House Rules

So I'm gearing up to get my local gaming group to play some Mordheim, and being in the Army I like to arrive with everything I need to accomplish the mission. To do so, I've begun rounding up all the online rules, scenarios, warbands, etc, that I want to see used, and I've gotten around to thinking of what House rules too use. Now, I know that most HR's are just that - rules your group makes up to fix problems that are (for the most part) specific to your gaming group - but I want to invite everyone to share your group's House Rules here so we can have a repository of House Rules. (*cough* sticky, maybe?) Feel free to share and please try to give a reasoning/supporting argument behind why your group is using that rule.


To kick it off, here are the HR's I've already decided I want to see my group adopt:

1. Shields will give an additional +1 armour save in CC on top of the +1 they already get. I fight in the SCA and not using shields because the rules favor dual-wielding seems criminal to me. (btw, here's me, whooping up on somebody a couple of years back)

2. The Vital Cylinder Save system, found here. As much terrain and other bits as my group is going to have on the table, this is going to be necessary to get any usage out of long-ranged attacks in our games. In other words, we'll have so much stuff on the table that EVERYONE will be in cover at all times if we use the main rules as they stand.

Enjoy, and please share.

https://boringmordheimforum.forumieren.com/rules-and-gameplay-f1/the-fishier-never-ending-list-t1479.htm

anything goes on that list I'll update the index page or just link to this post if you want.
(Although for streamline efficiency on searching I think it might be usefull to post there.)

We have our house rules written up for quick reference. Here's a copy/paste of it. Omitted are rules specific to a warband (nurgle's rot, squig movement, etc.), our houserules for mounts, and our slightly modified critical and misfire tables. Sorry, the rules are in no particular order.

Line of sight: Models in close combat block movement and line of sight. Friendly models outside of combat do not block movement or line of sight.
Line of sight may be drawn from any point on a model's base to the middle of the opposing base.
Models at a window or similar feature are considered leaning out (can be seen) if they utilize the feature for line of sight.

Charging multiple models: If a charge is declared against multiple models, neither of those models can intercept. If the charging model cannot make it into base contact with those models and only those models, it is a failed charge.

climbing charge: Climbing distance may not exceed base movement. Climbing model suffers -1 to hit in first round of combat.

Falling: Warriors will not fall off edges with railings, low walls, etc.

shield +2 armor save in CC, +1 shooting
Bucklers give +1 armor save in CC

offhand attacks are -1 to hit

When initially rolling for a character's spells, make one additional roll, and chose which of the two you'd like to keep.

1 on Misfire Chart: gun out for D3 games (character still suffers hit)

Armor: gives save against post-game injury equal to armor save (LA 6, HA&IA 5, GA4)

Handgun & long rifle: S5, no "prepared shot".
Long rifle: +1 to hit, 80 gold

Climbing: need not start turn in base contact with object

Sling attacks give +1 armor save.

Armor reduction begins at 5 str
Crits do -1 armor instead of -2, -2 instead of ignore.

Ith weap costs 2x +5
Grom weap costs 2x +5

Edit: Fixed a couple typos

more house rules please, i'm very interested

Finding obejcts/crates in houses: All things discovered for searching are found at the END of the Movement phase. (this prevents players searching buildings one by one, in an impractical relay).

Multiplayer games; You may shoot into combat that doesn't involve any members of your warband. Shots are randomized between participants.

Shooting & Cover: If you miss the intended shot by 1 (meaning, roll a 4 when you needed a 5+ to hit), the cover is hit instead. Depending on what's the cover, this may have drastic effects (i.e. hitting the henchmen in front of the target, hitting your own members, hitting the Lost Prince, hitting the gunpowder barrel he's hiding behind, etc.)

Treasure Hunt: Rather than the treasure appearing in the last building, have markers under each building. One random marker has the X for the treasure. OR:

Treasure Hunt 2: : each building searched adds +1 on the roll to find the treasure.

Rabbit's Foot & Lucky Charms: Lucky Charms and Rabbit's feet are permanent items, which may be used every game. Also, if a hero with a Rabbit's Foot did not use his Rabbit's foot in the game and was not taken out of action, you may reroll his Exploration dice once, accepting the second result

Soft Landings: (also in Sartosa) Certain areas have softer landings, depending on where they're falling (rug stand, bale of hay, water, etc.) The strength of fall damage is halved, rounded up. Does not apply to diving charges.

