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 The Hammer of Sigmar

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Aipha
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PostSubject: The Hammer of Sigmar   The Hammer of Sigmar Icon_minitimeFri 14 Feb 2014 - 14:35

I played against my good friend and roomie last night, where I played the Protectorate of Sigmar against his Undead warband with a pretty badass Vampire (78 experience). My Warrior Priest naturally charged him to beat the (un)living crap out of him. He was wielding a Sigmarite Warhammer and a Dagger, used his Blessed Sermon (+1A) and cast his "The Hammer of Sigmar" succesfully. I wound the Vampire twice, he has a 6+ save against my Dagger, which he fails, so naturally I cause 4 Injury rolls. He takes 4 Step Asides and makes two of them, resulting in 1 roll on the Injury chart - I roll a 5 and he dies.

Naturally my friend is a bit upset and complains about the OP-ness of the prayer. I tell him that the wise people at the boringmordheimforum says, that this is how the prayer goes, +2 Strength to him and all hits causes 2 wounds. Anyway, that's not enough to convince him, so I bring him all the arguments, etc. - still not enough.

Well, I thought, I always make a lot of calculations to see what is in order, so why not do it with this? I pick up a sample - Fury of the Wild, Sword of Rezhebel and Clubba, to compare it with something. These are most alike - Fury of the Wild buffs the caster, where Sword of Rezhebel and Clubba could be used for the other interpretation, that the Hammer is a weapon imbued by Sigmar.

I made the calculations, and here are my results:

The Hammer of Sigmar spell has twice the chance of all the rest of the spells to take an enemy OOA at max stats. Where Clubba, Fury of the Wild & Sword of Rezhebel all have a 333% chance of taking someone OOA (with WS7 and T5 + Resilient), The Hammer doubles this - 666% (notice THAT number)

I'm usually looking at potential Heroes, to see who is best in the end, and no doubt this is a winner. But is it too much? I definitely think so.

We have to go down to 1/2 attacks to get the Hammer just a slighty bit worse, and even then, it still excels against high Toughness enemies (no wonder). This leads me to the unexpected conclusion, that there is something wrong with the interpretation of the spell.

So I decided to take a look at it:

Quote :
The wielder gains +2 Strength in hand-to-hand combat and all hits he inflicts cause double damage (eg, 2 wounds instead of 1). The Priest must test each shooting phase he wants to use the Hammer.

Notice the "wielder"? What is he wielding? Right, the Hammer of Sigmar. The imbued weapon. Hopefully this is enough to convince some, that the current interpretation is incorrect.

Use this balance information if you want, we're changing it to imbue a weapon with the stats listed in the description of the prayer and replace the current bonuses of the weapon. Probably just make it apply to Hammers, doesn't matter, what matters is, that this is not usable with big two-handers at least!
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davinewrath
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PostSubject: Re: The Hammer of Sigmar   The Hammer of Sigmar Icon_minitimeFri 14 Feb 2014 - 15:17

I'd always thought of it as the priest blessing his hammer, rather than it applying to all/other weapons he carries. If your Sigmarite priest isn't carrying a hammer, you're doing it wrong!
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Shadowphx
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PostSubject: Re: The Hammer of Sigmar   The Hammer of Sigmar Icon_minitimeFri 14 Feb 2014 - 19:38

As I read the Spell and the Bonus of the Sigmarite Hammer. I’d say the Kill is good. Poor Vampire. He met up with the wrong priest. It’s a good combination of a randomly roll spell, with a successfully rolled prayer, and a weapon bonus against Undead. I’d say your Priest is a Force of Good to be reckoned with. I’m sure the Vampire player wasn’t calling foul when he walking through warriors like tissue paper. If you really wanted to increase the viciousness, give him 2 Sigmarite Hammers.
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Aipha
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PostSubject: Re: The Hammer of Sigmar   The Hammer of Sigmar Icon_minitimeFri 14 Feb 2014 - 19:40

