Does the Game need both Knocked Down and Stunned?

Does the Game need both Knocked Down and Stunned?

Playing Mordheim with someone new to it the other day, I realized that the existance of both Knocked Down and Stunned is very confusing to newcommers and not even fully supported (for example, Dogs, Kd on left side, Stunned on right side. This is not proper gaming, but cluttered "making the best of it".)

Therefore, I plan to introduce the following in my group's ruleset:

1 Both Knocked Down and Stunned will be merged into a single state clalled Knocked Down
- This state will have the same rules as the current Knocked Down state

2 Injury Table will be changed to 1-4 = KD 5-6 = OOA
- Club will have +1 S against enemies knocked down
- No pain will completely ignore wounds where the injury roll is a natural 1 *after* any modifiers
- Jump up will will completely ignore wounds where the injury roll is a natural 1-2 *after* any modifiers

3 Give all shooting and HtH a hard-coded +1 to hit

This will make Injuries Both EASIER TO INFLICT and EASIER TO RECOVER FROM

This has some added benefits:
- The game will become more strategic and less luck-based
- Easy to inlifct, easy to recover from means that attacking in numbers is important
- simpler, smoother rules
- easy to inflict means avoiding round after round of hth where nobody kills each other
- will make the game more fast paced



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so im pretty bent on this idea - am I missing something?

This will make parry more valuable, assuming that the parry roll must only block the roll, not the result. However, since Coreheim doesn't seem to have parry, that wouldn't matter to your rules.

Lucky Charms will lose a bit more value, since hits will become more common. No biggie there.

The only real issue I see is: charging and other attack-priority adjusters will become even more important, in that getting the enemy KD'ed to torpedo their strike order will be easier due to the hit bonus. Also, unless you use "roll of 1 always misses," Duelling Pistols auto-hit when a model has a higher WS than his target.

Premise: Game doesn't need stunned.
Conclusion: All models need +1 to Hit.
Result: "shrugs"

Why change "no pain" to only affect a natural injury roll of 1 instead of keeping it at 1-2?

Are Dwarfs still 1-5 Knocked Down, 6 OoA, and will clubs get a str bonus against them when knocked down?

What does a Helmet do? Similarly, what does the "hard head" skill do?

Also, this does make "jump up" a really powerful skill, in my mind, since it makes you immune to 2/3 of the wounds you'll suffer rather than 1/3.

@wyldhunt: yaerh, we dont use parry, but at 10gc, vanilla swords could use a boost

many things auto-hit in coreheim = easier to inflict - its ok - you still need to roll to wound

@Von Kurst: rules dynamics are interlinked.
http://web.mit.edu/krugman/www/ricardo.htm

@Myntokk:

re: Why change "no pain" to only affect a natural injury roll of 1 instead of keeping it at 1-2?

because now they will COMPLETELY ignore the wound, vs. just reducing stunned to kd

re: Are Dwarfs still 1-5 Knocked Down, 6 OoA, and will clubs get a str bonus against them when knocked down?

dunno, I dont use dwarves. we plan on just giving the slayer the no pain ability

re: What does a Helmet do? Similarly, what does the "hard head" skill do?

we dont use helmets or the hard head skills and there is no need of them, really

re: this does make "jump up" a really powerful skill, in my mind, since it makes you immune to 2/3 of the wounds you'll suffer rather than 1/3.

no, actually jump up will stay pretty much the same. see my op

Kind of hard for us to critique when you use such drastically different core rules.

Sounds like it will work pretty well with appropriate tweaking of related abilities, and I agree that having both can be a hassle. There's a balance between the depth and immersion of mordheim's quirky rules and stream-lined skirmish gameplay that I try to keep in mind, but in this case I don't see it as a great loss to the game.

Poor vampires with jump up! Will you let them ignore wounds on a 1 or 2? (when I read your post it sounds like you're leaving jump up as current, but I think you mean it will be the same as your new no pain)

Asp wrote:

re: this does make "jump up" a really powerful skill, in my mind, since it makes you immune to 2/3 of the wounds you'll suffer rather than 1/3.

no, actually jump up will stay pretty much the same. see my op

Right, I understand that in the OP you stated that Jump Up will stay the same, but with the changes you're proposing it will become significantly more effective unless the wording is changed.

Rules as written, Jump Up will prevent on average 1/3 of successful wounds against you because it ignores any knocked down injury result, which is (on average) 1/3 of all the injuries you'll suffer.

Since you're increasing the frequency of knocked down to 2/3 of injury rolls on average, that means that Jump Up will now effectively prevent 2/3 of successful wounds against you.

Myntokk wrote:

Rules as written, Jump Up will prevent on average 1/3 of successful wounds against you because it ignores any knocked down injury result, which is (on average) 1/3 of all the injuries you'll suffer.

Since you're increasing the frequency of knocked down to 2/3 of injury rolls on average, that means that Jump Up will now effectively prevent 2/3 of successful wounds against you.

Perhaps a slight rewording of 'Jump Up' to say the warrior ignores the result on an injury roll of 1 or 2, giving it exactly the same effectiveness?

