More Core Skills

Feel free to mod or feedback in any way you like


SHOOTING

Keen Senses: Warrior may charge and shoot at hidden enemies as though they were not hidden. (The target is still hidden to everyone else.) – If warrior is a Wizard he may also target them with spells.
(Cianty also has a good idea on this, see seperate thread.)

Jaeger: Warrior adds +1 to the Strength of his weapon when shooting at Animals. (Not Mounts or Monsters.) - (Pistols fired in close combat are not affected.)

ACADEMIC

Animal Trainer: At the start of each battle nominate one Animal (not mount or monster) in your warband. That animal has +2 WS this battle. (Applies even if warrior is missing the battle.)

Apothecary: Warrior is Immune to Poison, suffers no Side Effects when taking Drugs, and may ignore the effects of a single Nervous Condition Injury (33).

Break Concentration: Enemy Wizards (not Priests) within 6” of warrior suffer -1 to all spellcasting rolls. (Not active while knocked down or stunned.) – (Requires line of sight.) – (Multiple instances of Break Concentration stack.)

Stablemaster: All Mounts (not animals or monsters) in the warband are only lost on post-game injury rolls of 1. (Applies even if warrior is missing the battle or dies the same post-battle sequence.) – (No affect on the injury roll of mounted Hired Swords.)

STRENGTH

Skinner: Warrior adds D6 gc to the warband’s stash each time he takes an Animal or Monster out of action in close combat. (Applies even if warrior is later taken out of action himself.)

Heavy Pull: Warrior adds +1 Strength and the ‘Concussion’ rule to all shots fired with Bow (any kind). Cannot be combined with the ‘Quick Shot’ skill. (Treat injury rolls of ‘2’ as stunned.)

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Ideas for skills:

Alchemist
Tailor
Herbalist

I've always been of the opinion that the game could use more good skills. Over the years I've been asked repeatedly if skills should be randomly selected. I've never really liked that idea because some of the skills suck... at least compared to others (Web of Steel vs Step Aside, or Unstoppable Charge vs Mighty Blow). There aren't quite enough skills gained to ensure a random sample of good and bad skills and it's likely someone gets lucky and someone gets unlucky and the campaign gets lop sided. If there were more good skills in each category randomization might be a good idea.

Academic: Auspicious: May reroll advance rolls once per advance.

i dont think skills should be random at all consider the effort involed in modelling a figure to take advantage of a certain skill

actually i also think the randomization for stat increases should be changed to choose

nobody likes getting S and A for his ranged models or ld for his immune to psych heroes

It would be interesting to see how things worked out that way. But how would you do LGT?

EDIT: You're following post seems to miss the point. If you choose advances, everyone will have six heroes after game two.

Well that OT but:

Henchmen Advances
• Henchmen advance as groups and each henchman in the group gain the same advance.
• Henchmen never add more than +1 to any of their starting characteristics.
• If they become heroes through ‘Talent’ they are no longer subject to this restriction.

Talent!
One warrior in the group becomes a hero. If you already have six heroes, fire an existing hero or roll again. The new hero retains his type, equipment list and any stat advances already earned. (So a Mercenary Veteran would still count towards the 0-5 limit even though he was no longer a henchman.) He now has two skill lists available to him; these must be chosen from amongst those available to your warband.
• The new hero may immediately make one roll on the heroes’ advancement table.
• Any remaining henchmen in the group roll on the henchmen advancement table again, ignoring any further results of Talent! this post-game sequence.

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Henchmen
2D6 Result
2-4 +1 I
5 +1 S
6-7-8 Choose WS or BS
9 +1 Ld
10-12 Talent!

Academic: Ringleader: All henchmen within 6" gain +1 I and +1 Ld.

I like those skills alot. Few notes though:

Keen Senses: Broken on shadow warriors, but since they aren't real I don't care. I think it should take an initiative test to do it though, or something.

Jaeger: Situational, but useful. I could see grabbing this on a halfling scout and have it on dog-hunting duties =]. I see no overpoweredness nor underpowerendess. Well thought out (But I don't know the definition of Jaeger).

Animal Trainer: WS 6 chaos hounds from beastmen sound kind of funny. But aside from dire wolves (Are they animals or just undead?) I don't see a real good investment for this.

Break Concentration: No comment.

Stablemaster: I don't think this one is fair. Halving the chance of dying would make expensive mounts alot more bang for their buck. Half of mordheim is about deaths, and I don't approve of anything that reduces the number of deaths in the campaign.

Skinner: Too situational for not enough gold. Haggle would be a better investment 100% of the time. I realize not everyone can get haggle but remember alot of warbands don't have animals. I could only see it as useful if it applied to any animal or monster taken out of action by your entire warband throughout the battle. 2d6 for monsters?

Heavy Pull: What would you think if the bow is simply "Strength: As User" instead? What you have there allows any warband with a bow and strength skills to have a cheaper move-and-fire crossbow with a bit less range. I know it costs an entire skill. Maybe only bows & longbows? I haven't thought this one through entirely -- Str 6 vampire would be kind of lame.

Maybe a +1 on the injury chart woould be better for Jeager? I think +1S is a bit to powerful?

huh, the rules my group have been using off the Yahoo group actually have that exact Heavy Pull skill.

...huh...

erza can you paste that skill setup there?

