Arm the masses!

So, what I was thinking for the game in terms of weapons and equipment. Most of these are probably going to seem fairly common sense, but sometimes it's nice to clarify.

1) There is a generic pool of equipment for each warband, but specific warbands can grab specific things. (Wych cults get wych weapons, kabals get heavy weapons, mandrakes and hellions will get something neat, once we figure out how they'll work.

2) Vehicles are equipment, but there is also equipment you can tack onto the sides as well. My reasoning here is that the vehicle isn't going to come with a driver or a gunner. Yeah, you've got a ride, but now you have to choose who has to drive the bus. Vehicles also get specific equipment depending on the owning warband.

3) I know next to nothing about coven units (I'm mainly a kabal strike force, with some wych add ons.) That being said, I think Covens are going to have surgical enhancements as part of their specific equipment list. If a promising haemonculus wants to throw me some ideas there I would be more than welcome.

4) Input is always welcome! Let me know what you think should or should not be included.

Step one, the ubiquitous splinter weapon.

After some time at the job, thinking about Commoragh instead of working. I thought we should start with splinter weapons. I think to represent the varied nature of the poisons available to the Dark Eldar, splinter weapons should be much cheaper to buy than other weapons. However, a splinter weapon won't work right unless you have poison to use. The cost of the poison balances out the cheap cost of the weapon. That being said, we can think of a load of different poisons to use in the game!

My thoughts were these.

Poison A, (The Wargame standard) This is the good ole' standby we know and love that wounds on a 4+.

Poison B, (The pain causing one) This one makes your splinter pistols, rifles, and shardcarbines S3 and the cannon S4. However, you get a re-roll to wound because the poison causes intense searing pain.

Poison C, (The anti-coagulant) The weapons keep the same profile as poison B. This poison makes you re-roll armor saves because the models hit just can't stop bleeding.

Poison D, (the weird one) The weapons keep the same profile as those above. This poison doesn't do anything until the model goes down. After that it has bonuses to keeping them down or dropping out of the fight. I'm not sure if we're going to copy necromunda's rules exactly here, but I think that it makes them permadown on a 1-3 instead of just a one. Maybe if you roll and the models stands back up you have to roll a 4 or better for that actually to take effect.

Either way, this is just my first three hours of thought or so. If anyone has any tweaks to make or new poison ideas I would love to hear them!

4a. Please refrain from double posting. You may "bump" a post every 48hrs if you feel you are not getting responses. Double posts in project logs are acceptable. /Your friendly mod SS

Good ideas.  Here are some of my thoughts on each suggestion you put forth.

1) Much like Necromunda, each warband should have a group of common weapons available to all; knife, pistol/splinter-pistol, rifle/splinter-rifle.  After this each group will have specific weapons for their warband to reflect theme.  These "theme" oriented weapons will be available to other warbands at increased prices and only through special items acquisitions.   Each warband should have access to both light and heavy weapons, as per Necromunda, but the type of weapon should fit their background; hellions with heavy weapons mounted to skyboards perhaps and kabals/corsairs having weapons from their respective sub-racial weapon list.  

2) I didn't even think about this. I think weapons on vehicles should be limited by a large margin, as that is one of the things that could differentiate Commorragh - The Game from being simply Warhammer 40k at a small point value.  I like the idea of being able to add upgrades, and modifications like boarding spikes and such, or engine tweeks perhaps.  I also really like the idea of having your warband members pilot the vehicles, with perhaps the heavy weapons member manning the mounted gun, or using his own gun on the mounting block.

3) Surgical mods most definitely for the haemonculus himself, with smaller mods for his wracks and such.  Much like the Pit Fighter rules for Necromunda, which by the way would be a great starting point for figuring out how to make that system work.  I think that at some point, each warband should have access to surgical implants, for increased prices and being a rare item to find on the market.  Maybe some of the more basic and general implants available for the Coven warbands, with higher quality and more expensive ones available to all through special items acquisitions; bonus discounts to Coven warbands when these items are found?

Good ideas on the poison weapons!! I think that splinter weapons maybe get a basic strength value of like 2, with the poisons adding effects like wounds on 4-5+ and more. This would mean that splinter weapons can be used without poisons, and poisons have to be bought like shotgun shells in Necromunda or something similar. Basic poison being cheap, and others getting increasingly rare and more expensive.

