Shields How Do You Make Them Useful

We extended healing herbs to give a reroll after OOA and restricted rabbit foot to use in battle. We wanted that rabbit foot encourage people to cool actions like diving attacks.

The healing herbs were usable for every one, but costs for one use a fair price.

I like those little changes. May addopt them our selves in our group.

Pervavita wrote:

you could go one step further and create a new item available to all heroes.
30 gc, allows for a re-roll on the injury table post game.

I am in Saranor's group and we decided that healing herbs can be used for that if they weren't used for restoring wounds during the game. Makes hh an option for single-wound models as well. This is of course a little harder than the 30gs-item/ rabbit's foot, since it is rarer and one-use only.

Pervavita wrote:

if you were to make the Rabits foot extend to the wound chart then there is no need to have armour effect it.
Other wise you give those that can buy armour a new advantage: they get the re-roll after OOA AND get to use the rabits foot in the battle.
It should be a new talisman/charm if you wanted this.

For our group the reason to add it to armour was to encourage people to get armour. It actually doesn't make a huge difference in the odds of not loosing a hero very much. What it did do is get players to try the new armour rules which they still weren't doing even with the +1 bump to armor.

It is easy enough to just not allow SIC saves to stack.

Giving the reroll to healing herbs (in addition to their heal effect) would make sense by the background and encourage more people to take them, but if you do that I would advise not adopting the house-rule that herbs are a one use item if you want it to balance the penalty of not being able to wear armour.

If you are going to give heavy armor a re-roll on the injury chart, then you should not reduce the price.

kidterminal wrote:

If you are going to give heavy armor a re-roll on the injury chart, then you should not reduce the price.

I agree. In our group armour is just as expensive as ever.

So the 2 main schools of thought here is make armor cheap and increase the shield bonus by +1.
or

Give heavy armor equivalents a re-roll on the serious injury chart and increase the shield bonus by +1.

interesting.

If you are purely talking about making shields (as per the title of this thread) useful than an additional +1 AS in close combat for shields (and sometimes bucklers) seems very common.

The other house rules (cheaper or other options such as save against serious injury) are about making body armour more common.

Another option to improve armour which no one has mentioned so it has downsides which don't come to my mind right now is to change the negative armour save based on Strength to start from Strength 5 instead of Strength 4 since Strength 4 becomes very common very quickly negating 6+ AS (a shield) immediately.

There are many more ways (and combinations of it):

- remove/reduce "ignore armor" on the critical table
- give armor an increased armor save(for example Light armor give 5+)
- reduce the armor piercing because of strength
- give shield a bonus in cc
- grant a reroll on the injury table for armor
- reduce the price of armor

We use the increased armor save with the improved shield in CC.

kidterminal wrote:

I would like to get some thoughts on house rules fro making shields a viable option. As they stand now they are of little use.

Would allowing models with shields to attack with them do it? This "shield bash" would be an either/or option i.e. you either use if defensively and get the armour save or you attack (at base strength?) with it and forfeit the save. You could also extend the same courtesy to bucklers i.e attack or parry.

Armour's more difficult so, I won't say any more than that I like the concept of armour making the wearer harder to wound, that a toughness boost makes some sense and that this would have all sorts of implications that would require a significant rework of the game mechanics.

armour providing a toughness boost was proposed before by some one and it was found to be a problem.
if toughness were boosted from 3 to a 7 (3+ AS equivalent) means that any S3 hit has 0% chance of wounding.
That 3+ AS is not hard to get ether as it requires Gromril Armour and Shield or Mounted, Heavy Armour, Shield... Barding and Gromril armour give a further 1+ combined to a 1+ total or Toughness 9 requiring S6 just to break into that can (or S5 with an axe).
This renders all shooting useless (other then Amazons and black powder).
Toughness isn't the way to go. Interesting idea but won't work.

Pervavita wrote:

Toughness isn't the way to go. Interesting idea but won't work.

Not without a significant rework of the game mechanics as I already said. Things like black powder weapons getting a strength bonus against armoured targets rather than a save modifier, spring to mind. And having any wound roll of a 6 cause a critical hit - to represent a strike to a vulnerable area or a chink in the armour - regardless of comparative strength and toughness. Just two examples from the top of my head of how such a system could be made to work.

For sure, meeting a Dwarf tank with T5 and resilient in gromril armour would be a nightmare scenario but, I think that's as it should be.

Citizen Sade wrote:

Would allowing models with shields to attack with them do it? This "shield bash" would be an either/or option i.e. you either use if defensively and get the armour save or you attack (at base strength?) with it and forfeit the save. You could also extend the same courtesy to bucklers i.e attack or parry.

I've thought of that, but I think the issue is between granting shields a useful defense vrs. an off hand weapon attack. I'm thinking a save of 5+ from both cc and ranged attacks from the front would make them a decent 5gc item. Just watch out for the shot in the back.

Just allow shields and bucklers an attack (in addition to what they already do) as if they were an offhand weapon and you have no issues.

