Beastmen with Mark of Onogal

So... In my group we have another powergamer besides me. He's recently played up a Beastmen warband with the Mark of Onogal from the Bordertown Burning supplement. However, this warband has perhaps reached some place that's too high for others to climb. His Centigor has the Mark of Onogal, meaning that with the Blessing 'Bloated Foulness' (giving +1W and +1T by sacrificing 1 Movement), his Centigor has a Toughness of 7. While this is possibily to achieve with a Possessed as well, using Eye of God (giving +1 to a stat, or +1 to all stats), his Centigor will soon receive that spell as well, when his Shaman rolls it, meaning that it will be at Toughness 8.

While I thought this out and presented it to him, I of course bear a bit of the fault for this to happen, but one of our players have suggested some kind of change to the rules, that would disallow for this to happen.

As there must certainly be someone out there, who has experienced something alike, I would love to hear how we could deal with this. Removing marks from all non-Marauder warbands would of course be a way to go, but we actually quite much enjoy having these options, as it allows for more diverse and interesting warbands.

Perhaps we should simply bring the Hammer of Sigmar back to the original RAW interpretation...

Well, there is a reason for why they put racial maxima into the book Do these stat-enhancing blessings and spells explicitely say that with their help stats can be improved ABOVE the racial max anyway?
An easy way could be to just lower the costs for stuff like Black Lotus and superior blackpowder.

Grimscull wrote:

Well, there is a reason for why they put racial maxima into the book Do these stat-enhancing blessings and spells explicitely say that with their help stats can be improved ABOVE the racial max anyway?
An easy way could be to just lower the costs for stuff like Black Lotus and superior blackpowder.

Aye. And the T4/T5 for most with T6 for really tough things like Possessed and Vampires make sense, but Carnival of Chaos, where this blessing is from, is perhaps too much, especially when money isn't an issue. The problem is even worse, when you consider that the Mark of Onogal makes the marked one immune to poison, which of course makes sense fluffwise. Blessed Water would be a fine thing to use, but Superior Blackpowder wouldn't even be able to make things crit.

Here's the relevant blessing:

Carnival of Chaos, Blessings of Nurgle wrote:

Bloated Foulness: The Tainted One is a huge, disgusting mass of diseased, flabby folds. It gains +1 Wound and +1 Toughness but has its Movement reduced by -1. Cost: 40 Gold Crowns.

It makes sense on a M4 creature, but a Centigor with M8 doesn't really lose that much, going down to M7, or even M6, should one change the phrasing to 1/4 of its movement.

I have a beastmen warband in my last campaign dedicated to nurgle with a team rating of around 900,
the way i was taught some humility is by blessed weapons on the exploration table and a priestess of shallya with her nasty nasty spell of making all nurgle near her lose wounds, this was exasperated by that player putting her on a magic carpet.

The group I play in are almost all power gamers. The standard monster-killer build is S4, Mighty Blow, Strong Man, Web of Steel. This is the bare bones build that gives you S7 so it only needs to be enhanced by a little strength and you will be wounding on fours, although all you really need is to be able to crit.

The package is then also enhanced with whatever is racially available, e.g. Art of Silent Death, Bull Rush, etc.

This build means that, with a DH Hammer, 1/3 of all your crits result in OOA *regardless of how many wounds* the warrior has.

For ranged you have repeater crossbows with black lotus, throwing knives with black lotus, heck, even (in a pinch) slings at short range with black lotus. Blowpipes for the budget concious. In our group QuickShot has been house-ruled to give +1 shot if you don't move (rather than shooting twice) and may be used with any non-reload weapon.

Then, on top of all of that, you have multi-player scenarios. An alliance can bring down warbands much more powerful than any of the individual warbands. Even if it is only a pact of convenience with terms like "While the bloated centigor of doom is on the table, we all only attack the Onagal warband". There are any number of things that influence scenario rolls and if any one of the alliance gets to pick the scenario then there are one or two that are perfect for shafting someone you intend on ganging up on.

Aipha wrote:

So... In my group we have another powergamer besides me. He's recently played up a Beastmen warband with the Mark of Onogal from the Bordertown Burning supplement. However, this warband has perhaps reached some place that's too high for others to climb. His Centigor has the Mark of Onogal, meaning that with the Blessing 'Bloated Foulness' (giving +1W and +1T by sacrificing 1 Movement), his Centigor has a Toughness of 7. While this is possibily to achieve with a Possessed as well, using Eye of God (giving +1 to a stat, or +1 to all stats), his Centigor will soon receive that spell as well, when his Shaman rolls it, meaning that it will be at Toughness 8.

