It occured to me earlier that the following might serve as a means of allowing dodge and parry to work against hordes without neutralising the horde usually limited number of attacks.

If a character has a reaction remaining, they may make a dodge or parry attempt against a horde attack but with a penalty equal to that horde's current magnitude and so long as there is a possibility of success with this penalty. The penalty is capped at -60 as per the rules on modifiers.

Example 1: Brother Severus with his WS of 45 and chainsword attempts to parry a Magnitude 30 horde of khornate cultists. His parry roll is against 25 (50+10-30 = 25).

Example 2: Brother Severus with his Ag of 50 wants to dodge a Magnitude 120 horde of renegade guardsmen. Dodging their lasgun attacks is impossible (50-120 = -70) so he cannot make the attempt and will have to rely on the God Emperor's mercy.

Pros

It's easy to remember.

There is a noticeable difference in difficulty in evading the storm of attacks from a larger horde. And of course decreasing difficulty as the horde is weakened and dispersed by Kill Team fire. A tangible sense of the horde weakening as it were.

It increases the value of weapons that make parrying easier, since there's more opportunities to parry.

Assault marines can dive into combat with a lot less fear of being torn to pieces by horde melee attacks.

Cons

It weakens the ability of hordes to land a blow at all.

Butchering hordes with counterattack

It still leaves horde attacks as very all-or-nothing. But that is a feature of the combat system as a whole so I wonder if that's a big problem.

Assault marines can dive into combat with a lot less fear of being torn to pieces by horde melee attacks.

Any thoughts?

Very interesting.

I will try this out in my next game and see how it affects the game.

That is a decent house rule, I would only allow 1 dodge or parry regardless of talent, and I might raise the cap of difficulty in this one instance to -80, though that could be a slippery slope. I will deffinatly play test this a bit.

Fire away people. I'd love to hear how this works in practice, I'm still working on ideas for a DW campaign.

In your example, a 120 magnitude horde should be limited to -60 modifier to the dodge roll, correct? Still making the roll impossible as 50 - 60 = -10.

I had also considered what you have done especially as it applies to ranged attacks. For melee to receive the same benefit I require the purchase of the talent "Combat Master".

A high magnitude horde should be extremly difficult to dodge/parry. Anything with swarm ability should be impossible since you can not even disengage(though that might be another house rule now that I think of it, but one I do agree with).

Well the combat master talent says you suffer no penalties for multiple attackers on you. Being hit automatically with no dodge or parry is quite a penalty to my thinking. This is only melee I am talking about.

Suijin said:

Combat master on pg 115, states that opponets gain no bonus against you, not that you gain no penalties.

We used this in our game Saturday night and it worked pretty good, everyone seemed to like it.

I'm back from a con so a few replies are in order.

Suijin: p244 of the core book states that the -60/+60 limit applies to total bonuses or penalties to tests and that's what I'll go with. That said, I can see logic in limiting individual bonuses and penalties to +/-60.

I had completely forgotten about the feat Combat Master. A fair enough call on your use of it as a prequisite for parrying horde melee attacks.
Since it is a high tier talent, I'd consider modifying it to allow dodging and parrying hordes without penalty . Powerful but not overwhelming I think. Especially since high tier hordes will likely have multiple, lethal attacks.

Nimon: Since this is a house rule to begin with and it logically would be related to how a character defends against hordes, Combat Master should hardly be ignored and untouched.

Edsel62: Good stuff! Thanks for posting your thoughts on it.

Decessor said:

That's what I was referring to, it can be the total penalty or bonus. You used -120 as the penalty in your example, I was saying to limit it to -60. The base dodge of 50 doesn't factor in when figuring the bonus/penalty. The character rolls his dodge with the base penalty or bonus applied. Add all bonuses and penalties, and then limit it to between -60 to +60. This is then the modifier to the base roll.

I still think that it is a bonus to the opponent if you can't dodge or parry their melee attacks, sure isn't a bonus to the guy getting hit. Literal semanics, if they gain no bonuses for outnumbering you, then they should be treated as if they were an individual. That means you should be able to dodge and parry them then. Now if that bonus was from something other than outnumbering you, say feint, then I can see the talent not working as intended.

Suijin said:

*checks post again*

You're dead right on the modifiers, I overlooked that. Good spot.

It looks like your reasoning for how combat master works would lead to the same result as I suggested. And feint isn't affected by combat master so sure thing.

Sounds intresting.
But I think I would try another aproach.
Hordes do higher damage with greater magnitude. You could allow a dodge or parry but not have it negate the whole attack but just to negate the increase in damage through greater magnitude. For example 1 increment per success or thomething like that.

So the horde would still hit the character but deal less damage, increasing survivability very much.

Why do you want to allow a parry/dodge against a horde anyway?

