Concept: Evening the weapons out

We have been playing with a fixed critical hit's chart for some time – critical hits always gives double wounds, allowing armor save – and we think it works nice and smoothly. The problem still is that many weapons are still unbalanced, there is quite the consensus that Club > Sword (when considering price and everything). So I thought, why not use different critical hit results, though leave them fixed for speed to even out some of the in balance:

Sword: Double Wounds
Club/Hammer: The target is auto knocked down (i.e only works if you have 1<)
Axe: Ignores Armour Saves
Spear: +1 to injury rolls
DHW: Target wounded equal times as its remaining wounds
Flail: opponent may not fight back or +2 to injury if wounds are reduced to 0
Halberd: +2 to injury

Bows: +1 to injury
Sling: Auto knock down
Crossbow: Ignores AS, auto knock down
Pistol: Ricochet hits another model within 6"
Handgun: Double wounds

Now these are just examples of what it could be like, and the actual effect could o course differ.

I'd be worried about is having to look up what the critical is for different weapons all the time, and also that there are so many weapons it'd be a pain to make up different critical attacks for all the special weapons out there.

I really like this idea!
Iirc Wyldhunt's Mordheim Revision has a similar critical hit system. Although you make criticals on to hit in this rules..

Some Ideas from his rulebook:

Quote :

• Critical Hit Effect - Cleave: on a hit roll of 6, add +1 to the Strength of this attack
  
• Critical Hit Effect - Sweep: on a hit roll of 6, the Ball & Chain receives an additional attack against another model (friend or foe; not the original target) in base contact with the wielder
  
• Critical Hit Effect – Catch: on a hit roll of 6, the target of the attack is caught by the hook: if a bipedal creature, the target must successfully test Initiative or be knocked down. This critical hit does not affect creatures with more than two legs
  
• Critical Hit Effect – Bludgeon: on a hit roll of 6, the target suffers a -1 WS for the rest of this
  HtH phase (this is cumulative)
  
• Critical Hit Effect – Ablaze: on a hit roll of 6, the target is automatically set on fire
  
• Critical Hit Effect – Sting: on a hit roll of 6, a target without an Armor Save of at least +1 from Body Armor loses 1 attack, down to a minimum of 0 (this effect is cumulative). This critical hit does not affect creatures with an Armor Save of at least +1 from Body Armor
  
• Critical Hit Effect – Diseased: on a hit roll of 6, the target has been infected with disease: unless the target is a Daemon, Possessed, or Undead, the target must successfully test Toughness or suffer a Wound from the disease (in addition to any Wound from the dagger hit)
  
• Critical Hit Effect – Disarm: on a hit roll of 6, the target loses 1 attack with a weapon, down to a minimum of 0 (this effect is cumulative). This critical hit does not affect targets which use Natural Attacks, nor does it affect attacks made without weapons
  
• ...

Those effects are more fluffy imo, but rather equal power-wise.
If we can come up with a nice list of effects which balance out the weapons too, I will test them for sure!

And I am sure, that after some games you remember the critical hit effects pretty easily and are happy you have to make one (rather important) roll less during the game.

IMO, with the optional CH rules in mind, i gotta say "if it aint broke, dont fix it" - even if your fixes actually seem very good indeed

I guess its my "less is more"-kinda lifestyle that holds me back

Well I agree Jon, and I agree that the Critical hits is not that broken (some claim though that the critical hits makes the AS even more usless, for example, and other minor problems) however the fix was meant for the imbalance in weapons, which has been a topic many times before here at the forum. I'm merely using the critical hits chart as a tool to balance out the weapons.
I mean, look at the sword and club example.
Sword costs 10g gives you parry, a special defence that only works if if you roll more than the enemies to hit, as long as they didn't roll a 6.
Club costs 3g and gives you concussion, causing stunned if you roll 2 on the injury chart.

Adding a special, however fixed, Critical hits chart could make certain weapons more attractive.

Yeah, when you put it that way, I guess it makes more sense

Popmouth wrote:

The problem still is that many weapons are still unbalanced, there is quite the consensus that Club > Sword (when considering price and everything). So I thought, why not use different critical hit results, though leave them fixed for speed to even out some of the in balance:

Well, actually I did in my first post

Is the critical axe effect (lol) intended to be a drawback? I read it as if you don't get to roll for injuries but knock down the target automatically - thus not allowing for stunned / ooA results?

Ah, I think I get it now.. Works just like thrust I suppose..

Quote :

Thrust. The thrust lands with great force and the target is knocked down. Take armour saves as normal and see whether the model suffers a wound.

Sorry for the double post, but I think this idea deserves more attention.

