New Axe Rules

Since nobody ever seems to take axes, I thought I'd have a go at making revised rules for these oft-neglected weapons. While "fixing" armour is the general way to make axes a viable option (and is the only thing we've done to add axes to the streets of the City of the Damned), some people like having armour be rare and expensive - this is for those people.

Axe - Common - 7gc

Chop!: Axes are far from subtle weapons and the sheer force behind their heavy blades is enough to punch through armour and splinter bone. Because of this, axes have the armour piercing special rule. In addition, a warrior wounded by an axe suffers a +1 modifier on the injury table. If the injury roll for a wound from an axe is a 7 (a natural 6 with the +1 modifier), the warrior is taken out of action as normal, but the axe has become embedded in the seemingly-lifeless body! The warrior may not leave his current location without passing a strength test in lieu of making his normal attacks in the close combat phase; if he moves, the axe is permanently lost.

While the "stuck axe" is very flavorful, I think it's a little more complicated than most will most want to use. I'm interested to see what Asps's take on this is - it might just be the middle ground rule for Axes he was looking for.

Since we've already found a balance for Axes using our Critical Hit Effects, I don't see a need to playtest this ourselves, but am still interested so see what others think.

Thanks for your response, Wyldhunt. Like you, I actually have no intention of ever using these rules - I just couldn't bring myself to spend one more minute on the mind-numbing work I was doing and decided to take a "creative break".

It is a bit complicated now that I go over it again. It could be simplified by saying the axe is lost for the rest of the game.

Or it is lost for the rest of the game and recovered on a 4+ in the post-battle sequence (with a +1 if the warrior's warband won the game).

Or it is lost forever and the cost is reduced appropriately.

All of these rules make it a REALLY bad choice for warriors with a high number of attacks...

Just my random musings.

what about a simple +1S? or +1S and -1I... simple stat modifiers..

don't mind me or take me serious.. I don't know much about game mechanics, but that seamed kind of complicated for me, since I'm not familiar with the general rules yet

But I'm just saying, that for me.. a Noob Player.. simple stat modifiers make things a lot easier.. maybe in terms of game balance this is not a good idea.. but you experienced folks know more about balance than me.

My two cents.

Actually, our lot tend to carry axes more regularly than maces/hammers/etc., with no changes to any of those weapons. This habit was set even before we made shields +2 in hand to hand. I suspect it is because we tend to forget the bludgeoning benefit to hammers etc., but always seem to remember the -1 to armor saves that axes give (though as to why we always seem to remember one special rule but not the other, I couldn't say).

Pirexian wrote:

what about a simple +1S? or +1S and -1I... simple stat modifiers..

don't mind me or take me serious.. I don't know much about game mechanics, but that seamed kind of complicated for me, since I'm not familiar with the general rules yet

But I'm just saying, that for me.. a Noob Player.. simple stat modifiers make things a lot easier.. maybe in terms of game balance this is not a good idea.. but you experienced folks know more about balance than me.

My two cents.

My reasoning for not going with straight-up stat modifiers is that I like to keep things (fairly) consistent with Warhammer (if I don't, I get confused) and because the halberd already gives +1 S - making a 5gc weapon do the same thing but in one hand (even with -1 I) would make the Halberd even less viable an option.

That's why I tend to have my home-made rules affect the sections that are decidedly "Mordheimy".

I do admit that the axe getting stuck is a bit complicated, but reflects a battlefield reality.

+1 to INJ makes it too good

in coreheim, they give +1 S vs enemies knocked down - useful on heroes for xp kill stealing

I'd rather pump up the armour, leaving the -1 to armour save, thus making an axe usefull!