While I thought this out and presented it to him, I of course bear a bit of the fault for this to happen, but one of our players have suggested some kind of change to the rules, that would disallow for this to happen.

As there must certainly be someone out there, who has experienced something alike, I would love to hear how we could deal with this. Removing marks from all non-Marauder warbands would of course be a way to go, but we actually quite much enjoy having these options, as it allows for more diverse and interesting warbands.

Perhaps we should simply bring the Hammer of Sigmar back to the original RAW interpretation...

We had a player going down this route with his Centigor. He got to T6 with Bloated Foulness and Resilient on top of that.
https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=sites&srcid=ZGVmYXVsdGRvbWFpbnxvdXJob3VzZXJ1bGVzfGd4OjFmNjA5NzljMjRjOWI3YmQ

That Centigor was feared quite a bit but we killed him off eventually. (I don't remember how.) The problem with that warband was that he was choosing Bloated Foulness for ALL of his heroes (not just his Centigor) so he had two T5 heroes with Bloated Foulness and another T6 Bestigor with Bloated Foulness even without the Centigor.
https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=sites&srcid=ZGVmYXVsdGRvbWFpbnxvdXJob3VzZXJ1bGVzfGd4OjE3MTVkZjA5NTc5ZmI5MzE

What was your change to the Hammer of Sigmar?

Phantasmal_fiend wrote:

I have a beastmen warband in my last campaign dedicated to nurgle with a team rating of around 900,
the way i was taught some humility is by blessed weapons on the exploration table and a priestess of shallya with her nasty nasty spell of making all nurgle near her lose wounds, this was exasperated by that player putting her on a magic carpet.

+1

If you are playing with Corrupted Characters then you should also be playing with Priests of the Empire. They were made to be companion articles. Priests of the Empire gives access the Priestess of Shallaya. I was struggling with money in that old campaign (I was at the bottom of the warbands and was losing a lot of battles) but I had my eyes on recruiting a priestess in the hope of getting the Purify prayer.

Lord 0 wrote:

The group I play in are almost all power gamers. The standard monster-killer build is S4, Mighty Blow, Strong Man, Web of Steel. This is the bare bones build that gives you S7 so it only needs to be enhanced by a little strength and you will be wounding on fours, although all you really need is to be able to crit.

The package is then also enhanced with whatever is racially available, e.g. Art of Silent Death, Bull Rush, etc.

This build means that, with a DH Hammer, 1/3 of all your crits result in OOA *regardless of how many wounds* the warrior has.

For ranged you  have repeater crossbows with black lotus, throwing knives with black lotus, heck, even (in a pinch) slings at short range with black lotus. Blowpipes for the budget concious. In our group QuickShot has been house-ruled to give +1 shot if you don't move (rather than shooting twice) and may be used with any non-reload weapon.

Then, on top of all of that, you have multi-player scenarios. An alliance can bring down warbands much more powerful than any of the individual warbands. Even if it is only a pact of convenience with terms like "While the bloated centigor of doom is on the table, we all only attack the Onagal warband". There are any number of things that influence scenario rolls and if any one of the alliance gets to pick the scenario then there are one or two that are perfect for shafting someone you intend on ganging up on.

I agree regarding the melee specialist build. That was the route that I tried to take in the campaign for one or two warriors. It was a bit tricky since I was Gunnery School of Nuln but I needed something to try to go up against multiple warriors with Bloated Foulness in the warband.


(Edited to add links to warband rosters.)

Lord 0 wrote:

The group I play in are almost all power gamers. The standard monster-killer build is S4, Mighty Blow, Strong Man, Web of Steel. This is the bare bones build that gives you S7 so it only needs to be enhanced by a little strength and you will be wounding on fours, although all you really need is to be able to crit.

While this of course is a route we go as well, this simply won't cut it the moment he gets the Eye of Gods, giving him T8 with Resilient. Bye bye crits. On top of that he has a Sea Dragon Cloak (not Gromril Armour yet) and Heavy Armour.

Lord 0 wrote:

The package is then also enhanced with whatever is racially available, e.g. Art of Silent Death, Bull Rush, etc.

This build means that, with a DH Hammer, 1/3 of all your crits result in OOA *regardless of how many wounds* the warrior has.

Again, no crits, so no gain here.

Lord 0 wrote:

For ranged you  have repeater crossbows with black lotus, throwing knives with black lotus, heck, even (in a pinch) slings at short range with black lotus. Blowpipes for the budget concious. In our group QuickShot has been house-ruled to give +1 shot if you don't move (rather than shooting twice) and may be used with any non-reload weapon.

