W22 House Rules

________________________________________________

For anyone interested, these are our local gaming group's house rules (still under development though). You will probably remember some rules from threads found in this forum. Thanks for all contributors who unwillingly helped creating this compilation of house rule!

Warband specific rulings are very thin since we rarely play non-1a bands.

________________________________________________

Key changes:

• -1 to hit when using two weapons
  
• added new combat skill to compensate for that
  
• +1 AS on shield and buckler in hand-to-hand combat
  
• added new strength skill: shield bash (+1A with -2 on injury rolls, counting as dual wielding)
  
• Body armour grants a post battle save on serious injuries
  
• Different critical hits effects for each weapon
  
• Handguns have +1 on injury rolls and may cause an all lone test
  
• Same for the Hochland Long rifle but with S5
  
• Spears grant +1I in the first round of hand-to-hand combat
  
• Slings give the enemy +1AS
  
• Heroic henchman give one henchman groupt +1 exp per game when putting a hero OOA
  
• Rabbit's foot is destroyed when the reroll is either 1 or 2
  

Cheers,

Chris

Fixes for Handguns often create more problems with the simulation of reality than they fix. For example your rapid re-load just isn't possible until the nineteenth century, indeed as firearms became more accurate they became slower to reload until mass produced cartridges solved the problem.

Historically bows had a higher rate of fire, but anyone could fire a gun. Archery had to be learned and mastered, a gun could be picked up and pointed.

REminenz wrote:

MISTAKES
Each player is allowed one major mistake per game (e.g. forgetting to take action in a phase). No more, no less. A player is allowed to adjust his mistake only if the opponent has not yet started his shooting phase (the opponents movements can be “rewinded”, the shooting sticks).

"No more, no less." Sorry I just found this funny because it implies that each player *must* make one major mistake per game.

I like people posting house rules and discussion is generated as a result. You house rules are similar to the house rules that my gaming group will be introducing (the first time that we've decided to tweak some things).

Body Armour...
Did your group decide that a serious injury save made armour too powerful? I am assuming that you have not reduced the cost of the armour as there is no mention of any cost changes. For the additional D6 roll you only mention a result for 1, 5 & 6 so what happens if a 2, 3 or 4 is rolled? Perhaps you should just say that a 1 destroys the armour and a 6 is treated as survived against the odds and ignore 2 to 5.

Weapon Rules...
We tweaked handguns and long rifles slightly differently (see below). Of course only play testing will tell whether it makes the weapons too good (oh and we are always playing with the rules for blackpowder misfires).
Handgun: S5, remove "Prepared Shot"
Hochland Long Rifle/Hunting Rifle: S5, remove "Prepared Shot", add "Accuracy" (from Duelling Pistols)

We haven't tweaked the spear but instead I hope that the changes to shields will make spears more of an option.

of course handgunds should get to fire every turn. check our modded rules in my sig for inspiration

Asp wrote:

of course handgunds should get to fire every turn. check our modded rules in my sig for inspiration

@Asp
Hmmm... handguns cause concussion. Did you find that simply removing 'prepare shot' was not enough to make handguns viable?

@REminenz
Good idea about making lizardmen armour saves able to be totally negated otherwise lizardmen would become too powerful with the other tweaks to armour and shields.

Kroxigors cannot get armour though so is this another house rule? Perhaps instead of giving a -1 Movement penalty for Saurus warriors you could simply say that armour is too rare to give to henchmen and will only be given to Saurus heroes.

Some people also give the Kroxigor stupidity as another way of toning down the warband. It has Leadership 8 so stupidity would not be an issue most of the time but would make the Kroxigor slightly less reliable.

The rules for Rapiers from the Hochland Bandits is a typo. They should be the same as Ye Olde Curiosity Shoppe. Cianty is planning on adding some more errata to update the warband rules when he gets a chance.

Asp wrote:

of course handgunds should get to fire every turn. check our modded rules in my sig for inspiration

Why? For game balance issues? How does using or not using them balance the game? If the purpose is to make their use more widespread then perhaps instead of tweaking the guns rules one could tweak the rules for bows and crossbows.

Bows are actually hard to use effectively and require different skills than guns and longer training. So perhaps Bowmen should become more expensive and rarer than handgunners.

Instead of lumping all missile weapons under Marksmen, warbands could become more diverse by restricting bowmen to rural or mountain bands or savage races. More settled areas would have more guns.
Crossbows take longer to reload than bows so perhaps crossbows should lose Quickshot. That would change things!

