Greater flexibility in the Jump Down rules?

[Ant]

Thanks to the rather nice 3-dimensional aspect to Necromunda terrain, jumping down rules have always been something heavily needed. Not least to make the higher levels more useful for close combat fighters, so instead of scuttling in the sewers they can swiftly drop on the heads of opposing fighters all ninja style.

So it was great to see some jumping down rules in the rules review, but I was kind of hoping they would be a little more expansive. Here's the current ruling:

A model may jump down from a higher level to another. If the height is 3” or less then take an initiative test, a failure means you fell, a success means you have landed safely but may not move further and a roll of one means you have landed and may take the remainder of your move if applicable. A vertical jump over 3” is treated as a deliberate fall and uses the rules in the above damage section as normal. You may deliberately ‘charge’ another model who is below your model should you wish to, in which case use the rules for falling onto another model as described above.

Now the problem for me is that they are rather restrictive in not allowing fighters to even attempt to successfully jump from any height greater than 3". It would be quite nice if my high initiative ninja esque fighters could show off their acrobatics a little more by leaping from great heights and continue on unabated.

So I was thinking, instead of having the blanket restriction of not allowing anybody to leap from higher than 3", perhaps higher leaps simply gave harsh penalties to the initiative test required? This would also then allow the Catfall skill to fit neatly into it effectively doubling the distance a fighter can jump down. Rules along the lines of:

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A fighter can elect to jump down off a ledge at any point during his move as long as the distance is no greater than 10". Once you have elected this, roll an Initiative test. The fighter will suffer an Initiative bonus or penalty depending on how many inches the model is attempting to jump down from.

Code: [Select]

Distance    2"   3"   4"   5"   6"   7"   8"   9"
Modifier    +1   -   -1   -2   -3   -4   -5    -6
If the test is failed then the model counts as falling the full distance and suffers damage following the usual falling rules. If the test is passed then the model lands safely and may continue with his turn as normal. Each 1" jumped down costs 1/2" of movement and the fighter cannot elect to jump down from a ledge if he does not have the movement left to finish at ground level (i.e. he can't finish the turn in midair).

[Hellspawn]

I think this rule or something similar (diving charge or whatever it's called in english) is already set in mordheim. And yeah, it's based on the Initiative test, so wouldn't be an issue I think to have it implemanted there. Would be good to give it a try cause it would save sooo many turns to reach some points on the maps or just simply flee an upcoming nasty situation

[Lazura]

Interesting! The German Rulebook doesn't say a thing about jumping 3" down and passing an initiative test in order to prevent hurting. Both page 27.
I guess from now on I should definitly stick to the English Rulebook!

A question towards the original rules:

Is it for example possible to walk 2" and than jump 3" down? Would a roll of 1 on the initiative test allow me to walk the remaining 2"?

My opinion regarding the modifier is that a mini is about 1,5" which means jumping down 6" would be equivalent to a 7m jump for an 1,75cm tall person. I think this high would cause seriouse damage to a human... to hell with it. In reality there would be small chance to scrape through.

[Ravendas]

Wow that is a good idea, and I think I will propose it to my little group tomorrow. I've been slowly building up my necromunda terrain, and it has steadily grown higher with multiple levels (as it should!) and we keep running into difficulty traversing between the levels quickly. The current jumping/falling rules are pretty restrictive.

How do you handle falling charges?

Also what is your opinion on horizontal jumping? The actual rulebook lacks two key words, 'up to', that changes the rules pretty significantly. The rulebook states you just go X inches, so you could overshoot your target. We play that you can go up to X inches, so you have more precision in your jumps.

I think this will go over well with my group.

Also, Lazura, your question about moving, falling, and moving is spot on. You can move all you want before you fall, but after you fall the only way you can move is if you fall less than 3" and roll a natural 1 on the dice. And don't think that all ground is hard, just imagine if they pass that test, they used the surrounding walls/ledges/pipes to control their fall. That's why there is an initiative test, to see how well your model can control the fall.

[Ant]

How do you handle falling charges?

In exactly the same way.

Also what is your opinion on horizontal jumping? The actual rulebook lacks two key words, 'up to', that changes the rules pretty significantly. The rulebook states you just go X inches, so you could overshoot your target. We play that you can go up to X inches, so you have more precision in your jumps.

Ah good point, I forgot about the horizontal jump rules. What I dislike most about the official rules for them is that you have to expend your entire time to jump a gap that could only be 1". So first you have to waste a turn moving up to a gap, then a further turn jumping over it.

The way we do it is that we just basically allow the jump at any point during the move, but you still can't exceed your maximum move (so if you're maximum move won't take you over the gap then you fall). And as you said Ravendas, the D6 move will only take you over the gap, rather than rolling a 6 and leaping over the gap and off the other side of the ledge (which admittedly is quite amusing).

