Warhammer Quest

INTERESTING TID BITS

Compiled by Phil Chaos Lord

"Interesting Tid Bits" is just a small collection of tiny rules, most of them barely over a paragraph. Most of them can be found in old e-mails from the archives.

Initiative

I have read the house rules as far as the initiative phase goes, and personally, I think it is kinda unfair. So, I have thought of a way that makes it a little fairer. (i.e., when you first start, there are several BIG monsters that can kill a party member straight out, as in the minotaur)

What I suggest, is everyone rolls a d3 and adds it to their initiative score. This way, everyone stands a chance at going first, and it is not as set. As a saying of mine goes, "A little randomness never killed anyone, well, at least not yet!"

Too Many Powerful Weapons

If your problem was too many powerful weapons that make the players too powerful, then you may consider this little house rule I came up with.

A warrior may at anytime have no more than 4 single-handed weapons (not including daggers or rings, etc -- this have no actual maximum *carried*). 2 handed weapons count as *2* single handed weapons for purposes of this rule, and bows count a 1.

This rule controls players and imposes a realistic maximum to the weapons carried.

Weapon Break Table

To reduce warriors' power I use a weapon-break table every time a warrior rolls a double 1 on the to hit rolls. This helps lower level players that have still only one attack.

I don't have the table here, but it is something like this: rolling 2D6 scores near 7 won't affect the weapon. Scores with decreasing chance of happening will affect the weapon with increasing damage.

Warriors Without Weapons

See adv book, page 1 "While fighting unarmed, each warrior does 1d6 wounds when he hits, with no modifiers for strength" (i.e. he rolls 1d6 damage).

Monsters of course get to add their strength to the wounds score, often whether or not they have weapons. So a goblin, strength 3, causes 1d6+3 wounds when he hits. He is obviously the sort who needs a weapon, and usually has a spear or whatever. A giant bat on the other hand, causes 1d6+2 wounds, even though he doesn't have a weapon as such - he is purposely built to bite and slash with tooth and claw, and is clearly never going to carry an axe, and shouldn't be penalised for being 'unarmed'.

Warriors need their weapons - they do not have big fangs or claws (although the Chaos warrior might have something to say about that...).

Bigger Or Smaller Parties

An earlier article spoke of playing with one player and someone made the comment (1/4 of a minotaur is still 1 minotaur).  Sure, but the way I play it, you multiply the WOUNDS and the GOLD by 0.25 for 1 player and 1.25 for 5.  For low wounds it doesn't change much, but big deal!

Overwatch

If there are no monsters on the board and your warrior doesn't feel like searching because he thinks that the large wooden gate with the daemon on it is going to burst open, than he can go on overwatch (yes, this is a rule I got from 40K and Necromunda). If your warrior is on overwatch he can't search or move, he's just standing there waiting for the inevitable to happen. Place the model faced to the door or gate or whatever he thinks the monsters will be coming from, and place something next to the model to show it is actually on overwatch. If nothing happens during the monster phase your warrior missed outon some gold or treasure, but if the monsters do come, there is a possibility he might hit it.

As the monster enters the room, your warrior can parry the attack, and hit the monster, if he's good enough. Roll 1D6 for both the monster and the warrior it is attacking and that was on overwatch, and then add their weapon skill. Also add +1 to the monster's score, and subtract -1 from the warrior's score if the warrior was looking in the wrong direction. Also note that the monster doesn't have to attack the warrior that was on overwatch, so place your models carefully (a monster isn't going to attack a warrior ready for the fight, if there is somebody else with his head stuck in a barrel so to speak). The one with the highest result wins the fight, and is able to hit.

This procedure has to be carried out during the monster phase, so that the other monsters can attack the other models in the room without any penalty (as a GM, feel free to give the monsters a +1 to hit if the model is doing really weird stuff that isn't appropriate for battle).

Also note that the warrior doesn't have to test for fear during the overwatch phase. Something is coming at it, and he doesn't even know what he's hitting before it is actually there. You might also weaken terror down to fear.

If you want to put a model with a bow or the like onto overwatch, then he gets a free shot during the monster phase IF HE DIDN'T SHOOT DURING THE PREVIOUS TURN (you have to get another arrow, reload the pistol,...). If the monster is coming from another side then you can add a -1 or –2 modifier to the to hit roll at your leisure.

Spell Casting For Wizards

The wizard can cast each of his spells once every turn, whether he is pinned, fighting as well etc. He can cast spells at any time (unless the description specifically states), but a suggested 'house rule' is that if you have a more powerful wizard, he can only cast spells when it's his turn. This stops him killing everything before the rest of the warriors get a chance.

