hi guys!

i'd like to hear your approaches on the double strike action if you have any. we have tried several house rules now but have not yet come to a good version so that it is really balanced...

also, do you let characters wielding 2 weapons do some sort of "double meele strike" as part of a basic action? i have 2 players with characters wielding 2 weapons and there are only 4 twin weapon action cards in all the expansions, including doublestrike...

i thought about it, and have ruled it this way now: the double meele strike must be less powerful than a real doublestrike, so you would for example only hit with both weapons if you rolled a sigmar's comet. and it will, at best, inflict normal damage or less...

ideas?

let me go D&D on you.

The second weapon is almost always used at a disadvantage. Usually denoted with penalties to hit and damage.

Now real world/WH: the second weapon is usually used to parry or gain advantage, to setup a wide opening to take advantage of, which is why there would be so few moves that incorporate both weapons being used for offense at the same time. Which is why those attacks are so devastating.

same thoughts were already discussed, but no result to how to rule it in the end

nephtys said:

Can you explain a bit more what you mean by really balanced? What is bothering you and your party about Double Strike?

nephtys said:

Actually there are 5 + the Enhance card, 6 in total. In my opinion 3 action cards are already enough since they allow you to make a proper rotation without using the Melee Strike action card.

You can always photocopy action cards to give copies to your players so they don't have to share the cards.

nephtys said:

the double strike does, infact still deal ALOT of damage even with the new 2xST 2xTO rule. and i have a very combat oriented group. it is generally ok the way it is, i was just thinking that maybe someone had another approach to it which we could try

true that, the enhance cards are nice! but i have 2 characters wielding 2 weapons, and soon maybe even 3. and to me it is just logical that a character wielding 2 weapons would also always try to hit with both, so there i run into the problem. we have ruled that if a card is already bought no other player can buy it, that way the group is a nice mix of talents and actions. otherwise everybody would have doublestirke for example and any battle would be over in one round because of the mass damage dealt to (several) enemies.
and thats what also my players dont want to have, since they also like strategic battling and everybody having his "own" actions.

nephtys said:

First off, I'd try to desuade a third player from using the "same" fighting style as two other characters. There are plenty of other fun styles avaliable, I'd talk one of them up. It also gives you a more varied group and the players have their "own" way of fighting.

Secondly, 6 actions divided on three players isn't so bad. Every single action used doesn't have to be a dual wielding action, in fact you can use other attacks in between the dual wield actions and still do loads of damage. As a matter of fact, when fighting with two weapons you do not attack with both all the time, it would be both exhausting and exposing. So mixing it up with some regular, one handed actions would not be especially problematic in my mind.

Thirdly, you could say that you use the right handed weapon to do a reckless cleave and the turn after you use the left handed weapon to make a basic melee attack. I guess it all depends on how you envision a combat turn.

Any way I look at it I don't feel that all the character has to have dual wield actions only, so for me this wouldn't even be a problem.

yeah, you're right.

i'll try to talk to my players again about choosing another fighting style, hope one of em agrees

I have a standard rule that if you have two weapons and you roll a comet you can make a basic melee attack with an extra purple after you finish whatever you were doing

Cabello said:

Looks I nice rule.

Nephys, you said your PC's go through your NPC's like cutting butter. Just to know, are you using by chance the Henchman rule? because if so, dumping them could be a way of increasing the challenge of your fights. I always found the rules of henchmen not warhammish at all. Though, Razar is close to find a nice way to apply them for large battles.

Cabello said:

that is a very nice rule, i think i'll adopt that one! thx

i never use henchmen since they are too weak for my group anyways (8 combat based characters). but, as some might have seen, i now made my own creatures and actions to make battles more intresting and the hero's call has also helped me alot.
i guess i'll roll with more casters for enemies, since the WP ratings of my group are generally pretty weak

nephtys said:

I have found that Henchmen are extremly deadly and consistant. After all if you have a group of 8 players and your henchmen groups should be 8 deep. Hence when you roll to attack you are rolling 7 Fortune dice with your attacks. Hits with full benefits are practically guaranteed and while not all henchmen are created equal its going to put a serious crap on any group regardless of size if you are being so consistant with hits.

People often forget that when you are attacking with Henchmen you get 1 fortune dice for each henchmen after the first when making attacks. This is the significant thing about henchmen.

Though an 8 man group, thats hard to balance under any game system.

It is true that a group of 8 henchmen roll 7 fortune dice, but they only perform one action, while 8 separate npc's perform 8 actions. But anyway, may be the biggest problem I find with henchmen is regarding game consistency. If in one encounter my players meet 2 gors, they will see how hard are they to kill, it can happen that afterwards they find a group of 4 gor henchmen, and what then? The group will go through them like nothing. Why the gors are now so weak, while before they were so hard? Or in the other way round it can be even worse. For example, the group finds first a group of 6 gors henchmen and they kill it easely, shortly after they find a group of 4 gors and they will think ah! easy cannonfoder! and then the PC group gets wiped.

Although I think I understand why the henchmen rules were made for (Emirikol gave a nice point of view on them in some post), I don't like them. In my opinion, they produce a total "non-warhammer feeling".

Agreed. The only thing I consider henchmen handy for, is if I want to use swarms of weaker enemies. Goblins, skaven slaves, snotlings, nurglings and similar enemies that use drag-down tactics to take down enemies work fine with henchmen rules. Allthough I then tend to make the henchmen groups larger than they "should" be. With 3 players, a group of 3 henchmen is pitiful. A group of 10 hencmen though, that can lead to problems. You make the hencmen group big enough, it becomes a mini-boss that needs to be whittled down.

Ralzar said:

Sorry Nephys for deviating your post but

Ralzar, did you went further with your rules for large battles? Last thing I heard was that they were taking too long. The idea was good.

Yepesnopes said:

Yeah, I was actually thinking of posting the complete set of rules after giving them another read-through. I'm not sure on how to upload text documents though, so I might just copy-paste it into a post here.

I finshed the battle last session and it worked pretty well. It felt a bit too grindy though. I'm thinking of adding that when a Critical is caused you draw a card and do the following:

Critical Rating = Members killed.

That way it's possible to have some surprising turns in the battle and units die a bit faster, making the battle go faster and feel a bit less predictable.

I'll probably post it this evening or tomorrow.