Alex

Umbranus said:

I don't know that works very well as hordes do max +2d10 damage and that is at a horde magnitude of 20? That is a pretty small horde. Could make it hard to do what you say unless you use each 2 or 3 degrees of success get rid of a 1d10 extra damage, but then that would make the horde size irrelevant.

All combat master does is take away the typical +10 a NPC gets against you when it out numbers you. If you also make it that the player recieves no penalties that is a pretty big bonus you are giving them. If thats how you play it in your games, then so be it, but I like the RAW.

Suijin said:

Ah, ok so my memory was wrong. I thought it was just the bigger hordes that gave the bonus D10s

Umbranus and Suijin : My first thought on defending against hordes was actually something along those lines. What I came up with was: neutralise the efect of ten points of magnitude per success on a dodge or parry. It has the benefit that defending against large hordes is still tricky as a SM has to get a *lot* of successes to bring their damage bonuses below +2D10. It would increase survivability but I was concerned that it might be a bit "fiddly" to implement.

Ak-73 : It seemed a bit weird to me that an SM, regardless of ability or expertise in melee, would have zero chance whatsoever of influencing whether they can avoid getting harmed in melee against hordes. I like the idea of defending against hordes being difficult but not impossible.

Nimon : Yes, by RAW. But if I'm making defending against hordes possible with a house rule, then I feel it's necessary to review how combat master interacts with that rule. By the time even an assault marine can access combat master, they're generally *very* experienced so I feel it's not that much of a stretch that such a marine would be exceptionally capable at defending themselves against hordes. That said, it occurs to me that a flat "no penalties" rule does make the horde size irrelevant. Perhaps halving the modifier might be a better idea, still a great benefit but leaves the horde size relevant.

Nimon said:

A horde does not get the typical gang up bonus, it instaed gets the bonus that enemies can't dodge or parry. NPCs could get up to +30? to hit with extra attackers, maybe more with the talent double team (didn't look up rules specifically). Esentially the horde trades the gang up bonus for the no dodge/parry rule. Kinda sucks for a talent you may have that specifically negates advantages of opponents that outnumber you not work because the opponent outnumbers you but as a rules simplification is considered a horde instead of individuals.

I'm not trying to push my viewpoint onto others, that they must do it this way. Everyone needs to run their game their way. If you have fun then that's all that matters.

Suijin said:

Exactly, so if you take away a hordes ability to negate dodge, and parry, then you are also wanting to give the player no negative when dodging or parrying them? Ha no sorry getting a roll in the first place is a bonus.

Nimon said:

That's 'no negative' coming from an *eighth rank* talent, that only assault marines have access to in the core rulebook. As I've suggested, such a high level melee specialist should have considerable ability to fight off hordes. Perhaps represented by a high WS, perhaps by this use of combat master.

Decessor said:

Even attempting to dodge a horde of 60 is considerable, Now realize once a horde starts to diminish so will the negatives. To make a comprimise I might be see a player chosing to either gain no penalties or allow the enemy no bonuses when using combat master(kinda like a choice in stance, either aggressive or deffensive) but I would not do both.

I must be dense because I don't understand what Nimon is even talking about.

He talks about either a player gaining a bonus or the horde, but not both.

I only see one bonus in total and so I can't see how it could be applied to either the player or the horde but not both. There is only one bonus (of the horde) "not allowing a dodge or parry" and you apply it to the horde then it is applied, and if you don't, maybe due to the player having combat master, then it is not applied. It is an all or nothing type thing (at least what I'm talking about).

As far as logically the magnituide mattering in the difficulty of dodging or parrying the horde, I would think it would top out very fast. You can only get so many people/mobs/aliens/whatever adjacent to you, the others further away aren't really doing anything. This is melee.

Ranged hordes get extra ranged attacks based on their magnitude, so that all balances out based on the current magnitude.

What about allowing them to attempt a dodge/parry with a penalty equal to the horde's bonus to hit, and have each degree of success lower the pre-armour damage done by 1? That way it allows them to get some benefit, without the likely hood of negating the hit altogether. This is what I'm going to try in my game.

Hmm. I always thought Hordes doing so ridiculously little damage would already incorporate the player characters evading many of their attacks in the first place - in other words, just another aspect of combat abstraction.

I like the idea of player characters being able to dodge/parry to lower the amount of incoming damage even further, though, without negating the entire attack. On the other hand, Hordes are already pretty weak and the rules are meant for streamlining, e.g. as few dice rolls as possible... Would require some testing before I could decide on whether I'd like it more than how it works now.

Though you could also have characters with the appropriate talents reduce the damage of every round's first successful Horde attack by 2 points by default, as an automatic modifier? Like some sort of "Anti-Mighty Shot". No additional dice-rolling, talent still feels useful.