Old Warrior Rules   

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I have taken Custodian's Rules and adjusted them, adding some of my own. I have seen some things in the original WHQ (Warhammer Quest) rules that I feel would be good to do differently.  But, please be sure to read the Very Important Disclaimer at the end of this web page.

Most, if not all, the games I run will follow these rules. They are based upon my own preferences (using Custodian's Rules for a guide and to provide some of the substance). Generally, whatever is not found here (or in special rules for a specific game) will follow the normal WHQ rules. If I vary from those rules unexpectedly, please feel free to question me. It could be that I forgot something or incorrectly interpreted a rule.

The OW (Old Warrior) Navigation Links (found after my first three topics) should help anyone wanting a quick review of a certain rules subject.

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Language (Entirely my own rule)

I am a Christian who believes in living like one. Therefore, I do not use any inappropriate, non-Christian language (such as taking God's name in vain, and using vulgar words and overtly sexual comments). I also would appreciate that all players in my games refrain from using such language. However, I am forgiving and not a grump. So, if someone forgets, I may attempt to graciously remind them.

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A VERY Important Rule in Old Warrior Quest
(Like "the Rule of 1 and 6" in WHQ)

Rules are based upon these concepts:

Experience is generally represented by the amount of gold gained from killing monsters. (Here I differ from Custodian, by not dividing actual gold and experience.)

Magical Items are a bit more rare than the original rules provide.

Warriors should be diverse in their personalities. In other words, they should not just fit into a little stereotypical box; they should be multi-faceted.

Planning is vital to survival; good information is nearly as crucial as good equipment.

Magic can be dangerous and is not to be entirely trusted.

Depending on your preference for depth of role-playing, I may or may not be big on it; but, I certainly find interaction between the warriors to be entertaining and it is helpful for communication and cooperation. I may at times reward some outstanding performances and displays of character.

There are no good guys or bad guys, only guys (and gals!). The warriors are all in this together and their survival and success generally depends upon how well they cooperate with one another.

Although I have called these rules, they are not especially binding.  Following are some areas in which my rules will differ (or may seem to differ) from the original rules:

P L E A S E  READ ALL CHAT AND ALL TURN TEXT

This is one of the very most important rules in my games.  I am adding it here, because I have seen so many players make a huge number of mistakes only because they failed to do this.  I will often give needed information through chat AND turn text.  Both of them have their limitations though.  If the players will make sure to read before "ordering the GM around" - just kidding, OK? - ;^), then they will be able to behave more effectively in the game.  This rule is for the player's benefit.  I firmly believe that it will make the game more enjoyable for you.

          OW Navigation Links                      Back to Beginning of Rules

            A VERY Important Rule in Old Warrior Quest (one paragraph up)
            Economy
                Economic Rules
            Two Exceptions to Experience/Gold
                1. Trollslayers and the Like
                2. Healing Gold/Experience
            The Power Phase
            Wizards & Spell-casting
            Monster Rules
                         Monsters Used
            Reaction Phase
            Exploration Phase
            Luck
            Death-blows
            Settlements
                Finding Special Locations
            Dungeon Events, Hazards & Settlement Events
            Last Rule, But Very Important 
                Very Important Disclaimer

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Economy

(Here I handle gold differently than the Custodian.)
All monster gold is divided evenly between all the warriors at the end of each combat. I do NOT convert the gold to experience. I like the aspect of personal decision making in what to do with all the loot. Of course, I will gladly edit the warrior's experience -- by converting the player's requested amount of gold to experience (as long as the amount of monster gold earned justifies the translation to experience) at the end of my adventure so that he may take the experience with him to another GM's game (such as one of Custodian's, since he gives experience for killing monsters).

As an individual incentive for the killing of monsters, at the end of the dungeon each of the Warriors will receive a bounty in Gold for their kills of 10% of the original worth of the Monsters. So, a Pit Fighter, Troll Slayer, or offensively powerful Wizard may still “make a killing” adding extra gold to his bag by killing off more monsters. This will help offset the lack of monetary value in many of the treasures I give out at the end of the combats.

