Just curious if anyone has recently upgraded or tweaked the Field of Honor rules?

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Bloody Bohemian Earspoon Inn

A year or so ago ago I did. I'll try to put together what I have if interested.

Had a computer crash since then, not sure what I all have, it was in there

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Hmm Gurthang. What a nice name for a sword....

I hope this is not too off-topic for this thread, but my plan is to use BattleLore for this sort of thing, representing the PCs by exploiting the Heroes rules in various ways. I may zoom into full scale RPG combat rules for resolution of Hero/PC events (and give them a modifier based on the outcome of that when popping back up to the BattlleLore scale.)


There may be those with very long memories who recall I once used Total War to determine the outcome of the battles in the KSC. The players ran the armies on one of the sides, but of course one could not really determine the effects of the actions of their individual PCs, or the outcomes for those PCs directly from that engine.

I've looked at trying to gather up my Field of Honor "tweaks" for anyone that may be interested. Working a lot, so I don't have a ton of time.

One thing I'd like to add that might take a little work - the "random encounters" from the Arms Law game, done in Harnamaster fashion.

I.E. - something like "Roll vs Perception, a wounded prone enemy attempts to stab you with a dagger. If perception is sucessful, you may defend, otherwise ignore"

OR

"Roll vs perception, a riderless horse has been found"
"Roll vs perception, A friendly horse tramples you vs igonore if you fail, otherwise you may dodge"

It will give those that like the great helm in battle some resaon not to wear one, alo a bit of an advantage for those that wear no helm.

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Hmm Gurthang. What a nice name for a sword....

Any news on this? The only FoH rules I could find online anywhere are really, really old (Word 97, I think...my version of Word won't even let me open it).

Warhammer Fantasy can be used pretty much as written.

Use Bretonninans as your core troops, ignore the high fantasy elements.

Using PCs, just adjudicate their warhammer profile (use skill index straight across possibly)and have them lead units.

This is what I would do anyway.

Somewhere on the Office 2010 site there's a download that allows you to open older Word files in new versions.

In the meantime here's what I think is the original version of Field of Honour and my Field of Dishonour revision.

I actually like much of Field of Honor's rules. Some of the biggest plusses to me - it is a direct derivative of the HM rules. You don't have to figure if the unit is and A or B troop type, are they militia level, are they fanatic, etc. etc. The units that are effective in HM are effective in Field of Honor.

A few of my dislikes:

The multipliers for determining PV (troops effectiveness) are skewed in a few ways.
using Impact x Defense Class (defaults to 3 for dodge) x Attack Class gives some funny values.

For instance, take a Roman Legionairre. Using Impact of 4 (short sword), Shield of 5 (Tower shield) and AC of 2 (Shortsword) you have a modifier of 40.

Compare this to a round shield using Germanic Tribesman - They have Impact 7, DC 4, AC 4, for a value of 112, far superior.

Pikeman (8x3x5) have an value of 120, again, far greater than the legionairre.

The other ting is that there is not a big penalty for not having a shield in combination with a one handed weapon. That Germanic tribesman for instance would be at 84 without a shield, still far superior to the Legionairre.

How to fix it? Not sure, though just some straight modifiers based on weapons would work, i.e. spear/shield = +5

The other thing is that I think there is too much of an advantage for being mounted - x2 seems way to high, a 1.5 might make more sense.

The last thing is a the terrain modifiers. Any troop that is not wearing heavy (Metallic) armour should not be effected by terrain much. Pikeman are horribly effected by terrain, but with the rules in place a Roman Legionairre in bad terrain will be more effected than a light Pikeman in bad terrain - again, incorrect.

With a few modifiers it would work though IMO. No negative terrain mods unless wearing at least medium armour. Pikes automatically make a unit Heavy regardless of armour type for terrain. Pole weapons make a unit at least medium regardless of armour. Large shields make
a unit medium regardless of armour for terrain.