I am often confused by the rush to condemn dual wield because it is unrealistic followed by the fire every turn for everyone for handguns. Handguns drive out archery because they are simpler to use once the technology is available not because they were better at killing or had a high rate of fire. The gun doesn't make armor obsolete, the proliferation of guns beyond the previous availability of bows or crossbows makes armor obsolete.

I just wrote a long response but lost the whole thing when I hit the "backspace" and the browser went back.

To sum it all up:

I agree with a lot of your rules.
Handgun rules may work mechanically but aren't accurate of primitive firearms - my group gives them +1 on the injury table but retains the reload rule (you can try allowing them two rolls on the injury table keeping the highest, but we found this a bit too powerful - more damage may not be totally accurate, but matchlocks take a LONG time to load so I thought it was important to keep that rule).
Armour is difficult - the +1 AS for using hand weapon and shield seems to be almost universally accepted. I do feel that allowing a warrior in armour to get "survives against the odds" more often is a bit "cheesy" - though I am generally opposed to having armour affect injury table results as armour can be as much of a liability as a protection in many circumstances (especially if water or looters are involved).
If you want weapons to better reflect historical reality, spears should probably have a reduced cost - a sharpened stick is a basic spear, after all.

Over all it looks good - keep us posted on any changes you decide to make to these after they've been tested!

The tweak we are testing in my circle at the moment is that handguns and hunting rifles roll two injury dice, choosing the highest.

I have found, through several campaigns, that the +1 AS shield rule in combination with natural stacking armor saves (Lizardmen/Black Orcs) is very powerful.

I do not think that it is unbeatable, or way overpowered to the point of banning said warbands, but it does effect the whole campaign in negative ways.

Every other warband MUST be tailored to cracking 1+ and 2+ saves, which is expensive and consumes skill choices. As a trade off, lightly armored warbands become less effective against each other to stay comparative against the heavy armored warbands.

The first half of the campaign becomes a predictable series of strongman and mighty blow skill selections, and searches for double handed gromril weapons. Cutting down enemy heroes before the can get their hands on gromril plate (I am aware Saurus can't wear it) becomes the only goal at first, and if failed, their is little to stop these warrior later.

Also the sheer psychological effect of knowing you only have one or two warriors capable of wounding the enemy heroes can alter ones tactics to damage mitigation and avoidance rather than trying to win scenarios, further stregthining a warband already in the lead.

If you are altering the lizardman scale save consider altering the black orc's save as well, they can have 6 heroes with 1+ saves...

I say, keep the handguns at every second turn, and give them a plus 1 to injury instead – thus they become more different than the crossbow.

Pathfinder Dubstyles wrote:

I have found, through several campaigns, that the +1 AS shield rule in combination with natural stacking armor saves (Lizardmen/Black Orcs) is very powerful.

I do not think that it is unbeatable, or way overpowered to the point of banning said warbands, but it does effect the whole campaign in negative ways. .

Just out of curiosity what other rules did you change? I've played both Black Orcs and Lizards and never encountered this problem. We've been playing shield and a hand weapon since 6th edition Warhammer introduced it.

We use the optional Critical Hit tables and favor swords and axes. Personally I see the trend toward Strongman, etc whenever a high T warband is on the table by which I include Dwarfs, Beasts, Possessed and Orcs. Its the nature of taming that beast.

Tanks a lot for the input guys!
I will update the first post whenever we agree on changes.

Popmouth wrote:

I say, keep the handguns at every second turn, and give them a plus 1 to injury instead – thus they become more different than the crossbow.

Would you then keep our "ignores range penalty" house rules in play too?

I think we all agree that if we compare a crossbow and a handgun, the crossbow seems a better. It's cheaper, has more range, is easier to find and fires every turn. The handgun has only the higher armour save penalty.
Skillwise a crossbow can double its attacks via the quickshot skill. Which the handgun can too - with the hunter skill. Nimble doesnt work with quickshot, which in a way favors the handgun..
And some people play by the optional rules for blackpowder weapons too.

So keeping all that in mind, is +1 injury alone really sufficient?

I kinda like the idea with rolling injuries and picking the higher - but you mentioned it seemed overpowered?

REminenz wrote:

Skillwise a crossbow can double its attacks via the quickshot skill. Which the handgun can too - with the hunter skill. Nimble doesnt work with quickshot, which in a way favors the handgun..

You don't really mean that hunter allows you to fire twice a turn do you?
Hunter allows you to ignore the Prepare Shot special rule. Did I miss something in your original post?

Could it be that at this point in the Warhammer world's history that the crossbow just IS a better choice? For example the Conquistadors carried bows and crossbows to the New World because they were more reliable in battle, but the handgun was still a profound psychological weapon because the natives considered it magical... That gets no play in Mordheim. The target and anyone within 3 inches must take an all alone test.