Racial items: We'll sometimes let members of a certain race/origin find items unique to their setting for +1 to rarity rolls. Ex. Elves are +1 to find elven boots, dwarves and Gunnery school are +1 to find firebombs, etc.

StyrofoamKing wrote:

Multiplayer games; You may shoot into combat that doesn't involve any members of your warband. Shots are randomized between participants.

These are the normal rules, aren't they?

StyrofoamKing wrote:

Shooting & Cover: If you miss the intended shot by 1 (meaning, roll a 4 when you needed a 5+ to hit), the cover is hit instead. Depending on what's the cover, this may have drastic effects (i.e. hitting the henchmen in front of the target, hitting your own members, hitting the Lost Prince, hitting the gunpowder barrel he's hiding behind, etc.)

This too is the official ruling.

StyrofoamKing wrote:

Rabbit's Foot & Lucky Charms: Lucky Charms and Rabbit's feet are permanent items, which may be used every game. Also, if a hero with a Rabbit's Foot did not use his Rabbit's foot in the game and was not taken out of action, you may reroll his Exploration dice once, accepting the second result

Again, these are the normal rules.

Am I being dumb/blind/stupid and missing something key?

cianty wrote:

Am I being dumb/blind/stupid and missing something key?

Then that makes two of us...

We'll let just about any warband / DP / HS used.

As far as House Rules go, we're always up for trying this and that but I think one of the few we regularly use would be the +1AS when fighting with hand weapon and shield as mentioned above.

PitFighterTrainer wrote:

cianty wrote:

Am I being dumb/blind/stupid and missing something key?

Then that makes two of us...

Cool. Makes me feel much more comfortable..

Cianty: well, a few of them are not, a few of them are. (If I'm wasting time, I apologize.)

Shooting/hitting cover: Well, I didn't see it in the rulebook anywhere. Also, a previous thread on this forum discussed that you could NOT shoot if your own models created cover. And even if it WAS an official rule, it's worth pointing out to those that missed it, 'cause it has lead to some amazingly suspenseful moments.

Lucky Charms/Rabbit's feet: I've heard ruling that this was a single use item or a multi-use item. It varies group to group. Also, you look at the rules on both, and it never specifies "one hit/reroll per game" or only one reroll ever.

Shooting and hitting is in the rules reivew

Lucky Charms and Rabbits Feet are permanent items that can be used once per game.

StyrofoamKing wrote:

Shooting/hitting cover: Well, I didn't see it in the rulebook anywhere. Also, a previous thread on this forum discussed that you could NOT shoot if your own models created cover. And even if it WAS an official rule, it's worth pointing out to those that missed it, 'cause it has lead to some amazingly suspenseful moments.

Yes, I wasn't aware of the rule being in the book either but it is in the Mordheim Living Rulebook, so not applying it would be the actual house rule. Applying is just playing by the "normal" rules. I totally agree that it is worth pointing it out but under the title of "house rules" it does cause confusion.

StyrofoamKing wrote:

Lucky Charms/Rabbit's feet: I've heard ruling that this was a single use item or a multi-use item. It varies group to group. Also, you look at the rules on both, and it never specifies "one hit/reroll per game" or only one reroll ever.

Again, "once per game" is the normal rule so posting this in this thread did confuse me.

Heh. Sorry to confuse you, friend. (Although, I'll have to come up with NEW ways to make Cianty stay up at night, scratching his head.)

Although, speaking of shooting into combat, there was the house rule we've often discussed but have yet to use:

Skaven heroes may fire into combats that involve their own henchmen. Shots are randomized as normal. (Possibly have it extend to Orcs firing at goblins too.)

StyrofoamKing wrote:

Heh. Sorry to confuse you, friend. (Although, I'll have to come up with NEW ways to make Cianty stay up at night, scratching his head.)

He he, no problem. Good luck with that!

