Anyone willing to playtest an armour variation & feedback?

Hi guys,

I've been mulling over my suggestions from the Boring DW thread and after crunching some numbers I think it could be a viable alternative. I've got the backing of my group but wondered if anyone else would be willing to run some scenarios and try and break it.

Rules are standard vanilla with the following exceptions:

Criticals are moved from "to wound" to "to hit" rolls of 6. Critical hits cannot be caused on a 5 or less unless it the required 'to hit' roll is less than this. (i.e Art of silent death only causes crits on 6's if 5+ is required 'to hit')

Armour confers a toughness bonus instead of a save::

Shield +1T (additional +1T from shooting against the front of the model, i.e. he can see to block)
Light Armour +1T
Heavy Armour +2T (-1 movement if combined with shield)
Ilithimar Armour +2T
Gromril Armour +3T (-1 movement if combined with Shield)

All armour can be combined with a shield for a cumulative bonus.

Any skill/trait that ignores/reduces/increases armour saves does so to the toughness bonus, e.g. S4 reduces the toughness bonus by 1, a 3-4 on the critical chart will ignore armour totally, a dagger will increase toughness by +1, etc.

Dual weapon wield gives you an extra dice to hit (limited to 1 for the off-hand weapon) but you can never roll more 'to wound' dice than you have attacks. The only exception to this rule is if a critical hit is scored. This applies to all skills that apply additional attacks like wielding an off-hand weapon (such as Art of Silent Death, so a Skaven with A1, fighting claws and Art of Silent Death would roll 3D6 to hit but only 1D6 to wound unless he got a critical)

Thanks in advance.

I may be interested once I have more play time. Right now i'm still teaching my son the basics so don't want to throw out experamental rules to him yet that change so much... IE if they prove not to work I will have to re teach him how armor works.
The only other person I really play with is out on ship right now so once he is back state side we can look into this alternative. I like that it's simple so that is good.

I do look forward to hearing the results of this all.

Not a big fan of the +1 Toughness idea... It might work if attacks always wound on a roll of 6 (otherwise, you'll have some models that are immune to attacks!) Also, the S4 ignoring 1 armor makes NO sense... It's a higher Strength, it automatically has a better chance of getting through the armor. It might work better the "ignore armor / added toughness" only applies to things that cutter better than their strength, like Axes and blackpowder.

Crit to hit: Unless you're attacking something rare (like a nurgling, that grants you -1 to hit), you ALWAYS hit on 5+.

I kinda DO like your "extra hand = extra dice" idea. It grants a bonus for two weapons without making them super tough. To be honest, the "crit on a hit" idea kinda makes it HARDER to follow on this end, so I think it's a good idea even if you don't use the crit to hit idea.

Sadly, can't test it right now, as my group is scattered at the moment. Good luck with it, though!

StyrofoamKing wrote:

Not a big fan of the +1 Toughness idea... It might work if attacks always wound on a roll of 6 (otherwise, you'll have some models that are immune to attacks!) Also, the S4 ignoring 1 armor makes NO sense... It's a higher Strength, it automatically has a better chance of getting through the armor. It might work better the "ignore armor / added toughness" only applies to things that cutter better than their strength, like Axes and blackpowder.

Crit to hit: Unless you're attacking something rare (like a nurgling, that grants you -1 to hit), you ALWAYS hit on 5+.

I kinda DO like your "extra hand = extra dice" idea. It grants a bonus for two weapons without making them super tough. To be honest, the "crit on a hit" idea kinda makes it HARDER to follow on this end, so I think it's a good idea even if you don't use the crit to hit idea.

Sadly, can't test it right now, as my group is scattered at the moment. Good luck with it, though!

Thanks for responding!

I gave a couple of examples on the stickied DW thread about how it would work and yes a Dwarf Noble in Gromril with Shield (T4[8]) would be pretty much untouchable unless you took specialist weapons like Double-handed or Blackpowder or scored 3+ on the critical hit chart and ignored the armour. Cutting Edge still works as normal and would apply a further -1T, so S4 with an axe would ignore 2pts of Armour bonus exactly as it does now.


The main idea is to increase the variety of both the weapons in a warband and the make up of the warbands themselves. For example, club/dagger Dual wielder stops being the norm as they are far less effective, double-handed becomes a necessity for 'tin-opening'.

StyrofoamKing wrote:

Crit to hit: Unless you're attacking something rare (like a nurgling, that grants you -1 to hit), you ALWAYS hit on 5+.'

Not quite sure what you mean here? Crits need to be on 'to hit' otherwise you wouldn't get them under the Armour=Toughness system. Or are you referring to the additional line? I was referencing the Art of Silent Death rule that critical hits are caused on a 5-6 and to paraphrase the rules: if you need a 5+ 'to hit' you cannot cause a critical hit. Hope that clarifies it.


I'll continue the example I was supposed to finish on the other thread to try and shed some light on this.

Dwarf Noble in Gromril and Shield (T4[8]) vs Merc DW club and dagger S3 (4+ to hit)

The DW has a 75% chance to hit but without a 3+ on the critical hit chart he cannot wound.

In comparison equipping a Merc with a double-handed weapon means he's S5, assuming he survives striking last, he retaliates with his blow (50% chance to hit). This ignores 2pts of Armour Bonus bringing the dwarf down to T4[6] so the Merc needs a 5+ to cause a wound.

Lets keep this contextual though, armour's not cheap (Gromril especially), neither is it easy to come by, so I doubt tank-bands will become prevalent. We all know that spending all your cash on armour just makes it far more likely that you'll be taking early Rout tests.


Also, as I've said before, I can't take credit for the DW idea, that was Path, I've just picked it up and run with it.

I think this might actually make armour worse.