Thats how our group plays it, and we're not looking back. Ppl are stuck in a mindset that its all about the armor of the shield, but lets be honest: there is only so much you can do to balance shield save vs offhand attack using the current rules and keeping it streamlined and simple, not to mention how little can really be done using a D6.

This way, you dont have to choose between attack and save, instead 2attacks is the standard (which it always was anyways with the original rules, who'd pick a shield right?). Now instead you pick perks for those two attacks; stun from club, parry from sword or buckler, save from shield etc... And if you want to go twohander or flail you are no more at a disadvantage than you were with original rules.

This has bumped the amount of shields in our 6 warbands without gimping whoever picked a shield over two weapons and without affecting the speed of gameplay (a bumped armor saves will make for longer fights, if only marginally most often).

To keep shields and bucklers in line, we play that a shield bash gives the target a 6+ save much like a dagger attack would. No need to change price on shield/buckler either I feel.

Any ideas? Anyone else tried it?

The only problem I can see with a shield giving an attack is that it doesn't address other armours usefullnes. Armour is all but useless in the game. Shields help armour but a to get for 5 GC a 2nd attack with a 6+ AS with a -1 s vs at 3 GC a 2nd attack that has a better chance to knock some one out; I will take the club every time. And if you say Helmets will negate the club, then i just had you spend quite a bit extra gold to counter my 3 GC. Even take the Axe the direct counter to the Shield will negate the 6+ and cost the same, in addition to this there is no -1 s mod.
The best IMHO to make a shield usefull is to make all armour usefull and thats with the removal of most crits armour negating, cut cost, and bost AS. All around it makes armour and thus shields quite favorable.

I dont agree.

Clubs are unbalanced in original. Two clubs is the way to go, no doubt about that.
This is about shield vs offhand weapon and offhand weapon wins every time.
The point was that with only a D6 as your tool, you cant really balance shield vs offhand weapon without making several rules or making the shield too powerful and thats what I was trying to avoid.
If you dont have a problem with everyones survivability going up considerably then ofc up the armor on shields and armors. I personally prefer the pace of original mordheim =)

I have no idea where you get the -1 S from?

one rule that my groups slowly testing out is nerfing critical hits, and cutting cost of armor. leaving everything else the same.

When you cause a critical, roll on the chart as per normal, and subtract 1 from the die roll. (D6 -1)
so your results will be 0 - 5, 0 being No Effect, and reserving the Crit 6's for those who spend the skill on that Web of Steel skill that was otherwise utterly useless.
this cuts down on the Crits ignoring armor saves and makes armor saves a bit more useful. The next addition will be the Shield Bash attack that soundofmusica has suggested. havent had a chance to try it yet, but I like the way it sounds.

We have also lowered the cost of all armor by 50%.
I guess it depends what kind of game you want to play.
My group looks at armor as something extra you pay premium gold for. On rare occasions it does save someones life, but thats how we like it. A swift and harsh game =P So we dont really pay too much thought on balancing armor against weapons. Towards the latter half of any campaign theres plenty armor around anyways.

I personally prefer a more defensive approach, but giving them an attack fits with historical combat syles from what i know.

My research has shown that european shields were quite often a deadly weapon. Some used metal spikes, but most used a reinforced band around the outside that was useful for bashing as well.

The show Deadliest warrior measured the impact from a Spartan sheild hitting a mock-up body. It was as much or more force than most clubs etc. exert. So having it as a blunt 'dagger' would be ok to me.

Also I think shields should count as a weapon not armor if you do this.

sorry, I just re-read your post and for some reason I picked up a "-1 s" for your shield bash rule. Not sure where. I sware I saw your post say that -1 s like a dagger.

As to the game play, I understand many people want the high speed/brutal game play. For those warbands that would use armour or players who like the idea of armour then some buff to armour needs to be made to make it of more value to those players. As you say armour is of little use in a game. But this is a diffrent issue.

As to giving shields a full strength attack with it's armour I can see the value of this as an idea. It's not a bad idea for those who want to make shields of use and keep the game play fast, but I fear they will fall to the same catigor as Axes, and thats of no use to anyone as the AS (or for an axe -AS) is too easy to bypass.

I have only started playing Mordheim, I got my gaming group to get started. I read tons of topics about how to balance shields/armour and I came up with what seemed the most simple of all the solutions I came across:

Buckler : Parry and 6+ As
Shield : 5+ As
Armour : price reduction by 50% ( heavy armour, light armour, anything with the name armour in it )

This way you can have a 4+ armour save for 15 gc.

Then I'v changed the parry rule to parry any of the attacks that hit you, not the one with the highest D6 roll. Giving you a mediocre chance of actually parrying something now and then.

These two changes saw me equip both my 2 wound youngbloods with sword, light armour and shields.

What we have done with our group is this:

A weapon that can parry plus a shield or buckler will give the wielder a +1 to parry. That way someone with a shield is able to parry a six (if they have a sword or something like it that is)

Has that rule caused your group to uses shields a lot?