Assorted Mordheim Rules questions

[Darkhorse]

Hello all,

I have just started playing Mordheim with a big gaming group and we are starting to collect some questions that have come up in the games. (We are using the current pdf rules on the GW website)

Rather than make a lot of different threads and clutter up the FAQ thread, I thought I would just post a bunch of issues that have come up here.

1) Can the skill Resilent reduce the Strength of a Spines hit to 0 (and for that matter, any S1 hit to S0)?

2) Can Tentacle be used against 2 opponents at once, that is, enemy A and enemy B both lose an Attack or just enemy A?

3) Can Quick Shot be used to shoot at 2 different targets?  What about slings and repeater crossbows?

4) Calculating Warband Rating: Do you multiply the number of henchmen by the hench group XP or not?  If there are 3 henchmen with 5XP earned by the group, do they add 20 to the warband rating or 30?  (We have found the rulebook very ambigious on this and lots of contradictory stuff on the net)

5) Are Witch Hunter Flagellants and Cult of the Possessed Dark Souls effectively immune to Stupidity by virtue of "automatically pass all Leadership-based tests they are required to take"?

6) Does a Cult of the Possessed warband lead by a Dark Soul pass all Rout checks?

Well, that sounds plenty for now.  Thanks in advance for the help.

Cheers
DH

[RationalLemming]

Whoa! Those are some good questions. I came in here thinking "yeah I know Mordheim pretty well so I'll answer these questions" and well I don't think that I actually can! Teaches me a lesson about being vain. I'll do my best though for fun and Da Bank can prove me wrong.

1) Yes. S1 hits are weak and if your model has tough skin then weak hits just don't do any damage.

2) No. The rule for Tentacle says opponent singular (italics mine in quote below).

Tentacle
One of the mutant’s arms ends in a tentacle. He may grapple his opponent in close combat to reduce his attacks by -1, down to a minimum of 1. The mutant may decide which attack his opponent loses.

3) Yes. The rule simply says that the warrior can shoot twice per turn with no restrictions.

4) You multiply the number of henchmen by the henchmen group XP. The henchmen group XP is the XP for each member in the henchmen group. This is why you must roll 2D6 to determine available XP if you want to add more henchmen to existing henchmen groups. Therefore in your example the warband rating would be increased by 30 (3 x 5XP plus 5 x 3 models).

5) I don't know. It definitely could go either way. I would say no though because stupidity is brain damage as opposed to insanity (yes I guess insanity could be seen as a form of brain damage though).

6) I don't know. Some people see the rout test as being related to fear in which case no but other people see the rout test as a tactical decision made automatically by the leader when things start going bad in which case yes. Help!

[Master]

Rational Lemming has it right IMHO, but I'd like to comment on 5 & 6 anyway.

5) By the letter of the rule, yes they are immune to stupidity, byt the spirit of the rule, I don't think so, this has been discussed before, and I think the general consensus was that no they are not immune to stupidity. This can be argued either way.

6) Well, the idea is pretty clear, but the letter of the rule is rather ambigious. Rout test says it's a rout test, and never mentions being a leadership test, which is why dark souls wouldn't be able to auto-pass it IMO, but flaggelants have another wording here, and could be read to auto-pass it. However, auto-passing rout tests is silly, as even warbands immune to psychology make them. Therefore it seems as the rule is intended to be never auto-success. (With flaggelants you'd still test at LD 10 as soon the captain goes down IIRC though).

[cianty]

If a model had two Tentacles though, then it surely could use them against two opponents. But still only one enemy per tentacle.

[someone2040]

I'm part of the same group as the Original Poster, and thought I'd bring a few things up.

1. Healing Herbs - This was actualy brought up by the OP. But technically... you can use them at the beginning of any recovery phase and they never run out? I think if the rules review ever comes around, they should be changed to a one use item type thing (Doesn't make sense that you can use them again after using them once, nor multiple times per battle).

2. I like to zip around on my Magister using Wings of Darkness. Can you hide after performing the move? The way I see it, I should be able to. My spell has been cast, I move 12", and then I have finished my move, and can hide. However I suppose, one could argue that I can't hide because I'm also casting a spell - but I'm not hidden yet... I'm not fussed either way, but would be nice to see what others think about it.

3. Can Animals claim buildings, carry wyrdstone, etc? We know you can't claim the treasure with one, but can they do other scenario specific things?

4. Selling items, do you round up or down when selling? i.e 3 gold crown mace, sell it for 1 or 2 gold crowns?

I'm sure there are plenty more questions our group has - but none come to mind at the moment!

[RationalLemming]

Hi someone2040.

1) You are right that the rules for Healing Herbs seem a little bit strange. As the rules currently stand though it seems that they can be used many times in a single battle and can be used in every battle from that point onwards. Other items (e.g. Garlic) specifically mention limitations on use.

2) I would say no you cannot hide. The spell implies to me that the model moves on "demon wings" and the rules for Hiding says that "His sudden burst of speed does not give him time to hide" when talking about running and therefore I would say that the Magister would not have time to hide after casting Wings of Darkness.

