Critique my House Rules

Going to play with many first time players and have looked online for some opinions on House Rules. This is what I like, please critique:

Frenzy: Does not double your attacks, it adds +1 Attack. Additionally Mad Cap Mushrooms now cost 50% less.

Initial Armor Discount: At the beginning of a campaign all armor has a 70% discount, this does include any type of armor including shields and helmets.

Code:

To provide choice, instead of having everyone just buy the most models possible at the start some may choose to get a discount equipping their people out.

Sword and Shield: A model with a Main hand weapon and shield should add +1 to their armor save. Including an unmodifiable 6+. This bonus always applies in close combat, but not against ranged attacks if the model also carries a ranged weapon.

Injury Save: When making a roll on the post-game serious injury chart Heavy Armor provides a 6+ save, Gromril provides a 5+ save.

Code:

Makes armor much more valuable.

Off-Hand Penalty: Any attacks made with an offhand weapon are at a -1 to hit. This penalty can be removed with the existing Combat skill "Weapon Mastery".

Armor Modification Chart: The chart starts at S5 and not S4. Shift all values to the right.

Quick Shot: only applies to short bows, longbows and variants.

Code:

Crossbows with S4 and huge range IMO, encourages camping/sniping the entire game, particularly vs low initiative warbands that can't climb to the sniper.

Hero Replacement: Heroes may be replaced with a model that rolls “Lad’s Got Talent”, but the retiring Hero leaves with all his equipment.

Climbing and Charging: Models are able to charge enemy models who are on the upper floors of buildings, without the use of ladders, by following these charge rules. After the charge is declared, the distance moved (twice movement usually) is measured from the charger to the target, counting the distance climbed up the building. As soon as the charger reaches the wall, an Initiative test must be passed. If the test is passed, the warrior climbs up and is able to continue his charge. If the test is failed, the charger fails the charge and stops right at the base of the building, and may do nothing else that turn. Conduct combat as normal.

Safe Climbing/Jumping: In dense, tall terrain, low initiative warbands have a huge disadvantage. Thus a model may climb or jump down up to 3” or one level/floor of a building (whichever applies) without taking an initiative test if they are already at the base of what they want to climb at the beginning of a turn. This takes up all remaining movement. Trading rapid movement for caution and safety. This does not apply to diving charge.

Vampire Buff: Eternal Vigour: In the post-game trading phase you may sacrifice a human warband member (necromancer, dreg, or hired sword) to reroll the vampire's results on the serious wounds chart. If you sacrifice a hired sword in this fashion, the hiring and upkeep costs for all hired swords are doubled for the warband for the rest of the campaign.

I think you've gone overboard with making armour viable: a lot cheaper, save against the injury chart, and shifting the armour penetration rules.

Personally I just use the "modification starts at strength 5" rule, and I'm happy with that.

The other rules:
- Frenzy, yep fine.
- Offhand - that should work, though personally I see it as an unecessary complication. I'd just use -1 weaponskill on ALL weapons then you don't need separate dice.
- Slings, fine, I like it.
- Pistols - is that not the rule already? I thought it was?
- Hero replacement - nothing wrong with it, but personally I don't like retiring heroes.

All in all a solid set of rules, but with a lot of new players you might want to consider keeping it simpler, until people have played the game a bit, then you can discuss tweaks together.

How does your armor rules stack with other armor discounts? I'm mainly thinking about Dwarven Treasure Hunters and their -50% Gromril Armors.

I think that a player should be able to dismiss any of his warband members at any time between battles, and keep their equipment.

Other than that, I like your rules.

I never like having armor effect the post game serious injury chart as it effects warbands differently as not all warbands have equal access to armor or even at all (even some heroes for that matter) and the ability to effect post game serious injury rolls is a huge deal.

I have found that giving armor a price cut along with an armor save boost (or the strength mod change) seams to be enough. Also with the effect of making shields more viable this also makes armor even better.

The last change we have made was to the Critical hit chart making the critical hits have less of a chance of negating armor. This seams to be a big deal as there are a lot of hits in the course of a game that go critical and it's far to easy to negate the armor that way.

Thanks for the input, you all are prolly right about going overboard on armor. If we were to play this very few people would die and warbands would get powerful too quickly. It's just so hard to choose what to get rid of....

Pervavita wrote:

I have found that giving armor a price cut along with an armor save boost (or the strength mod change) seams to be enough. Also with the effect of making shields more viable this also makes armor even better.

The last change we have made was to the Critical hit chart making the critical hits have less of a chance of negating armor. This seams to be a big deal as there are a lot of hits in the course of a game that go critical and it's far to easy to negate the armor that way.

We tend to like the high cost of armour as it up keeps a Mordheim feeling of scrappy warbands. In other settings I might try raising the amount of money warbands receive after selling treasure if having everyone well armed and armoured felt appropriate. We do give shields +1 to AS in close combat while standing and using hand weapons. I am considering reducing the cost of armour for certain warbands (like Witch Hunters to compensate for only having 12 members).

