would make successful parries more frequent.

We are trying out a new parry rule as we also see a problem where a lesseer skilled warrior can hold off a swordsman all day, while it can sometimes be nearly impossible for a competent WS 5 warrior to block an attack from a WS 2 warrior. We just have the person trying to parry, roll higher than the attacker's WS. The only caveat we have is that a roll 'to hit' of a 6 cannot be parried.

Our league is starting up Tuesdays, so I will let you all know how this goes.

Chup