Great weapon damage in AHQ Reforged

[Neuralstasis]

So next week I’m about to GM some AHQ Reforged. Our group spent the last year playing Enhanced-AHQ and have decided to try another variant. I got the rules printed and bound and have been reading through them and gathering all the other resources required to start a campaign.

As I own a small Chaos Dwarf army, I was intending to use them as one of the main foes of the players. So I started reading through the supplied “Dwarves” beastiary and was immediately baffled by the low damage dealt by the great weapon wielding models. Checking back with the main rules I see that almost all great weapons (swords, axes, flails mauls etc) use the damage band E and deal 1 damage when used at strength 4, 2 damage at strength 5 and 5 damage at strength 6.

Here's the weapon damage table comparing two-handed (great) band E weapons to the regular band D weapons, which are almost all the single-handed weapons like arming swords, hand axes etc.

Damage Band	STR 1	STR 2	STR 3	STR 4	STR 5	STR 6	STR 7	STR 8	STR 9	STR 10
Band E (most great weapons)	0	0	1	1	2	5	6	7	8	9
Band D (most 1 handed weapons)	0	1	2	2	3	4	5	6	7	8

This strikes me as extremely odd and makes great weapons obviously inferior when used by models with strength of less that 6. It leads to bizarre situations where a Skaven Slave or Goblin of points value ½ deals 2 damage dice. (sword band D, str 3), but a Bull Centaur Champion (Points Value 11) or a Chosen Champion of Chaos (Points Value 6) deal 1(!) damage die (great weapon band E, str 4). Those two big monster examples are not too common, but there are a lot of basic troops that are str 3 and are equipped with great weapons that then only do a single damage die.

There are also a lot of big tougher champions and characters at str 5 that only do 2 damage dice with their great weapons. In the beastiary there are 21(!!) point value Chaos Lord characters that only deal 2 damage dice because they are str 5 with great weapons. 21 points!!! (I know the beastiarys are work in progress)

I understand why, at low strength, that models should not be able to effectively use great weapons, this was covered in the original AHQ by simply banning models with lower strength from using them at all. But in Reforged that cut-off point seems to be set at strength 6. At a strength lower than 6 great weapons are simply worse than single handed weapons. At strength 5 a halberd (Voulge) gives 3 damage dice and a reach range, where as a great axe has 2 damage dice, worse fumble, Cleaving and regular range. Strength 6 is quite a hard number to reach in reforged.

So, in a effort to bring back the great weapons for the less than extremely strong, I propose a change to the band E damage.

Damage Band	STR 1	STR 2	STR 3	STR 4	STR 5	STR 6	STR 7	STR 8	STR 9	STR 10
Proposed Band E (most great weapons)	0	0	1	3	4	5	6	7	8	9

This would still stop weaklings from swinging the big weapons, but would make them a bit useful for monsters and other heroes n henchmen.

What do other people who have played Refroged think? Or even the great Slev?

[RECIVS]

So next week I’m about to GM some AHQ Reforged. Our group spent the last year playing Enhanced-AHQ and have decided to try another variant.

Nice! Reforged is far superior than EAHQ in my humble opinion.

As I own a small Chaos Dwarf army, I was intending to use them as one of the main foes of the players. So I started reading through the supplied “Dwarves” beastiary and was immediately baffled by the low damage dealt by the great weapon wielding models. Checking back with the main rules I see that almost all great weapons (swords, axes, flails mauls etc) use the damage band E and deal 1 damage when used at strength 4, 2 damage at strength 5 and 5 damage at strength 6.

Here's the weapon damage table comparing two-handed (great) band E weapons to the regular band D weapons, which are almost all the single-handed weapons like arming swords, hand axes etc.

