Ye Olde Inn

Think of allowing diagonal attacks between two full fields, where diagonal shooting between two fields is not allowed.
Suddenly the Longsword, Spear, Halberds are quite worthy, and for the bows you think twice.

For the short sword diagonal discussion it depends really on your game board. Use the original board, you will maybe reach the diagonal enemy with a short sword and have no line of sight for shooting when both adjacent fields are used.
Use a board with 40mm squares and you will probably have no problem with diagonal line of sight between two used fields, but the short sword suddenly looks really too short for diagonal attacks. A Rapier is longer than that.

So, a thing to be played either blindly by the rules, best case NA rules, or to be houseruled matching to your game board.

My short sword is not diagonal. For that, I have the spear and the rapier. And yes, the hand axe receives a yellow die to make it unreliable and piercing at the same time.

This could work well because it sticks to more generic terms.

Short Sword - 2
Straight Sword - 2/
Broad Sword - 3
Long Sword - 3/
Bastard Sword - 3 or 4 One or two handed
Great Sword - 4/ Two handed
Giant Sword - 5/ Two handed
Katana - 6/ Two handed

Hand Axe - 2~
Double Axe - 3 Two handed
Battle Axe - 4 Two handed
Great Axe - 5 Two handed
Giant Axe - 6 Two handed

The Admiral wrote:Ranged attack is much more flexible than an adjacent diagonal attack, agreed, but I think with the ability to have a shield with a longsword, the money for them is right. Re the Halberdier, it is useful to have that diagonal attack at times, but for the same money as a Crossbowman, he should maybe have an extra defence die to make there even cost fair?

That would nicely do it. It's not an issue for me using the WoM stats, crossbowmen attack with two dice, light crossbows. Heavy crossbows attack with four but can't move and shoot in my rules. I'm thinking of replacing that with a reload action, sacrificing either movement or attacking action, their choice.

Realistically, there are five classes of attack:
Close (orthagonal adjacent)
Long (any adjacent)
Close + Thrown
Long + Thrown
Ranged

There are two sizes of weapon, one handed or two handed. Two handed forms a penalty to weapons, as thet can't be used with shield. This makes the five types of attack, ten forms of weapon:
A= Close 1H
B= Close 2H
C= Long 1H
D= Long 2H
E= Close + Thrown 1H
H= Close + Thrown 2H
I= Long + Thrown 1H
J= Long + Thrown 2H
K= Ranged 1H
L= Ranged 2H

For each class, there's then what dice it rolls.

I've long been of the opinion that HQ is build with stats taht depend on 4 dice being the max, and then being rare and/or restricted. Similarly, weapons at the lower end are near useless.

slev wrote:I've long been of the opinion that HQ is build with stats taht depend on 4 dice being the max, and then being rare and/or restricted.

That's only because the battleaxe is the biggest weapon you can get as standard, the five and six attack dice weapons do make sense by comparrison and it's a handy boost for the dwarf and especially the barbarian if you put sensible hero restrictions on them.

Short Sword - 2
Straight Sword - 2/
Broad Sword - 3
Long Sword - 3/
Bastard Sword - 3 or 4 One or two handed
Great Sword - 4/ Two handed
Giant Sword - 5/ Two handed
Katana - 6/ Two handed (Very rare and expensive)

Hand Axe - 2~
Double Axe - 3 Two handed
Battle Axe - 4 Two handed
Great Axe - 5 Two handed
Giant Axe - 6 Two handed

The standard view is that the wizard needs the most improvement and there's a ton of custom options for that around the inn (I use fate points for two rerolls per quest), the elf is fine and the dwarf needs a bit of improving but not as much as the barbarian so this takes care of that quite well.

Just thought I'd throw in my 10 cents - this is the armoury I use in my games and the prices, which are based on a formula to standardise the prices based on the weapon's use.

download/file.php?id=3622

Armoury Rules
Weapon cost: 50 for first combat die, 200 for each subsequent. Reach and diagonal is plus 50 each, missile is 100, thrown is free. Reloading is -100, consumable is -100.
Armour cost: 150 for first combat die, 250 for each subsequent. -50 for movement penalty. +100 for magical items only the Wizard can use.

Open to thoughts!

Is the thrown-is-free part necessary? You already have +100 for missile and -100 for consumable, which cancel each other. If you rename them +100 for ranged and -100 for lost/consumed, then you get the same cost as thrown (free) and can drop the category.

I'm throwing this option out there if you're interested. If you intentionally rejected this for specific wording, well maybe that's best and keep what you have. After all, the armory costs are the important thing, moreso than the formula semantics.

Anderas, do you still use the different colored dice for different weapons? Does anyone else do this and if so what did you do to make the weapons seem different. I guess the question really is for those who have switched the different color dice, did you go back to play vanilla ha with just regular white dice.

Using the colored dice to differentiate weapons is a good idea for me.
An example:
x weapon rolls 2 black dice in combat (more chance to hit).
Y weapon rolls 2 green dice in combat (more chance to successfully defend).

Did you have to give the monster more BP or defences dice to counter balance.