Your favorite experimental rule option

Okay, way back in the days, when yearly rules reviews still seemed to be a possibility, people cooked up three experimental rules options (see quote from the Yahoo group below).
Which one do you prefer and have you adopted them in your games?
How does it work in practice, especially in terms of alleviating the over-abundance of dual-wielding warriors and the lack of armour usage?

EDIT: Added a few more voting options, since the first three seemed to be too restrictive.

Quote :

Message: 4
Date: Mon, 23 May 2005 22:24:22 +0100
From: "ian"
Subject: playtesting dual-wielding/armour: preamble

Ok, here it is...three initial proposals designed to deal
with the over-abundance of dual-wielding and to improve the attractiveness
of shields and armour. Your playtesting feedback would be appreciated.

There's a very good piece on playtesting at the back of FM9. To quote a
sub-heading from the article "It's not what you think, it's what you see".
To put it bluntly if you ain't rolled any dice, you ain't allowed an
opinion.

What we'd really like to see is the ideas being tested by a range of
warbands, a range of players over the course of a full campaign. While
learning how the proposals affect play *within* the game is useful, equally
important is to gain information on which weapon/armour choices the players
make over the course of a campaign.

The perfect package will result in a split between players choosing two
single-handed weapons, a double-handed weapon and a single-handed weapon +
shield/buckler. Some warriors should choose heavy armour, some light
armour, some none at all. It doesn't have to be a perfectly equal split but
if one option is favoured almost exclusively over all the others then
clearly something is wrong. That's exactly the sort of thing we need to
know.

Finally, and this too is advocated in the FM9 article, be as beardy as you
like. If you think you've spotted a loop-hole then you should exploit it to
the full. As long as you let us know of course.

Happy playtesting.

Ian



OPTION A.

i. Page 35, "Fighting with two weapons". Add the line "Due to the difficulty in fighting with more than one weapon, any warrior attempting to do so suffers a -1 penalty to hit with both weapons. A warrior using a pistol in hand-to-hand combat is exempt from this penalty."

ii. Page 122, New Combat Skill "Maniac Warrior: The Warrior is adept at fighting with a weapon in each hand. He may ignore the -1 to hit penalty that such practice normally incurs."

Johann The Knife, Bertha Bestraufung and Veskit should all be granted the "Maniac Warrior" skill.

iii. Page 51, under Shield. Add the line. "In addition to this save, a warrior armed with a shield and a hand-weapon has a basic save of 5+ (or may add +2 to his armour save if other armour is worn) in hand-to-hand combat. Mounted models may not gain this benefit. Hand weapons are defined as hammers, staffs, maces, clubs, axes, swords, morning stars and spears. Variants such as rapiers or Dwarf axes are also included.

Page 51, under Buckler. Add the line "In addition to this, a warrior armed with a buckler and a hand-weapon has a basic save of 6+ (or may add +1 to his armour save if other armour is worn) in hand-to-hand combat.

iv. Page 50, under "Light Armour" add "In addition the warrior gains a 6+ save against Serious Injury during the post-battle phase. Treat a successful save exactly as if the warrior had received the "Full Recovery" result. He may not explore, trade nor take part in any other post-battle activities".

v. Page 50, under "Heavy Armour" add "In addition the warrior gains a 5+ save against Serious Injury during the post-battle phase. Treat a successful save exactly as if the warrior had received the "Full Recovery" result. He may not explore, trade nor take part in any other post-battle activities".

vi. Page 51, under "Ithilmar Armour" add "In addition the warrior gains a 5+ save against Serious Injury during the post-battle phase. Treat a successful save exactly as if the warrior had received the "Full Recovery" result. He may not explore, trade nor take part in any other post-battle activities".

vii. Page 51, under "Gromril Armour" add "In addition the warrior gains a 4+ save against Serious Injury during the post-battle phase. Treat a successful save exactly as if the warrior had received the "Full Recovery" result. He may not explore, trade nor take part in any other post-battle activities".

viii. MH Annual 2002, Page 16, under "Toughened Leathers", replace the entire Special Rules text with the line:
" A warrior wearing toughened leathers gains a 6+ save against Serious Injury during the post-battle phase. Treat a successful save exactly as if the warrior had received the "Full Recovery" result. He may not explore, trade nor take part in any other post-battle activities. Toughened Leathers are classified as Armour and may be worn by Henchmen"