3) No. I think that the scenario would need to specifically state that animals are capable of achieving an objective for it to be allowed otherwise the same restriction as with treasure exists.

4) I don't know. I'd round down though. At the end of the day it is only 1 gc that will ever be the difference though.

[Master]

1. Healing Herbs, although I can't find the basis for this, I've always played this as once per game.

2. You hide in the movement phase, which is over when you ast wings of darkness.

3. Never played that they could, can't seem to find the basis in the book though.

4. I've always rounded up, maybe because I'm a cheesy bugger, but my math teacher always told me to run fractions up. Either that or you could have half gold crowns?

[someone2040]

This rule came up in last nights game.

My Possessed with Spines, was fighting 2 Orcs. One orc had just charged him, while the other was still in combat from a previous turn. My Possessed walloped one Orc who has Reslience and managed to stun him. Due to the nature of Resilience, Spines can't hurt him. However, because he was stunned, I argued that it doesn't matter, Spines automatically takes him out of action as there is no to wound roll.
In the end, we diced off for it and I lost, but I'd like to know whether my spines should have worked.

Also, something I should have also asked a while back. Does Hammer of Sigmar REALLY get all the benefits of your mundane weapons, plus the perks of the spell? It just seems totally overpowered that more than half the time, a Warrior Priest can be running around with 2 Maces, that have concussion, +2 strength and deal double wounds in addition to any criticals he rolls. This Warrior Priest in the campaign has pretty much been unstoppable, because you don't want to go near him because if you don't take him out, he's going to maul you.
I thought for an instance the Mordheim FAQ cleared this up (By saying it's a weapon in it's own right), but then the Witch Hunter player points out that it says the user gains +2 strength, and all hits are multiplied into 2 wounds. So realistically, all it means is 1 of your attacks doesn't gain a weapon bonus...
This I feel needs to be cleared up! Very confusing, and I feel is probably one of the best spells in the game if it's as so.

[RationalLemming]

Spines against a stunned model who is resilient... I think this would work because the rules for taking a stunned model OOA does not require strength. Therefore I think it would be OK in a scenario like below though:
1) Two orcs verses posessed.
2) On orcs turn, one orc is stunned by possessed.
3) On possessed turn, main attacks focused on orc still standing and spines take stunned orc OOA.

I think that the Hammer of Sigmar spell only has the rules given in the spell. Your question has made me wonder something myself though... (new thread).

[ANSWER_MOD_DABANK]

I agree with RL's points.

[someone2040]

Thanks for the answers so far.
Just another one about the Hammer of Sigmar.
The player using it, has decided that every hit he causes, gets multiplied into two before rolling to wound - which in turn of course means more reliable damage (more chances at critical, less reliance on failling 1 wound roll when you're rolling 2).
 I think he's taking all hits causing double damage wrongly. 2 wounds instead of 1 to me, implies after rolling to wound and any saves are taken the damage is doubled. Because you don't actually cause any damage or wounds until you actually make the to wound roll, beat armour and possibly step aside if they have it.

[RationalLemming]

Interesting. Your Witch Hunter player is definitely wrong. Doubling damage means doubling the wounds. You roll to wound and then double that result before checking armour saves, step aside, etc.

[someone2040]

Interesting. Your Witch Hunter player is definitely wrong. Doubling damage means doubling the wounds. You roll to wound and then double that result before checking armour saves, step aside, etc.

Fair enough. That's almost exactly what I thought.
Another question! XD. I just read the part on critical hits, where it specifically states on the roll of 1-2, it is only doubled after armour saves. Our group has been playing, that for any doubling of wounds, etc, any successful step aside, regeneration, etc ignores the critical completely, rather than rolling twice for step aside. Right or wrong? It feels odd that you would have to Step Aside 2 wounds rather than 1 if the hit actually never connects (Maybe Step Aside should be like Dodge, against the hit rather than the Wound).

Also, given the paragraph below critical hits, saying that if a crit causes more than 1 wound and so does the weapon, use the one with most damage. Does this mean, Hammer of Sigmar always causes 2 wounds, and the only better result for it is 3-6 on the crit chart (ignores armour, ignores armour +2 injury). Makes sense to me, but figured I'd check up on it.

Amazing stuff you find when you actually read the rules properly 'ey.

[RationalLemming]

Sorry it has taken me a while to respond (boy it seems like there are just us two Aussies in here currently! ).

I agree that it sounds odd to Step Aside twice for a critical hit but the rules for Step Aside say to roll for each wound. Therefore it is just like a 5+ armour save you need to roll twice for a critical hit.

The usage of the word "damage" in the rulebook is absolutely horrid. You should take the word purely in the context of the current paragraph and not link it to any other sections that use the word damage. I'm pretty sure that this is referring to the roll on the injury table which means that you roll on the injury table for each wound (once the warrior is down to 0 wounds) - so roll for injury for the wounds caused by the critical hit and also for the wounds caused normally by the weapon - and then you choose the injury result that did the most damage (e.g. choose stunned over knocked down if you rolled both). Of course the wording is terrible here and it would be good if someone else (especially Da Bank or Cianty) could confirm or deny what I am saying.