Damage Band	STR 1	STR 2	STR 3	STR 4	STR 5	STR 6	STR 7	STR 8	STR 9	STR 10
Band E (most great weapons)	0	0	1	1	2	5	6	7	8	9
Band D (most 1 handed weapons)	0	1	2	2	3	4	5	6	7	8

This strikes me as extremely odd and makes great weapons obviously inferior when used by models with strength of less that 6. It leads to bizarre situations where a Skaven Slave or Goblin of points value ½ deals 2 damage dice. (sword band D, str 3), but a Bull Centaur Champion (Points Value 11) or a Chosen Champion of Chaos (Points Value 6) deal 1(!) damage die (great weapon band E, str 4). Those two big monster examples are not too common, but there are a lot of basic troops that are str 3 and are equipped with great weapons that then only do a single damage die.

There are also a lot of big tougher champions and characters at str 5 that only do 2 damage dice with their great weapons. In the beastiary there are 21(!!) point value Chaos Lord characters that only deal 2 damage dice because they are str 5 with great weapons. 21 points!!! (I know the beastiarys are work in progress)

Slev's system is quite brilliant in many ways, though I'm afraid his approach of lowering the stats of adventurers and monsters ends up being counterproductive, as it creates more problems than it solves (see this post). It seems those problems are becoming evident to you.

I understand why, at low strength, that models should not be able to effectively use great weapons, this was covered in the original AHQ by simply banning models with lower strength from using them at all. But in Reforged that cut-off point seems to be set at strength 6. At a strength lower than 6 great weapons are simply worse than single handed weapons. At strength 5 a halberd (Voulge) gives 3 damage dice and a reach range, where as a great axe has 2 damage dice, worse fumble, Cleaving and regular range. Strength 6 is quite a hard number to reach in reforged.

As you say, ST6 is quite a hard number to reach in Reforged, so it seems that Slev's Damage Band E was simply adapted to the said scale. Most reforged models wouldn't be able to use greatweapons otherwise. I don't see the benefit or advantage of following such an approach, by the way.

So, in a effort to bring back the great weapons for the less than extremely strong, I propose a change to the band E damage.

Damage Band	STR 1	STR 2	STR 3	STR 4	STR 5	STR 6	STR 7	STR 8	STR 9	STR 10
Proposed Band E (most great weapons)	0	0	1	3	4	5	6	7	8	9

This would still stop weaklings from swinging the big weapons, but would make them a bit useful for monsters and other heroes n henchmen.

What do other people who have played Refroged think? Or even the great Slev?

That would imply, for example, that Clanrat Warriors (w/ST3) would be able to wield greatweapons in Reforged (though poorly as you say), whereas Skaven Warriors (w/ST5) couldn't do it in AHQ. It's just another example of the imbalances in Slev's approach. Is that the result you're looking for? Personally, I'm sticking to the original rules and bestiaries as much as possible.

There's nothing wrong with the "PV scale" in the vanilla game as far as I can tell. My simple fix for the T12 issue, for example, renders most of Slev's changes unnecessary, allowing us to keep the original scale and feel of AHQ regardless of how high the Toughness scores may be.

[Neuralstasis]

Hi RECIVS, haha, I guess if Slev can't come for a comment then you are pretty much the next best thing!

I have definitely seen your re-reforged rules around and actually used your Chaos Dwarf Beastiary to get me starter stats for my own Chaos Dwarfs for Enhanced-AHQ.

I was always turned off your rules as I thought that the adjustments were enormously complicated because of the number of pages in the PDF. but I sat down a read them through properly a couple of days ago and realized that they are actually fairly minor. That's a bit of feedback for re-reforged is to move the 90 pages of changelog elsewhere. Not having played either reforged or re-reforged I can't comment too much on the actual content yet though.

What I think I am going to do is to use re-reforged character creation and beastiary to keep the stats more like the original. The rest of the changes might have to wait a bit before I get a handle on how they might affect the game.

Any other parts of re-reforged you think are critical, RECIVIS?

[RECIVS]

Thank you for the feedback! It's much appreciated.

