Secret Weapons

[Mestari]

In General Chat people were arguing whether to include secret weapons on the goblin team list.

IMO secret weapons should not be tied to a single player. They are playing tools! In addition, hiring them permanently is not the way to go.

Here's a little something:


SECRET WEAPONS
---------------------
List of secret weapons here... Add in the See-Saw, Kill-Dozer, other new funny weapons. For every wepon there's also a freebooting price and a list of races to which a certain weapon is available.


HIRING SECRET WEAPONS
-------------------------------
Secret weapons can be freebooted for the price shown above (in the SW list) and only for the races indicated. It's freebooted for a single game only - if you want to have it later on, you have to freeboot it again.

Once you've hired one, you need to assign it to a player (so you could give the chainsaw to the AG4 dwarven lineman, as he's the person who can most easily start the damn thing). He's the person that uses (or drives in case of deathroller) the secret weapon and is the one who's ejected if the weapon fails his penalty roll. He has it for the entire match for which the weapon is freebooted and gives it away only after the game.


GOBLIN SECRET WEAPONS
-------------------------------
In addition to the normal rules, the following rules apply for goblin teams.

Pogosticks are not considered by the coaches as the best of secret weapons, and they usually aim their efforts and money at acquiring more effective ones. Goblin players, however, feel that the increased movement, ability to hop around and the potential glory is worth it, so they often smuggle one to the pitch on their own!
It could even be that every player has one in the locker room, but they're only waiting for a good opportunity to get it to the pitch!

To represent this, every time a goblin team has set up, roll a d6: on 5+ one randomly selected goblin has decided to smuggle a pogo stik to the pitch. That player now counts as having a pogo stick for the rest of the match. Yes, this would mean that you could end up with several of them after a few set ups...
Also, goblins can hardly resist the temptation of bringing a dagger along with them to help even the odds in blocks: every time a goblin team has set up, roll a d6: on 6+ one randomly selected goblin has smuggled in a poisoned dagger, which he now holds for the rest of the match.

[McDeth]

IMO, a secret weapon should be purchased permanently, then a general upkeep paid for it each game. If the mon ey isn't there then the weapon cannot be used until it is repaired

[Bevan]

I don't think any player who has used a secret weapon would ever take the field without it again.

Having movable weapons would cause major problems with the models, because all weapons are shown on the model. Having to keep renumbering players would suit some coaches, but having variable weapons in the rules would force everyone to have a full range of models with and without weapons.

[Mestari]

Secret weapons can be easily related to wizards. Having wizards permanently on a team was not a good thing. It was just a one step you had to take, and you practically never had to replace him. Even though players are more vulnerable, I feel we should follow the freebooting concept here too. It would also introduce more possible places to spend money on.
Having them freebooted only would also keep the focus of the game on normal players instead of secret weapons. Sure, if you have the money, you can have some fun with them, but you just couldn't base your tactics on having a death roller or a chainsaw each game!
Secreat weapons should be a fun and an effective thing on pitch, but they definitely should be freeboot-only things. Paying for maintenance is not a solution - it introduces a new mechanic which really doesn't have much to offer: we already have freebooting rules that we can easily incorporate secret weapons into, so no need to make maintenance cost rules.

With this suggestion, a team with extra money before the match would have to choose:
1.Keep the money
2.Freeboot a wizard
3.Freeboot some Stars
4.Freeboot some secret weapons to their players
5.Combination of the above

That, IMO, would, while in essence preserving the current mechanics, offer new options in the freebooting phase, introduce secret weapons in a non-inbalancing manner and make the game a bit funnier thing to play.


Even though there's some credit to Bevans critic on the model issue, I don't think that's such a major problem. You don't need to have a "full range of models with and without weapons". You just need to say before the game that "number 13 drives the deathroller" or "chainsaw guy is number 8".
With the proposed goblin rules, however, there could be more problems, but the poisoned daggers and pogosticks could easily be represented by placing a counter on the players base if the coach doesn't have enough of the appropriate miniatures.

