dual wield and chance

Analysis on the following proposal:

1. AS roll of 1 always fails
2. Weap+Shield in HtH grants +1 AS
3. Off-hand attack suffers -1 Str
4. Dagger/Fist suffers -1 Str (rather than granting +1 opponent AS)
5. Manic Warrior (Strength skill) removes the -1 Str penalty from off-hand attacks

Just doing initial S3 A1 vs T3 W1. Single-wield with mace; DW with mace/dagger:

Official rules DW bonus over single attack: +17% to cause 1 wound; +8% to cause 2 wounds

Official rules Shield bonus against DW: 7% to prevent 1 wound; 1% prevent 2 wounds

Above proposal DW bonus over single attack: +6% to cause 1 wound; +0% to cause 2 wounds

Above proposal Shield bonus against DW: 7% to prevent 1 wound; 1% to prevent 2 wounds

Now with DW of Mace/Mace:

Official rules DW bonus over single attack: +19% to cause 1 wound; +8% to cause 2 wounds

Official rules Shield bonus against DW: 5% to prevent 1 wound; 0% to prevent 2 wounds

Above proposal DW bonus over single attack: +13% to cause 1 wound; +7% to cause 2 wounds

Above proposal Shield bonus against DW: 8% to prevent 1 wound; 1% to prevent 2 wounds

With this proposal, a mace/shield is marginally more effective than a mace/dagger against an A1 even model, but is more expensive. Double maces is more effective than mace/shield (by around 5%). Effectiveness of shield will go up (to a consistent limit) against more attacks; effectiveness of off-hand attacks will go down with increased Attack characteristic.

Result I see from the above:

1. Cheap models will continue to use DW - that will always be true if we don't penalize the main hand for DW or remove the free dagger.

2. Models desiring to keep DW will ditch the free dagger pretty quickly, investing in better off-hand weapons (already true, but will become more desirable due to dagger change).

3. After getting an Attack increase, shield will begin to look desirable.

4. Even if allowed to swap between shield and offhand dagger during a scenario, a shield offers a slightly better bonus, and will likely be chosen much of the time. However, if shield/offhand dagger switching is allowed, then prime/offhand DW switching should also be allowed - it's not restricted now, but involves more close record-keeping.

The goal for me has never been to statistically balance beginning DW vs weap+shield, especially after being shown that off-hand extra effectiveness decreases with increased Attack, and shield effectiveness increases (to a point) against more attacks. As cianty said early on, balancing the two for beginning models would merely flip the imbalance towards weap/shield. The goal for me is to provide effective options to widen the variety seen in equipment.

This proposal may give DW/armor just enough balancing to give armor an effective role (I'll always have a concern regarding Str's extra AP until I've gone through at least one full campaign with a rules proposal like this). I really like having some shield skills in there to give more options for shield-wielding heroes, and I'm still planning to give some more feedback to ts's skill ideas, but just haven't taken the time yet.

By the way, we've played a few more scenarios using the earlier proposal cobbled together (you know, the more complex one including not starting Str's AP bonus until S5), and while shields have shown their usefulness, DW has not disappeared - it's got its place. We haven't progressed enough to start seeing body armor/mounts yet, so I don't know how the end-campaign will look yet. Since offensive skills like Mighty Blow, Manic Warrior, Strike to Injure, and Expert Swordsman benefit DW, I don't see shields über alles at this point.

So, we've been using the -1 Str to off-hand, +2 AS save on shields in CC, and half price Light/Heavy Armor in our games and it's working pretty well. The -1 Str is actually making a difference and people are considering other weapons.

Another thing I think that should be done is 2h weapons should get the base bonus of their weapon type (ie. 2h Sword gets parry, 2h Mace gets Concussion, 2h Axe gets -1 to AS). This makes 2h weapons much more attractive.

All of that stuff combined I think makes people want to use different stuff. It might not be perfectly balanced, but it's not a lot of crazy changes to the game. Also, I'm curious... how many people play with advanced crit tables? We haven't been, but we're going to start from now on.

Svenn - The rules you posted for the Glen Burnie get together allowed heroes to dual wield without penalty. Have you played any games like this? How did it go? This might be fine if you just include some shield skills to encourage shield heroes. Although, I'd prefer off-hand penalties effect everyone to make shield henchmen a bit more effective against heroes.

Also, I do like the idea of buffing 2HW as you suggest. And ss far as lowering the cost of armor, what about just lowering light armor to 15 gc? Slightly more available, but not splashable everywhere. Lowering heavy armor starts to interfere with the end game dynamics a bit, don't you think?

ts061282 wrote:

Svenn - The rules you posted for the Glen Burnie get together allowed heroes to dual wield without penalty. Have you played any games like this? How did it go? This might be fine if you just include some shield skills to encourage shield heroes. Although, I'd prefer off-hand penalties effect everyone to make shield henchmen a bit more effective against heroes.

