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I had the idea for a core rule in a Blood Angels thread that seemed to hit an ok approval rating, so I'll repost it here so the people not interested in BA can see.

-Who has the rule?

All Astartes. From scouts to special characters. Anyone who, in the fluff, got a gene-seed from a primarch and went through a dozen surgeries to turn their body into a war machine. This DOES include chaos marines.

-okay, what rule?

Closer to monster than man: Due to the intense amount of alterations, the astartes' bodies are much better equipped to handle extreme damage that would place other races in mortal peril. As long as all models in the unit possess this special rule, any roll to wound made against a model with this rule automatically fails to wound on a roll of 2, in addition to the normal automatic failure of rolling a 1.

-What is the design intent of this rule?

Currently, if a unit of astartes models and a unit of 2 month old helpless babies (all stats .1) are out in the open, and each unit is hit by one of the following: battle cannon, ion accelerator, krak missile, lascannon, meltagun/fusion blaster, plasma, monstrous creature melee attacks, and many many more, there is no statistical difference between the marines and the pile of soon-to-be-dead babies. Assuming the same dice rolls, both units will go down at the same speed.

The intent of the rule is to up the survival rate of all marine models by 17% specifically against higher strength weapons. This would have no effect on any weapon strength 5 or lower. (But would have an effect on poison 2+, making it 3+ instead!)

Do they need this?

In my opinion, yes. Here, have a thread to yank the idea about.

Also, I would absolutely love to hear of any playtest results if someone decides to try the rule out in a game.

Better to move to a d20 system so there is room to differentiate between human and altered human.

One thing 40k DOESN'T need is more USR's (or indeed buffs to space marines for that matter).

I approve of the idea. Interestingly enough, it'd make Heavy Bolters, Big Shootas and other S5 anti-infantry weapons a little better relatively.

Sounds good but a bit strange. Maybe just make them all equivalent to plague marines with upgraded bolters to be like rapid fire 2/3? With appropriate point increase ofc.

Nope.

Well, maybe.

Remove this bonus for weapons that cause instant death and you've got a fairly reasonable rule against autocannons and assault cannons. (and eldar in general.)

 Scipio Africanus wrote:
Nope.

Well, maybe.

Remove this bonus for weapons that cause instant death and you've got a fairly reasonable rule against autocannons and assault cannons. (and eldar in general.)

That's exactly what the bonus is there for. Marines cost too much to be wounded at the same rate as gretchin. But making them T5 introduces a slew of problems. Marines wouldn't be able to kill each other, and smaller hordes would have a hell of a time trying to put them down. I mean, fluff-wise I could see it, but in games against masses of lasguns and cheap little s3 melee attacks, it might be a little over-the-top.

I believe the only design issue is the huge amount of s6+ in the game nowadays that treats marines like ratlings with armor, so that's specifically where this gun is aimed it.

How about any weapon of s5+ that does not inflict instant death either increases the roll it needs to wound by 1 (so 2+ becomes 3+) or re-rolls successful rolls to wound?

 rohansoldier wrote:
How about any weapon of s5+ that does not inflict instant death either increases the roll it needs to wound by 1 (so 2+ becomes 3+) or re-rolls successful rolls to wound?

As silvermk2 implied, there are a lot of special rules in the game, and cutting down on complications is important.

It's easy to remember: Hey I'm marines, I can't be swept.
It's annoying to try and remember say...soul blaze, a very poorly written rule. You might take some wounds and it might continue and we want you to wait to check for this at a time when you're not going to remember it.

It's easy to remember: Hey I'm marines, you have to wound me on at least 3's.

"s5-7 weapons wound me on 1 worse" is a little more complicated. Not much mind you, but it's definitely easier to overlook in the middle of a game.

I'm still of the opinion that marines should be at least a LITTLE better at surviving the big guns than gretchin. 33% survival as opposed to 17% really isn't asking all that much.

In order to match the fluff, Marines across the board certainly need buffs. That is not the issue.

The issue is just that it's not hard to get an army that includes as many Space Marines as your enemy has Orks, and this frequently happens.

As you can imagine, such battles would turn really silly really fast (Just look at the game Space Marine for what a single determined Marine with a CCW can do to a horde of Orks) or the Marine player would never ever be able to use more than a fraction of his collection unless he is facing other Marines.

