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Proposed this off-handedly in one of the General threads about 8th edition gripes. Curious what people think.

Basically, if you're Steadfast, you divide whatever you lost the combat by two (round up as per rules). So if you lose by 4, you instead roll at -2. Lose by 7, you roll at -4. This would boost undead armies and give them a reason to have Steadfast to begin with (less losses to Unstable). This would also make Steadfast still a good thing to have, but make combat res more relevant when things are really overwhelming and the combat is clearly not going their way.

This would have no effect on balancing elite deathstars and would only serve to nerf units that rely on staying around and whittling down the opponent.

~xalfej

^yeah. Steadfast is really to protect guys who AREN'T going to do any wounds. Like none or almost none. Why would you ever take them? Whether they test at -6 or -12 they are still breaking. Whereas Ogres can dish a ton of wounds to anything they face--assuming they ever lose combat.

Fair enough. I just see a lot of griping about it.

Lots of people are unhappy about it but that's the price to pay for step-up + additional ranks of fighting
otherwise, cheap low-quality troops have absolutely no use in the game
That would render useless whole armies (or parts thereof): O&G, Skavens, infantry Empire, infantry Bretonnia ...
I know you play WoC so you don't play the same side of the game, I'm used to play large quantity of crappy guys and Steadfast is the only thing that holds the line

What about steadfast working the way stubborn used to. You can either use the general ld with the negative modifiers or your own without the modifiers.

This when combined with a BSB would still allow standard troops to hold the line but garbage units couldn't become inescapable tarpits.

TanKoL wrote:
Lots of people are unhappy about it but that's the price to pay for step-up + additional ranks of fighting
otherwise, cheap low-quality troops have absolutely no use in the game
That would render useless whole armies (or parts thereof): O&G, Skavens, infantry Empire, infantry Bretonnia ...
I know you play WoC so you don't play the same side of the game, I'm used to play large quantity of crappy guys and Steadfast is the only thing that holds the line

Yeah, I don't think I've ever had a unit that could claim Steadfast, so I'm not exactly the unbiased expert here! I haven't ever really had much of a problem with it either, so I guess I'm trying to fix something that isn't broken. Still, it's something I had tossed out in the 8th gripe thread that people seemed to like, and was curious for more opinions on it.

I think steadfast should work the way it does, but it should be done so that you are steadfast on the base LD of the unit.

Another possibility is that, if a steadfast unit loses, you can choose between the general's LD, the BSB reroll, or stubborn.

A proposed rule in this vein that's been tossed around a lot in the past is -1/2Ld when charged in the flank/rear. That way, you're less likely to hold, but not essentially guaranteed to run, either.

Warpsolution wrote:
A proposed rule in this vein that's been tossed around a lot in the past is -1/2Ld when charged in the flank/rear. That way, you're less likely to hold, but not essentially guaranteed to run, either.

I like this rule as well. This way if a unit would be charged from both flanks and rear it would suffer a - 4 ld. However if a unit is charged from the flank/rear it's ranks don't count to the combat resolution. So I don't think -1/2 ld for beeing charged flank/rear is necessary.

devestator 7777777 wrote:
I like this rule as well. This way if a unit would be charged from both flanks and rear it would suffer a - 4 ld. However if a unit is charged from the flank/rear it's ranks don't count to the combat resolution. So I don't think -1/2 ld for beeing charged flank/rear is necessary.

First, I'm pretty sure that it'd be -1 for whoever has the most units in flanks, not -1/flank. Like musicians, banners, and ranks.
Second, most units that rely on Steadfast don't care if they lose their rank bonus to CR. As long as you've got more ranks, you're still testing on that unmodified Ld. This rule would modify that number.