[Hellspawn]

I think there was the possibility in a special skills to actually jump from a building to another, though a) not sure and b) can't recall which one

[fen]

I think there was the possibility in a special skills to actually jump from a building to another, though a) not sure and b) can't recall which one

Agility - Leap

Ant, do you house rule climbing upwards?  We half inched the mordheim climbing rules, mostly due to a lack of ladders in scenery. 

[Ravendas]

I think there was the possibility in a special skills to actually jump from a building to another, though a) not sure and b) can't recall which one

Actually anyone can do that. Instead of moving normally, you can just make a horizontal jump d6". The leap skill lets you make that jump in addition to your normal movement.

[Ant]

Oh hey you there it's fen! I was worried we lost you at sump like poor Widowmaker (we miss you WM ). Still gaming?

Ant, do you house rule climbing upwards?  We half inched the mordheim climbing rules, mostly due to a lack of ladders in scenery. 

We just count climbing certain spots as difficult terrain. I don't know what the Mordheim rules are for climbing, something related to a Strength test? We're quite prone to lazyitis when it comes to terrain making. We make use of a few fizzy pop can towers and just say "meh, the whole thing counts as one big ladder!"

[Ravendas]

Pretty sure the entire game is considered climbable unless you state otherwise. If you start your turn in base to base with a wall of a building, you may climb 1 floor up, and end your movement on the next floor.

Or something like that, it's been years since I played.

[fen]

Oh hey you there it's fen! I was worried we lost you at sump like poor Widowmaker (we miss you WM ). Still gaming?

I've been offline for several months for a few reasons.  It was kind of sudden and unexpected so I didn't really have a chance to say "I'll be off for a while."  I'm still gaming sure, less Necro atm - more board gaming and WFRP.  Still painting though (was working on Esher most recently - I have 5 of them done now  )

Ant, do you house rule climbing upwards?  We half inched the mordheim climbing rules, mostly due to a lack of ladders in scenery. 

We just count climbing certain spots as difficult terrain. I don't know what the Mordheim rules are for climbing, something related to a Strength test? We're quite prone to lazyitis when it comes to terrain making. We make use of a few fizzy pop can towers and just say "meh, the whole thing counts as one big ladder!"

LOL, fair enough.    Mordheim uses I for climbing ftr - they're pretty elegant imo.

[Ant]

Well you've appeared just as I'm about to disappear (we're like two ships passing in the night). I'll be taking a break from the comp over the summer so for the next week or so I'm hurriedly writing up in note form all of those random rule ideas I've had over the years. Fingers crossed I may even get to write up a bit of Necro:Sump before my arm falls off! Btw, can't wait to see your Escher. Be sure to tell me where you post photos of them so I can publically laud them.

LOL, fair enough.    Mordheim uses I for climbing ftr - they're pretty elegant imo.

It's nice Initiative gets more use in there, but I'm not a fan of the incompetence Mordheim fighters have at something as simple as jumping over small gaps. If you apply Initiative tests for climbing and jumping across then in the Underhive there's a 50% chance of most fighters just standing around looking befuddled or in the case of a jump just falling straight through the hole. Personally I prefer movement a little bit more fluid, which is good for terrain makers since they can model a nice war torn walkway without fear nobody would ever step foot on it because of oh noes there be scary holes in it!

[fen]

Hmm yes, but there's always the possibility of adding modifiers.

So roll equal to or under initiative for jumping over a wall
+1 for trying to jump a short gap (under 3") or low wall
-1 for trying to jump a wall taller than 1" or across a gap larger than 3"

etc.  Just a few easy to remember modifiers to modify the odds.

[Ant]

Well I guess the D6 roll to see how far the fighter jumps could be replaced with the Initiative test. +2 mod for jumping a 1" gap and +1 mod for jumping over a 2" gap. I suspect you may have to limit it to jumping over a gap of a maximum range of 3", just like in Mordheim, otherwise you could see some high Initiative fighters taking short cuts all of the time and jumping insane distances worthy of an Olympic gold.

[Hellspawn]

Well even if our gangers are "sur" humans sometimes especially when they're having bionics etc, what would be really nice is to keep in my that even with bionics, they're somewhere still "humans" and thus can't jump huge distance in length so it would be nice to keep the jumping part on a scale that would be somewhere realistic cause even if they're as said a little more than human sometimes, they're still holding/transporting some equipment and it would be silly to see a heavy for example jumping 6" distance on a lucky roll. The guy can't move and shoot cause of the weight of his weapon but can jump 6"? wouldn't be a) realistic and b) getting in contradiction someway of moving/shooting with a heavy weapon cause for me if guy can jump 6" with a heavy then he has no issue moving and shooting hehe