If you could change 3 things in Mordheim

In our group, the simple bump to shields (making them +2 to armor saves in hth) has meant that a reasonable number of warriors now go with shield and weapon rather than two weapons.

We do enforce a negative on the dual-wield with a skill to remove it. Improving Shields and reducing the cost of armor has made armor appear on heroes earlier in campaigns and created the appearance of "shieldmen" whose job it is to take charges.

Halberds... we have never found a good solution. The + Str just doesn't seem worth the loss of the attack. I'v ethought about allowing Bucklers with Halberds (There is some historical precedent for this) but not shields. The other might be to reduce their cost a bit. Or add 1st strike to the halberds. We've never decided what to do...

As for me and my group, I've already brought together our own rules
revision higly inspired by many discussions and propositions on this forum
and also by our Czech Mordheim Ikon Honza Skypala (you can find his
scenario in Annual 2002).
As I was working on it, I saw 3 biggest problems in following:

1. ofcourse the dual wield problem- big boring story Closely with this is connected other problem:
2. imbalance between quality (few well equipped warriors) and quantity (bunch of non-equpped warriors) - armor and other enhancing stuff is more expensive and of no real use compared to a naked guy with two simple hanweapon-basic tactical unit in Mordheim.. that realy kills the spirit of choices, which way you want to develope your gang and also makes more than half of the whole equipment (which should be also the attractive part of the game) completely useles.
3. as third I'd mention the overall vague interpretation of most of rules, which makes you to ask dozens of questions all the time you play. No chance to make it without some house rules solving those unclear parts.

Myntokk wrote:

These are gonna sound like big ones, but I don't think they would actually change the game that much:

1 - Warband rating is calculated as total XP + total cost of the warband (magic items would have a "cost" assigned to them for rating purposes).
2 - Balance equipment costs based on in-game effectiveness rather than "realistic" pricing.
3 - No limit to the number of heroes you can obtain (still cap exploration rolls at 6 dice).

I really don't see any of these as a main problem.
1. The warband rating may be a bit off, I agree, though the warband rating is sledom crucial to a game's outcome!
2. Now this may be a slight problem, still I would rather balance the actuall equipment abilities, than the cost. I think for fluff, and since it's gold it makes good sense that a sword is more expensive than a club - still fluffwise a club should be a lot worse than a sword, and this is were the problem lies.
4. Why is the limit bad? If there's no limit, there hardly is any point for henchmen at all - I think the balance between heroes and henchmen makes the game interesting.

Nastyogre wrote:

Halberds... we have never found a good solution. The + Str just doesn't seem worth the loss of the attack. I'v ethought about allowing Bucklers with Halberds (There is some historical precedent for this) but not shields. The other might be to reduce their cost a bit. Or add 1st strike to the halberds. We've never decided what to do...

I played around with a lot of stuff for my current campaign. I could never find the right balancing point between you'd never take them and you'd be an idiot not to take them. Right now they're vanilla with a new Strength skill that gives them strike first.

i think halberds would come into there own, when you introduce a penalty for two weapons. cos you getting two advantages then....

Im really likeing the whole idea of "-1 to hit if you have two weapons."
and then maybe adding a combat skill for, "you have no penalty for having two close combat weapons!"

1: More ways for lagging warbands to catch up to the big dogs, which does not require a campaign organizer to hinder the winning players unfairly with constant ambushes, and specially ruled handicaps.
2: The above depends of accurate ratings, with equipment entered into the equation. Equipment should have a separate rating for this, not GC, which is fluff based.
3: All the official/almost-official rules to be collected into one big volume, with layers of optional rules. This would help eliminate duplicate items with different rules, and duplicate named, or conceptually similar, rules with different effects. Also it would help aleviate PDF hunting to find out obscure rules, so long as the index was good enough.

frog wrote:

i think halberds would come into there own, when you introduce a penalty for two weapons. cos you getting two advantages then....

Im really likeing the whole idea of "-1 to hit if you have two weapons."
and then maybe adding a combat skill for, "you have no penalty for having two close combat weapons!"

This is exactly how we play, and we play shields give a +2 armour vs missle weapons, and Halberds are still the red headed step child.

Oddly, one of our Mordheim players is a red-headed step child. He doesn't use halberds either, come to think of it.

More elves, more ogres, and more fish!

Regards,

Werekin.

B-)

Definitely more fish!

I forgot to mention the biggest thing I'd like to see change about Mordheim... more people playing it!