I'm refering to this thread, which seems to be the newest: The Hammer of Sigmar spell

But ofc. he is! Wink
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catachanfrog
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PostSubject: Re: The Hammer of Sigmar   The Hammer of Sigmar Icon_minitimeFri 14 Feb 2014 - 23:22

I can't see problem at all. Your friend is just upset at loosing his most (I guess) powerfull model. I don't know exact battlefield situation, but when priest with "hammer of Sigmar" is nearby, there should be at least one model to intercept the charge (if someone is really scared about being "hammered"). Making calcultions is pointless I think, even on paper HoS looks more powerfull when compared to clubba or sword of R (besides - how many wounds target has and how much strenght has an attacker? why counting WS?). It was always like this and yes, people (will) complain about it as much as other complain about art of silent death, bull rush or some spells. You finall interpretation of this prayer is based on badly (common in Mordheim) used word - there's really, nothing about boosting weapons like, for example in DE spell "Flamesword":
Flamesword wrote:
The Sorceress may choose the hand-to-hand combat weapon of a member of her warband within 6" to be engulfed in flames. A weapon with these flames acts as a normal weapon of its type, but also adds a +2 bonus to the users Strength. Hits inflicted from the weapon ignore armour saves. Lasts until the Sorceress’ next shooting phase.
And even if you want to use your interpretation - why great wepons cannot benefit from HoS?
Strange - vampire with 78xp and without "lightning reflexes"? scratch
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Aipha
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PostSubject: Re: The Hammer of Sigmar   The Hammer of Sigmar Icon_minitimeSat 15 Feb 2014 - 1:01

Actually he only walked through 1 model - a villager I was protecting! The other villager survived his two Dire Wolves and a main hand attack from the Vampire! So that villager was occupying all three, which meant no intercept and no Lightning Reflexes (should he have had that). Anyway, with our change it is still powerful (1.67% better to be excact), so I don't mind. But yeah, a random prayer with our rules, so no problem there. Soulfire is prolly better with the new rules though.
But you're right, he's usually not pissed when his Vampire is stomping all my units. That warband has molested me as well because of the Vampire (and a Necromancer who's dead now).
I just find it odd that this prayer is twice as good even when it's on a melee Hero. Rest are balanced just fine with each other and that leads me to the misinterpretation conclusion.


Last edited by Aipha on Sat 15 Feb 2014 - 12:24; edited 1 time in total
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Lord 0
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PostSubject: Re: The Hammer of Sigmar   The Hammer of Sigmar Icon_minitimeSat 15 Feb 2014 - 9:23

Could I trouble you to post the formula you used to arrive at these numbers? It is 0300 for me, so I could well be overlooking something, but the numbers don't seem to reflect my experience with this spell.

The wording is a little confusing, but be aware that the spell doesn't auto-wound - you still have to roll to wound with each hit. Also, does your formula against the max level guy assume any defenses? Step aside? Parry? etc?

To me, Hammer of Sigmar seemed a high-risk, high-reward kind of spell when compared to the other close-combat spells. I don't remember the Wild one off the top of my head, but the Sword and the Clubba both give you more chances to get past defenses whereas the Hammer will boost any damage that *does* get through the defenses.

Also, the Hammer has the hardest retest to keep it going, needing a casting roll - one of the harder rolls for holy casters to boost. The Sword only needs a Ld check (gets easier as the caster levels for free) and the Clubba lasts until the caster loses a wound, so if they have 0 wounds the Clubba is with them until the end of the battle.

As far as flavour goes, we made the same mistake too, on first reading and thought the spell summoned a literal hammer or blessed a hammer. Now we just assume that the spell makes the the *caster* the metaphorical 'Hammer of Sigmar' and it works with any weapon he is holding. That being said, also for flavour reasons, he is almost invariably wielding a hammer anyway.

