How many floors?!

Just getting back into Mordheim after a little break and want to get back into making some scenery, and I had a generic kind of question/observation about the number of floors in Mordheim buildings.

A lot of the pictures you see of various peoples work (many of which are awesome) have like 5 or 6+ storey buildings, sometimes with stone look bases (as a heavy foundation) with foam core above with crazy angled walls and floors, often with wooden planks across gaps.

It just seems to me that the falling damage rules and the ease at which a fall check can be forced (i.e. just hit something within an inch of any drop, even a window, let alone a plank four storeys above the ground) pretty much negates any benefit from being that high...? I am pretty new to all this still, so its entirely possible I am missing something, and I really want to be wrong as I love the look of the scenery, but it seems to me that a fall over about 4" is likely to be at least OOA and therefore possibly dead, let alone 18" - 24"!

Obviously higher initiative helps, but not everyone has that.

Am I being dense (highly possible!) or did any of you lot houserule things to make the falling damage even slightly less painful, or less likely?

Thanks.

That depends on your tastes in buildings & whether or not your group has gaming vertigo...a lot of gamers seem to have a fear of heights . I LOVE tall buildings; SO...mine tend to be four or, usually, more stories with each story about 60 mm high.

To my eye, a table full of 3 to 4 story buildings with one or two very tall buildings near the middle looks best.

I kind of have Darkfury's same doubts.
How many rounds/turns would it take an average Unit/Mini to go up from storage 1 to the top in say.. a 6 storage building? wouldn't that make the game ultra slow?

I mean, great sniping possibilities.. but.. how smootly would the game develop?

We allow vertical movement up ladders and stairs at the same rate as normal "open ground" movement (including running and charging) to increase the amount of use of upper floors.

Sounds like a good solution I guess.
Thanks mate.

Pirexian wrote:

I kind of have Darkfury's same doubts.
How many rounds/turns would it take an average Unit/Mini to go up from storage 1 to the top in say.. a 6 storage building? wouldn't that make the game ultra slow?

I mean, great sniping possibilities.. but.. how smootly would the game develop?

Slow perhaps, but there is nothing quite as exciting as dueling on some rickety crosswalk at dizzying heights above the cobbled streets. Tall buildings are for swashbucklers...& idiots.

WarbossKurgan wrote:

We allow vertical movement up ladders and stairs at the same rate as normal "open ground" movement (including running and charging) to increase the amount of use of upper floors.

I use the same rules WarbossKurgan mentioned, and I also put built-in ladders or stairs in my buildings to facilitate this. Yes, it is more risky fighting on high elevations, but it really makes the fights more dynamic.

Also, since dice are involved the consequences of falling can be quite random. I've had a youngblood get knocked off of a high cathedral and all he suffered was a few bruises. I've also had two marksmen jump down a 2" ledge only to have them both fail their checks and get taken Out of Action.

Now that I think of it, it would be kinda funny to have a few "hay-bale" pieces you could put below high buildings that would prevent all damage (like from Assassins' Creed) Used sparingly, it would be an interesting way to provide a fast and relatively safe way down from the highest rooftops.

You could also allow for warbands to start inside the buildings.

I personally get frustrated when all the action is on the ground floor. It seems like such a waste of perfectly good 2nd + levels.

Yeah with buildings you have to put in ladders and stairs, or low Agility warbands will completely ignore them. I mean when you fail on a 3+ it doesn't make you even want to try to climb anything.

Our gaming group was talking about it one time and we went back and forth about what should happen if you are shooting strait down from a building but the models you are shooting at are outside of your weapon's range. i.e. you are 30 inches up, but you weapon has a 26 inch range should you still be able to shoot. The two arguements that came-up were since your weapons were shooting down they don't need more force to get to your target, the other arguement is that due to wind, dusk and what not your weapon doesn't have to force to keep it accurate so the wind makes it too unpredictable to realalisticly have a chance to hit.

I think we all agreed that 1 in 6 wouldn't be fair odds, and that since we didn't have any buildings that tall we didn't really need to debait the issue.

