Routing

One thing has been bugging me a little since we started our campaign. It is related to the way routing works. Some illogical routs have occurred in the games we have played, whereby a team had to bolt when they were heavily outnumbering their opponent and clearly had the upper hand or when they were one round from completing their specific objective without the opponent being able to counter it.

Hence I was wondering if anyone applied any house rules on the rout test, and what people believed of the following ideas:

- modificators, such as:
+1 when the warbands is below 50%
+3 when the warband is below 25%
+1 if the leader was taken OOA
-1 if the warband has taken more heroes OOA than they have lost.
-...

- possibility to reroll if the warband can objectively complete their objective within one round.

I say buy an item that allows Routing rerolls. Those are useful in this case. Or, use the Rabbit's Foot to reroll one of those dice that were from a failed Routing Roll.

But, I know what you mean. It's all part of the theme of the game. Mordheim is tough, and anyone's nerves could break at any moment. It also puts a little more fluff with what goes on in battles with the team that is winning suddenly running away.

"Oh crap! It's 4:58! The Simpson's is about to start! We gotta run!"

Or something like that...

I think those are some good ideas Duredhel. However, as PFT said, I think "unmodified" rout tests have the advantage of randomness and represent the tension in all warbands involved.

In Mordheim warbands evolve quite quickly, and having a loosing streak can have a considerable impact on money/wyrdstone earnt.

Therefore, you inevitably will have underdogs after a few games. Now if you modified rout tests according to the damage done, you make it even harder for underdogs to win, since they are less likely to inflict as much damage as quickly as the others.

By taking the same rout test for every one, you give weaker warbands the chance of coming out on top, after an encounter.

Besides, routing is really not that bad. In fact, in my experience, half of the time the warband that routs gets away with lesser severe injuries and more money... simply because beating the crap out of the opponent comes at the price of severe bruises for yourself.

I personally would therefore not apply any modifiers, but if it fits the gamestyle of your group, go for it! I think it is a nice little tweak that can potentially make your games more enjoyable (but also more predictable) if all players agree to it.

Thanks for the input, guys. The thing is our campaign is territory driven and territories are only "won" when the warband wins a scenario, and the territories determine the "reputation" points that in turn will determine the final winner of the campaign (rather than final WB rating). Hence why it is important for the players to win their scenario...

I hadn't thought about the fact that it provides underdogs with a chance to win (with some luck)... Will have to think about it some more.