Just remembered, only considering the end-game is a little unbalancing also. Hammer starts off relatively poo and gets *better* compared to the other spells. +1 attack is very valuable to a starting warrior with only 1 attack, less so to a warrior with 4 attacks. Having only 1 attack early game can be annoyingly shut down by, eg. a lucky charm, parry, step aside, and so forth. Two attacks are harder to neutralise so easily.
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Aipha
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PostSubject: Re: The Hammer of Sigmar   The Hammer of Sigmar Icon_minitimeSat 15 Feb 2014 - 12:39

Lord 0 wrote:
Could I trouble you to post the formula you used to arrive at these numbers? It is 0300 for me, so I could well be overlooking something, but the numbers don't seem to reflect my experience with this spell.

Sure, it's D6 numbers: ((Chance to hit*Chance to wound*Chance of enemy failing armour save*Chance of taking enemy OOA)/1296)*Number of attacks)
It's the Mathhammer method.

I just noted that the excact chance to take OOA was miscalculated, but the difference between the Hammer and the other is still the same (divided by 216 instead of 1296).

Lord 0 wrote:
The wording is a little confusing, but be aware that the spell doesn't auto-wound - you still have to roll to wound with each hit. Also, does your formula against the max level guy assume any defenses? Step aside? Parry? etc?

I could take Step Asides and Parry into account, but the result wouldn't change, since I'm comparing against the same opponent with the different spells.

Lord 0 wrote:
To me, Hammer of Sigmar seemed a high-risk, high-reward kind of spell when compared to the other close-combat spells. I don't remember the Wild one off the top of my head, but the Sword and the Clubba both give you more chances to get past defenses whereas the Hammer will boost any damage that *does* get through the defenses.

Also, the Hammer has the hardest retest to keep it going, needing a casting roll - one of the harder rolls for holy casters to boost. The Sword only needs a Ld check (gets easier as the caster levels for free) and the Clubba lasts until the caster loses a wound, so if they have 0 wounds the Clubba is with them until the end of the battle.

You're right, it's harder to maintain, but not that much harder (with a Holy Tome almost just easy). Also, you only have to maintain it 'when you're using it' according to the prayer description. I don't agree with the Clubba thing, but I see where you're coming from Wink

Hammer with 7+ casting is 58,34%, 6+ is 72,23% chance to maintain.
Anyone with Ld8 maintaining has the 72,23% chance as well, but 83,34% with Ld9 (even more with Ld10 - Dwarf Slayer!), but it's still not that much better, since you don't have to maintain it each round, only when needed.

Lord 0 wrote:
Just remembered, only considering the end-game is a little unbalancing also. Hammer starts off relatively poo and gets *better* compared to the other spells. +1 attack is very valuable to a starting warrior with only 1 attack, less so to a warrior with 4 attacks. Having only 1 attack early game can be annoyingly shut down by, eg. a lucky charm, parry, step aside, and so forth. Two attacks are harder to neutralise so easily.

I agree, which is why I made the calculations at 1, 2 & 3 attacks as well, and as I said, the others were better vs. low Toughness opponents at 1 & 2 attacks, but after that it scaled a lot more (which is no wonder). But again, not that big a difference since you cause 2 wounds instead of 1. But charging with more than just the Priest should remove some parries/charms as well.

Anyway, the reason for the focus on the endgame is, that it is so much better there, where the difference in the beginning is not that big. My Warrior Priest only had 1 Attack + Blessed Sermon + offhand Dagger when he took the Vampire down. T5, Resilient, 2 Wounds and Step Aside along with a re-roll parry and Gromril Armour. And he even made the two Step Asides. Mostly luck, which is the power of the dice, but also a very powerful spell and S7 +1 to Wound rolls on 2 attacks and S6 +1 AS on the offhand. The big factor was, that it was buffing him and thus his offhand as well, which was mostly what the complain was about.

Again, changing it ain't that big a nerf tbh.! It's still friggin powerful.
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PostSubject: Re: The Hammer of Sigmar   The Hammer of Sigmar Icon_minitime

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