Session Update; Rage Comic 6/27/12

This is an adequate and unique session update. I hope the PC that did this more, or at least tells me if he wants attribution. Love the memes, ah, Rage Comics make everything funnier.

Monday Night Mordheim: Loremasters of Hoeth Skills

Monday Night Mordheim: Loremasters of Hoeth Skills.

At long last, LAZ HAS RETURNED TO  MONDAY NIGHTS! 

So this is going to be my final installment for the Loremasters of Hoeth. I've been banging on this project for a long, looong, time. I think that It's gotten to the point where the only thing that I really need is to do some fluff and toss it into a .pdf. I've been experimenting with creating .pdf's using Open Office's draw program (for another project naturally). I just need to figure out a place to put those .pdf's for y'all to download from.

Now, back on topic. So the last thing I need to bang on about is Skills. Now, I already had the idea that the Loremasters' warband would require a unique set of skills. Skills are what separates warbands from each other. There are really two different types of skills that are required. First off is the universal skills, those which apply to all members of the warband. The other ones are skills that heroes get.

So first off, referring to the HE book, there are two universal skills that should be applied, however, I did have to subtly modify them to make them work with Mordheim.

Universal Skills:

Speed of Asurman- A member of a Loremasters warband will always go first in the event of an iniative tie. I kinda toned this down from the 'elves always go first' in the HE army book. Given the high iniative value in the LMoH warband, it seems rather redundant. However, I there are still times when there MAY be opponents who are just as quick.

Valour of Ages- Members of LMoH warband re-roll all failed psychology rolls against Dark Elves. This one will come up so rarely that I've left it basically intact. I would like to monkey around with it a bit more, but other then applying it more to other warbands, I don't see the point.

Hero Skills:

First off, I'm going to wholesale steal those from the Elf Ranger list and some other lists, which I find appropriate. Then I'm going to add a bit of fun.

From Ranger/Stolen:

Seeker

Excellent Sight

Fey

Luck

Infiltrate

My New Skills:

Animal Empathy- Opponent with the 'animal' descriptor (such as wardogs or giant rats) will not attack this model, if the model passes a Leadership test. 

Apprentice Assistant- This model will give a friendly spell caster a re-roll on a failed magic roll, if within 6". This is to represent the apprentice helping with the spell casting. (As a side note, this might be a bit powerful given this warband's focus on magic. I would like a bit of feedback on this one).

Rare Lore- Roll on a different warband's magic list. You can cast the spell rolled at a +1 difficulty.

Well, that's all I got for now. Let me know if there's a glaring omission. Next week, the complete .pdf!

Baatezu's Advocate: GW and 6th Ed.

New post over at Baatezu's Advocate, where I generally get angry at the way that GW is handling the rumors of 6th edition, and their general communication issues. I realize that most of you read that by following the link, just as a reminder, BA is NSFW, well, actually not safe for anywhere really...

Linky

Monday Night Mordheim: Homebrew Magic

Well, still working on stuff for the High Elf Warband. It seems to be going slowly, and by god, it is. That's because I spend a lot more time thinking about it (for the most part) then writing stuff down. At least not on a format that I can easily upload. Just my chicken scratch on scrape paper. Which is great for me, bad for you.   Though, I have to admit that I am bolstered in this project by my constant readers, especially those of you who have deemed me worthy of comments, like Von and Mark Beardmore. I might not always respond (cause I'm a bit of a dumbass like that), but I do see them and fold them into my thinking.

What  I spent time on this week was working on the spell list. Most of that involved trying to adapt the High Magic list to the lower expectations of Mordheim. This is what I've come up with.

