The weakness of armor and the preponderance of duel wielding

I am trying something new with Dual Wielding.

Only Heroes may dual wield.

Henchmen may not use two weapons until they gain an attack characteristic.

Off hand, it is working but HTH takes a bit longer.

Still need to play a full campaign to see how it goes.

I like this ide, but maby it should be WS and not A.
This will make more sense to me, and not make it all henchmen have 1 or 3 attack.

But please tell us how it works, im very interested in this house rule.

-Skavenslayer

Grumbaki wrote:

1. Heavy Armor+Shield is -1 initiative instead of movement
2. Shields give +2 AS in close combat, +1 vs. shooting
3. Bucklers give +1 AS in close combat
4. Dual weapons give you a -1 to hit penalty (there is the idea of changing this a bit though, as few people dual weild at all now. We are thinking of making is -1 to hit on the off hand.)
5. New Combat Skill: Manic Warrior, which lets you ignore dual weilding penalites
6. Critical Hits: 1-2 (2 wounds), 3-4 (2 wounds, no armor save), 5-6 (+2 to injury rolls)

We've added 2, 3, 4 [though the -1 penalty only applies with the off hand weapon]. We've changed all of the (optional) criticals so none of them ignore armor anymore, they just give -1 or -2 to the armor save instead. These changes have made virtually every close combat weapon (incl shield and buckler) in the rulebook used in our campaign.

Equipment is the sweetest thing about a game such as Mordheim
... and so need to be cleaned...

Here's how our group do it:
> -1 to hit with 2 weapons (multiple attacks higher crit chances)
> Have to confirm crits... successfully re-roll to wound to confirm the crit.
(allows crit on a 6 to wound, confirm with a 6, makes tougher creatures harder to crit)
> Sword and Greatsword give 1 parry, Shield give 1 parry and buckler give 2 parries.
> We boosted parry so it stacks in the following way:
- To parry, roll equal or higher than the highest attack from an opponent
- You roll a number of dice equal to the number of parries you have
- If the attacker have higher Str than the parrying model, he lose one level of parry for
each point.
- Articulated weapon such as Flails or Whip remove one level of parry.

And when a model DIES, equipment does not vanish, roll 1d6:
1- The opposing warband gets the model's equipment
2- Lost
3-6- The owner's warband recuperates the dead warrior equipment
(Yes, henchmen too... the game is a lot less harsh that way)

What does mordheim experinced people think of the shield? Does it bechome worth having later in the game?

The original +1save shield that is.

Tok wrote:

What does mordheim experinced people think of the shield? Does it bechome worth having later in the game?

The original +1save shield that is.

Only in combination with a gromril or maybe an ithilmar armour. Otherwise a second hand weapon is pretty much always better. However, you can use it against ranged weapons and still use two weapons in close combat so that's always another way of making good use of it. If most of your opposing warbands use crossbows instead of bows, then that is still no good use though, of course.

Ok, my gaming group thought that perhaps the shield would be worth it late game.

Tok wrote:

Ok, my gaming group thought that perhaps the shield would be worth it late game.

Well, unless you are willing to use a few house rules concerning this issue, armour in general is rarely worth it. Shields alone simply don't cut it, armour is too expensive and in the late game when you could afford good quality armour and shields your enemy's Heroes will be at Strength 4, mighty blowing you out of your tin suit.

To bad, guess thats a no then. Thanks anyways.

My favorite combination of rules so far:

Boosting Armor:
Shields give +2 armor in HtH (only +1 against shootzing)
Bucklers give +1 armor in HtH (none against shootzing and still do normal buckler stuff)
Armor be cheaper, mon (number tweaked as you like)


Wrecking Dual Wielding:
Hits with your "additional weapon" are -1 to hit. (-1 to hit affects all warriors equally)
Daggers get a special rule to negate this.


Optional Rules (in order of how much I dig them):
Optional: Weapons that come in "pairs" do not suffer any penalty for dual wielding.
Optional: Being a hero negates the -1 to hit for dual wielding.
Optional: Being any type of unit that would conceivably be dual wielding negates the -1 to hit for dual wielding (hired swords that come with two weapons and any henchman with fluff to back it up).
Optional: Armor gives saving throw vs injury after battle (not shields or bucklers, just bodily armor)
and the armor is destroyed if save is passed (problem being that now the dude doesn't fit in it's henchman group anymore)


I think the most eloquent way to reduce the power of dual wielding is to add -1 to hit , which is kind of a huge deal (but a lot less if it's only the off hand), and then create exceptions as appropriate. The idea's above seem good to me, but that may just be in the light of my preconceptions about hand to hand fighting (i.e. I may be seeing it more from a "that makes sense in real life" instead of purely game balance point of view) and my inexperience with Mordheim. Also I didn't take statistics and didn't do any math while thinking this through so that is another way in which I could be totally wrong.

The dagger exception makes life easier in a number of ways:
-Lots of models come with off hand daggers (or swords that can be called daggers!)
-Daggers are implied so you can model that guy with a crossbow in one hand and a sword in the other and not have to worry about fitting more junk in his trunk
-Mace/Dagger goon squads still work (wait, is this good?)

Cons:
-Daggers are boring
-No pricier upgrade for daggers (which hurts models that can't use shields, such as my entire wood elf warband there's like one wood elf model with a shield g'damn!)
-Other stuff I can't see through the veil of my own prejudices


Shield bash skill, plz

Some of my oponents play a -1 on the off-hand weapon for dual-wielding, as we usually have to use a different dice for the off-hand weapon anyways.

The shield and hand weapon +2 save bonus some argue against it saying it weakens spears more. As technically, it does if you play spears don't grant this bonus, which in WH they don't...

Just ignore that whole "+2 armor with a handweapon" jazz. Just say shields get +2 to armor save in close combat, but still only +1 against range, and bucklers get +1 against close combat but nothing against range.