OPTION B.

i. Page 35, "Fighting with two weapons". Add the line "Due to the difficulty in fighting with more than one weapon, any warrior attempting to do so suffers a -1 penalty to hit with both weapons. A warrior using a pistol in hand-to-hand combat is exempt from this penalty."

ii. Page 122, New Combat Skill "Maniac Warrior: The Warrior is adept at fighting with a weapon in each hand. He may ignore the -1 to hit penalty that such practice normally incurs."

iii. Replace the existing cost, movement penalty, rarity and armour saves with the following:

- Light Armour: 6+ save , no -1M with shield, common, (10GC)
- Medium Armour: 5+ save, no -1M with shield, common, (20GC)
- Full Armour: 4+ save, -1M with shield, rare 8, (50GC)
- Ithilmar: 4+, no -1M with shield, rare 11 (90GC)
- Gromril: 4+, no -1M with shield, rare 11, Special Rule: "Death Defying: A warrior that is wearing Gromril armour gains a 4+ save against Serious Injury during the post-battle phase. Treat a successful save exactly as if the warrior had received the "Full Recovery" result (150GC)

Medium, Full, Ithilmar & Gromril Armour are all types of Heavy Armour.



OPTION C.
i. Page 35, "Fighting with two weapons". Add the line "Due to the difficulty in fighting with more than one weapon, any warrior attempting to do so suffers a -1 penalty to hit with both weapons. A warrior using a pistol in hand-to-hand combat is exempt from this penalty."

ii. Page 122, New Combat Skill "Maniac Warrior: The Warrior is adept at fighting with a weapon in each hand. He may ignore the -1 to hit penalty that such practice normally incurs.."

iii. Page 51, under Shield. Add the line. "In addition to this save, a warrior armed with a shield and a hand-weapon has a basic save of 5+ (or may add +2 to his armour save if other armour is worn) in hand-to-hand combat. Mounted models may not gain this benefit. Hand weapons are defined as hammers, staffs, maces, clubs, axes, swords, morning stars and spears. Variants such as rapiers or Dwarf axes are also included.

Page 51, under Buckler. Add the line "In addition to this, a warrior armed with a buckler and a hand-weapon has a basic save of 6+ (or may add +1 to his armour save if other armour is worn) in hand-to-hand combat.

iv. Page 32 & p.167. Critical Hits Chart. Under result 5-6 "Master Strike!" remove the line "The attack ignores all armour saves"

Page 160. Optional Missile Critical Hits Chart. Under result 5-6 "Master Shot" remove the line "There is no armour save"

Page 161. Optional Bladed Weapon Critical Hits Chart. Under result 5-6 "Sliced!" remove the words "ignores armour saves"

We use a mix of all of them. We use:
-1 to hit on both weapons and the 'Dual-wielder' skill
Shields and bucklers grant +1 armour save in close combat
armour saves vs injury
armour is half-price
armour-ignoring is removed from some of the criticals.

In addition to the above, we also use Ithimar counts as a Light Armour.

We found you needed all of them to encourage people to take the wanted variety of weapons.

First one to vote! Ha, we don't use any of them. But I do give a shield plus hand weapon = +1 armour save though.

Well, we havent used any of the options so far, but I think we will use a good mix of all three of them like Lord O.

Just as a little background, the group I play in is fairly competitive. We play with a lot of terrain; we prefer to change (in descending order of preference) tactics, flavour, rules; we tend to have rather long campaigns (6-8 months) and will often run two warbands each (only one at a time though); although we are pretty much all power gamers, none of us are WAAC players.

So far all we have changed is the shield rule )5+ in hand to hand), and even that has helped restore more of a balance. If we add anything else, my recommendation would be the saves vs serious injury rolls in option 1.

I don't like the -1 to hit option. Combined with changes to armor like the options above, it will make armor the default everyone will take.