Assume a warrior with S4 and an axe. He would ignore anything but gromril armour, and ithilmar (or heavy but that costs movement) armour + shield would only give you a net of +1 toughness. Not really worth losing one movement over.

In most cases the extra toughness you have translates well to the chance of your armour saving anyway, so it's not a big change.

I'm a big fan of the simple, all saves are increased by 1. Shields give you a 4+ armour save that can't be combined with other armour (if your other armour save was better they just added +1 to that), but are cumbersome, so if you wear a shield, you cannot use anything else in that hand (was added mostly to prevent the, everybody buys a shield at 5gc and they get a 4+ save against missile attacks). Since shields with this system cost a hand, most missile weapons can't be used (although we houseruled that slings and most blackpowder weapons were still ok), the warrior wont be getting an extra attack in close combat (which is ofset by that 50% chance to block), and he wont be using a two-hander to wreck havoc on everything else. With these rules we also added in a Pavise at 10gc (this was a shield that could be equipped/unequipped which you stated at the beginning of your turn, if equipped you suffered -1 Movement, and couldn't use both your hands, if unequipped you suffered no penatlies but couldn't use the shield. It gave a 3+ Armour save against missile fire only. Needless to say, these became a hit among the skaven henchmen).

I really like the pavise, but at the moment i'm wanting to find out what effect these changes with have on the standard game. One of the things i want to include later is that all double handed weapons have the relevant trait of their type, i.e. Double handed axe would get cutting edge.

Master wrote:

I think this might actually make armour worse.

Assume a warrior with S4 and an axe. He would ignore anything but gromril armour, and ithilmar (or heavy but that costs movement) armour + shield would only give you a net of +1 toughness. Not really worth losing one movement over.

In most cases the extra toughness you have translates well to the chance of your armour saving anyway, so its not a big change.

For those of us unblessed by the dice gods, armour saves are a waste of time. (I'm the guy who can charge with a unit of saurus cavalry and lose half of them despite the 2+ save). I'll try to publish some comparisons later.

One problem I can foresee is that it could make things 'a game of sixes'. It's not unreasonable for a model to get T6+, which makes things a little boring. Unless you invest in very high strength weapons, you might as well spam S3.

An intriguing idea, but I'm not sure it will work. Plus dissociating toughness and armour can be seen as more realistic - yes, I know we are dealing with abstract game mechanics and realism is arguably secondary to game-play - armour doesn't make you tougher. How squishy someone is doesn't affect how their armour performs. This system would be a bit like the DnD one where armour makes you harder.. to.. hit?

What might be intriguing to investigate is armour reducing the strength of a weapon rather than armour increasing toughness. Though personally, modifying the current armour system seems the best course.

biscuit wrote:

For those of us unblessed by the dice gods

You should know that this is not a valid reason to alter a mechanic.

Some people are lucky, some aren't, that can't be altered.
Plus, removing random chance makes a game more predictable - chess, in theory, can be played perfectly, as chaotic as it's many-fold interactions are - random chance brings a whole extra dimension to game theory; risk assessment.

I have the same concern, hence why I'm asking for playtesters.

Question 1:
If you were starting a New warband under this system what would you take for your 500Gc?

Question 2:
How does your current warband work under this system? Does it feel different? Is it more/less effective?

How about making things simpler instead of more complicated, with more rules.

If you don't like critical hits that much,...
just make them available to happen only once per player turn
(the first time you get a crit.)
OR
once per player turn in shooting and
once per player turn in HTH
After the 1st time a 6 to wound is just a wound.

That way a new stategy comes into play as to who you shoot first and what order you do HTH
(as always, the order is up to the active player's turn).

biscuit wrote:

I have the same concern, hence why I'm asking for playtesters.

Question 1:
If you were starting a New warband under this system what would you take for your 500Gc?

Well I guess I can answer this:
Vampire 2x Axe, Heavy Armour 170gc
Necro Club 38GC
Dreg Axe 20
Dreg Axe 20
Dreg Axe 20
---
3 Ghouls, Seperate Groups
1 Dire Wolf,
4 Zombies

The Vampire would be pretty tough against most shooting at T6. It would be silly to invest in armour for anyone else, since they are expendable.

If playing dwarves I would in some rare cases get a Gromril armour, but in such a case I wouldn't combine it with a shield.

All in all I don't think this would give you the changes you want.

Oh, and the dice gods probably don't exist.

This sounds like it's gonna break shooting. Most shooting is S3 which means that just a shield will give you 6+ to wound, and Light armour + Shield will always give you 6+ to wound even if shot from behind.
For warbands like Shadow Warriors, this is a big deal. Probably for bands like Reiklanders too (even if they can take crossbows).

Hi chaps, I doth return (I hear the moans, but choose to ignore them )

As I ran into similar arguments with my gaming group, I've created a cribsheet.

Please take another look.

@Schoel Sorry for not commenting earlier, but I didn't have a solution. Do now though, Bodkin point arrows -1 to Armour Save. Same price and availability as Hunting Arrows.

Okay, three weeks into the main playtesting and here are the results:

- Everyone's getting confused about when to apply criticals, but that's just force of habit.

- There's been an increase in the number of axes.

- The line "Although you may hit several times, you may only carry forward a number of dice equal to your Attacks characteristic." has been dropped as its proving counter-productive to the armour = toughness bonus.

- Skaven have been properly nerf'd, they're still deadly but nowhere near as much. Equipping your models with shield and light armour is a far more effective deterrent as the Heroes have to wound on a 5+ and don't have access to shields themselves.

- Expanding the shooting chart has shown an increase in ranged shots attempted. Likewise the shield bonus has shown an increase in the number of shield walls / tanks running protection.

- Overall the groups enjoying the changes.