High Magic List.
1. Shield of Saphery- Difficulty 7, give target friendly model within 10" a 5+ armor save until your next recovery phase.
2. Curse of Arrow Attraction- Difficulty 9, target enemy model within 24" gets all unsuccessful ranged attacks re-rolled until your next recovery phase. NB: This only effects non-magical ranged attacks, not magical ones.
3. Courage of Aenarion- Difficulty 8, target friendly model within 6" is immune to psychology until your next recovery phase.
4. Flames of the Phoenix- Difficulty 7, target enemy model within 12" takes an automatic strength 2 hit. If in the next round, the spell difficulty goes up to 8, and if the spell is successfully cast in the next round, the target enemy model takes an automatic strength 3 hit. This continues to rise in both difficulty and strength damage until either the spell is unsuccessful or the enemy model is taken out of action.
5. Fury of Khaine- as per the Silver Arrows of Arrah.
6. Winds of Magic- Difficulty 8, target enemy spell caster within 24" is unable to cast spells on their next turn.

So this is what I have so far, but I'm pretty satisfied. I particularly think that the Flames of the Phoenix and Winds of Magic are very evocative of a High Elf magic heavy army.

Monday Night Mordheim: A Day Late, A Dollar Short, and a Forgotten Email

So like I said, I did a bunch of work at work. Then I forgot to email it to myself. Talk about stupid. Right now I'm realizing that I'm actually about 50% done. I still have some more skills and magic to get to, however, the basics are all done.


Loremasters of Hoeth Warband

Choice of Warriors:
The Loremasters of Hoethe warband must include a minimum of three models. You have 500 gold crowns to recruit your warband. The maximum amount of warriors in the warband may not exceed 12.

Loremaster: Each Loremasters of Hoethe warband must start with one loremaster, no more no less.

Apprentice: You may include a single apprentice.

Journeymen of Hoeth: You may include up to two Journeymen of Hoeth.

Archers: You may include any number of Elven Archers.

Elven Youth: You may include any number of Elven Youth.

Starting Experience:

The Loremaster starts with 20 experience.

The Apprentice starts with 0 experience.

The Journeymen of Hoeth start with 8 experience.

Elven Skill Tables:

Loremaster: Academic, Speed, Elf
Apprentice: Academic, Speed, Elf
Journeymen: Combat, Speed, Elf.

Equipment Lists:

Elven Equipment List:

Hand-to-Hand Combat Weapons:
Dagger: 1st free/2gc
Sword: 10 gc.
Spear: 10 gc.
Ithlimar Weapons: x2*

Missile Weapons:
Bow 10
Long Bow 15
Elf Bow 30*

Armor:
Light 20
Heavy 50
Shield 5
Buckler 5
Helmet 10
Ithilmar Armor 60*

Journeymen of Hoeth Equipment List:

Hand-to-Hand Combat Weapons
Two Handed Weapon 15
Ithlimar Great Sword 30*

Armor:
Light 20
Heavy 50
Shield 5
Buckler 5
Helmet 10
Ithilmar Armor 60*

*This cost represents the cost of intial purchase from before leaving Ulthan. Once gameplay has started, regular costs and rarity apply.

Heroes:

Loremaster of Hoeth: 90gc
M WS BS S T W I A Ld
5 4 4 3 3 1 5 1 8
Weapons/Armor: Can choose from the Elven Equipment List
Special Rules: Leader, Wizard (can CHOOSE one spell from both the High Magic lists, this is unique, this character does not roll to determine spell.), Arcane Lore (Can choose to roll on either the High Magic or Hedge Magic spell lists when determining new spells).

Apprentice of Hoeth: 40Gc
M WS BS S T W I A Ld
5 3 3 3 3 1 5 1 8
Weapons/Armor: Can choose from the Elven Equipment List
Special Rules: Wizard (Can roll for spell from the Hedge Magic List)

Journeymen of Hoeth: 50GC
M WS BS S T W I A Ld
5 4 4 3 3 1 5 1 8
Weapons/Armor: Can Choose from the Journeymen Equipment List
Special Rules: Strongman


Henchmen:

Archers: 50 gc
M WS BS S T W I A Ld
5 4 4 3 3 1 5 1 8
Weapons/Armor: Can choose from the Elven Equipment List
Special Rules: None

Elven Youth: 25gc
M WS BS S T W I A Ld
5 2 2 3 3 1 4 1 8
Weapons/Armor:
Special Rules:

Giant Eagle: 210GC
M WS BS S T W I A Ld

Weapons/Armor:
Special Rules: Flying (Move 20 ignoring terrain, counts as charge), Awkward (cannot enter buildings), Animal (does not gain experience)

Elf Skills:
Seeker
Excellent Sight
Fey
Luck

RPG Thoughts: On Line Play

Well, I took the jump. Went into online play. It was an interesting experience. I dug out my old homebrew D&D campaign, and we had a blast.