Also, I do like the idea of buffing 2HW as you suggest. And ss far as lowering the cost of armor, what about just lowering light armor to 15 gc? Slightly more available, but not splashable everywhere. Lowering heavy armor starts to interfere with the end game dynamics a bit, don't you think?

I think Dulu picked the Heroes dual wield without penalty. We didn't get to play this weekend so I haven't played any games like that.

As far as lowering the cost of heavy armor... I'm not sure how much it affects "end game" dynamics because I've never really had a warband last that long. However, at end game don't a lot of people have 4+ str, negating most armor anyway? Also, the price of gromril/ithilmar doesn't change. Then there's the -1 move penalty for heavy armor/shield... It seems to me like heavy armor is nice, but even at 25gc isn't amazing. It's a 5+ save, but once people get over str 4 (which happens pretty fast from what I've seen) that drops. If you add a shield it's 3+, which is really good, but then there's the move penalty and the negatives from str (or even the -1 from axes). It's just really easy to negate armor in general, especially once people level up stats and get skills. Honestly, even at 25gc I haven't seen a single person wearing it yet in our games. I've been considering picking it up for my mutants maybe once I have enough money to finish hiring out the rest of my warband, but I'm also considering just saving and attempting to get some gromril.

Speaking of which... anyone can wear ithilmar/gromril, right?

Svenn wrote:

Speaking of which... anyone can wear ithilmar/gromril, right?

Any heroes, if they can find it. I suppose your right about the costs, for some reason I was thinking that Ithilmar/Gromiril cost was a multiple of the heavy cost, so reducing heavy would reduce those. But no.

ts061282 wrote:

Svenn wrote:

Speaking of which... anyone can wear ithilmar/gromril, right?

Any heroes, if they can find it. I suppose your right about the costs, for some reason I was thinking that Ithilmar/Gromiril cost was a multiple of the heavy cost, so reducing heavy would reduce those. But no.

Henchman can't wear it? And yeah, Gromril/Ithilmar are flat rates, so those wouldn't change.

I think I'm making things up. Henchmen could wear it, I guess, but the heroes have to search for it.

ts061282 wrote:

Svenn wrote:

Speaking of which... anyone can wear ithilmar/gromril, right?

Any heroes, if they can find it.

No. See here.

cianty wrote:

No. See here.

Meaning, only those who can wear heavy armor can wear ithil/grom.

My thoughts on Shield skills:

ts061282 wrote:

Strength: Shield Bash: The warrior may use his shield as an off-hand weapon.

With this skill, the warrior gains all the benefits of DW and shield use. But it's limited to heroes with Strength skills, and still gets any off-hand penalties (great wording on that, ts061282). Add Manic Warrior, and you're ready to rock! However, this eats up two skill choices that could've been used elsewhere... It initially looks good to me as-is.

ts061282 wrote:

Strength: Bulldoze: The warrior may push his opponent back with his shield up to a number of inches equal to his strength. The warrior and his opponent remain in base contact but all other combatants are left behind. An opponent ending this movement close to a ledge must take an initiative test or fall.

Pretty cool. I'd say this still requires a Hit roll, but the effect replaces any Wound roll. It looks like the bulldozer can still use other attacks - I'd say they can only be used against the target of the bulldoze. Also, the bulldozer should only be able to push once per turn. Should this skill require the warrior to know Sheild Bash first? (It's logical, but limiting.)

ts061282 wrote:

Combat: Fend Off: The warrior wielding a shield makes his attacks before wounds are resolved against him in close combat.

I think I understand the intent of this, but it adds a deal of complexity as worded. If the intent of this is to allow the warrior to make "final strikes" before being knocked down, stunned, or taken Out of Action, then it might be worded as: "even if the warrior is injured, he still gets his attacks this round." That's pretty powerful, and I'm not sure it belongs as a shield skill.

ts061282 wrote:

Combat: Shield Master: The warrior wielding a shield may cancel one of his opponents attacks (Shield Master's choice) down to a minimum of one.

Rather than this, let's just borrow the Norse Shield Master skill (which is a little less powerful).

Another Idea to Shield Bash:
if using a shield in close combat you may nominate one of your opponents attacks, this will hit with a -1 to hit (i.e. 4+ is 5+), since the enemy has slightly lost his balance from the bash.

I just got back home from another games day and let me just say...

Using;
Shields at +2 AS
DWing attacks with 2nd attack at -1S
Rolling a 1 always fails an armour save...

Everything went really really well!

