N18 Help/Feedback Requested for First Campaign

[clutchheimer]

I am the owner of a FLGS in Renton, Washington and we have been discussing doing a Necromunda campaign. I played a ton of the original game, and have been talking up the campaign aspect to our players. The thing is, we wont have consistent play, so the structure of the given Dominion campaign, based on passage of real time, is not going to work. I think I have that part resolved, but there are a bunch of other questions I have.

I have been reading fan made rules, and have Bookromunda and Rulebook 1.03, but I cant find where to get the YCE. The only thing I see in the vault is the rules based on the previous edition. I have also found a Necromunda Comprehensive Rulebook v9.03, but that seems like it is just a compilation of rules without any edits. Are there any other good fan rules I should check? One thing I am quite interested in are updates to skills, so they are all viable.

Some other questions:

What do you do about challenges in the Dominion campaign? The way it sits now, there is a huge advantage to making the challenge, because you risk nothing. I was going to increase the home turf advantage to account for this, and possibly also add an XP bonus for defender, but I would also like to hear other solutions.

How do you adjust the cost of Chaos Familiars? They are incredibly powerful as they sit. They dont even have to actually take the hit they warn of! Can they be targeted instead of the fighter? I was thinking of making them normal cost for the first one in the gang, but having them be an extra 5 credits, cumulative, for each one after the first. Any other solutions?

I know there is an issue with close combat that has been mentioned, but I wanted to find any solutions people have. Its kind of strange that if you are amazing in close combat, the other guy can still charge you and probably take you out, with you having nothing to say about it. I was thinking of the following change:

1. Both fighters roll all of their attack dice.
2. Charging fighter chooses a die to resolve.
3. Defending fighter chooses a die to resolve.
4. Charging fighter makes an initiative roll. If successful, they choose a die to resolve.
5. Defending fighter makes and initiative roll. If successful, they choose a die to resolve.
6. Repeat steps 4-5 until all dice have been resolved.

Treat serious injuries as flesh wounds in close combat. At each resolution fighters have a chance to use skills, if applicable. So parry also is important on the charge as well as when being charged, especially since only one die is resolved at a time. Having two parries available via the skill means you could potentially get 3 attacks in before the opponent gets 1.

I already updated experience to use the randomized one, but I redid the chart slightly.

Any help is appreciated. Thanks

 

[NoOneII.]

I recently gave the "Lost Zone" campaign modifications by the goonhammer crew a thorough read lately, and I like many of their thoughts and Ideas.
Especially if you played a lot of 'munda in the olden days, I think they might appeal to you.

 

[clutchheimer]

Thanks! I just started checking it out and the initial impression is positive.

I recently gave the "Lost Zone" campaign modifications by the goonhammer crew a thorough read lately, and I like many of their thoughts and Ideas.
Especially if you played a lot of 'munda in the olden days, I think they might appeal to you.

 

[Kiro The Avenger]

My group just never used challenges, at all.
Two people could mutually agree to play and stuff like what was being fought over would be randomised (but biased in favour of the person who had played less).

Melee is a strong topic.
Jawrippa used a system similar to yours, and I've tried it as well. The conclusion is that it doesn't work brilliantly.
Firstly, it makes combat a total slog with so many individual dice being rolled back and forth.
Secondly, it screws with balance. High damage weapons become hugely important.
It also makes things like Juves useless because they have a high chance of just being killed in retaliation first.
It's important to remember that, in melee, one person is using their two actions to charge whilst it's costing the defender nothing. There needs to be a strong incentive to kit a fighter for melee, tactically move them up the board, then charge someone. If all that effort just results in a 50/50 who lands the first dice, people don't bother and they'll just shoot the enemy instead where there's a 0% chance of letting the enemy kill you for free.

 

[mateyboy3000]

I second both the Lost Zone and just mutually agreeing to play as suggestions.

As for rules, ignore the ncr, bookromunda is a vastly superior final product. You won't find the YCE anywhere because it's not even reached the playtest stage as far as I'm aware

 

[almic85]

YCE has been stalled for a while as it tried to do too much too early and the people doing it (including me) started diverging on how we we’re going to actually implement the proposed changes and the overall scope of changes.