GW apparently really likes the idea of being able to fill the board with Space Marines (And they want you to buy tons to get a suitably points-priced army) so Marines have rather pushed-down stats. I mean, a Guardsman Major or whatever (Company commander) can take three times as many gunshot wounds as a Marine in the same armour. seems fluffy breh

I can see no real way of fixing this at this point, especially not with the incredibly imprecise D6 system.

Honestly, I tried making 'fluff Marine' stats and played them against an Ork friend, and while we had fun and all, it just does not seem to work out in the current system.

I pray to the Dark Gods for a complete rules overhaul, honestly.

As a side note, the other T4 troops in the game are either much more resilient, or much cheaper. This is a factor at the heart of the issue.

Ork boys are a dime a dozen. Them dying in droves doesn't cost you the game.

Necrons survive 33% more of anything thrown at them regardless, 50% if you have an orb, so this change would NOT put marines over necrons in survivability.

Nurgle Daemons have a constant invuln, and are fairly cheap.

Out of all the T4 basic troops, it's just marine equivalents that get shafted by s6+, where the extra points they're paying for "increased survivability" on every model are totally wasted.


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 BrotherHaraldus wrote:
In order to match the fluff, Marines across the board certainly need buffs. That is not the issue.

The issue is just that it's not hard to get an army that includes as many Space Marines as your enemy has Orks, and this frequently happens.

As you can imagine, such battles would turn really silly really fast (Just look at the game Space Marine for what a single determined Marine with a CCW can do to a horde of Orks) or the Marine player would never ever be able to use more than a fraction of his collection unless he is facing other Marines.

GW apparently really likes the idea of being able to fill the board with Space Marines (And they want you to buy tons to get a suitably points-priced army) so Marines have rather pushed-down stats. I mean, a Guardsman Major or whatever (Company commander) can take three times as many gunshot wounds as a Marine in the same armour. seems fluffy breh

I can see no real way of fixing this at this point, especially not with the incredibly imprecise D6 system.

Honestly, I tried making 'fluff Marine' stats and played them against an Ork friend, and while we had fun and all, it just does not seem to work out in the current system.

I pray to the Dark Gods for a complete rules overhaul, honestly.

O.O what codex do you have where your marines cost 6 points a model and come in sets of 30? Or what ork dex is he using? You sure someone mean didn't photoshop in an extra digit into the cost in his codex?

If marines are outnumbering orks at the start of a game, someone went crazy on their list building. Probably both people actually. The only races that ever hope to outnumber orks are bare-bones tyranids and Imperial guard/chaos cultists. And all of those have worse stats and performance.

Yes, I've played Space Marine, and I know an actual fluff marine would cost over like 100 points per model, before you even start getting to fluff captains like Titus, or fluff ridiculous guys like Mephiston, who took out an ork army alone with no weapons or armor, and Draigo who...well who's Draigo.

The issue is that the stats for the tabletop game are dumbed down to ATTEMPT to make the game balanced, so the guy NOT playing marines can win. Unfortunately, at the moment, it's a little off-balance. (No one is going to argue this, right?) Thus, a minor change. I don't think the game is so far from balanced that it needs a total rules overhaul. Just a few tweaks here and there.

One of the issues is, as has been said, marines pay a lot of points for survivability of their models, and their models DON'T survive. You don't get what you pay for. It's fine on the low end, as they do survive lasgun fire, heavy flamers, pretty much everything s5 ap4 and worse only kills 1 marine for every 3 of other models that would've died. That works since the marine tends to cost 2 or even 3 times more. But it isn't working on the higher end. Armies in general have gotten a ton of firepower that invalidates the upside to marines and chaos marines over other races' troops. Atsknf and the like isn't even an issue when the firepower just kills the unit like they were guardsmen or gretchin.

To put it another way...let's say you've been playing necrons for a long time, and a new edition and a rash of new codices come out, and everyone's GOOD weapons, the ones they take even if they're not facing necrons, all have the special rule "kills necrons dead: no reanimation protocols roll." That'd be a bit out of whack right? I mean, you're paying points for that rule, and it's getting invalidated all over the place. This is pretty much what's going on with marines.

Marines have things to make them more survivable as it is. T4 and 3+ Armour.