We haven't used any option to date and therefore most warriors have two weapons and no armour. In our next campaign we'll be doing...
- Shields and bucklers give a +1 armour save in close combat
- Attacking with a double-handed weapon or flail negates the above benefit that the defender would otherwise have received in addition to granting the normal Strength based armour save modifier
- Armour gives a save against serious injury after the game (except toughened leathers, shields, bucklers, helmets, parvises, etc)
- Armour can be destroyed if it successfully saves against serious injury (see here http://www.sg.tacticalwargames.net/forum/index.php?topic=1256.0 (just to get some traffic on the SG forum ))
- Armour costs unchanged and ithilmar armour is still heavy armour
- Armour negation due to strength of attack starts at Strength 5 instead of Strength 4
- Basic critical hit chart is used but 1-2 does not affect the armour save, 3-4 grants -1 armour save modifier instead of negating the armour save entirely and 5-6 still negates the armour save entirely
- Duel wielding is -1 to hit with off-hand weapon and attacks from off-hand weapons can be parried on a roll equal to or higher than the roll to hit (so it is possible to parry an off-hand attack when a 6 is rolled to hit)
- Ambidextrous skill to negate duel wielding penalty

I think that is it. It might be overboard but I guess that playing will help us determine if we need to tone it down. If possible we want duel wielding > double-handed weapon > weapon and shield > duel wielding. Of course we won't get this but oh well the main object is to have fun anyway.

@Lord O: You mentioned ' a lot of terrain'.
Our warbands are Orcs&Goblins, Maneaters, two warbands of Skaven, Treasure Hunter Dwarves and the Marauders
of Chaos.
So we have shooting warbands and close combat warbands. The Skaven like to have few pieces of terrain. The Maneasters, Dwarves and Marauders like to have a lot of terrain.
How do you handle the amount of terrain pieces for fair play? Do you roll a die?

mweaver: I think the rules are there for different things. The -1 to hit makes things like halberds, DH weapons, 2h spears etc more attractive over dual wielding and the cheaper armour, +1 in cc, and removal of crit armour penetration makes taking shields more attractive over dual wielding. As a side-effect the increase in armour leads to more handguns over crossbows and more axes over clubs.

Shacru: We place terrain until the table is full. The tagline is Mordheim - City of the Damned after all, so any player arguing that there be very little terrain on the table has a hard road ahead of him doing so . Not that anyone does argue, like I said - power gamers, not WAAC players . To us it seems like the game has been balanced around a full table of terrain so that is what we play on. Simple as that.

We use a few house rules:

1. str 5 needed to gives -1 armor save not 4.

2. Duel wield -1 ws

3. armor as normal

4 shield + 1 hander +2 armor save.


We find it has worked well in making people really think about what they want to get. sword + shield 5+ armor save and a parry not bad, also Axe + shield 5+ armor save, but - armor not bad. or duel wield extra attack.
we are thinking on makeing a house skill to neg. the -1 weapon skill for DW .

@Lord O: I see. We are playing most of the time 'Border Town Burning'. There are the Wastelands and the borderlands and the dark woods and the high mountains and, well, we are looking for a 'fair play' option for the amount of pieces of terrain. Any idea?

While B is close to what my group does I had to vote for "something different". We have put the "dual nerf" in place and have increased the close combat effectiveness of shields. While we are considering a slight reduction in cost for armour (15 for light, 40 for heavy), it hasn't happened yet as we're still debating (though I'm in favor).

I've never found critical hits that ignore armour to be that big of a problem (though I admit that armour has always been pretty rare in Cygnusheim).

We use:
1. All body armors gain an additional +1AS vs HtH
2. Add Toughened Leathers (we call it Leather Armor) with +0AS (so it gets +1AS vs HtH) at 5gc
3. Shield costs 3gc
4. Off-hand weapon suffers -1S
5. Dagger suffers -1S (rather than granting opponent +1AS) - copied from Coreheim (Asp's rules)
6. Manic Warrior (Combat skill) negates off-hand Strength penalty.

This is working quite well - keeps armor a little rarer, since it's still expensive, however off-hand weapons (especially daggers) are penalized without penalizing main-hand attacks, and body armor itself gets a bump.

Critical hits always make 2 wounds is an easy, time saving fix to the crit. problem imho.

I found that always giving 2 wounds for crit hits was a little too much. Adding penalty to armor saves or giving +1 to injury roll adds a benefit but doesn't give 2 injury rolls.