I really liked the idea for a Soul Reaper an army book. So I thought up a new way to fire it. The way given was a little confusing.
M WS BS S T W I A Ld
Soul Reaper - - - - 7 3 - - 9
Crewman 3 4 3 3 4 1 2 1 9
Special Rules:
Terror
Soul Reaper: The Soul Reaper does not fire in the same manner as normal cannon but instead rips the souls out of their enemy’s bodies leaving them as lifeless husks, it then blasts them back at the remnants of the enemy.
To represent this the Soul Reaper must pick a target unit within 36". The target unit must take a leadership test at -3. The unit must use the Leadership value given on their stat-line and do not benefit from Generals Leadership, Banners, Magical Items etc. For every point they fail the test by the unit suffers two wounds at strength 5 with no ward saves. Units that are usually immune to psychology still take damage from this attack.
If the enemy ever rolls a Double 6 when rolling for his leadership test the Soul Reaper transfers the attacks to the crew. The crew get no saves of any sort against these attacks. When a Soul Reaper has no crew left it may not fire, in addition every turn it is without a crew it suffers one automatic wound
You raise a good point about units immune to psychology having to take the test, plus the things that will improve leadership not being used, I will amend that on my pdf as well.
Your version is considerably more powerful than mine, particularly on low leadership and multi wound creatures (like ogres).
What sort of range did you have in mind?
The potential damage you could cause could be 18 wounds per shooting phase for skaven and night goblins… Compared to mine at the maximum it would be 10 wounds per shooting phase.
Yours has the edge over mine on high leadership troops as well:
10 wounds per shooting phase for Ld9 (yours)
6 wounds per shooting phase for Ld9 (mine)
The great advantage your version has is on misfiring (and a simplified misfire at that)
1 in 6 for mine, 1 in 36 for yours.
Your misfire is much more harsh to the crew, but this is probably fair considering how rare it would be.
In my version 1 in 6 chance to misfire, 1 in 6 chance of killing D3 crew (1 in 6 chance to accidently blast your army as well).
Your version 1 in 36 chance to misfire, certain death for all crew when it does.
Hmmm, thanks for the reply. I do have to admit the odds on that are quite overwhelming. I was thinking of giving it a range of 36".
Maybe change the strength to 4.
And change the leadership to -2
The mis-fire was to represent the awesome power of the machine. The main reason for using these rules as an idea was that I found it quite hard to understand. No offense or anything. What do you think of the possible changes?