I don't see any need to halve Armour cost as it would allow armour into the realm of henchmen and makes things a bit harder to figure out (changing prices, rounding up etc)

I can't see any need past the above changes except for possibly removing the Criticals of the 2nd attack.

At this risk of being a kill joy.

Adding additional skills always seems to be the fastest way to make people feel something is too complex or foreign. I personally love new content for Mordheim in almost any form, but I have learnt to deal with some pretty strong minded individuals who don't believe in altering Mordheim (luckily, they loved the result from the 3 changes at the top of this post)

TheFool wrote:

I just got back home from another games day and let me just say...
I don't see any need to halve Armour cost as it would allow armour into the realm of henchmen and makes things a bit harder to figure out (changing prices, rounding up etc)

Rounding up? it's 10/25gc vs 20/50gc for armor. That's not much of a change. Honestly, I've still never seen armor on henchman (and still rarely on heroes) and we've been using it for a bit. Buy why would you ever buy armor at 20/50gc when there's so much other stuff you could be buying?

How did you find keeping track of the off-hand weapon?

Popmouth wrote:

How did you find keeping track of the off-hand weapon?

We've been using the -1 str to offhand for a little while now. It's pretty easy to keep track of, especially since you're rolling a separate color for the different weapon anyway.

I haven't seen anyone try and switch up which one was the off-hand, but part of that is because most people have been off-handing daggers.

ok, fair enough... good to know as well.

We have a rule in our group;

White dice for the primary, Black for the secondary.

So you just end up with a bunch of white dice and a single black one.

After a game or two, it doesn't even take a second thought to keep the -1S offhand separated from the rest of the attacks.

Ok, do you note the off-hand on the rooster as well?

We actually nominate at will, we thought that it felt too unrealistic to make a fixed primary and secondary as warriors would realistically swap depending on the situation.

So instead of mentioning on a roster, we just made notes that the weapons couldn't be changed in any round of old combat. (It wasn't too hard and there were 4 of us in the one game)

Good to hear, however, I can still see some types taking undue advantage of the swapping. I've been thinking about how to minimize the fuss around this, and here's what I have currently:

1. Write the three HtH items (the third can only be a dagger) on the rooster in their "default" order - primary, off-hand, dagger.

2. At the beginning of the resolution of HtH for a group in which a model participates, if the player wants to deviate from the "default" HtH items order, he must state any deviations.

----

I've also been thinking more about the Extra Arms and Tail Fighting models who opt to get two shields. Why not allow them the benefit of both? It reeks of Chaos, after all. They'd still only get one AS bump from the "weap+shield" rule, not two. However, they would get the normal +1 AS from each shield. This would give them a total of +2 AS vs missiles and +3 AS vs HtH from their dual-shielding.

Somehow I find it less realistic that a warrior would swap in a battle, I'd rather thick a warrior has trained with a certain setup and therefore may not swap. Also, this will take advantage WYSIWYG, making it easier to keep track of everything.

Popmouth wrote:

Somehow I find it less realistic that a warrior would swap in a battle, I'd rather thick a warrior has trained with a certain setup and therefore may not swap. Also, this will take advantage WYSIWYG, making it easier to keep track of everything.

I agree popmouth. Maybe with some steep penalty like spending a turns movement to switch your setup. As it is, you can run, be charged, switching to a shield take out the enemy then next turn charge another enemy with two weapons. Should require a skill or something

Shield skills-
Bulldoze and Fend Off need rewording and refinement. What else can you use a shield for? Also, rename my "Shield Master" to "Shield Bind", check out the technique here http://www.hurstwic.org/history/articles/manufacturing/text/viking_sword_technique.htm

ts061282 wrote:

Popmouth wrote:

Somehow I find it less realistic that a warrior would swap in a battle, I'd rather thick a warrior has trained with a certain setup and therefore may not swap. Also, this will take advantage WYSIWYG, making it easier to keep track of everything.

I agree popmouth. Maybe with some steep penalty like spending a turns movement to switch your setup. As it is, you can run, be charged, switching to a shield take out the enemy then next turn charge another enemy with two weapons. Should require a skill or something

Shield skills-
Bulldoze and Fend Off need rewording and refinement. What else can you use a shield for?

I thought you couldn't have a shield and two hand weapons on the same character? Doesn't the shield take up a hand weapon slot?

Svenn wrote:

Doesn't the shield take up a hand weapon slot?

I proposed that but I'm not really sure where everyone is on the issue. It makes sense you could still strap a shield to your back for +1 as no matter what. It's just a question of when you can switch during combat. I did edit in a shield skill under speed to allow switching during the game, it seems like a good skill to me.

ts061282 wrote:

Strength: Shield Bash: The warrior may use his shield as an off-hand weapon.

I like this, but how about making it so it can't crit?