Balancing Pit Fighters

Increase the cost of Heal-Itt potions to 1,000 gold -- they're worth it.  (Alternatively you can insist that the PF only have one HI potion at a time.)

Balancing Troll Slayers

The Troll Slayer IS doomed as written.  That would be okay, if it weren't for the fact that he's usually doomed to die at the hands of pathetic creatures in his first dungeon.  Here's a possibility: Change the axe's rune to a "Life-Stealer Rune."  This rune instantly provides the wielder with the same number of wounds as he causes in damage.  This appears to be an overly powerful device, but it is not.  Many monsters at higher levels should be able to kill the TS in one round -- the Trolls come to mind.....  This allows most TS characters to survive lower level dungeons and allows them a real chance at the glorious death they seek.

Balancing Rats

Another way around the giant rat problem is this. It says that the giant rat dies on a 3+ when attacking. For lower level characters, roll to see if the rat dies BEFORE his damaged is resolved. My group does it like this: Establish which rats have hit, roll to see which ones die, and then the lucky rats (or UNlucky characters) inflict their damage. Keep in mind the darn things are only worth 20 Gold, and there are many other things that do less damage and are worth a heck of alot more gold.

Should GMs Cheat?

Okay, everyone has an opinion on whether to lie about dice rolls, rolling behind screens and things like that. Here is an alternative for those who think that they should let players see what they roll. Give yourself luck points. Make it a function of your warriors' battle-level or luck total (something like sum up all levels and divide by 6...).  What you do with the luck points, you simply say you want to use one and then reroll a dice. This way, you have control when it counts.

Another alternative is a fate deck. The GM gets to pick a card for every x turns the warriors take to finish the quest.  The GM may horde his cards and use them when he wants. The cards could read like:

GM ignores one dice roll he makes

GM ignores one dice roll the Warriors make

GM may place one monster anywhere he wants

GM may draw an encounter card

GM may place 1D6 monster (of the same type) anywhere he wants.

Play immediately!  Warriors gets xxx gold in the next encounter.

Fate/Luck Rolls For Monsters

I've been doing this for a while, giving the bad guys [the important ones at least, such as the wizard in the quest room, etc.] fate/luck points to use as the players would.  This has helped significantly and made the bad guys a bit tougher.  The main thing about this is the players find it amusing, guessing exactly "how many luck points does that Skaven warlock have?"  And the fun is the thing.  If the players aren't having fun and you aren't having fun, something needs to be changed.

Gold Formula?

W((I+A+M+S+WS+T)+X)

… where X is a small number.

Gold V.S Experience

Well, this is the system I'm gonna use in my next roleplay.  There are a lot of houserules involved because it's going to take about a year to play it.  These are the rules I think should be used:

For most mosters, killing them means getting some gold.  This amount is however much smaller than the amount indicated in the book.  In the case of spiders, dragons, beastmen and others that don't care about gold, you could nominate a part of their gold value as being what they're worth in trading. This is the same system as used in necromunda (spider eyes etc.) The gold amount is used for buying stuff in the settlements, or for additional training (see below)

The rest of the monster's value could be seen as experience points. The warriors will gain their skills by killing monsters, so this comes up another list.  I'm gonna change the training bit by increasing the warrior's characteristics inside the dungeon.  For example, if you need 2000 gold to get to the next BL for getting two increases (like +1 WS and +1 skill), when the warrior gets his first 1000 experience points, I'll decide what he gets.  If he didn't but beat up bad guys until now, he'll receive the +1 WS or a skill that involves fighting.  If he searched all day for a secret chamber, he'll get a skill that'll do just that.

If the warriors go to a settlement they can still train.  They'll just a have to pay an amount of gold equal to a part of the experience they'ld like to acquire.  In the former case it would be either 1000 or 2000 g. If they do that however, they will have to roll their skills on a random table.

There are experience points to be gained for accomplishing difficult tasks, or for having really good ideas (the kind of ideas that make the GM's sick, because it skipped an entire part of a dungeon).  It is up to the GM to decide who gets how great an amount of experience points.

Of course, the players would need two lists, one for the gold they found, and one for the amount of experience points.

You don't have to distribute fixed amounts of gold for each warrior.  If a warrior used an incredibly potent weapon to kill an Orc, than he doesn't receive the same amount of experience points as if he did it with his bare hands.