First a bit of background. Due to half my work group getting new jobs, I was at a loss. While I can still play stuff with the remaining, I was at a loss. So while talking to my buddy Consadine, who lives several hundred miles away, we hit on the idea of playing an RPG by Skype.

So I also decided to get a few more people involved. I invited Jim and Po, who had left work. Then I invited Consadine, since it was in part his idea. Finally, I invited Doug, who is probably one of my oldest friends, we've  been playing D&D and other games together since 6th grade- he was especially important since he played in Campaigns II, III, and IV of the homebrew campaign.

Now, Jim didn't have a microphone to join via skype. And for the first session Po was having trouble with Skype (which was his own damn fault). So it was just Doug and Consadine for the first session. As first sessions go, it was pretty typical as RPGs go (I'll do up a quick write up, if readers and players want it). What made it unique was the stuff I learned.

1. Skype is excellent for decreasing the amount of tangents. Back in the day, I actually had a 'S.T.A.N.' jar. S.T.A.N. stood for 'Stupid Tangents a Nickel'. We would charge people who broke game flow a nickel. The clink of the nickel dropping into the glass jar was a nice sharp focus (and we occasionally cashed it out for pizza). With Skype though it, there were no tangents. Multiple people talking at once made for mass confusion, every one took turns talking. Even getting up to take the kids to bed or switching laundry didn't cause a big disruption.
2. Rolz.org is an amazing gadget. First off it allowed us to all join a room where we could see each other's rolls, but also had neat scripts for the weird unique type of die rolls I like. You could do roll-over (roll the highest on the die, add in and reroll), or drop the lowest result on a number of die. It was a great tool, and one that I think that everyone would want to use if they are playing online.
3. No more lost character sheets. Since everyone had to send me a copy of the Character Sheet, that means that I will always have one. Especially since they will remain forever inside my gmail, there's little to no danger of losing something.
4. Easy reference. While I didn't use it myself this session, I do plan on using links much more in the future. However, it was great that when I was talking about a primitive trombone, called a sackbut, Consadine was able to get into here. However, given that my PCs are going to be going to going into a territory that is thematically based on The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, I'll have lots of chances to use those awesome Seirra Club pics of the southwest that are everywhere on the internet.
5. More importantly then with live gaming, it is important that everyone has a chance to catch up with everyone. This kinda harkens back to the first point, since there is really no chance for some talking when someone else is the primary player. This will also teach me to really spread around the love, there's nothing worse then sitting while someone is the center of attention, except perhaps not even being able to talk to your buddy while it is happening.

In all it went really well, but I can't wait until next week to pick up a new PC or two. It went so well that I think that I might expand the invite to a few others. However, that may prove difficult depending on the number of players. We'll see.

Monday Night Mordheim: An Understandable Delay

Well, I've spent the last week and a half playing around with DDN. Seriously, when you are homebrewing, there's nothing like sitting back and testing someone else's game. It gives you an excellent ideas of what you are trying to do.

So back to work.

So last time, Mark Beardmore (SHOUT OUT!) pointed out that the other GW elf bands had a base cost of around 35 gold crowns. This is probably why I think that they are overpowered. They are much better then the standard warrior, but only costing 10 GC more. I think that's really where I am running into the sticky point.

Right now, the costs I am looking at seriously considering are as follows;

Loremaster of Hoeth: 90 GC
Apprentice of Hoeth: 40 GC
Journeymen of Hoeth: 50 GC

Elven Spearmen: 40 GC
Elven Archers: 40 GC
Great Eagle: 210 GC

Now, this is more along what I was thinking of. Granted, I've spent only a little time on this, BUT next week, I should have a big update, since my other stuff has basically resolved itself, and I should be able to put in some mad time on Sunday, and then possibly make it into a .pdf for people to download.