If your opponent is using anti-vehicle weapons on your infantry, maybe you should have more vehicles.

niv-mizzet wrote:

It's easy to remember: Hey I'm marines, I can't be swept.
It's annoying to try and remember say...soul blaze, a very poorly written rule. You might take some wounds and it might continue and we want you to wait to check for this at a time when you're not going to remember it.

This is the reason people lose games. Every little point of damage you can do is good damage, no matter how obscure it is. Always make your opponent roll for things that are bad for him.

Jefffar wrote:
Marines have things to make them more survivable as it is. T4 and 3+ Armour.

If your opponent is using anti-vehicle weapons on your infantry, maybe you should have more vehicles.

If my opponent is using anti-vehicle weapons on my infantry, he's using the wrong tools for the wrong job, and that's to my advantage. A lascannon will take the whole game to pay for itself if it's hitting one marine at a time. If I was bringing vehicles to a game where they had an overflow of anti-vehicle, I'd also tell them "merry christmas" when I deployed, because at that point they have a pretty massive advantage. That's not what's going on though.

They're not using anti-vehicle on the infantry, they're using really good anti-infantry on the infantry. Lots of shots, wound everyone on 2's. Doesn't matter how tough they are, with the exception of like...eldar wraithguard who they might wound on 3's or 4's, depending on the gun. The thing that makes those guns great is that they pull double-duty as light anti-tank/anti-flyer. If you really want to get down to the core of the problem, perhaps its more of "most army's str6-8 guns are undercosted," but that's a lot harder to fix.

That's one of the reasons that some people (including me) advocate running some dark horse lists that utilize land raiders, purely because of the metagame. Even outside tournament or competitive settings, people run the good guns that cover lots of bases without being really expensive. It's part of the reason dark eldar love their dark lances and necrons love their gauss. Cheap, and can handle literally anything, given enough rolls. People don't run tons of lascannons because they're expensive, and if you don't have a shot at a heavy vehicle, the lascannon probably isn't paying for itself. It's also only one shot, and still isn't all that reliable when it comes to tank hunting, without say...throwing it in an imperial fist dev squad for tank hunters special rule. I've won a handful of games now just because I brought Land Raiders, and killed off the one or two things in their army that could hurt it. One involved grabbing a relic, hopping inside, and sitting there.

Of course if you run into the guy who's prepared for that, you become the paper in a scissors vs paper match.

As for the quote above. The point is that the T4, and a large amount of times, the 3+ AREN'T GETTING USED, they're getting bypassed. Our reanimation protocols that we're paying for unwillingly on every model are getting nullified by a bunch of guns that say "no reanimation protocols."

At this point, if I could play a codex called "naked marines" that don't have to take power armor (and not have to pay points for it,) I probably would. Then I could have an "underwear tide" list and actually put up a decent fight with my infantry.

I think that's called 'Orks'

Jefffar wrote:
Marines have things to make them more survivable as it is. T4 and 3+ Armour.

If your opponent is using anti-vehicle weapons on your infantry, maybe you should have more vehicles.

Marine vehicles basically suck in 6th. Especially against S 6/7. Try again.


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 Scipio Africanus wrote:

niv-mizzet wrote:

It's easy to remember: Hey I'm marines, I can't be swept.
It's annoying to try and remember say...soul blaze, a very poorly written rule. You might take some wounds and it might continue and we want you to wait to check for this at a time when you're not going to remember it.

This is the reason people lose games. Every little point of damage you can do is good damage, no matter how obscure it is. Always make your opponent roll for things that are bad for him.

No one bothers to HTH marines except Daemons and SW. Everyone else shoots them to death.

I don't see a reason why such would be necessary or warranted. Big guns are big guns for a reason.


A big HE tank shell will kill almost anything with terrifying effectiveness, you hit an 8 ton Elephant or a 180 pound Human with a 120mm HE shell from a tank, it's spaghetti sauce either way. likewise it shouldn't matter if you hit a Space Marine or a Grot with a Battlecannon, they should both be pasted fairly effectively. Likewise a Lascannon, capable of killing the most powerful tanks in the 41st millenium through their most defensible armor facings, aren't going to care about how much more resilient an SM's flesh is, it's still just flesh that's simply going to flash-boil into cauterized mist when hit by an energy weapon of such magnitude.