Another critical hit effect could be:
Stun. If the target doesn’t wear body armour or carry a shield it loses 1 attack, down to a minimum of 0, until the end of combat.

What would you do with the morning star, lance and throwing knives? Those are from the core rulebook.
To make things easy, all weapons not mentioned here should get the double wounds until they get a specific rule..

Well like I said, the rules I posted was just examples of a concept, so I haven't thought it through really, nor have I time to give it an adequate play-testing right now.

You know looking again it doesn't sound half bad. Just have to start listing critical effects in the weapon description like other special rules.

Also having it be a set effect for each weapon would provide another dimension for balancing and differentiation of weapons. Axes could be given more value compared to clubs by having a more desirable critical effect without the fuss of changing the other aspects of the weapons.

Exactly, that was kind of the whole Idea. I think it could have quite the effect!

Popmouth wrote:

So I thought, why not use different critical hit results, though leave them fixed for speed to even out some of the in balance:

One thing we have started doing in my play group is to "confirm" your critical hits. To do this we simply roll a skill check on WS whenever a critical is rolled, much in the same way you would make a check vs your initiative to avoid falling. If the check passes then the critical is indeed a critical and the player rolls on the critical table.

This allows Heros with much better training to get criticals more often than Henchmen with lower weapon skills. It actually works out pretty well. Heros become more heroic, and henchmen just get lucky.

Seems like a fair idea, though you must do many rolls...

My guys generally prefer swords to clubs... sorry. If we have clubs, it is only until we can afford swords.

Of course, we do tend to fight undead a lot these last few years - that could have something to do with it.

As I noted on REminenz's thread, I don't think it is remotely possible that you can "balance" weapons and maintain any meaningful difference between them. Heck, I don't think there is that much agreement between us as to which weapons are currently too powerful (see the discussion on slings, for example).

Oh, and if you could balance weapons, then you'd be unbalancing some warbands, since weapon availability is one way that some warbands are balanced.

Well my agenda was not to make all choices equal, rather use the critical hits to fix some rather weird errors.

The undead could absolutely have something to to with it – I think the general consensus is that club is most often better than sword.

It is true that changes does have a butterfly effect, and thus it could change some balance (or inbalance for that matter) between warbands.

I wonder, have you played Starcraft? In starcraft, the three races are fundamentally different, though still they are balanced; at least in the sense that, if you play them right they are.

I think this is important for any strategy game, and GW generally seems to be less good at this – though for the complexity that Warhammer and its cousins are, I guess its unfair to be to harsh.

Well, you get my point!

Mweaver, do you house rule at all, or is it plain vanilla for you?

I agree that the mace is probably a better weapon than the sword, given relative costs. I still prefer swords because I like keeping my guys alive, and every little bit helps.

We actually have a fair number of house rules, although at any given moment I can't remember but a few, mainly because most of them we've had so long that I tend to forget we made them. The most recent one is granting shields an additional +1 in close combat. I think next time we start a campaign we will probably decide to go back to the original way spears worked. Let's see, what are some others? We modified the can't run when too close to an enemy model by saying you could run away from it. If searching for a rare item that you could have bought when originally equipping your warband, you receive a +1 on the roll (so a Dark Elf hero receives a +1 when looking for a repeater crossbow - you know, to cover the chance his mom might send him one from home when she sends the cookies).

We do certainly tend to be more conservative than many around here, though. But that's OK - if your group is happy with a change, make it! But be willing to unmake it later (we changed the mix of heroes for dwarves one time, and then figured out the problem with dwarves is that we weren't playing them well and that they were really a very powerful warband and did not need any tweaks to help them out).

I see, well we have quite a few house rules, and we tend to change them if they don't work so... I guess we are kind of at the same level.

What might not work for one group, leading to houserules, might work fine for another group, depending on styles of play. Our group tends to be fairly closed - any new player is pretty much someone we teach to play the game - so some viable tactics and approaches used by other groups might not materialize in our group. For example, we have only ever had one player who went for the massed Skaven sling storm approach. It happened that it didn't work that well for him (blunderbusses go boom!) and so that approach never became popular with our group, and consequently when someone starts a slings are broken or skaven are too powerful thread my response is nooooo. Maybe my opinion would be different if I had seen successful slingey skven warbands.

We have the same situation; it is a good observation that different rules might work with different groups because of varying conventions.
Still it is always nice to "test" your house rules outside your group, if not in practice, at least theoritcal, like here on the forum!

... where cranks like me can go "booooo, hisssss"!

Indeed, and there is not much I can do about that

I like it. Just don't overdo it. How many weapons are there in the core rules? Maybe one should have effects by weapon groups as in the optional critical hit tables..

What do you mean with "overdo it"? I mean, what risks do you see?
The concept was meant to be quite simple.