This is of course something that should be considered immediately, however, note what I wrote earlier:

Aipha wrote:

The problem is even worse, when you consider that the Mark of Onogal makes the marked one immune to poison, which of course makes sense fluffwise.

So Black Lotus is worth nothing against him. Also we allow Venom Rings, so it would be an easily solvable problem for him anyway.

Lord 0 wrote:

Then, on top of all of that, you have multi-player scenarios. An alliance can bring down warbands much more powerful than any of the individual warbands. Even if it is only a pact of convenience with terms like "While the bloated centigor of doom is on the table, we all only attack the Onagal warband". There are any number of things that influence scenario rolls and if any one of the alliance gets to pick the scenario then there are one or two that are perfect for shafting someone you intend on ganging up on.

While this is something we have considered and talked about as well, we're usually not a group to go all on one. Also, I remember a game where even my Centigor without the Mark of Onogal did something where he ran from one table edge to the other, slaughtering one warband at a time. But we're working on it!

RationalLemming wrote:

We had a player going down this route with his Centigor. He got to T6 with Bloated Foulness and Resilient on top of that.
https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=sites&srcid=ZGVmYXVsdGRvbWFpbnxvdXJob3VzZXJ1bGVzfGd4OjFmNjA5NzljMjRjOWI3YmQ

That Centigor was feared quite a bit but we killed him off eventually. (I don't remember how.) The problem with that warband was that he was choosing Bloated Foulness for ALL of his heroes (not just his Centigor) so he had two T5 heroes with Bloated Foulness and another T6 Bestigor with Bloated Foulness even without the Centigor.
https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=sites&srcid=ZGVmYXVsdGRvbWFpbnxvdXJob3VzZXJ1bGVzfGd4OjE3MTVkZjA5NTc5ZmI5MzE

Hrmm... Bloated Foulness for all Heroes - how? Only warriors with the Mark of Onogal/Nurgle can purchase it.

RationalLemming wrote:

What was your change to the Hammer of Sigmar?

Instead of it being a buff, giving all attacks +2S, causing 2 Wounds and still being able to crit, we made it a weapon enchantment, replacing all existing characteristics. When he gets Daemon Soul it won't matter much though.

I'll have to check out the Priest of Shallaya it seems. We'll have to approve it first; shouldn't be a problem with a monster like that running around though.

Aipha wrote:

Hrmm... Bloated Foulness for all Heroes - how? Only warriors with the Mark of Onogal/Nurgle can purchase it.

Ah, I think that you are wrong. Here are the rules.

Corrupted Characters wrote:

If a double is rolled on an Advance roll that would result in the Hero or Hired Sword receiving a new skill, then the model has impressed his patron! Instead of choosing a new skill the Hero may buy one mutation instead. In addition to mutations, a dedicated servant of darkness might be awarded a gift by one of the four prime Gods of Chaos. If any member of the warband has a mark of Chaos then the Hero may choose to buy a gift instead of a mutation.

(Emphasis mine.) This states that once any member of a warband has a Mark of Chaos then any other Hero (or Hired Sword apparently) is eligible to receive a gift from one of the dark gods. I think that your day may have just got worse. (You may want to hide this from your powergamer. )

RationalLemming wrote:

Aipha wrote:

Hrmm... Bloated Foulness for all Heroes - how? Only warriors with the Mark of Onogal/Nurgle can purchase it.

Ah, I think that you are wrong. Here are the rules.

Corrupted Characters wrote:

If a double is rolled on an Advance roll that would result in the Hero or Hired Sword receiving a new skill, then the model has impressed his patron! Instead of choosing a new skill the Hero may buy one mutation instead. In addition to mutations, a dedicated servant of darkness might be awarded a gift by one of the four prime Gods of Chaos. If any member of the warband has a mark of Chaos then the Hero may choose to buy a gift instead of a mutation.

(Emphasis mine.) This states that once any member of a warband has a Mark of Chaos then any other Hero (or Hired Sword apparently) is eligible to receive a gift from one of the dark gods. I think that your day may have just got worse. (You may want to hide this from your powergamer. )

Consider it hidden

Also, we have just recently implemented more from this ruleset, but the 'roll a double' is not yet implemented and we do not play in the Northern Wastes just yet. The Mark is simply just from the extended Marauder rules, and the blessings are those allowed to be brought through a skill increase.

A STR 4 character with a two-handed weapon and mighty blows hit at 7... just a point less.Meaning you can hurt the creature with a 5 and still score critical hits.

Yeah.. I know... the very fast centigor will net let the power-blower approach. Still... the T8 of the centigor is possible to beat.

Remember the centigor is a very rare character and that getting the mark will not always happens... well. Getting it to T8 is harder and cost more than equipping a good fighter with S4 with a two hand sword and mighty blows...

