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So, I've been pondering this, after reading an abridged version of the illiad for school

'Fights don't happen in broad daylight, with maximum visibility and no weather.'

While armies would tend to find a best day to have a big bash, there's nothing to suggest that they MUST be fought in the best of conditions, or that those conditions won't change.

Rolled for at the start of the turn

Like any random roll, 2 is good, but a 12 is terrible.
Of course, 1's always fail. >_>

2D6 Result:
2-4
- Fine Weather
- Play as normal

5
Drizzle:
-Slightly Rainy:
- Artillery add 1 to scatter distances
- Mundane Bows, Crossbows, Shortbows, Longbows, Thrown weapons suffer -1 to hit rolls.

6
Windy
- Windy weather
- Scattering weapons +3 to scatters
- Ranged weapons suffer a -1 to hit rolls

7-8.
Raining
- Raining heavily
- Artillery add 2 to scatter distances
- All mundane Ranged weapons suffer -1 to hit rolls.

9.
Tremors:
Movement done at half rate
Cavalry may not march

10.
Magical Rain
- Raining burning magic, due to the build-up of latent magical tension in the area.
- All models must pass a strength or toughness test, alternatively, they may take an armour save or be removed from play.
- All Ranged weapons suffer -1 to hit rolls
- Wizards gain +1 magic casting attempts

11.
Terrible Disaster
- A hurricane, whirlwind or tornado, or maybe even an earthquake has assailed the area, displacing units and killing many warriors
- All Models must pass a strength or toughness test.
- All models count as having moved that turn
- Ranged weapons suffer -2 to hit rolls
- Charges are not possible

12.
Magical Disaster of epic proportions
- The release of aforementioned latent magical tensions explodes, creating a firestorm capable of destroying anything and everything
- All Models take a S5 hit, Those who have magical wargear or who are intrinsically magic take this hit at S7. Resolve as shooting.
- 2D6 Dice are lost from either players dispel and casting pools for the remainder of the game [does not stack]
Additionally, I believe that it is fully possible for Lore of heavens magii to use their prowess to re-roll the weather dice. [maybe it costs one spell dice.] or maybe to even affect the weather worse off than that!

While I think weather isn't terrible, I believe people complain already in 8th about too much random influence on "strategy."

If you roll a 6 to start and you're an all-shooty army, you pretty much know from the get-go you lost at the very first die roll. That can be pretty frustrating.

If you're going to add something, make it not a punishment, but something that players can take advantage of. Like in the Windy example, you can allocate 1 shooting unit as +1 to hit IF you also allocate one as -1 to hit. Or whatever. Something people can use. Like terrain.

it's rolled for every turn, but I'm unsure what you mean in the last instance.

Whether it's every turn (which is kinda silly, "hey, it's sunny, no it's pouring.") or 1 turn, it's still a random factor that can potentially make your army worthless.

A 9 could hand the game to a war machine heavy team. A 12 can destroy a magic-heavy team.

Basically, how does this make the game more strategic? Normal weather can be countered by good generals or new strategies, but you already picked your troops, there's not a whole lot you can do. Terrain is something that's placed at the beginning and you can plot how to take advantage of.

Also, there's 5 occurences where ranged weapons suffer a negative to hit. You got 1 that permanently nerfs magic the whole game (yeah, it also removed dispel, but so what, if you can't cast that's irrelevant). It's heinously, not remotely balanced.

But like I said, even if it was balanced, I don't see what it adds except penalties people can't cope with. Hey great, I'm -1 to hit everything. What am I going to do about it? Hit less, that's what.

Make it something strategic. Like each player can choose one weather effect--armies actually CAN choose when they go to war and do even to this day. And severely reduce the effects above.

erm, why don't Handgunners get affected by light rain and no less affected by reglar rain than other ranged weapons? there used to be this old spell in the Lore of Life caled 'The Rain Lord'. ranged units had to roll a 4+ to shoot as thier strings streched and such. gunpowder units needed a 6+ to fire because, well, you can't light gunpowder when it's wet.

try to pour the powder into your musket now!

Weather works best in campaign settings where you have some control over where and when you attack.

On a random table during play, that's pretty brutal.
As a dark elf player, Rolling a 12 would kill 80% of my army.
As an Ogre player, rolling a 12 would kill 20% of my army.

That's too much variation to work. You might as well toss a Cat onto the table, and anything that gets knocked over is killed.

-Matt

HawaiiMatt wrote: You might as well toss a Cat onto the table, and anything that gets knocked over is killed.

I thought Storm of Magic is not out yet?

The idea is good but HawaiiMatt is right the magic events are a little biased, I am a Dwarf player and I don't want to have all the fun of killing High Elves taken from me by some stupid rain . To comment on DukeRustfields' point, it is true that the weather won't change every turn but if there were to be a massive magical event I'm sure random, quick weather changes are quite a possibility, though having never been in one myself I can't say wether this is true but you could switch up the effects. I think you should roll once at the beginning of the game and if it is a magical event then continue to roll for weather.

