My proposed houserules

A hearty hello to one and all.

I will be running my first Mordheim Campaign soon, and would like the thoughts of the learned assembly on the house rules I am going to be playing with. Also, any other ideas anyone may have I would also be interested in. I'm sure the various points have be discussed to death (I stole some ideas from other places, and others I came up with are so self eveident that I cannot be the originator), but any thoughts will be taken under advisement. Without further ado:


1. Two weapon fighting gives a -1 to each strike.

2. Slings have a range of 12" and fire twice at 6"

3. Halberds now cost 20 gc (I'm back and forth on the price. 20 gc seems high. Would 15 be too low?)[/i] and have the qualities of +1 ST, Strike First (as a spear), and two handed.

4. Official Warbands only.

5. No mutation may be taken multiple times on the same model. Also, no identical multiple mutations.

6. Skaven may have a second Black Rat or Skaven Seer (maximum 5 heroes), but they still have a maximum warband size of 20.

7. Armor and shields gives an additional +1 vs missile weapons each (ie Light Armour is 6+ vs hth, 5-6 vs missile weapons, and a warrior in Heavy armour and shield is 2+ vs missile weapons, and 3+ in hth). (Armour needed a serious buff, plus it makes gunpowder more worth the price as well)

8. The Hired Swords available are the: Pit Fighter, Ogre Bodyguard, Halfling Scout, Warlock, Freelancer, Elf Ranger, Dwarf Troll Slayer, Dwarf Treasure Hunter, Ninja Gnoblar, Duelist, Bard, Bounty Hunter, Witch, Beast Hunter, Highwayman, Roadwarden, Imperial Assassin, and Tilean Marksman.

9. No Dramatis Personae allowed (because they're lame), unless they're part of the mission. (this stems from my experience with Necromunda. Are they any better balanced in Mordy?)

Dramatis Personae: I've never hired them myself, but the only one that seems unbalanced on paper is Nicodemus (1 wyrdstone is WAY too low.)

Snappy_Dresser wrote:

1. Two weapon fighting gives a -1 to each strike.

I think that with both this and your proposed armor buff, you'll see the opposite of what we get now (i.e. heavily skewed towards shields). -1 accross the board is pretty rough for only getting an extra attack. I would instead incur a -1 penalty to half of a model's attacks when fighting with two weapons, rounding down, to represent his off-hand attacks.

Snappy_Dresser wrote:

5. No mutation may be taken multiple times on the same model. Also, no identical multiple mutations.

What do you mean by the second part of this statement? As far as I can tell, "no mutation can be taken multiple times" and "no identical multiple mutations" mean the same thing.

Snappy_Dresser wrote:

6. Skaven may have a second Black Rat or Skaven Seer (maximum 5 heroes), but they still have a maximum warband size of 20.

As I understand it, the proposed rule change is the option to take one additional Black Skaven or Sorcerer, but also cutting the total number of heroes from 6 down to 5, is that correct?
If so, I guess I just don't really understand why you would want to make that change. Very few, if any, other warbands are allowed to have more than 2 "champion" type heroes or more than 1 spellcaster, and I don't really get why Skaven should be any different. Also, are you cutting back on the number of heroes permanently, or only to start out?

Snappy_Dresser wrote:

7. Armor and shields gives an additional +1 vs missile weapons each (ie Light Armour is 6+ vs hth, 5-6 vs missile weapons, and a warrior in Heavy armour and shield is 2+ vs missile weapons, and 3+ in hth). (Armour needed a serious buff, plus it makes gunpowder more worth the price as well)

I think this is fine, although as I pointed out earlier you will probably want to do something to make dual-weilding and carrying a shield roughly equal in terms of their gameplay value, so that everyone doesn't flock to armor and ditch the notion of dual-weilding altogether.

Snappy Dresser wrote:

8. The Hired Swords available are the: Pit Fighter, Ogre Bodyguard, Halfling Scout, Warlock, Freelancer, Elf Ranger, Dwarf Troll Slayer, Dwarf Treasure Hunter, Ninja Gnoblar, Duelist, Bard, Bounty Hunter, Witch, Beast Hunter, Highwayman, Roadwarden, Imperial Assassin, and Tilean Marksman.

Looks good, but why not include more? In my experience most of the hired swords are fairly well balanced.

Snappy_Dresser wrote:

9. No Dramatis Personae allowed (because they're lame), unless they're part of the mission. (this stems from my experience with Necromunda. Are they any better balanced in Mordy?)

Unfortunately we've never really used DP's too much, so I can't offer much useful advice here.

I think the other changes look pretty good, though.

Thanks for your responses! I can see some of them need clarification.

To whit:

1. After thinking about it, I'm ok with weapon and shield being much more popular than than dual wield. It was in the real world (unless you were a berzerker or renegade dark elf, that is). And 2 shots to hit at 5+ is still better than one at 4+.

5. The first part is clear. What I meant by the second is "If you have one hero with, say, Black Blood and a Claw, Then you can't have another with black blood and a claw (but you could have a Claw and a Tentacle). It just seems un-chaotic. I make an exception for one mutation heroes (two with Daemon Souls, for example) because there simply aren't enough mutations. Not a big thing, but more for flavour.

8. As for the hired swords, this was more to stop arguments occuring on the day, so I just rounded up all the official ones I could find and listed them. The Kislev Ranger is out, only because I can't find rules for her anywhere :S.

9. Jury's still out on the DPs. Unless I can think of a good reason to keep them in, though, they're probably out.

P.S.: I've been going through some of the old threads and I must compliment you all on the civil tone throughout. Very refreshing to see that not every hobbyist is socially retarded.

Snappy_Dresser wrote:

5. The first part is clear. What I meant by the second is "If you have one hero with, say, Black Blood and a Claw, Then you can't have another with black blood and a claw (but you could have a Claw and a Tentacle). It just seems un-chaotic. I make an exception for one mutation heroes (two with Daemon Souls, for example) because there simply aren't enough mutations. Not a big thing, but more for flavour.

Ah gotcha, I like that one. It's kind of bland to have mutants and possessed with all the same stuff anyways.

a small recommendation that if you have the -1 to hit for dual weapons (which is a good idea) that you allow a skill (most likely in combat) that counteracts this, we use one called ambidextrous but you could call it whatever you like

saltbush wrote:

a small recommendation that if you have the -1 to hit for dual weapons (which is a good idea) that you allow a skill (most likely in combat) that counteracts this, we use one called ambidextrous but you could call it whatever you like

Maybe call it "Gimpy D'rizzt Fanboi" and put it in the Cheese group of skills?


Just kidding, that sounds like a good idea.