I couldn't agree more about the Critical Hit tables! They are mostly responsible for armour feeling useless. In our house rules, critical hits of bladed weapons never negate armour saves (most armours are designed to counter bladed weapons anyway), thrust weapons 33% of the time negate armour saves, missile weapons 50%, and bludgeon weapons 66%. It gives armour a boost as well as encourages more diversity of weapons.

Didn't address all of them, but here are some I've had experience with in some fashion:

- Frenzy : reasonable. My group has capped at +2 attacks but we haven't seen how it will work out yet - but our Middenheim player did get the Frenzy spell with his wolf priest, so I'll have practical experience with it soon. Frenzy does definitely need some sort of cap; a potential extra 3-4 attacks on a combat monster can break games. Even just one additional attack is a pretty powerful bonus together with the immune to psychology.

- Pretty massive discounts on armor : we went to 15gc light/40gc heavy and it's worked out reasonably, but it really depends on if you want widespread armor or not - personally I still like it to be uncommon, but that's a personal choice. My worry with the cost reduced that much - and the injury protection from armor - is the balance effect on warbands that are limited in terms of armor they can take, or with multiple models that can't use armor at all.

- Shields : seems reasonable, though is this bonus only in melee or against ranged as well? I'd consider giving bucklers a +1 save in close combat to make them more competitive with shields (though no unmodifiable 6+ save). We just give shields an additional +1 in melee and bucklers a +1 in melee (so 5+ and 6+ with no armor respectively) with no ranged bonus - it has made shields a more common choice. I don't think your additional rules will be a problem.

- Off-hand penalty : a little harsh, but it might work out. We use just -1 to hit on the off-hand and it's helped balance two weapons, but two weapons still tends to be the best choice at least for 1 attack models. It does add a bit more complication, which may not be the best for first time players, but two weapons really need something to bring their power down.

- Armor modification chart : seems reasonable. Makes armor more effective and better value for axes and blackpowder. As some have noted though it might make armor too good with the reduced cost, though critical effects still ignore armor so it's hardly unbeatable.

- Quick Shot : Quick shot crossbows can be rather powerful, though good terrain setup can limit it a lot. I've never had a huge problem with them, but without heavy terrain (75%+) quick shot crossbows will make games extremely unfun for opponents. Then again, this might relegate crossbows to henchmen only, since without Quick Shot I think longbows will be strictly better (2 Str 3 shots beat out Str 4 shots in most circumstances).

- Slings : we did the +1 armor save too, and I think it helps offset the ridiculously cheap cost of slings.

- Pistols as club : we play fairly strict WYSIWYG rules, and our version of this is that you can buy clubs and the pistols can represent them (no need to model additional clubs). But your rule is perfectly fine in my opinion - it makes sense from a fluff perspective, and it's at most 6 gold worth of savings. Make sure to clarify to your players whether crossbow pistols count or do not count along with blackpowder ones.

- Armor: 18 crowns to give a model heavy armor and a helmet at the start of the campaign is INSANE value, especially with the MANY other buffs that you gave to armor. With this set of rules you'd for sure go from seeing no one wearing armor to everyone wearing armor, which isn't any better. Removing the additional starting cost reduction and the save vs. injury roll would at least make it something of a choice.

- Frenzy: seems like a reasonable change, although you may want to reduce the cost for Madcap Mushrooms, because they're only worthwhile for the cost and risk when given to a model with at least 2, preferably 3 attacks.

- Off-hand: Increasing armor's vaiablitiy also reduces the viability of dual-wielding. If you've increased armor AND shields, then put a particularly harsh penalty on dual wielding then you probably won't see any of it. If sword-and-board or two-handers are what you want to see, great, but I'd suggest a lesser penalty (like just -1 to hit)

- Quick Shot: I love this rule, as it makes a choice between bows and xbows. Right now the only real reason for a hero to have a bow is for hunting arrows.

- Slings: the -1 to hit for double-tap is actually a normal rule, so you don't have to house-rule that. +1 to armor save makes a lot of sense (but also pushes people even more toward armor), while another strategy is to make them slightly more expensive. I'd also recommend swapping their range with short bows (so slings are 16", short bows are 18" - makes the bow range progression make more sense, and makes slings a little bit worse, especially as double-tap means automatically in charge range)

- Climbing and jumping: both good rules

- Vamp sacrifice: love this idea

Thanks guys, modified based on suggestion, I feel comfortable with this refined version! Will tell ya'll how it plays.

Aak! Historically, slings were cheap. Slings had a longer range than the common short bow and slings were feared by warriors wearing armor (including the Spanish versus the Aztecs and other American natives). (I do note that GW has just increased the range of the short bow to 18" with 8th edition Warhammer.)

Frenzy--we have played this house rule since Warhammer 6th edition. Works great. We buy Madcaps at the regular cost, mainly to offset Stupidity. (We never buy anything like poisons and drugs until way late in the campaign unless its an Greenskin player with a fanatic.)

Sword and shield (hand weapon and shield)--done this since 6th edition as well. At least until the last couple of campaigns because one of the older players can't remember the house rules...

Armor--never bothered to mess with it. Not a fan of Serious injury saves. Not playing in your campaign either.