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So, i know this is a common issue among mordheim groups, and there are a lot of fixes people have come up with. The most common fixes i've seen are:
- Lowering the price of armours by half
- Raising the strength requirement to reduce armour saves by 1 (so starting at 5)
- Giving shields and bucklers a smash attack
- Nerfing dual wielding (-1 to hit on one or both weapons)

Usually I see people using one of these, rarely two, in their campaigns. My FLGS used the second option, but most of the time I still felt more inclined just to buy more henchmen instead of protecting my heroes. Might've had something to do with the fact that i faced exclusively skaven all things considered.

I've been trying to figure out a way to balance them myself, and I think a combination of the first two might help. Due to the abundance of S4 available early on, the S5 requirement for reducing armour saves feels like a must to me. Considering a pistol takes away your 50gc investment in heavy armour with ease. Then there's still the pricing issue. 50gc for 5+ save (and often 6+) feels a bit too much, and reducing the price by half seems a bit too good. I'm thinking of a compromise of 33% cost reduction, rounding down. So heavy armour would now cost only 33gc.

Next up are shields and bucklers. I find the -1 movement penalty of heavy armour and shield to be a bit too crippling, rather I'd propose an initiative penalty of some kind. Armour really isn't that heavy in real life that it'd slow you down that much when moving, but it does slow you down some. A flat out -1 I might work, considering the previous changes, but I'd prefer a -1 penalty to initiative checks instead, for when you're jumping gaps, climbing etc.
In the case of bucklers I feel like they're just not worth it when you can grab a second weapon. Sisters have some use for them because they don't get swords, but that's about it. And at this point the dual wield nerf and shield bashes come in.
Some people recommend a -1 to hit penalty when dual wielding, but this seems to change a lot between both attacks and just the secondary attack. I haven't used this in any of my games so far, so i'm hoping you guys could shed some light on the issue. But what about shield bashing for bucklers and shields? Should it be just another attack with no special rules, of course integrating the -1 to hit penalty from before?

Helmets seem ok as they are to me.

TL;DR:

What do you think of these changes for a casual campaign?

-Reduce the price of armours to 2/3rds
-Shield and heavy armour combo is -1 to initiative checks
-Dual wielding gives -1 to hit (trying to decide if for both attacks or just secondary)
-Some sort of a bash for when using shields and/or bucklers (counts as dual wield attack, no special effects)

I favour increasing the armour value of all armours by 1, so light armour gives a 5+ save, but capping the max save at 4+ (or 3+). This does make armour more viable but given the range of high strength attacks present in the game as well as the many critical hits that negate armour it never becomes too much.

I also nerf dual wielding, my last campaign gave the off hand weapon -1 strength.

Our group played around with this stuff a little, but ultimately left most of it as is, figuring that the game is meant to be about swashbuckling style combat and not guys in armor fighting in pitched battles. *shrug*