The fear I have with poison weapons is that they could easily make a skirmish game far too generic and dominated by poison rifles and pistols; i do get the irony of this statement seeing as how we are in Commorragh, the city of poisons Razz . This could easily make warbands like mandrakes and corsairs underpowered, not having easy access to these types of weapons. We'll have to come up with some way to balance these things out.

I like the idea of a poison market/merchant that is accessible between battles, who has a random chance to offer new and better poisons. Maybe poisons could be a one battle use, needing to be repurchased before each battle; making poison prices cheaper than permanent investments? This could allow for a player to purchase poisons, and keep them in their warband holdings to use them in different battles.

4a. Please refrain from double posting. You may "bump" a post every 48hrs if you feel you are not getting responses. Double posts in project logs are acceptable. /Your friendly mod SS

Just thought of a new weapon stat that could go with the vehicle rules.

Weapons with the grapple special rule can be used to attach models to vehicles. Models attached to a vehicle in this manner count towards the vehicles extended carrying capacity. Models attached to a vehicle in his manner may make swipe attacks when passing over, or within 1 inch of an enemy model.

Some of the wych and hellion weapons could easily have this special rule. Just a quick idea update.

-sent from my iPhone 5

Perhaps the hellions could have a weapon similar to a stunclaw that allows them to grapple?

I also like the ideas of poisons being one use and one use only. Therefore you have to keep buying poison to make the weapons worthwhile.

At the risk of encroaching onto gang ability territory.... If you can always parry with swords in Necromunda, why not extend the ability to a wych with a knife. Something that only they can do.

Hiya guys, thought I'd add my 2 pence to this thread and keep things moving.

Edit: just read your 'gangs' vs warbands' terminology. I shall do so after this post - believe I used both but meant 'warbands' whenever I used gangs.

I come from a more mordheim-esque background and from my experience, balancing shooting is one of the biggest requirements for a successful skirmish game, of course poisoned weaponry is a very clear part of this. Here's my thoughts on your first posts in this thread Enociac / Zahaldune;

1) I like the 'basic pool' idea. Weapons I would suggest:
- Splinter Pistol (save Rifles / Carbines for specialised weaponry - see below)
- Basic close combat weaponry; knives, swords, throwing knives, bladed weapon-attachments, two handed close combat weapon ('staff' like - but more dark eldary(!) with option for bladed weapon attachments?)

Jumping ahead to 4) Poisions.
A. Love it, I think that a 4+ to wound is a bit powerful for a starting warband however - you have to start small so that there is a reason to expand your warband. Saying that, it sounds like your idea would be have a limited ammo amount (even during 1 game) and that once its gone, its gone. If so then this A idea is good but I think a better option for this would be a +1 to wound poison that is cumulative with itself. EG. Imagine it as buying a vial of poison; if a player buys 5 doses of it then he can use them in any combination before rolling to hit: eg. he could use it on 5 seperate shots, each with a +1 to wound bonus, or he might choose to add 3 doses to a single shot and give a +3 bonus to wound. This would add a tactical risk:reward decision to the player. Furthermore (and slightly off topic) this basic poison should be possible to be produced by some gangs (Kabalite and Hellions seem obvious to me) through a skill/ability that can be levelled up (capped depending on the 'appropriateness' to each warband) to make production easier. They could even have the option to sell it to make money.

B. Re-roll to wound sounds great - the cost should be higher but a good idea. Could even be combined with Poison A. Again, your one-use-per-dose idea is a good one to give a player some serious decisions to make with his limited poison use.

C. Sounds good; I don't know necromunda but in Mordheim you didn't fall down/get stunned until you'd lost all your wounds first so I'd add a part to this that also causes additional wounds over turns. Might need a token for this (eg. start of every game turn roll a dice, on 6/5+ the model with a Poison C token suffers an additional wound with no armour save).

D. Perfect, love it.

Can also refer to Mordheim and the Dark Elf army books poisons as addtional effects:
- 6s to hit = autowound
- the 'killing blow' (6 to wound) = auto knock down/strips wounds/auto kill, depends if you introduce rules for 'critical hits' however (the Mordheim term for 6s to wound)
- reducing / weakening enemy stats (eg. -1 Toughness until they pass a toughness test?)