Firearms were at a disadvantage in skirmish situations well into the mid-nineteenth century, but Mordheimers must fix it? You could just play Legends of the Old West...

Also why no champions of the Longbow? In ancient battles where longbows and crossbows were on the same field the longbows often won, shouldn't we fix that first?

Von Kurst wrote:

You don't really mean that hunter allows you to fire twice a turn do you?

No, I meant that both crossbows and handguns can double their rate of fire with their respective skills. Crossbows shoot twice instead of once per turn, and a handgun fires once per turn instead of every other turn.

Von Kurst wrote:

In ancient battles where longbows and crossbows were on the same field the longbows often won, shouldn't we fix that first?

I really appreciate your historical insight, but I prefer a mechanically balanced tabletop over a highly realistic one. If we can have both - great! But if I wanted historically correct rules I would play historical tabletops.
That doesn't mean I want to completely ignore the background, but keeping handguns (unbalanced) as they are, just because "they were like that in those days, chap" is not really an option (for us as least ).

But thanks for the input!

Quote :

I really appreciate your historical insight, but I
prefer a mechanically balanced tabletop over a highly realistic one.

S5 also works wonders for handguns

I confess I do not understand the issue underlying this discussion. Handguns are somehow "unbalanced" because their rules fit with the original fluff written to support the game (Mordheim), i.e. that gunpowder weapons are in their infancy and are therefore rare and unreliable. Bows and crossbows are the current (in game terms) staple of missile weaponry and are therefore common and reliable. Seems like they got that right. (But its 'bad' and "unbalanced"?)

Dual wielded weapons are 'bad' because they are "unbalancing" (how since no warband is at a disadvantage) or because they are not "historically" correct from a real world perspective. Obviously you support one of these interpretations for one thing but not the other which is very human yet perplexing to an observer.

It is only perplexing if you don't what people are talking about them being balanced against. What a lot of people want over historical accuracy is *variety*. They want each weapon option to (ideally) be just as good as any other when all factors are taken into consideration. They want a sword to be as good as an axe, a club, a halberd, a dagger, etc. (Note that most people are willing to consider cost as a factor of what makes a weapon good.)

Gross generalisation here, but in the vanilla rules everyone always takes two hand-weapons of one kind or another because dual-wielding is just better. Further more, those weapons are always a club main-hand and sword off-hand because a club has the best weapon rules for attack and a sword has a chance to parry. Well, you get that on heroes. Henchmen get club and dagger because clubs are good and cheap and daggers are good enough and free.

Everyone avoids armour because it costs too much and doesn't do anything until late game when everyone then switches to suits of gromril.

Noone ever takes handguns because compared to a crossbow they fire slower, have a shorter range, and are more expensive. Crossbows are better in every way except armour penetration, but as noone takes armour that is a non-issue.

TL;DR version: Most people prefer interesting viable options balanced against each other to historical accuracy and will emphasise that in their house-rules.

Maybee the reason to change rules is diversity.

In case of dual wield people like to change the rules to give diversity to weapon choises. Its no balace issue among the warbands (as nearly all are affected tha same way) its about balance weapon and equipment choices. If u play without dual wield penality ist always the best choice to go for two cheap hand weapons, and there is no room for doublehanded weapons or unwieldy stuff or shields.

In chase of ranged weapons ist just the same, u want to change them to give a use in the game. Fluffwise blackpowderweaponsmneed to be expensive, but beeing expenseive they need to be usefull rulewise. Why i should spend lots of money in handguns if cheap bows and crossbows a better in terms of gameplay?

Also arguments about historical conditions arent usefull for fantasy games, if u are able to construct double barreled blackpowder weapons and those beeing more accurate than bows (duellpistols) u already reached technological know how of the last century.

Von Kurst wrote:

I am often confused by the rush to condemn dual wield because it is unrealistic followed by the fire every turn for everyone for handguns. Handguns drive out archery because they are simpler to use once the technology is available not because they were better at killing or had a high rate of fire. The gun doesn't make armor obsolete, the proliferation of guns beyond the previous availability of bows or crossbows makes armor obsolete.

Hi Von Kurst,

You're argument have made me decide to keep "Prepare Shot" for both the Handgun and Hochland Long Rifle/Hunting Rifles. I always enjoy your views on Mordheim. However, I do want to have more variety with weapon options instead of always just choosing two cheap weapons and a crossbow so I think that I'll make Handguns and Hunting Rifles like this:

----
Handgun: S5, add "Lethal", always follow the misfire rules (and cost reduced 20%).
Hochland Long Rifle/Hunting Rifle: S5, add "Accuracy" (from Duelling Pistols), add "Lethal", always follow the misfire rules (and cost reduced 20%).

