Shooting To Hit Questions

Mostly looking for RAW here, but I'd like to hear alternate opinions and relevant house rules you guys might be using.


When rolling to hit for shooting...

1) Does a natural roll of 1 always fail?

2) Does a model with 1 BS, thus requiring a 6 or higher to hit, miss automatically shots to subject to at least a -1 shooting penalty (and so requiring >7 to hit)?

3) Does a natural roll of six always succeed?

4) Is a model with 6 BS, thus requiring a 1 or higher to hit, guaranteed to hit their target provided the shot has no negative modifiers?

5) Does BS above 6 compensate for negative modifiers? I.E. If a model has 7 BS does it effectively ignore up to a -1 shooting modifier, and thus still have a guaranteed chance to hit (assuming natural ones don't auto-miss).

1) Not clearly stated. We play yes (otherwise black powder misfire rules become even worse) but I reckon strict RAW probably is no.

2) Yes. Some groups (not mine) apply the WHFB second dice roll method.

3) No.

4) See 1. Probably yes for RAW provided range is sufficient.

5) See 1 & 4. Yes. I see high BS simply useful to ignore -1 modifiers. As mentioned though our group plays that a roll of 1 always misses.

I'm with Lemming on all questions. He described the exact way we play it as well.

How we play:

1. A roll of one to hit always fails.

2. We play by WFB rules. If you need a 7 to hit, you hit if you roll a 6 followed by a 4+; an 8 is a 6 followed by a 5+ and a 9 is a roll of 6 followed by another 6.

3. No

4. No. (Again house rules)

5. No, because of #1.

We also add Soft Cover/Hard Cover and weather modifiers and darkness.

Thanks for the responses, guys.

Von Kurst, what's the difference between soft and hard cover? What are your rules for weather and darkness? It seems like these new rules would make shooting slightly weaker in general.

Soft Cover--we play by the old Warhammer definitions, so soft cover is woods, hedges, wooden fencing and barricades, rubble and the like.

Hard Cover--is stone walls, buildings, ruins, boulders. A ruin may be soft cover if it is a ruined shack rather than a ruined house or temple. We try to indicate what a scenery piece is before the game.

Weather--we play by whatever weather rules the campaign setting has. I can't think of one that doesn't have a table of weather variables. If you game mostly in Mordheim we use the Raining Fische article.

Darkness--gets a bit complicated but here are the basic rules kinda mutated from Relics of the Crusades:

Quote :

Darkness. Scenarios that take place in Darkness have limited range of vision. After each warband has set up the player with lowest rated warband rolls 3D6. The resulting number is the number of inches members of both warbands can see in this game. Undead, skaven, orcs and goblins, elves and dwarfs may add 6 inches to this range.
In addition all shooting (except magic missiles) must add +1 modifier to hit due to the uncertain light. Thus if a warrior normally would have hit a target on a 3+, it will need a 4+ in the dark.
Finally any template weapons fired at visible targets may hit targets in the open but beyond the range of vision on a D6 roll of 4+.

Treacherous Ground. Any non-illuminated model wishing to run/charge must first roll a D6. Models who roll a 6 are Knocked Down. Animals and Undead do not need to test. Ghouls and Skaven may avoid becoming Knocked Down by passing an Initiative test.

Relics has models in hand-to-hand needing +1 to hit. We played that way for one campaign and changed it to missile weapons. Relics has a Dangerous Ground rule for scenarios that take place in the dark. Clear ground becomes difficult terrain. We found that way too slow.

I think RationalLemming covers the answers nicely. At one point I became convinced that I had read a roll of "1" always misses, and I went through the rulebook pretty carefully looking for it, and could not find it.