In mordheim there are a lot of ways to improve the longevity of your heroes which is very important since when they go out of action you're losing out on crowns and on top of that they could die or get seriously injured. Of course this means there is a lot of defenses you'll have to get through yourself.
One of the first things that comes to mind on defending your heroes is armour and a shield. They benefit you with a 6+ to a 3+ save (Gromril with a shield). This save is enhanced by getting hit with a dagger (+1 to save with a basic of 6+ so you could have a 2+ save!) or hindered by the strength since every strength above 3 decreases your save by one until you lose it. Not only can the strength of the hit decrease your armour's efficiency but some weapons also have negative armour modifiers like axes along with critical hits having a chance to ignore it completely! So why would you take armour, the biggest reason would be against shooting attacks since they are normally strength 3 or lower. Crossbows and black powder being strength four though black powder grants a -2 to armour. In almost all of my games I've played only dwarves take armour (there are a few exceptions but hardly anyone takes it). The best time to buy armour is when you have nothing else to buy such as more men (or other species) and other equipment.
The next thing that pertains to armour but is separate is a helmet which is the number one defensive armour to take. It is cheap and on a 4+ you go from a stunned to a knocked down result so if you are facing two opponents alone your character won't be automatically put out of action since knocked down results still need the opponent to roll to wound (One more dice roll between you and out of action). This also means that if your helmet works, you're character can stand up and fight in your next turn instead of just rolling over that turn.
After armour you have some rare equipment you can purchase (besides gromril armour) that can help you out. These are of course lucky charms (the first thing most people search for) because ignoring the first hit on a 4+ is worth it. In one game this has saved three of my heroes in the first round of shooting (he rolled to see what would have happened and my leader would have been KO'ed by a critical arrow). The next piece of rare equipment that is on the extended list is a rabbits foot which lets you reroll once (lucky charm or even an injury roll!) and if you didn't use it you can reroll an exploration die. The biggest thing I'd use the rabbits foot on is to reroll the injury table so a knocked down turns into an out of action followed by rerolling a lucky charm or step aside / dodge. Just remember that they are both once per battle items though they can be used every battle.
The next thing that many people take is swords for that parry save. Against one attack in close combat where the strength isn't equal to or over your strength you can attempt to parry it by beating the roll to hit (so if they roll a three and you parry with a four you ignore that hit).
Finally the next thing that can save your heroes are some certain skills, these are more reliable then armour but are less likely to show up since you need to roll a new skill and be able to learn the skill. They can also be used more then once a battle making them better then a lucky charm. The top two are step aside (a chance to ignore every close combat wound on a 5+) and dodge (ignore ranged hits on a 5+). Step aside is extremely helpful because it can be used against critical hits. Dodge is also very sweet because it happens before lucky charms so you don't have to use it if you can dodge first. Another two useful skills include lightning reflexes which ignores all knock down results that aren't caused by things like successful helmet saves. Finally resilient is useful since your opponents are striking at -1 strength against you in close combat. Out of them though Dodge and Step Aside are the most useful as you'll want to get some more offensive skills with your spare skills like strike to injure.
The best thing about most of these is that they stack so in close combat you can Lucky Charm, Parry, Armour save, Dodge, Helmet and use a rabbits foot to reroll any of these. At most that is five dice rolls your opponent has to get through to knock your hero out of action. I've tried to organize them in relation to how useful they are but I'll display a list of most to least useful saves based on my own personal tastes and ideas.
- Dodge and Step Aside (depending on if your hero will see more ranged or close combat, my marksman hero uses dodge while my young blood uses step aside)
- Lucky Charm (once per battle 4+ to ignore the first hit)
- Parry (can't parry criticals (unless a dwarf has a certain skill) but you're just buying a weapon with a save attached, buckler not really that useful since that second weapon is very nice)
- Helmet (For when that attack goes through but you have a chance of not being useless or auto killed for a round of combat)
- Armour (expensive and lots of things negate it but good later game when you have money to burn and against arrows)
- Shield (Same with the buckler, in most cases a sword and club are more useful)
- Buckler (I'd personally rather have a second weapon then a re-roll-able parry)
- Finally the rabbits foot, as it is not a direct save and just a reroll it isn't listed but it is really good.
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