If you look at common infantry weapons and physical melee attacks, SM's are tremendously more resistant than a common human soldier. As they should be. However, there is a threshold where certain weapons are so powerful they just don't care, same concept as the Instant Death rule.

Martel732 wrote:


Marine vehicles basically suck in 6th. Especially against S 6/7. Try again.

To be fair, this is true for pretty much anyone that isn't Tau, Eldar or Necrons.

So a scatter laser is now a "big gun"? Or are you talking about ST 8+?

 Vaktathi wrote:
I don't see a reason why such would be necessary or warranted. Big guns are big guns for a reason.


A big HE tank shell will kill almost anything with terrifying effectiveness, you hit an 8 ton Elephant or a 180 pound Human with a 120mm HE shell from a tank, it's spaghetti sauce either way. likewise it shouldn't matter if you hit a Space Marine or a Grot with a Battlecannon, they should both be pasted fairly effectively. Likewise a Lascannon, capable of killing the most powerful tanks in the 41st millenium through their most defensible armor facings, aren't going to care about how much more resilient an SM's flesh is, it's still just flesh that's simply going to flash-boil into cauterized mist when hit by an energy weapon of such magnitude.

If you look at common infantry weapons and physical melee attacks, SM's are tremendously more resistant than a common human soldier. As they should be. However, there is a threshold where certain weapons are so powerful they just don't care, same concept as the Instant Death rule.

Martel732 wrote:


Marine vehicles basically suck in 6th. Especially against S 6/7. Try again.

To be fair, this is true for pretty much anyone that isn't Tau, Eldar or Necrons.

It's like people complaing about the ion cannon's overcharge (which is actually just a not as good battle cannon, so no, it's not cheesy or OP or LRBTs are too) killung marines. It's the primary weapon on a battle tank, iniantry won't survive a hit from it.

Ugh. More ways to fix the game that introduce further exceptions. No. Dislike intensely.

Counter proposal? This is the best I've seen so far.

Martel732 wrote:
Counter proposal? This is the best I've seen so far.

Leave things as they are. Your starting point of 'Marines die too easily' seems flawed and based on a very broad opinion so far. By all means, continue the discussion amongst yourselves as I will drop out now, but I wanted to make sure there was at least one dissenting opinion.

Basically, marines die exactly as fast as they should, given the weapons of the 40k universe. However, I'm also all for almost completely removing Feel No Pain; And They Shall Know No Fear being nerfed to the ground and other ideas that strip the game back a lot further than it is these days.

 Slaanesh-Devotee wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Counter proposal? This is the best I've seen so far.

Leave things as they are. Your starting point of 'Marines die too easily' seems flawed and based on a very broad opinion so far. By all means, continue the discussion amongst yourselves as I will drop out now, but I wanted to make sure there was at least one dissenting opinion.

Basically, marines die exactly as fast as they should, given the weapons of the 40k universe. However, I'm also all for almost completely removing Feel No Pain; And They Shall Know No Fear being nerfed to the ground and other ideas that strip the game back a lot further than it is these days.

Game=/=fluff, otherwise Marines ought to get a lot higher stats than they do.

Right, and gamewise they're fine. If they really are dying too fast (which I'm not convinced about), lower their cost.

Martel732 wrote:
Counter proposal? This is the best I've seen so far.

Reduce the strength of high RoF, weak AP weapons. With the exception of Baleflamers, everything that has AP3 or better is an anti-tank gun. Multilasers? Scatter lasers? Assault cannons?

These are all AP4 or worse. These are anti-infantry weapons. Highly effective anti-infantry weapons. In the case of these three weapons especially, their high Strength score is supposed to represent their insane rate of fire compared to equivalent weapons.

Remember, the Assault Cannon (S6) fires the same rounds as a Heavy Stubber (S4).

So, the answer to the problem of Marines being slaughtered by high strength anti-infantry weapons is to cap strength based on AP value. Say, anything with an AP of 4, 5 or 6 can only have a maximum Strength of 5. This has a similar effect to setting a maximum 'to wound' calculation, but keeps things more in line with sanity - a krak missile is still going to turn a Marine into chunky salsa, because anything powerful enough to ignore power armour is just going to go straight through a living creature, even one whose ribcage is as hard as steel (Which is still weaker than ceramite). Then for things like the Multilaser and Assault Cannon, push their rate of fire back up to represent their rate of fire, or give them Rending.

