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This is just an idea that popped in my head when thinking about the Death Jester and its stated lore. I was thinking about how to adapt the following into a rule which helps to capture the essence of infuriating trollishness that can be part of the Harlequins.

"Killing a foe is not enough for a Death Jester. To make war worthwhile, they must intersperse murder with ironic humor. Slaying an officer at the crescendo of a rallying speech or sending sappers fleeing into a minefield they just got finished laying are examples of this macabre sense of humor."

The part about "Slaying an officer at the crescendo of a rallying speech" feels like the easiest to implement, so here's how it might go.

[Proposed Rule]: Once during the morale phase, if an enemy unit passes a morale test on the roll of an unmodified 1, this unit may shoot as if in the shooting phase against that unit if within range and line of sight. If an enemy model is slain as a result of this attack, the enemy unit must retake the morale test with any additional casualties accounted for.

The Death Jester already has some morale based rules, such as the Shrieker cannon profile applying -2 leadership upon killing a model (plus the d3 MW), and "Death is not Enough" letting the user choose the first morale casualty. Would this be too much of a bonus when coupled with these assets? Possibly too much when considering the rest of the army? Any tweaks such as extra cost to consider?

I'm fine with it. It ain't broken with the stats the weapon has and it certainly makes morale matter slightly more.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Hell I applaud the creativity to be honest.

I like the rule, but I do feel feel that it complicates the jester a bit too much. Adding on your rule with no other changes, the jester's gun...

* Imposes a -2 ld penalty AND
* Lets you choose morale casualties AND
* Lets you shoot an extra time (situationally) AND
* Potentially prompts an additional morale test with the new penalty BUT
* Only does some of those things if you use one of two profiles AND
* that selected profile kills someone

Also, you'd have to elaborate on how this rule works if you have multiple death jesters in range of the unit that failed the morale test.

Maybe this would work better as a stratagem that can explicitly only be used once per phase (for non-matched play game simplicity)? It's a cool, useful rule, but doing it up to three times a player turn might be a bit much.

Maybe the jester can choose the death dance they will perform every round and each dance has a different effect/weapon profile to apply?

The Harlequin characters are pretty underwhelming at the moment. Death jesters should definitely be more lethal than they are.

Wyldhunt wrote:
I like the rule, but I do feel feel that it complicates the jester a bit too much. Adding on your rule with no other changes, the jester's gun...

* Imposes a -2 ld penalty AND
* Lets you choose morale casualties AND
* Lets you shoot an extra time (situationally) AND
* Potentially prompts an additional morale test with the new penalty BUT
* Only does some of those things if you use one of two profiles AND
* that selected profile kills someone

Also, you'd have to elaborate on how this rule works if you have multiple death jesters in range of the unit that failed the morale test.

Maybe this would work better as a stratagem that can explicitly only be used once per phase (for non-matched play game simplicity)? It's a cool, useful rule, but doing it up to three times a player turn might be a bit much.

It can simply be worded that a squad can only be targeted by the rule once per morale phase. It isn't really that complicated.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

Wyldhunt wrote:
I like the rule, but I do feel feel that it complicates the jester a bit too much. Adding on your rule with no other changes, the jester's gun...

* Imposes a -2 ld penalty AND
* Lets you choose morale casualties AND
* Lets you shoot an extra time (situationally) AND
* Potentially prompts an additional morale test with the new penalty BUT
* Only does some of those things if you use one of two profiles AND
* that selected profile kills someone

Also, you'd have to elaborate on how this rule works if you have multiple death jesters in range of the unit that failed the morale test.

Maybe this would work better as a stratagem that can explicitly only be used once per phase (for non-matched play game simplicity)? It's a cool, useful rule, but doing it up to three times a player turn might be a bit much.

It can simply be worded that a squad can only be targeted by the rule once per morale phase. It isn't really that complicated.

The new proposed rule itself isn't all that complicated, but the jester on the whole becomes a bit wordy at that point, no? Resolving a single jester in a turn means you have to:
* Do a normal shooting attack
* Roll an extra die to do additional mortal wounds
* Track a leadership debuff for the turn
* Potentially resolve a second shooting attack
* Potentially roll an extra die to do additional mortla wounds
* Calculate a second morale test penalty (the initial casualties, the -2 debuff, and the new casualties)
* Roll a second morale test.

Not the most complicated thing in the game, sure, but complicated enough that it makes me question whether a given model needs that many baseline rules. Especially since we're investing a lot of verbiage into the basic concept of, "Mildly shooty guy that makes morale worse."