Because I believe Magical Items should be more rare, I use a system in which the warriors are more likely to receive common or minor magical items at the end of a combat rather than the standard magical armour, magical weapons, and magic items, found in the original rules. This system tends to increase the chance that a warrior will gain a common type of useful armour or weaponry. Also, I will many times use my own Objective Room Treasure Type Table (a 1D6 table) to determine what type of treasure will be found in the Objective Room. Depending upon the adventure, I may at times have specific special treasures at the end of the adventure or at the end of a particular combat.

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Economic Rules:

A Monster is worth 10% of its Gold value to the killer at the end of the adventure and 100% of its Gold value to the Party at the end of the combat.
Common treasures and minor magical treasures are more usual than the more powerful Magical Treasures, which are rarer prizes.
I use all the standard prices in the shops in the original rules.
Any character with experience (separate from gold), will be allowed to “spend” experience points along with actual gold on their training. This way, I can allow warriors to be more interchangeable with my games and the games of others (like the Custodian's).

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Two Exceptions to Experience/Gold

1. Trollslayer - (and any player with like gold/experience rules -- I am currently working on a Changeling character with the same basic rule.) I make an exception for a character requiring two separate tallies, one for actual gold that can be spent and the other for ”gold” accumulated as experience. For this type of player, I will still share out the gold from the combat as usual; but, I will also add the same amount to his/her experience. For example: a Trollslayer receives 100 gold from monsters (his share from the end of a particular combat). I will add both 100 to his actual gold (up to his maximum amount of actual gold) and 100 experience. When he reaches maximum actual gold, I will then only add to his experience any further gold from monsters and unusable treasures.  At the beginning this may seem unbalanced, but, given all the Trollslayers limitations (both in actual gold handling rules and in other areas, such as NO armour), I see no difficulty with the early advantage.

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2. Healing Gold/Experience - I am currently giving experience instead of gold for healing (at the standard 5 per wound healed on others). The reason is that it is easier for me as the GM to track it this way. Also, this may be an added incentive to healers, because this experience will not be subject to the loss of gold type of dungeon events and hazards. I will gladly convert such healing experience into gold when requested at a settlement.

I may occasionally grant a little experience along the way as one of my rewards for great role-play and/or other accomplishments.

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The Power Phase

After much thinking, and getting others' input, I have come to the conclusion that the RolePlay book has a typo where it says that the Wizard would get 1D6+4 at BL 4. The rest of the paragraph all makes sense if we simply change the numeral 4 to a 3 (should read “1D6+3”). Therefore, I use this formula to determine the Wizard's current power: Power Phase/Winds of Magic roll of 1D6 + Wizard's Battle Level - (minus) 1. I just subtract 1 from his BL and add the result to the power roll. So, at BL 1 he gets +0 to the power roll; at BL 2, +1; at BL 3, +2; and so on.

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Wizard's & Spell-casting

The Wizard, according to the rules, has great opportunity to do things at inappropriate times, in my opinion. Just so everyone knows, I only allow his offensive spells to be cast during his active turn in the Warrior Phase. Otherwise, he may cast any spells at any time with no limitations except for the amount of power points available and the WHQ books limitations. And, he must be conscious (above 0 wounds) to be able to cast a spell. I do not want to limit his Spell-casting in any other way at this point, because I feel it is his prerogative to save or use his power as he thinks best. This may at times seem unfair or unbalanced; but, in my experience, this sometimes barely makes an adventure survivable.

For clarification, the Wizard is generally not limited on the number of times per turn that he may cast any number of spells (even if they are repeat spells); nor does it cost him any extra power to cast more than one of the same or of different spells in the same turn. Remember, such limitations were imposed upon the Elf Ranger, the Warrior Priest (blessings), the Witch and such like non-wizard characters. Some exceptions apply, but these are mentioned within the spell descriptions.

Other spell casters and similar types of warriors will usually have this same restriction: no directly offensive/attack type spells/effects are allowed outside of the Warrior Phase. I will usually make an exception for any ability, treasure or spell that gives a warrior a turn outside of the normal Warrior Phase.

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Monster Rules

I will generally use the Monster Tables in the RolePlay Book (Also see "Monsters Used" for exception for the first adventure of a party), but may use specially designed monsters for some games and/or designed Unexpected Events.

If necessary, specially designed monsters may be represented by another enemy ‘model’ with the true stats displayed elsewhere.