That should pretty well work for the terrain mods.

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Hmm Gurthang. What a nice name for a sword....

OK, a little more on my soliloquy on Field of Honor

Found a method for determing the value of the various issues of what a soldier is armed with (AC's, DC's, Impact, etc.) that works a bit better for me.

The personal value is calculated like this -

(AC+AC+DC+DC)x IMPACT

The DC is 5 for a large shield, 4 for a "small shield" (uncommon), and if no shield use the DC of the primary weapon.

The second "DC" is dodge. I use DC of 2 for a dodge - it is DC3 in HM, but most warriors have a lower dodge than weapon skill ML. A better way to do it might be to use Dodge ML, and a DC of 3, but this is simpler. Plus in mass combat, a dodge is less effective.

So if you have a shield, you use Shield DC, and Dodge DC (Unless the primary weapon has better than a 2 in DC, very few weapons have this). If only have one weapon, you use the DC of that weapon and dodge.

This works pretty well for me, with only a few "issues".

One issue is javelin or other low velocity missile armed troops - Per FOH, they get an AC of 6. IMO, with the rule I have of using the AC twice, one AC would be the javelin (AC6), the other should be that of the other promary weapon in melee, i.e. a shortsword of 2.

The other issue is bow armed troops - right now I'm thinking similar to the javelin rules, AC7 for a bow, but also AC2 if bow and short sword armed.

There are a few chnages I have made to other HM weapons though, that impact these calculations as follows:

Daggers, Shortwords - P value of 5

Spears - Used with one hand, they have a -5 one hand penalty in HMG, a -10 in HM3. I like to use the -5 of HMG, but also a -1 on impactwhen used one hand. Therefore a one handed spear has an AC in essence of 3, DC of 1, and Impact of 6p. THis also goes for any other weapons with one hand penalties.

Javelins - HM3 has a penalty of -10, HMG no penatly. I treat them like spears, -5 to 1 hand use (no 2 hand use), and -1 on impact, so 5p. These penalties do not apply if thrown, as that is what they are designed for.

Pikes - I give them an AC of 6 for mass combat purposes. There are some rules in HM that allows them to be 2 hex range weapons - and in real life they outrange the AC5 weapons in the game.

So with this, here are some of the PV values of troops:

Pike - 6+6+2+1 = 15x8 = 120
Spr/Lshld - 3+3+5+2 = 13x6 = 78
Shrtswrd/Lshld - 2+2+5+2 = 11x5 = 55
Jsv/Shrtswrd/Lshld (Legionairre) 6+2+5+2=15x5= 75
2 Hnded Axe = 4+4+2+2 = 12x8= 96
Brdswrd/Lshld = 3+3+5+2= 13x5 = 65
Javelins(only)+Lshld = 6+2+5+2 = 15x5=75

As you can see, Javelins make a big difference in a unit's effectiveness, and there is historical corraboration for this. But this should not be construed to where every unit uses javelins - they should be limited to those where most or all are equipped with javelins. Good examples of such troops:

Roman Legionairres, Peltasts are two good examples. For Harn, I think your standard Militias and Yeomen would not be so equipped - but Huscarls would be, Thardic light infantry, the Khuzdhul low guard, some Barbarian troops (would they be spear/shld or Javelin/shld armed?), etc. etc.

The other issues I have are Archers and Knights or other mounted types.

Archers - Should they be AC of Hi velocity and AC of hand weapon? This makes most sense to me. For the Impact mulitplier, I'd use that of their missile weapon. For Javelin armed infantry, I'd use the hand weapon as their impact mod, as they are predominantly melee troops with some missile capability, but for archers I'd use the missile multiplier (though IMC, there is no true "Longbow", merely self bows of about longbow lengths, with impact modifiers of 7p for most military bows).