Wyldhunt wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

Wyldhunt wrote:
I like the rule, but I do feel feel that it complicates the jester a bit too much. Adding on your rule with no other changes, the jester's gun...

* Imposes a -2 ld penalty AND
* Lets you choose morale casualties AND
* Lets you shoot an extra time (situationally) AND
* Potentially prompts an additional morale test with the new penalty BUT
* Only does some of those things if you use one of two profiles AND
* that selected profile kills someone

Also, you'd have to elaborate on how this rule works if you have multiple death jesters in range of the unit that failed the morale test.

Maybe this would work better as a stratagem that can explicitly only be used once per phase (for non-matched play game simplicity)? It's a cool, useful rule, but doing it up to three times a player turn might be a bit much.

It can simply be worded that a squad can only be targeted by the rule once per morale phase. It isn't really that complicated.

The new proposed rule itself isn't all that complicated, but the jester on the whole becomes a bit wordy at that point, no? Resolving a single jester in a turn means you have to:
* Do a normal shooting attack
* Roll an extra die to do additional mortal wounds
* Track a leadership debuff for the turn
* Potentially resolve a second shooting attack
* Potentially roll an extra die to do additional mortla wounds
* Calculate a second morale test penalty (the initial casualties, the -2 debuff, and the new casualties)
* Roll a second morale test.

Not the most complicated thing in the game, sure, but complicated enough that it makes me question whether a given model needs that many baseline rules. Especially since we're investing a lot of verbiage into the basic concept of, "Mildly shooty guy that makes morale worse."

It isn't anymore wordy than lots of the other units of base rules being thrown in for the sake of being thrown in. I'm sure there's room in the unit entry to make the rule appear. With that said I'm not against it being a Strat but making units reliant on Strats is a bad idea.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
I'm fine with it. It ain't broken with the stats the weapon has and it certainly makes morale matter slightly more.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Hell I applaud the creativity to be honest.

When I first came up with it I considered letting it happen on any successful morale test. The first critique I got was to limit it to rolls of 1 to better highlight the "cruel humor" behind the attack and to keep it reasonable. Would you call that too much?

Vorpalim wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
I'm fine with it. It ain't broken with the stats the weapon has and it certainly makes morale matter slightly more.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Hell I applaud the creativity to be honest.

When I first came up with it I considered letting it happen on any successful morale test. The first critique I got was to limit it to rolls of 1 to better highlight the "cruel humor" behind the attack and to keep it reasonable. Would you call that too much?

Not really. It's slightly more randumb but it's a good benefit to make morale matter more.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

It isn't anymore wordy than lots of the other units of base rules being thrown in for the sake of being thrown in. I'm sure there's room in the unit entry to make the rule appear. With that said I'm not against it being a Strat but making units reliant on Strats is a bad idea.

Fair. I'm not against throwing it in as another special rule either. It's just reaching that level of complexity where the designer in me starts to go, "Hmm. Maybe we should consider removing or revising some of this." Note that this does basically double the damage output of a death jester as opponents will usually pass a morale test unless you're doing a freakshow build or whittling down a horde. Which, again, is probably fine given how not-killy DJs currently are.

Hmm. Is shooting two or three times a game round with Curtain Fall too much?

Wyldhunt wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

It isn't anymore wordy than lots of the other units of base rules being thrown in for the sake of being thrown in. I'm sure there's room in the unit entry to make the rule appear. With that said I'm not against it being a Strat but making units reliant on Strats is a bad idea.

Fair. I'm not against throwing it in as another special rule either. It's just reaching that level of complexity where the designer in me starts to go, "Hmm. Maybe we should consider removing or revising some of this." Note that this does basically double the damage output of a death jester as opponents will usually pass a morale test unless you're doing a freakshow build or whittling down a horde. Which, again, is probably fine given how not-killy DJs currently are.

Hmm. Is shooting two or three times a game round with Curtain Fall too much?

Not everyone passes on a 1 though, which was the OPs condition, so it's a nice bonus here and there and simply nothing game breaking.

Deadly Humour/The Killing Joke/You're the Punchline (1 CP) Use this Stratagem after your opponent passes a Morale test (even if it is automatically passed). Select a Death Jester from your army to shoot at that enemy unit that passed a Morale test as if it were your Shooting phase. If your opponent used the Insane Bravery Stratagem you may instead shoot the enemy Warlord.

I think, if it were a Strat, all Death Jesters at range should be able to shoot. Why? It'd be funny to see some Guard Commander really everyone, they shrug their shoulders, and then blast away.

Sorry to dredge this back up, but how relevant is this with 9th edition morale?