The results on the table would dominate the game. Something like increased scatter and -1 on ranged attacks should be among the most significant results, not the most minor.

I agree with the other posters that rolling on the table each turn would make for a comical experience, with an entirely random new weather effect each turn.

Perhaps instead you need a chart from, say, 5 to -5, and each turn you roll a single die, on a 6 you go one higher, on a 1 you go on lower.

5 Torrential downpour - both Heavy Rain and Fierce Winds take effect.
4 Heavy rain reduces all weapon ranges by 6" (and half ranges by 3") and charges no longer add Mv score to their charge distance
3 Fierce winds cause confusion, range of general's IP and BSB are halved.
2 Normal Weather
1 Normal Weather
0 Normal Weather
-1 Normal Weather
-2 Normal Weather
-3 Very shiny weather inflicts -1 on all ranged rolls to hit
-4 Oppressive heat, no marching, charges no longer add Mv score to their charge distance
-5 Intense heat applies both Very shiny and Oppressive heat results.

This way you would move slowly from one condition into another, and the battle might even build thematically, becoming stormier as the fighting intensified. The table above isn't great, and could maybe do with a little more imagination in the results, but I think the structure is alright.

I like Sebster's idea as it allows for variation.

The only forseeable issue is that with so much "Normal weather" and only a 1/6 chance of moving towards abnormal weather is that you will likely never see it over the course of your game. Seeing as how this would be a houserule, you are using it in the hopes of actually seeing the weather, so I would make it that a 1 and 2 move it down, 3 and 4 stay put, 5 and 6 move it up. The other thing you could do is remove the normal weather at steps -2 and 2. With only 3 stages of normal weather (0, -1, and 1) you are more likely to see weather impact the game.

The odds of actually seeing stage 5 weather in a game would be astronomically low. There are usually only 6 turns, and to get to -5 or 5 you would have to roll 5 1's out of 6 rolls or 5 6's out of 6. Ideally you wouldn't want stage 5 +/- in most games, but you would still want the chance to see it.

The table would need work, but Seb is right in that the structure is much more ideal. Weather effects would bring more life to the story of your battle, but if it was implemented in this way, weather would not dominate the game.

Lehnsherr wrote:The table would need work, but Seb is right in that the structure is much more ideal. Weather effects would bring more life to the story of your battle, but if it was implemented in this way, weather would not dominate the game.

Yeah, the table and the idea in general was pretty rough, but I think it'd get the idea . I like your idea to change it to 1-2 down, 5-6 up.

It also might be worthwhile starting the weather table by rolling a whole load of dice, maybe 5 or 6, and starting from the net position of all those dice rolled. That way you might start with something a little more interesting. Another idea might be to reduce the normal weather to just 0, +1 and -1, and start the weather effects from 2 and -2 onwards.

You might want to have weather help determine mission.

I'd do weather as:
1-2 Foul (rain, fog, sleet, blizzard)
3-4 pleasant (no significant weather)
5-6 Oppressive (blazing hot, bitter cold, deep snow, muddy, thundering)

Foul weather would obscure vision, while oppressive would impact troops. Each weather type could have a modifier for deployment and victory conditions, and a small game wide effect on play.

-Matt

I just read the BRB and under their special mission pages there are wheater rules

Too many of these results will disturb shooty armour. This is kinda unbalanced.

I agree with sebster and lensherr. A gradual change that doesn't screw one army over another would be a good compromise.
Perhaps on the 1d6 roll a 1 means move it down 1 and a 6 means move it up one.

Another option could be a seperate "Disaster" roll, which needs 3 or 4 1s or 6s or something to get "Charged up" before it could occur, causing one of the following effects (Roll once the Disaster gets 2 of the 3 needed tokens)
---1: Tornado: large blast template, scatters 2d6"/turn, S4 hit (S6 for fliers) on units it crosses over, and the affected unit moves at 1/2 movement

---2: Hurricane/Dust Storm: Scatter weapons scatter +1d6" or similar, and shooting gets a -1 to hit

---3: Earthquake: All non-flying/hover movement reduced by 1/2, Artillery mishaps roll 2d6 and take the worse result.

---4: Volcano: Put a marker in the middle of the field, and roll 3d6 for scatter (can't hit). Roll 1d6 per turn, and write the number down (or put down a number of tokens). This is the "lava" range in inches around the volcano marker, and it increases by d6" every turn. Every model within range of the volcano takes a S8 hit, and fliers are hit on a 4+ if they cross the over the volcano (Flaming debris and such).

---5: Magical Vortex: All magic phases for the rest of the game gets +1d6 power and dispel dice. However, if there are any leftover dispell or power dice at the end of the phase, each magic user in the army takes a single Hit with S equal to the number of remaining Power dice for the current player's magic users, and 1/2 the number of remaing dispel dice for the opponnent's magic-users.

---6: Beautiful Day: The ominous rumbles turn out to be nothing, heartening everyone present. The Ld for all units is 10 for the rest of the game, and any units currently fleeing Rally (although they may break again in subsequent turns)