I'll list others later as I have the books to scan through once its not so late (3am here!).

And now back to 1) Expanding on your thoughts for the non-basic (I'm going to refer to this as 'specialised') weaponry Zahal, I would suggest a simple scaled cost system to reflect the 'appropriateness' to each gang.

I personally reckon that there should be a 3 scale system (easy, medium, hard) to create diversity that will make each gang additionally unique as opposed to simply the 'easy' and 'hard' search difficulties. This reflects weaponry that is associated with each gang but that is not exactly 'Rare' (for these I'd suggest the assigned value and roll system that Mordheim uses). I guess a simple 3+/4+/5+ would suffice for this?

Furthermore, generally speaking there are a few gangs that I would argue have associations with one another:
- Wyches and Hellions (some weaponry/drugs)
- Haemonculi and Scourges (skin grafts/body mods)
- Scourges and Kabalites (weaponry)
- Corsairs and Kabalites (armour, weaponry?)

Clearly mandrakes are in a bit of a league of their own...  

Sorry if I'm overcomplicating the issue here! I just love the ability for skirmish games to really show the subtle (yet tactically separate) differences between gangs and the ability to demonstrate differences in weapons.

I wish I could think of more generic 'basic pool' weapons however. Shurikan weaponry??!

Hmm - I'd rather say that Splinter weaponry is what is basic in Commoragh. After all, that is what almost everyone is using, right? Shuriken rifles are rather rare if I have understood it right, but Corsairs do have some. Of course, poison (Splinter are poisoned pretty regularly) can be somewhat fancy, but I frankly wouldn't say it's that good with just a 4+... Or am I completely wrong now?

Of course, what you said up there would work pretty nice, with Splinter just having something like S2 or 3. Then you buy various kinds of poison for each member, with the poisons having some funny effects such as always wounding on 4+ (the main poison) or re-roll to wound, or even weirder ones. yeah, I'd say that should work better than what I said before, but I still think Splinter weaponry are better to have as basic.
Something like this, just here?

Splinter Pistol
Range - 12" S - 2 Ap - 6 Type - Pistol

The Ap is something I am not very sure about, as saves aren't exactly something the inhabitants of 'rragh are well-known of...

And yes, Mandrakes are definitely on their own what it's about guns - they rather use baleblasts  

Good ideas all around guys.  I do agree that splinter weaponry is extremely common in "rragh" - I like that, gonna use it more often   - and should be a mainstay for most warbands.  That's why the addition of a poison merchant system would need to be included, as with the thematic approach to having different poisons to choose from.  With basic splinter weapons shooting out S2-3 hits, the wounding potential is very low, but still possible, and thus inclines one to purchase poisons.  I like DB's idea of having the cheapest poison being a +1 to wound sort of deal, as that follows in line with the systems already in place for skirmish games, with bonuses to hit and wound being right in the rules; much better than a simple 4+ to wound, as it would still benefit stronger splinter weaponry.

As for the close-combat weapons, the list and rules are pretty much already in the DEldar codex, and just need a direct port over to this game; with minor tweeks.  So, don't worry so much about those, but any ideas regarding special, and new weapons would be awesome, as there are bound to be some clever new types and abilities that will better display the nature of 'rragh; see what i did there   .  

Finally, as for AP, you are right Saint to think that armor is a bit lacking in the city, in terms of big bulky heavy duty variants.  But, the Wych suit has at least a 6+, and Kab's have a 5+, plus the addition of ghost plate and all that, so armor will be involved as a last ditch effort to deflect wounds or be high end purchases for leader models and such.  So, some weapons will have AP values, namely the heavy weapons, but splinter weapons probably won't, outside of the cannon.  This will allow for the models to actually get a chance to use that meager armor save.  All this has yet to be play tested though, and modifications will be necessary if we come to find that no one seems to be able to kill anyone!!!

BTW, if you haven't already checked out the basic rules set, you can find it in my sig.  Hopefully I'll have the weapons and warband roster created by the end of February, so some basic play testing will be possible.  Thanks again for your ideas and support of this project, don't go thinking you wont get credit for it in the end  

Perhaps Mamdrakes can buy totems or crystals that change the qualities of their baleblasts and 'magical' qualities for rheir weapoms along with the poisons, however I know absolutely nothing about either of these games so i can't give anything but general advice.