[Snew]

I love the ideas you posted.

I also agree with a lot of what the other guys said. Mostly, though, I feel that a palyer needs to have a secret weapon permanantly attached to him to represent practice concealing it and using it without being noticed.

That said, though, I would have no problem adopting the changes you suggest. I would still lean toward the same player using that weapon each time it's freebooted. This would cover the practice points I mentioned and Bevan's point about a player not wanting to play without it. This may cause a coach to can a player who's used the Blunderbuss previously so he can give it to the guy who got AG+1 last game but I think that's okay and in the spirit of things.

[Mestari]

I'm not keen on limitations imposed on who you should give the weapon to. Now if weapons would be freebooted, you won't see them too often, in which case it'd be nice to be able to give them to anyone you want to.

And a definite 'NO' goes to suggestions that put weapons permanently to the team. There should be no one-off cost for having a chainsaw on the team, and freebooting is an existing and efficient method for handling this problem.

[Darkson]

Under your suggestion, can a team still only free-boot 1 secret weapon (ignoring Gobbos) per game, 1 of each, or as many as they can afford?

I like snots idea of only allowing the player who originally used it access to the weapon ("no.5's having a bad game" - "yeah, I know, thats cos he left his chainsaw at home").

[Mestari]

I don't think there's a need for an artificial limit. Let the price of the weapons create a de facto limit.

Nowadays teams don't have that much money available, so I don't think this would be a problem.
For example: let's say that we decide that Deathroller costs 60k per game. If your team has 600k in the bank, I would let them get 10 deathrollers for the game and have only one dwarf on foot on the pitch.

[Mestari]

I simply revived this thread to compete with the other SW threads on the top of the topic list for this forum

I'm biased because this is my idea, but I definitely like this more than any permanent SW additions, for reasons described in this and in other threads.

[Styrofoam King]

Well, I always saw it as a skill. If one of your Lineman rolls a double on the skill table, and you can afford the price (for example, from Blood Bowl Magazine 1&2, Chainsaw at 60k) then the player can permanently buy it.

[Styrofoam King]

OOoops, that's exactly what the other Thread discusses. Small world. Never mind.

[Mestari]

Then you don't see the game balance aspect. To have balanced secret weapon rules, you can't have them permanently added to teams. Period.

I'm repeating myself when I say this, but one of the biggest reasons for inflated teams in 3rd edition was the fact that everything that you could buy was one-shot: you bought it and then you had it until it got killed.
This resulted in inflated TR's and the power levels of the leagues rising enough to make the game no longer fun.
Decreased income helps already, but it only slows the process down unless there are recurring costs that the team has to pay. Wizards have already been fixed to help in that respect. Should SW rules be introduced, they should have a similar method implemented.

Having them available as freebootable things gives the SW's a really tactical aspect. Instead of becoming a must-have for every team, you can hoard money and have SW's for an important game (against your arch-rivals for example). As freebooted they will also make it possible for some teams to refuse from using them. Should they be one-off payments, that wouldn't be a good option: the teams with SW's would have a clear advantage over the others, and would create pressure for everyone to buy them.
As freebooted things, they become an interesting and fun addition to the game, but won't dominate gameplay.

Naturally, you can house-rule them as you wish, but this is the way to go to have balanced and fun secret weapon rules.

[Styrofoam King]

Assuming that you were limited the weapons to one a team, couldn't you argue the same theory against Big Guys? Everyone feels forced to get one, just because one team in the league got it?

[Styrofoam King]

Though, to be honest, I can see where you stand as well. Please don't let my House Rules version insult you in any form.

And person, I'm not at all for the multiple SW option either. Even goblins shouldn't go over board.

[Marcus]

IMO, a secret weapon should be purchased permanently, then a general upkeep paid for it each game. If the mon ey isn't there then the weapon cannot be used until it is repaired

Freebooting the player adequately approximates paying "upkeep" without having to add in a new rule mechanic.

Besides which, I don't want to see Deathrollers with Block.