Cavalry - The Combination of a high AC of a lance (5), and high impact of a lance (8) makes this a great combination when used with a shield. However, this is ONLY during the mounted charge - A cavalryman was more likley to be using his sword or other hand weapon when not charging. I think the hand weapon whould be factored in when factoring PV. Or the lance can be used, but a -15 non charge mod gives it an effective AC of 2, and impact should be reduced as well, probably averaging the hand weapon and lance impact makes the most sense.

So here are a few cavalry PV's using this idea

Knight, Lance, Lrge Shld, Lance, Broadsword 5+3+5+2= 15x ((8+5)/2) or 15x 6.5 = 98
Hodiri Light Horse - Bow, small shield, javelins = 7+2+4+2= 15x ((7+5)/2) = 90

Looks like a Pike is the best foot weapon - Though I'd counter this with for terrain, Pike equipped units are one GAC class higher than the armour they wear for terrain - with a minimum of being classed as Heavy.

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Hmm Gurthang. What a nice name for a sword....

FoH was insirational to me at the time when I was running a wargame campaign as background for role play, and served its purpose for a while before the players lost interest in an abstract system.

When that happened I should have put the absract system aside and encouraged players to play out engagements with De Bellis Antiquitatus (DBA to its friends). Even though I had negligible approporiate wargame figures at the time they'd have coped with using tokens to represent units and, I think, still have found it a more engaging prospect than an abstract system I tried to make increasingly accurate and yet succeeded only in making more complex.

You'd need a different troop to figure ratio for the small scale engagements Harn yields but the mechanisms are simple yet effective at encouraging the tactics of the time. The rulebook includes army lists to pick just about every historical fighting man you can imagine, from well before your pHarn period (Bronze Age warfare) to well after it (first appearance of gunpowder), included in the rule book. Plays on a 2 foot square area with up to 12 'units' (each 40mm frontage) , or bigger areas for larger armies. if you play a more magic strong pHarn then you want 'Hordes of the Things' the fantasy brother of DBA.

I think one of Andy's early Kingdom spreadsheets even had a built in conversion to DBA elements (bases).
I recommend anyone to try these rules as a good altrernative to a paper based abstraction of 'battles'.

My players were OK with the more abstract issues - the only thing is that I (and my players) would have preferred a bit more options in the micro portion of the game, perhaps something akin to (and modified for HM) the old Arms Law system.

The good thing about Field of Honor - as it is derived directly from HM stats, it works well even in fairly small unit combats if you don't want to flesh them out more by using zBattleust.

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Hmm Gurthang. What a nice name for a sword....

One thing I've mentioned in the past, there was an early Chivalry and Sorcery supplement for miniature battles that was very good.

They had rules for foraging, based on type of troops foraging, where you are foraging, etc., also rules for scouting, and rules for battlefield disposition of troops after a loss (How many dead, crippled, slightly wounded, etc. etc.). The one interesting part was when an army routed, there were significant losses among the troops, but this would vary based upon the location (friendly of foe territory), the type of troop (Cavalry would survive a route better than infantry, an all infantry unti routing against an all cavalry army was kind of dead meat), and other factors.

This would be a great help to integrate with a FOH type of campaign.

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Hmm Gurthang. What a nice name for a sword....

LOL! Yeah, while my Word version won't open the older files, I am not to the point of having Office 2010 yet...still using 2003. I can open thes efiles though, this looks like just the ting I've been looking for. Thanks for updating them and making them available! Woohoo!

I can save them as .doc instead of .docx, if that would be helpful. Alternatively type 'opening Word 2010 in earlier versions' into Google and you should find fnd the conversion update on the Microsopft Office 2010 pages.

I might add, my biggest reason for "tinkering" with some of the FOH rules is to get more realistic results for battles.

For an example:

A tribal army is not going to be a effective in an open standup battle vs. A feudal army with heavy cavalry, archers, etc.

But if in their home territory, a rougher terrain, they will do better, and heavy pike equipped units will suffer in an area like this.

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Hmm Gurthang. What a nice name for a sword....