StyrofoamKing wrote:

Racial items: We'll sometimes let members of a certain race/origin find items unique to their setting for +1 to rarity rolls. Ex. Elves are +1 to find elven boots, dwarves and Gunnery school are +1 to find firebombs, etc.

this is very nice!
i'll propose this rule at our gaming group

Oh, Eliazar's comment on Simultaneous turns reminded about the 'Playing Card' system of turn order that someone in my group introduced:

If playing a game with 4 or more people, instead of resolving turn order in a clockwise pattern, shuffle a full deck of playing cards, and deal a card to each person, face down, who privately looks at it. A player then slowly calls out the Cards from Highest to lowest, pausing to give each player time to respond. "Aces? Kings? Queens?" and so forth. When a player has the said card, they flip it over, and take their turn. If two players have the same card, the Red Suits go before the Black Suits (in the odd chance they're the same suit, roll off.) After the player takes his turn, then the countdown continues until all players take their turn.
Once all players have gone, turn in the cards, reshuffle and deal (yes, this may result in a player going twice before his opponent goes once... but the opponent has just as much chance of doing the same thing to his opponent in a later turn!)

Ex. The cards are dealt. Archie's got an Ace, Brad's got a Jack, Charlie and Conrad both have a six. Archie calls out 'Aces', and flips over his own card, waiting to see if any other aces are reveiled. He takes his turn, then calls out "King?" No response. "Queen?" no response. On "Jack?", Brad flips his card over, takes his turn, and the countdown continues. Charlie and Conrad both flip over on Six, but Conrad has a Heart and Charlie has a Club, so Conrad goes first.

Result: A random, and hard to play order to the game. The best part is the complete randomness that comes with 52 possibilities... you can draw a low card like a 4 or 5, and have 3 players go after you. Likewise, you can draw a Queen and go second to last. It gets the heart racing, really, and adds some energy to it. Not recommended for groups smaller than 4 or 5.

Styrofoamking - Neat idea, and definitely something to keep in mind if you want to change it up. I've played a lot of the RPG Deadlands (the pre-d20 version) and it used a standard deck of playing cards for its turn sequence as well. Of course, there was an order to the suits that was in the rules (Spades are at the top and Clubs at the bottom, though I can't remember if Diamonds or Hearts were higher) and it worked out really well. Of course, the way Deadlands worked is that you didn't have a fixed stat, you had a # and type of dice for every stat - for example: my guy would have 4d6 in say strength, but your guy would have 3d12 in strength, meaning he was generally stronger. So for initiatives, you'd roll whatever stat that governed that, and then draw the number of cards per die that beat the difficulty (usually 5 for initiatives). It worked well and really added to the theme of the game (Wild West with magic).


Keep the House Rules coming, guys and gals, this is an awe-inspiring list!

Guys we recently started a campaign - I wanted to make Handguns better so I just went on and gave them straight 5S - does it sound too much or is concidered resonable change ?

I've seen some HR's for Skaven slings, one upping their price to 5gc instead of 2gc and another giving whoever is struck by a sling stone an automatic +1 armour save, like the blowpipe. I wouldn't want to use both HRs, but would like to use something that balances out the slings a little more in a campaign, so which one do you folks think is more fair?

I dealt with slings by upping the cost to 7gc. Aside from that, they follow all teh rules as normal. No complaints from any of the Skaven players. There weren't any Sisters of Sigmar players so know idea how they would have felt.

Here's a house rule that has NOT been implemented, but I'm tempted to introduce it into the Sartosa Campaign. Tell me what you think:

~Any hero that takes an enemy out of action while making a diving charge gains +1 Experience.

I want to promote 'Diving Charges' as much as possible, but that's the best carrot I can think of. Any other ideas? Maybe allow a free reroll of one of the Init. checks?

StyrofoamKing wrote:

~Any hero that takes an enemy out of action while making a diving charge gains +1 Experience.

In addition to the +1 experience for just taking a guy out of action normally right?

Other ideas:

A diving charge could increase your chance of getting a stunned result on the injury roll, or you could give the player the option of resolving the diving charge like the Bull Charge special rule from the BTB Maneaters list.

Quote :

Guys we recently started a campaign - I wanted to make Handguns better so I just went on and gave them straight 5S - does it sound too much or is concidered resonable change ?

many groups do this and it is far from unbalanced as they only shoot every 4th turn

you could also keep the handgun as-is and say that it can shoot every turn - still only marginally better than a crossbow

As for additional hause rules - do you use in your campanings any rules for weather - if so why and how it works ?

I saw quite nicly done its raining fishe or something article - but i think some of the weather results favour more cc oriented warbands - ideal weather rules should be - 30% times nothing happens 30% times cc get slight upper hand 30% times shooting get upper hand and 10% for totaly wild stuff and such