Idea for a new Combat skill:
Counter-attack: After a succesfull parry the warrior can make a single attack (resolve before the attackers excesive attacks) with the weapon of his choice.
- Popmouth

sure, no problem.

actually, i just noticed your Heavy Pull has the "concussion" rule, must have missed that the first time.

Me and my friends where talking about a house rule for gaining new skills!

Every so often it happened someone rolled a double "1" or double "6" for hero advancment and it always felt wasted, but then I remembered in "Necromunda" if you rolled a double for advancment you could choose any category of skills, even those not availble to you gang!

We have been disscusing about this and it would be kinda cool to see a Troll slayer suddenly charge "9" inches instead of "6"
Of course, with this house rule is would only apply to the core skills, so no orc boss with "Master of Blades" skill!
And maybe some other limitations... would be nasty to have a spell casting Possessed!

The idea of more core skills is a great way to enhance the game and individualise character minis, it gets so boring when every one chooses the same skills as the game progresses so more skills is more fun in my book and these are some good new addisions, one point though is with heavy pull, this shouldn't affect cross bows as their power relies on the weapon quality not the sterngth of the user

Question: What should the power level of new skills be? I'd personally like to see about 20 new skills on the level of step aside/mighty blow/sprint. Thoughts?

What do you mean with "Power Level"?

ok i heard all the critique of the skill that lets you shoot hidden models and i agree

rain9441 i dont think stablemaster is overpowered, but i do agree with your point about mordheim should be about stuff dying

yes and haggle is better than skinner, but i think haggle is too good to begin with - ah, a dilemma

heavy pull: i'd just remove the concussion rule

New Skill Category: Leadership: Leadership skills may only be taken by warriors with the "Leader" skill (warband leaders, duh.) The academic skills are a little bloated with the expanded list found on Mordheimer.com (Articles -> Mordheim Master Skill List). Three of these should be moved to a whole new category and new skills should be added. You'll see why when you read them.

Move from Academic to Leadership:

• Battle Tongue: This skill may only be chosen by a leader. The warrior has drilled his warband to follow short barked commands. This increases the range of his Leader ability by 6". Note that Undead leaders may not use this skill. (RB 123)
  
• Tactician: This skill may only be taken by a warband leader. The warrior has a great tactical mind and can often find the best positions for his warriors to meet the oncoming attack. In any scenario the warband leader may reposition his warriors after his opponent has set up and may even advance them up to 12 inch onto the board instead of 8 inch. (TC7)
  
• Hunch: This skill may only be taken by the warband leader. The warrior has an uncanny knack of placing his men in the right place at the right time, as if he senses danger through instinct alone. In any scenario the warband leader may position up to 3 of his men capable of earning experience in any ruined building on the board that is at least 12 inch away from an enemy model and not in the enemy deployment zone. (TC7)
  

Now, add:

Foment: At the beginning of each battle nominate one henchmen group. All henchmen in that group are subject to Frenzy in the first round of combat this game.

Extra Rations: At the beginning of each battle nominate one henchmen group. All henchmen in that group gain +1 I and +1 Ld for the game.

Beloved Leader: At the beginning of each battle nominate one henchmen group. Wounds suffered by the Leader may be transferred to any member of the henchmen group in base contact before armor saves. The henchman takes the hit rather than see his leader harmed.

Get it? Now there's a reason to group henchmen!

Popmouth wrote:

What do you mean with "Power Level"?

It means should new skills be very good, good, medium, bad or very bad.

Step Aside is very good.
Strike to Injure is medium.
Leap is bad, perhaps.

Smart players take the very good skills first and in a campaign you tend to see the same 5-6 skills on everybody. Shouldn't there be more very good skills so you end up seeing many different skills enabling many different play styles?

I guess any really, but I see rather skills that makes the game more fun, than boosting your warriors to the max. I say that the Very Good Skills should rather be more scarce, I mean, to good skills would effect the whole game to much, and you would need a lot of testing to see how they effected them.

Something I have thought about is if you should have some sort of minimum limit for skills, so that those that are really good can't be gained to early. Say you base a ranking system of the skills with a minimum experience points or so. Wyrdstone hunter needs say 25 exp (just any number picked here for the example) untill you may pick it. How about it?

we created a new category called 'common' which any hero gets access to, we moved all the riding skills to this category (now orcs can get ride) and added a few more






Lucky: The gods seem to smile on this warrior. The warrior may reroll one dice
each battle







Scavenger: The warrior is
always looking for odds and ends, bits and pieces, every now and then they find
something of value, after the battle the warrior may find stuff worth D3 gold instead of searching for Rare
items.





Aquatic:
The
warrior is an expert swimmer and is now considered aquatic.





Master
Netter: The Warrior can use nets when charging, also if the warrior is charged
they may throw a net at one charger and the charger is knocked down on a
successful net.





Pack Rat: The warrior ignores
the restrictions on maximum equipment allowed. Also if robed they may save D3
random peaces of equipment. Finally in an event a bit of equip would be
destroyed they get a 6+ save against it.





Fist Fighter


The warrior can fight with their fists and suffer no penalty for doing
so (use unarmed crit table).





Insane Courage


A warrior with this skill will not route with the rest of the warband if
they can pass an LD test with 3 dice, (they must continue to test at the start
of each turn)