Animals can pick up Wyrdstone?

Hum.

For starters, this is beginning to smack quite heavily of a powergaming discussion.

Animals are animals. Trying to logically dispense an inherent state of 'specialness' due to a perceived ability of warbands to be selective in their acquisition of specific training levels of animals is just silly. Also, in response to animals not being 'worth it', I beg to differ. Strongly.

Yes, they don't gain experience. Yes they tend to only have one attack. NO they do NOT cost anywhere near the price of a henchman!! You don't equip animals. Their cost is their cost, nothing additional. This in conjuction with all previously mentioned 'faults' tends to place animal minions/units quite squarely into the category that they are imminently suited for: Skirmishers.

Think of it...90% of the time animals are significantly faster than their two-legged brethren, if you lose one you DON'T lose invested experience/bought equipment/etc., and you generally aren't limited (aside from warband cap) on how many you can have. They make the perfect skirmish screen to shield your far more valuable heroes/henchmen from nasty encounters and can tend to pick and choose their targets due to speed! How is that useless???

Quite honestly, the only way I could see anyone considering them useless is if they were focusing solely on min/maxing so as to brute-force destroy instead of actually using...call me crazy here if you will...tactics.

Please, people. There is no point in discussing this, and providing exceptional youtube videos does not support these arguments.

It is official word that dogs cannot climb letters. See here.

If you want to house rule this (along with "dogs may earn XP and can wield swords in their mouths if they have the weapons training skill"), then by all means go ahead and do so, if it improves your gaming experience.

Gotcha, as long as it's official, it's fine. I was under the false impression that people were house ruling animals not being able to climb ladders

Angron wrote:

Gotcha, as long as it's official, it's fine. I was under the false impression that people were house ruling animals not being able to climb ladders

As linked above, it will be in the next official FAQ. Until then, you might want to refer people to the thread in the SG Forum.

@Da Bank

First, I agree with you. Animals can not pick up objects (and should not). Other than the rules and FAQs, the main reason is that it is not a reasonable thing to expect of a dog trained to fight in real-life.

Second, I would like to know if a Rat Ogre is concidered an animal in this regard?

At this time rat-ogres are not included in this bunch as rat ogres can use weapons thus they "should" be able to pick something up and they are already reasonable warped already.

Cianty and I had talked about this dilemia a while back as unfortunately, everything needs looked at as some creatures have the "animal" skill or characteristic but are able to do more than a dog.

For now, Trolls, Ogres and etc should be able to or you can easily say no or require a leadership test.

The overall no available for all those animals that I listed earlier.

Not to be too picky, but my Mordheim rule book says Rat Ogres can never use weapons or armor... Just sayin'.

Got it.

It took me a bit to remember where it was but in Random Happenings, here is what it says on "animals".
16 Lucky Find
One random model, on his feet and not in hand-to-hand combat or
fleeing, has stumbled upon a shard of wyrdstone! Assuming he
doesn’t go out of action, this is added to any other shards the
warband finds after the game. If he is taken out of action in close
combat, the enemy model steals the shard away! Note that only nonanimal
models can find or steal a shard, not Dire Wolves, Hunting

Dogs, etc.

so far there is nothing official. you could wait for a rules update, but so far we have been waiting for 5+ years...


alternatively, absolute clarity on such issues has always been a stable feature of coreheim

LOL, ASP. It is official as noted earlier above. Corehiem or Your Rules ARE NOT OFFICIAL.

Yes. That was both unnecessary and flat out wrong, Asp.

ok, ill be a good asp

but even the bad asp never said that coreheim was official


but tell me: does your argument that this point is covered in the official rules rest upon the addendum in the random happenings alone? that would be quite the favourable reading of the official rules...

@Asp. LOL. It is what it is.

Andy's permission to officially answer rules questions and produce FAQs as granted by Andy Hall, head of Specialist Games, is what it rests upon.

Not to flog a dead animal here (heh), but I have a proposed house rule I'd like the assembled grey beards to mull over for possibilities.

House rule:

Except where specifically prohibited (ie treasure chests), animals (defined as hunting dogs, dire wolves, squigs, bears, warhounds, giants rats, or warhounds of chaos) can climb ladders or handle items upon a succesful Ld test. A failed test ends their move. Not being human, animals don't really appreciate the commanding presence of the leader. The leadership aura can not be applied to this check.

However:

New Skill (Academic)

Animal Handler: Animals are not people and can not benefit from a leader's leadership in this regard. However, they can benefit from the leadership of a trainer with the proper skill. This skill allows animals (as defined above) to benefit from the leadership of the skill possesor as long as they are within 6" of him. *Due to the time and effort required to form the animal bond, each warband may only have one active animal handler at a time. Multiple takings of this skill do not provide multiple leadership fields, but the warband leader may nominate which Handler is "active" before the encounter.

I think it would be fun to work up some house rules.

If the friendly (non-animal) model nearest the pooch makes a successful leadership check, the dog follows orders and will pick up the shard.

At the start of every turn that the dog is carrying the shard, roll 2d6. On a 2 or 3, the dog swallows the shard. On a roll of 10+, the dog drops the shard and will not again pick it up.

If the dog eats the shard, roll a d6 after the game.

1-2 The dog absconds with the shard. Roll a random mutation for the dog, and place him in the center of the table during the next scenario. He will always move toward the nearest model from any warband, and will attack any model he can reach.

On a 3+ the warband can recover the shard. But at the beginning of every subsequent game, after the warband is deployed, roll a d6 for the dog; on a roll of 1 the dog sprouts a random mutation and is now hostile to his warband.

i dont think there is any need for animals to be able to pick up things at all it just slows down play

i think it would be very good to make animals excempt from the leader ability

right now you can easily work around it.

ie witch hunter captain with 5 dogs around him

an animals handler skill would be good, but would only work for some warbands (dire wolves are itp) and would work better for warbands who have expensive animals than inexpensive animals (giant rats)

How does it slow down play?

Snappy_Dresser wrote:

How does it slow down play?

Well the house rules that were suggested by yourself and mweaver require at least one extra dice roll which would slow down the game. Still, people have different likes and dislikes and house rules allow customisation of the core game to better suit the likes of a particular gaming group. I agree with Asp and others that animals don't need to be able to pick up things. I will not tell you not to use your house rules though because they are fine if your gaming group want animals to pick up things and don't mind extra rules to allow it to happen.


Edited to add...
Your "Animal Handler" skill just sounds like a reworded version of the "Beast Handler" skill from Blazing Saddles. I was sure that it sounded familiar. Therefore you probably don't need a new skill for your house rule but instead can use the "Beast Handler" skill that already exists.