...well gravity does kind of figure into the thingy; i.e., the projectile would continue to accelerate beyond the velocity the weapon could normally achieve until it reached escape velocity.

On the motivating factor for using upper stories: the boards I did for Monkey Head Mac were pretty densely packed with crosswalks at various levels. His group adopted a table of wandering monsters of varying degrees of lethality that encouraged staying off the streets...rather like certain sections of New York City . I also did a board that was comprised of a number of isles, making strolling down the street damp if not totally impossible...again their were critters inhabiting the "streets".

BargainBinArcher wrote:

Now that I think of it, it would be kinda funny to have a few "hay-bale" pieces you could put below high buildings that would prevent all damage (like from Assassins' Creed) Used sparingly, it would be an interesting way to provide a fast and relatively safe way down from the highest rooftops.

I love this, it's not quite haybales, but it reminds me of the Ulli and Marquand graphic novel with all the leaping down to escape some grisly end going on.

Would certainly add a cinematic vibe to proceedings.

Thanks all for the replies.

It wasn't really the time ascending that was my issue, just the falling damage, but of course putting in more ladders and stairs would prevent the need for any climbing checks unless people wanted to do something radical i.e scaling sections outside.

Just to make sure I have the sequence right for falling damage, you automatically take 1d3 hits at strength equal to the height in inches against your toughness, theres no to-hit required, right?

Assuming a toughness of 3, that means a fall from 5" means a wound is sustained on a 2+ on each of the 1d3 dice.

Ah right, but then when the injury dice is rolled I am only OOA on a 5 or 6, otherwise I am back on my feet in a turn or two. And on the plus side, even falling the height of a cathedral, I could get lucky and take just one wound or roll a 1 on that dice (good luck!) or then roll 1 to 4 on the injury dice.

Plenty of chances in there for some good luck ;p

BargainBinArcher wrote:

Now that I think of it, it would be kinda funny to have a few "hay-bale" pieces you could put below high buildings that would prevent all damage (like from Assassins' Creed) Used sparingly, it would be an interesting way to provide a fast and relatively safe way down from the highest rooftops.

Now that's an amazing Idea! I also played Assassin's Creed.. thats actually a great idea mate!

On the subject of shooting up at tall builds vs shooting down from tall buildings, we have house-ruled that:

If you are shooting down you measure just the horizontal distance between the shooter and the target.
If you are shooting up you measure the actual distance between the shooter and target.



This means shooting down from high-up has a slight range advantage over shooting up from the ground.

WarbossKurgan wrote:

If you are shooting down you measure just the horizontal distance between the shooter and the target.
If you are shooting up you measure the actual distance between the shooter and target.

Nifty! This I will discuss with the others in my gaming group!

DeafNala wrote:

...well gravity does kind of figure into the thingy; i.e., the projectile would continue to accelerate beyond the velocity the weapon could normally achieve until it reached escape velocity.

On the motivating factor for using upper stories: the boards I did for Monkey Head Mac were pretty densely packed with crosswalks at various levels. His group adopted a table of wandering monsters of varying degrees of lethality that encouraged staying off the streets...rather like certain sections of New York City . I also did a board that was comprised of a number of isles, making strolling down the street damp if not totally impossible...again their were critters inhabiting the "streets".

Sounds like fun!!

I wrote a scenario a little bit ago and posted it. The premise was that part of the city was flooded with evil things lurking in the water ..making it so that the warbands would want to stick to the upper levels.

Of course in my mind the board would be set will all types of walkways to get from one building to the other. ...Which reminds me that I still have to build a table for it!

BargainBinArcher wrote:

Now that I think of it, it would be kinda funny to have a few "hay-bale" pieces you could put below high buildings that would prevent all damage (like from Assassins' Creed) Used sparingly, it would be an interesting way to provide a fast and relatively safe way down from the highest rooftops.

As far as I can remember, there are such rules in StyrofoamKing's Sartosa setting.