I think Topsy has Bookromunda and JawRippa is working on his own set of house rules which both seem to work reasonably well. I think Petitioner’s City also has his own set of house rules set up that looked pretty solid last time I read through them.

For my campaigns I have been running them largely as per the Dominion campaign from the hardcover rulebook with a set of house rules over the campaign to limit champions, trading post access and a few other things. It seemed to be working well, but Covid interrupted our campaign with a lockdown at the half way point and it hasn’t really picked back up again.

To make sure gangs are balanced in terms of challenges I usually say that each gang can only issue one challenge each “campaign cycle”, and each cycle lasts two weeks. So everyone should expect to play two games each cycle, one as the challenger and one as the challengee, and if you can only make one game that cycle then people should generally let you issue the challenge.

What I also implement is a different scenario selection table where just because you are the challenger it doesn’t automatically make you the attacker. In fact my tables mostly feature scenarios that don’t have an attacker or defender and you only get to pick those if the underdog or overdog get to pick the scenario, and on top of that both gangs stake territories on the game.

As for familiars (chaos and genestealer varieties) and close combat rules I haven’t found them egregious enough to really bother changing the rules around for them, though I can see why people may want to muck around with them.

The biggest issue I actually see with combat isn’t that your great melee fighter can get janked by another great melee fighter charging them first, but rather there is no point charging a great melee fighter with anything other than another fighter that can kill them in one turn. And to counter that I would recommend just removing retaliation attacks out of the combat sequence so your super fighter needs to actually use one of their actions to beat the other person down.

 

[JawRippa]

To clarify, YCE is not up yet.

• My focus is on improving core rules, replacing them entirely if needed. I'm trying to make both melee and shooting viable. I've been running campaigns with my group to test the ideas for a while now. You can read more about it, including list of proposed changes here. Regarding familiars and melee:
  • Familiars are absolutely busted and I would not allow stacking more than 1 on the same fighter. You could easily triple their cost and they'd still be great to get. RAW they block an attack every turn, which means they trigger multiple times per round (probably not intended and is a result of writers mixing turn and round throughout rules)
  • Melee needs changes, but only if you allow getting into melee easier first. I'm in the camp that fighter's attacks and weapon skill should matter when they defend and if attacker can frontload their damage, then it will rarely be the case in melee champ duels.
• From what I understand, TopsyKretts is working on de-powering gangs and making them more similar to old gangs where most of fighters had really tame profiles. Also his campaign is modified to fit the old mecromunda campaign. Basically the scope is to retrofit core rules of new necromunda into old necromunda, if I understand it correctly.

 

[Jacob Dryearth]

If I were you I would track campaign weeks per gang so if a player has had five battles they've had two and a half campaign weeks, or something like that. Then if they play somebody who hasn't had as many campaign weeks, you can give the other player some sort of benefit like tactics cards or free Hive scum. This would be in addition to the normal underdog tactics card bonuses.

As others have suggested I would completely ditch the idea of challenges as well. Instead, when two players choose to meet they should each choose the territory that they want to score. The winner gets the one they wanted, and the loser gets a random one. That way losers don't fall too far behind in the arms race. Alternatively you can use the unknown zones alternate rule (I believe that's what it's called) where you randomly draw the territory at stake for the players during a battle. But then the loser still doesn't get anything, which is what leads to most of the imbalances in Necromunda over the course of a campaign.

I'd also like to add, no offense, but you're trying to change too many things for your first campaign. I'm all for balancing actual campaign and income rules... But altering Close Combat and gangs special rules is only going to confuse or frustrate new players. Necromunda is complicated enough without changing the core rules.

If you're worried about the balance between shooting and melee, just make sure games use plenty of terrain, and are played on 2x2' to 3x3' tables, preferably Zone Mortalis terrain (I'm talking about walls you can't climb over, ie. 2d battlefields). If you must use the fancy walkways that come with those walls, go ahead and build up, but treat all walls without walkways on top as infinitely high to prevent sniping over walls. That way you can have tunnels connecting larger "rooms" with traditional 3d terrain.