Welding knocked down and stunned into one injury level?
Hum. Me and anybody I've played with never ever felt that neeed...

I'd consider changing something else, like consequences from recovering from knocked down...
Almost anybody seems to forget about it (stirke last and hits only with a natural 6, can't shoot), plus it somehow slows the game and frustrates players (my model got hit, for next 2 turns at least he'll be pretty useless...).
Some argue that it ensures some lasting benefit for knocking down enemies (otherwise next turn they are up standing), still knocked model is easy to dispose of with numbers...

Cheers!!!

I was very opposed to this until I started reading... I do like the idea of getting up faster. Currently stunned might as well be the same thing as dead in most cases. It takes so long to get up that even if you do somehow survive the battle is probably close to being over.

edited the OP for Jump Up and No Pain

I've been thinking about this. There are two points to adress here, the injury system and the +1 to hit.

Weapon Skill seems like a rather weak stat as it is, and in Coreheim this is still the issue, hitting on 4+ just takes away half the
attacks, and is not that important, increasing your weapon skill by 1 rarely gives you more than the equavilent of +1 attack.
+1 To hit in CC will make weapon skill less worthwhile, this is IMO really a change for the worse, warriors should have a hard time
hitting, so weapon skill is much more important, I don't want to have weapon skill tables like the to wound table, but IMO it could be less
forgiving. It seems very weird that someone as good with a sword as aenur is so bad at parrying his opponents, it also makes some stats way
better than others which IMO is a shame.
Instead you could give tactical bonuses for close combat attacks? If you are fighting someone in their back who is alreade engaged in combat
to their front you get +1 to hit? Whether giving +1 to hit on range is a good idea I'm not sure about, it really depends on what you want from the game, I myself hate warbands that just stand in one place and shoot, (the other change also boosts these warbands), I also consider shooty warbands to be less tactical which is why I think any gaming change should refrain from making missile combat too much better. +1 To hit is rather good in this regard.

On the other thing:
Changing Knocked down:
Well, Basically I think this is a good idea, having thought a bit about it, I think it could work very well.
However, IMO the injury table is too forgiving, you get hit by a bolt and only have 1 in 3 chances of going down, that's a bit weird. However on the other hand, this change to injury tables would makes combats easier. It would not do much in the speed department, as more people get up quicklier there'll be more attacks, but there'll be no auto-kills from stunned. This fix also removes the ability to charge in with loads of henchmen and a hero on the same initative, let henchmen attack till the target is stunned and then give the hero the kill for the experience, this way would at least make it harder to do, a problem here is that a lot of heroes would now weild a club, which is sort of weird.
Instead of making jump up simply a better version of No Pain I have another solution:
Make injuries 1-3 KD and 4-6 OOA, No Pain Makes it 1-4 KD and 5-6 OOA, dwarves hard heads counts as having no pain.
Helmet could then give 4+ protection against critical hits.

great as always, master

ill think.......

replying to the main post!

I really like the idea of it. I can see how all 3 things make scene.

the only other thing that would be a great improvement to mordheim would be getting armour more usable. currently Critical hits, just destroy armour. making it well useless, so i don't know anyone who uses it! a lucy charm is the only armour you can get!

note it also makes helmets useless! (not biggie tho!)

Asp, I am totally with you on this, for my part a single knocked down effect that incorporates the best of both reults would be, my preference. I've found that it is occasionally not possible to lay a model on either side, and that it increases the risk of damaging the model in certain casesby continuously setting it on anything other than it's base.

Aside from that, the combined effect would speed things up alot, and allow you to perhaps play one more game in a sitting...

still working on this, but also writing a philosophy thesis at the same time

Can I suggest perhaps the addition of flesh wound like necromunda has? on a 1 on the injury roll the model takes -1bs and -1ws and is out of action if reduced to 0? Would make the table a bit more intereseting.

Personally I dislike the flesh wound from necromunda because it is very cluttering to remember who has the flesh wounds and who hasn't got any, but it is very fun and realistic rule though.

Master wrote:

Personally I dislike the flesh wound from necromunda because it is very cluttering to remember who has the flesh wounds and who hasn't got any, but it is very fun and realistic rule though.

We just use tokens which say "1,2,3,4 flesh wounds" each model will only have one counbter, but I can see your point.

so whats the status on this? has anyone tested it out?

I know I havent,a s I think the rules are good as they are.

I haven't tried it either and I agree with the others. This isn't broken and it is part of the core rules so why change it?

Perhaps you could head over to the Warseer forum and ask Asp whether he has experimented with this any further. He may have experimented with it in Coreheim and found that it fits his game quite well.

I would also tend to agree that when you remove something that is so embeded in the game you really aren't playing that game anymore.

I understand the value, and logic behind house rules etc., but have often thought that when you change something to create balance, something else becomes unbalanced in return.

Yeah, and good houserules are ones that improve the rules already in the game. Like the house rule which gives all armour +1 armour save! That rule makes gunpowder weapons and axes much more useful, as well as actually constituting the use of armours, which was rarely used before. This house rule actually gives MORE balance to the game (both in aspects of armour and some armour save affecting weapons) while not affecting anything else in a negative way.