Fear, (and I include Terror and Greater Daemon Terror) has always confused me slightly, so the current rule I use is that Fear only affects your to hit roll if you are in hand to hand combat, not in ranged combat. Spells are affected in the same way -- only if the castor is adjacent to a monster that he fears, and is casting a spell against it.

Fear has no effect on ranged combat.
Fear tests are deemed to succeed if they are equal to or over the number given. This is a little easier to pass than the original fear test rule.

Monsters Used:
I currently don’t use very few if any monsters apart from those I have designed myself, or those in the original game or those based directly on Warhammer models. Expanded Monster Tables are not used.

Also, in my randomly-generated linked adventures games (Like "The New and Improved Heroic Adventures!", and "Venturing into the Old World"), I have developed modified Level 1 Monster Tables (based upon the RolePlay Book) (modified here means totally rearranged and somewhat changed).  These modified tables will normally be used only for BL 1 warriors in their first adventure (the 1st of many in a linked-adventures game).  I may develop other modified tables as I see the need.  Use the following link to see the modified monster tables:

Battle Level 1, First Adventure Warriors Monster Tables 

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Reaction Phase

If you think you want to do something in a Reaction Phase, please mention it in your orders. Example: "Reaction Phase please". As a rule, I will skip the Reaction Phase unless it is requested, or I see the possibility of someone able to heal a warrior that is suffering any substantial number of wounds. At BL 1 almost all wounds are substantial.

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Exploration Phase

I will assume that the leader, or someone else that is able to explore (i.e. Halfling Thief, or Gold Hunter), is intending to explore when standing adjacent to a doorway. I will then usually place the appropriate board section. Normally, an Exploration Phase will not be activated. I will usually allow any warrior on the same board section as the leader to explore at a doorway, since the lantern lights all adjacent board sections. But, I will generally enforce that the warriors must remain in the light within one adjacent board section of the leader or they must wait for the light to return, before moving. This is because I believe the lantern rules were made in part to enforce a level of cooperation or sticking-together-ness of the warriors.

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Luck

Basically, if a Warrior uses Luck to affect a dice roll, it works in one of two ways.  If the dice is determining the quantity of something, such as wounds caused, gold found or guards alerted, the die or dice are re-rolled. The Warrior can then choose the best set of results.  If the dice roll determines the success of the Warrior at something, like hitting a monster or leaping a gorge, the Luck point ensures automatic success to the highest level possible (essentially a natural roll of 6).

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Death-blows

I have changed by death-blow rule for the last time (I think).  To clarify matters, death-blows in my game will follow this modified version of the original Death-blow rule in the WHQ Rule Book:

Any attack with a melee weapon that kills a monster may result in a death-blow on the next monster adjacent to the warrior. If that monster is also killed, then the attack may proceed to the next available monster (adjacent to warrior), and so on, until it is stopped by running out of monsters, by failing to hit a monster, by another warrior, or by a solid object (such as a wall).

Two points of clarification:

1. Monsters diagonally adjacent to the attacking warrior may be hit by a death-blow. Empty spaces do NOT prevent a death-blow.  A warrior may death-blow around a corner (to the diagonal square), as long as he is swinging in that direction.

2. ANY melee weapon may be used to death-blow, unless the weapon's description or the warrior's rules state otherwise. I allow a death-blow with "fight in ranks" weapons. For instance, a spear may kill a monster adjacent to the warrior AND proceed to the monster directly behind it. I will make a judgment on other such weapons during game play.

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The Old Warrior Message Board may be used to pose questions or make comments concerning my Old Warrior GMed games, WHQ rules, character specifics and etc.  This is NOT intended to take the place of the Warhammer Quest Forum.  It is the best thing I could think of to provide a continual archival of my specific rulings on various issues as well as providing a place to have Old Warrior specific discussions.  I may sometimes invite Players to join in a discussion about my particular game ideas.  I just don't want to clutter up all the game chat and turn text with my great tendency to grind issues to powder. ;^)

New in the month of August 2006:

1.  I am now hosting games in my message board.

2. I have begun Old Warriors Website, a place to host custom, fan-made Warhammer Quest characters, custom board sections, house rules, and what-not.  Also, I have there a good list of links to Warhammer Quest resources on the Internet.  Please visit at the following address:

http://www.goodsandgoodies.com/wq/