Yes, appearances may be deceiving. My approach is all about getting better results with less complications.

The size of Re-Reforged may be discouraging at first glance, I know, but (as you point out) it’s not difficult at all once you’re familiar with Slev’s rules. My approach is in fact simpler than his. Besides, most of the new content is used only between expeditions, so my tweaks don’t slow down exploration and combat, quite the contrary. I don’t use to-hit tables or monster matrices, so the basic gameplay in my variant is actually more agile than in AHQ. The game's footprint is smaller too.

We could fairly say that Re-Reforged is about fixing these problems in AHQ (among others), so my approach revolves around making characters and combat more varied and interesting without overcomplicating the game, always preserving the essence and feel of AHQ as much as possible. You may want to look into this post for more details.

My example GM play sheet allows you to jump right in without having to deal with the character-creation and set-up rules, which may save newcomers considerable time and effort.

Here’s a suggestion: Don't start playing with all the rules at once. You may want to start with the surprise and combat rules first by using just rooms and doors (you don't need to generate a full dungeon to start learning those rules). Simply generate rooms and play them out. You only need the core rules, the room-generation mechanics, and the bestiaries for that purpose.

Once you’re proficient with the monster-placing and combat rules (they're really not hard at all to learn), you'll be more than halfway through. At that point you’ll just need to become familiar with the exploration tables, which are not hard either, and that's it. Once the first expedition has been completed, simply start over until the system becomes natural to you. I'd leave the "between expeditions" phase for the last. You really don't have to deal with the character-creation and character-advancement mechanics at all for the moment.

I’m releasing V1.82a in a few weeks, by the way, more than enough time to get familiar with Reforged. However, I’m afraid the results of the current version of Slev’s system for generating groups of monsters are way off to the point of being unusable (see this post). In the meantime, you may want to use my revision of his system with his bestiary instead.

[Neuralstasis]

I’m releasing V1.82a in a few weeks, by the way, more than enough time to get familiar with Reforged. However, I’m afraid the results of the current version of Slev’s system for generating groups of monsters are way off to the point of being unusable (see this post). In the meantime, you may want to use my revision of his system with his bestiary instead.

Excellent! I look forward to seeing you updates and seeing how they go with my own changes. I'm very happy to muck around with rules if I dont like the look of them so I already have some monster generation systems cobbled together.

For the initial game I intend to use these extra/changed rules:
- re-reforged's hero and henchmen creation stat block
- re-reforged's Damage dice rules with 10+ always wounding unless TH 12 etc...
- re-reforged's additional actions (push, withdraw etc)
- re-reforged's movement through friendly models
- various minor alterations to the Dungeon generation tables in reforged for my own reasons.
- Alterations to the monster generation tables
- re-reforged's bestiaries.

I also automate virtually all the dungeon generation by using Inspiration Pad Pro 3 to digitally roll up all sorts of stuff. That's a HUGE timesaver on manually rolling on a swath of tables every time a hero walks round a corner or opens a door!!!

[RECIVS]

Don't forget my doorway-exploit fix. As posted in other thread here, I didn't invent the concept of surprise ambushes in the game. Please take a look at the images on pages 24 and 53 of the AHQ rulebook (and also the image on page 36 of TitD). That's what ambushes should look like (pretty much like in WHQ), and it's the model I think we should follow. Such a way of playing the game certainly allows for more tactical variety (and it may fix other problems such as the "FP accumulation issue"), but it's incompatible with the original design of the game, unfortunately. We could fairly say that my whole approach revolves around making such a model playable in the least "invasive" way and preserving the essence and feel of AHQ as much as possible.

If you're implementing my fix for the bottleneck issue, then you'll also need my revised healing rules, or the game would become unbearably difficult otherwise. I'd recommend using my death zone rules too. I'd allow the use of FPs to influence surprise rolls as well.

About movement through friendlies (and my DZ rules), you may want to look into this post.