Lethal: Add +1 to injury roll (as used by CygnusMaximus).
----

I guess that handguns and hunting rifles were not more lethal than bows or crossbows but this will hopefully make them more viable while the "Prepare Shot" and misfire rules keep the fluff for them being less effective weapons than bows and crossbows.

Asp wrote:

Quote :

I really appreciate your historical insight, but I
prefer a mechanically balanced tabletop over a highly realistic one.

S5 also works wonders for handguns

We've shied away from giving handguns S5 - mainly because most of us also play Warhammer and two strength values is confusing to the older members of the group (myself included) who can't even keep the various editions straight!

RationalLemming wrote:

Hi Von Kurst,

You're argument have made me decide to keep "Prepare Shot" for both the Handgun and Hochland Long Rifle/Hunting Rifles. I always enjoy your views on Mordheim. However, I do want to have more variety with weapon options instead of always just choosing two cheap weapons and a crossbow so I think that I'll make Handguns and Hunting Rifles like this:

----
Handgun: S5, add "Lethal", always follow the misfire rules (and cost reduced 20%).
Hochland Long Rifle/Hunting Rifle: S5, add "Accuracy" (from Duelling Pistols), add "Lethal", always follow the misfire rules (and cost reduced 20%).

Lethal: Add +1 to injury roll (as used by CygnusMaximus).
----

I guess that handguns and hunting rifles were not more lethal than bows or crossbows but this will hopefully make them more viable while the "Prepare Shot" and misfire rules keep the fluff for them being less effective weapons than bows and crossbows.

I'm waiting for an expert on Age of Enlightenment weapons to tell me I'm wrong...

But thanks RationalL.

Hunting Rifles may have indeed been more lethal, they were certainly more accurate but were even slower to load do to the rifling of the barrel. They are also from an later era historically but as is pointed out above, history only takes us so far...

I do think that people miss the premise of Mordheim being set in a past within the Warhammer world timeline. If only for doing equipment costs in alternative settings. Guns could get cheaper and bows and crossbows fall out of use in settings closer to "current" Warhammer history.

Also, changing other game mechanics rather than weapon strength could be an option to reflect the psychological impact of gunpowder weapons. Fear, envy, respect? Or their relative ease of use compared to bows and crossbows. Repeating myself, I know.

CygnusMaximus wrote:

We've shied away from giving handguns S5 - mainly because most of us also play Warhammer and two strength values is confusing to the older members of the group (myself included) who can't even keep the various editions straight!

Cygnus--+1 and an Amen to that. I'm also interested in how the various forms of the Games Workshop rules have kept to S4. The Buffalo gun in LotOW for example. If anything should be S5...

Doing some math.. Crossbow vs Handgun

Setup:
12 rounds to fire
6 rounds on close range
BS 3
Toughness 3

Crossbow
against armor 5+:

Code:

chance to wound: 222%
chance to ooA:    74%

against armor 6+:

Code:

chance to wound: 266%
chance to ooA:    88%

Handgun
equal against armour 5+ and 6+

Code:

no modifier: 133 / 44
weapon strength 5: 166 / 55
no range modifier: 166 / 55
+1 injury modifier: 133 / 66
2 injury rolls: 133 / 74
S5 & +1 injury: 166 / 83
no range & +1 injury: 166 / 83
S5 & no range: 208 / 69
S5 & no range & +1 injury: 208 / 104
rapid reload: 133 / 44
rapid reload & no range: 200 / 66
rapid reload & no range & S5: 250 / 83
rapid reload & no range & +1 injury: 200 / 100
no prepared shot & no range & +1 injury: 277 / 138
S5 & +1 injury & accuracy: 236 / 118
S5 & accuracy: 236 / 78

What i didn't take into account:
S5 modifier being better against 4+ armours

Seeing that break-down makes me think that maybe allowing handguns and longrifles to roll two dice for injury may have been the best way to go after all...

I edited my previous post by adding several new calculations..

Two rolls it is, then.

The calculations appear to assume that the weapon has a target every turn of the game. While I would love it if this were the case, it rarely seems to be. This, in my opinion, is a good argument in favor of the "modified" handgun, even when statistics don't appear to be in its favor - shot for shot, the double-injury handgun will take targets OOA with more frequency (both due to armour modifiers and increased severity of injuries caused) while the crossbow's advantage is range and rate of fire.

I like it - it makes the weapons "separate but equal".