 Slaanesh-Devotee wrote:

Leave things as they are. Your starting point of 'Marines die too easily' seems flawed and based on a very broad opinion so far. By all means, continue the discussion amongst yourselves as I will drop out now, but I wanted to make sure there was at least one dissenting opinion.

Basically, marines die exactly as fast as they should, given the weapons of the 40k universe. However, I'm also all for almost completely removing Feel No Pain; And They Shall Know No Fear being nerfed to the ground and other ideas that strip the game back a lot further than it is these days.

It sounds like you enjoy apocalypse games more, where models just fly off the table in droves and you don't really have to worry about individual statlines and the like.

I, for one, enjoy a bountiful amount of special rules, many varying armies, and general asymmetrical gameplay. Obviously some of the rules are clunky, like soul blaze, and should be streamlined a bit, but the overall scale of the game appeals to me, where the whole army and its synergy matters, but the individual models that make up the army also matter.

I think if you read the full fluff explanation of a marine's bio-engineering, you might have a different take on how much it should take to kill them. They're not really even human anymore. They're biological war-machines.


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Oh, and again, if anyone has any playtest data, I'd love to see it. I won't get a chance to play until I get through my work week.

I don't think any of this is a good idea. Marines are already tough, and highly resilient to standard infantry guns. Things that are AP3 or less are designed for the very function of ignoring armour like this. The gun is made with the objective of killing people in mind, it is going to be pretty good at it.

Why exactly would a battlecannon not turn a marine into pulp? only exceptionally blast-resistant armour (so, terminators) has any chance of withstanding the forces that will crush a marine to bits inside his own suit, and that's only factoring in the shockwave from an explosion, not even the whole shrapnel and fire part. Something like an Autocannon wounds easily on a 2 because they not only have a high RoF (as Furyou mentioned) but fire large-caliber shells that once they -do- pierce the armour, they will (or, at least 5/6 times) instantly cause a fatal wound. The only protection is your suit, once it fails, you're done.

No, marines aren't as tough int he game as they are in the fluff. But neither is anything.

Ehm.

Sparkadia, are you arguing that Marines are fine gamewise because of fluff reasons or balance reasons?

I am not sure if I see what this thread is trying to do. Either it is trying to make Marines fluffy-tough (Almost entirely doomed to fail in the current system) or it tries to make them balanced gamewise (Which they arguably are, the issue is just that nobody sees it since there are other troops choices that are too good, and weapons that are too good at killing Marines for their steep cost, so Marines seem UP in comparison.)

 Sparkadia wrote:
Marines are already tough, and highly resilient to standard infantry guns.

This wouldn't make them any tougher against standard infantry guns. Those tend to wound marines on 5's, 4's or 3's in the case of the really strong tau ones. I mentioned earlier that I find this to be working nice, and didn't want it messed with, so a toughness raise was out of the question.

Things that are AP3 or less are designed for the very function of ignoring armour like this. The gun is made with the objective of killing people in mind, it is going to be pretty good at it.

This suggestion wouldn't negate AP3, or change its function at all. Marines would still die when successfully wounded by ap3 or better.

Why exactly would a battlecannon not turn a marine into pulp?

Because you roll low to wound? Two questions for you:
A: If a battlecannon/any big super cannon should instantly kill any infantry similar to strength D, why bother with not wounding on 1's?
B: Why exactly should a gretchin stand the same chance of living as a power-armored marine?

No, marines aren't as tough int he game as they are in the fluff. But neither is anything.

I'm using the fluff as an example for part of the reasoning, sure, but its just a support. The main argument in the crunch game is actual game balance. At the end of the day, in the actual game stats, the balance is the goal, fluff be damned.

 Slaanesh-Devotee wrote:
Right, and gamewise they're fine. If they really are dying too fast (which I'm not convinced about), lower their cost.

Line up some marines against IG, Tau, Eldar, or shooty Orks sometime.

I instantly disagree with Marines getting more buffs. Wait until the next SM codex. They'll get stupid good again. Always do.