I do understand your frustrations however as I often have to go through dwarves with T5, Resilient, Gromril armored+shield and helmet... This become frustrating very quick. ... until that day I discovered monk fish hooks...

How does one get a mark of chaos in a warband other than Marauders? I don't see any rules that would allow, say, possessed to attain a mark.

REDMANE

http://bordertownburning.de.vu/

Somewhere on this site there is an article named Corrupted characters.

Already found that, but it's ambiguous as to how you can get the marks. Can you choose a mark instead of a mutation?

Redmane wrote:

How does one get a mark of chaos in a warband other than Marauders? I don't see any rules that would allow, say, possessed to attain a mark.

P. 183 in the Bordertown Burning supplement.

Goglutin wrote:

A STR 4 character with a two-handed weapon and mighty blows hit at 7... just a point less.Meaning you can hurt the creature with a 5 and still score critical hits.

Yeah.. I know... the very fast centigor will net let the power-blower approach.  Still... the T8 of the centigor is possible to beat.

The problem is not T7 with Resilient; the problem is T8 with Resilient, which it will get with Eye of God from the Undivided Shaman.

I'm hoping to find a solution that will last, even if that should happen.

Whoops. I called the article from Mutiny in Marienburg "Priests of the Empire" but it is actually called "Miracle Workers". Here is your solution.

Miracle Workers wrote:

4 Purify  Difficulty 9
The Cleric displays her abhorrence of the Plague God with an anathema to his polluting servants. The Priestess shrivels vile followers of Onogal with the purifying power of Shallya.
Any warriors from a Carnival of Chaos warband or other servants of Onogal the Fly Lord within 24" of the Priestess lose D6 Wounds, regardless of Toughness or armour. All affected warriors must also pass a Leadership test or be stunned.

Personally, I think that 24" for D6 Wounds is a bit too extreme. If you could get your priestess into the centre of a 4' x 4' table then you'd be able to touch warriors over a hugh percentage of the table. Werekin hasn't been convinced yet to tweak the prayer.

I do think that it should be a powerful prayer and more powerful than Pestilence. It is obviously a counter to Bloated Foulness and other Toughness increasing abilities for Nurgle/Onogal but also is very limited in use if there is only one Nurgle/Onogal warband or even worse if there is none in the campaign.

Empire in Flames wrote:

4 Pestilence Difficulty 10
The Master inflicts horrible diseases upon the unbelievers.
All enemy models within 12" of the Master suffer a Strength 3 hit. No Armour saves are allowed.

RationalLemming wrote:

Whoops. I called the article from Mutiny in Marienburg "Priests of the Empire" but it is actually called "Miracle Workers". Here is your solution.

Miracle Workers wrote:

4 Purify  Difficulty 9
The Cleric displays her abhorrence of the Plague God with an anathema to his polluting servants. The Priestess shrivels vile followers of Onogal with the purifying power of Shallya.
Any warriors from a Carnival of Chaos warband or other servants of Onogal the Fly Lord within 24" of the Priestess lose D6 Wounds, regardless of Toughness or armour. All affected warriors must also pass a Leadership test or be stunned.

Personally, I think that 24" for D6 Wounds is a bit too extreme. If you could get your priestess into the centre of a 4' x 4' table then you'd be able to touch warriors over a hugh percentage of the table. Werekin hasn't been convinced yet to tweak the prayer.

I do think that it should be a powerful prayer and more powerful than Pestilence. It is obviously a counter to Bloated Foulness and other Toughness increasing abilities for Nurgle/Onogal but also is very limited in use if there is only one Nurgle/Onogal warband or even worse if there is none in the campaign.

Empire in Flames wrote:

4 Pestilence Difficulty 10
The Master inflicts horrible diseases upon the unbelievers.
All enemy models within 12" of the Master suffer a Strength 3 hit. No Armour saves are allowed.

Not to worry, did find it anyway, and presented it to one of our players, who thought it to be strong as well, so we changed it to only affect things with the Mark and creataures of Onogal. We changed Pestilence as well though

Aipha wrote:

Not to worry, did find it anyway, and presented it to one of our players, who thought it to be strong as well, so we changed it to only affect things with the Mark and creataures of Onogal. We changed Pestilence as well though

I agree with that change. It doesn't make sense for it to affect other warriors within the Nurgle/Onogal warband who have not sold their soul to that dark god. We originally changed Pestilence but changed it back to its original rules with the release of Miracle Workers.

We made purify work against anyone with a nurgle mutation as well, as in the BTB random events there is gifts from papa nurgle and many players have heroes with bloated foulness.