I was reading the MC thread and this struck me as the chief reason why Vehicles are weaker then MC even if they cost the same or in a lot of cases more then MCs.

Would you be ok with removing the vehicle damage chart? So that instead of suffering results on the damage table you instead just lose hull points.

Second question is would you be ok with changing glancing hits to 1/2 a HP instead of a full HP? This reflects the loss of the damage chart and also makes vehicles even MORE durable, and it has the added bonus of causing High rate of fire weapons with low strength to lose some of their benefits making slower firing, higher strength weapons more viable again.

Personally no. half damage would be pain in the butt to track. rather it would be easier to increase hull points across the board.

it also doesn't change the fact that any pens will still feth it up including a straight auto kill.

the whole HP mechanic needs to change.

Vehicles should move to the T and armor saves system with additional rules for critical hits. in a way that when the model has lost its list hp/wound, it could possible explode on a 6 (since its pretty cool)

additionally a critical system should be added to MC.

I'm going with rewrite the game from the ground up.

I think it would be simpler to do either: 1) Make it so you can only loose 1 HP to glances per turn (no limit on pens, obviously) OR 2) give vehicles an armour save based on their AV (14 = 2+, 13= 3+, 12=4+, etc.) Another 'fix' would be to balance out the buffs the (G)MC rules give to things that are obviously not MCs (Tau stuff, Wraith knights/Lords, Dreadknights, etc.)

 Desubot wrote:
Personally no. half damage would be pain in the butt to track. rather it would be easier to increase hull points across the board.

it also doesn't change the fact that any pens will still feth it up including a straight auto kill.

the whole HP mechanic needs to change.

Vehicles should move to the T and armor saves system with additional rules for critical hits. in a way that when the model has lost its list hp/wound, it could possible explode on a 6 (since its pretty cool)

additionally a critical system should be added to MC.

Basically if a vehicle or MC gets wounded on a 6, other than by things that only wound on a 6, they should get a roll on a critical effect table. which should really just be 1-3 nothing 4, cant move, 5 cant shoot, 6 an additional wound, and maybe on a 7 give it the Spartain style mag explosion where you deal an additional D3 wounds but if it would cause the model to die, then it explodes.

edith god i quoted instead of edited again feth me.

Honestly, all vehicles should follow the same damage rules as Super Heavies, no sub-damage like crew shaken, immobilized, etc, just explodes on a 7 or loss of hull point for everything less, nothing else. This makes vehicles slightly more durable because they don't risk diminishing returns and gets rid of the annoying damage effect tracking.

I'd like to see the transition have penetrating hits follow the vehicle damage rules for super heavies and allow vehicles an armour save on glancing hits only (a penetrating hit is exactly that it gets through the armour) but on the glance you have a chance to save.

Also better armour give a better save as mentioned about 14= 2+, 13=3+ etc.

 Desubot wrote:
Personally no. half damage would be pain in the butt to track. rather it would be easier to increase hull points across the board.

it also doesn't change the fact that any pens will still feth it up including a straight auto kill.

the whole HP mechanic needs to change.

Vehicles should move to the T and armor saves system with additional rules for critical hits. in a way that when the model has lost its list hp/wound, it could possible explode on a 6 (since its pretty cool)

additionally a critical system should be added to MC.

Well no not really, at hte moment you have to keep track of dmg results such as immobilized, shaken, stunned weapon destroyed, that takes just as much effort to keep track of as half hull point damage.

It does change the Pen results. Without a damage table their is no 7 to roll therefore the vehicles will NEVER explode. This is a good game mechanic but it was so poorly done that it ruined vehicles in 7th edition. Maybe when vehicles run out of Hull points they explode, that would be fluffy as well. But they shouldn't just randomly explode to 1 shot, yeah it happens in real life but this is 40k not real life. Im rather sure that I didn't see any Necrons or Eldar in Afghanistan.

The amount of nonsense needs to be lowered, not increased. MCs should be way more vulnerable than they are currently.

How about monstrous creatures lose 1 strength, toughness, and initiative per wound they have suffered. Regaining wounds returns these stats but not in excess of their base value.

In addition to this smash should count the ap of the attack as equal to the to wound roll (min roll required).

Secondly glances on vehicles should have to roll again on a glance table, where a 5+ takes a hull point. All other results are nothing (faux save on glances) also with ap modifiers.

There are a lot of things that need to be done for vehicles to be relevent, especially compared to MCs.

A: Grav weapons don't affect vehicles at all

B: D weapons restricted to Lords of War slots, in turn restricted to 3K+ points; 'lesser' lords of war like knights that are playable in smaller games no longer have access to Str D weapons or stomps.

C: Reduce Str. or RoF for many of the other weapons introduced in recent years. As a benchmark, lascannons should be the go-to long range anti-tank weapon for imperial factions, and should be towards the high end generally, though not the best in the game.

D: weaken vehicle damage chart, but don't remove it

E: Increase armor values or hull points on many vehicles

F: Introduce an injury chart for Monstrous creatures similar in concept and effect to the vehicle damage chart

G: Make some of the MCs that are blatantly dudes in robot suits into Walkers like they should have been to start (dreadknight, tau stuff, etc).


honestly, it's so much that the game would need a 3e style reboot from the ground up to do it. baby step edition changes and codex updates won't fix it. Until then, the game's just boned.

SemperMortis wrote:

 Desubot wrote:
Personally no. half damage would be pain in the butt to track. rather it would be easier to increase hull points across the board.

it also doesn't change the fact that any pens will still feth it up including a straight auto kill.

the whole HP mechanic needs to change.

Vehicles should move to the T and armor saves system with additional rules for critical hits. in a way that when the model has lost its list hp/wound, it could possible explode on a 6 (since its pretty cool)

additionally a critical system should be added to MC.

Well no not really, at hte moment you have to keep track of dmg results such as immobilized, shaken, stunned weapon destroyed, that takes just as much effort to keep track of as half hull point damage.

It does change the Pen results. Without a damage table their is no 7 to roll therefore the vehicles will NEVER explode. This is a good game mechanic but it was so poorly done that it ruined vehicles in 7th edition. Maybe when vehicles run out of Hull points they explode, that would be fluffy as well. But they shouldn't just randomly explode to 1 shot, yeah it happens in real life but this is 40k not real life. Im rather sure that I didn't see any Necrons or Eldar in Afghanistan.

Eh im just saying rather than bothering with half points make it just regular points and double up on pens instead. ultimately the same thing.

also yeah i really would rather the chances of an explosion happening only when the vehicle has lost a substantial amount of hp. instead of off the bat on T1

Though to rehaul everything a LOT of things need to be fixed at which point you might as well rehaul the game.

There's really no good reason for HP's or attempting to salvage their current concept. We have two options really.

Go back to the 5E vehicle system and apply the 7E transport rules to avoid issues with Rhinos that only cared about damage results that killed/immobilozed them (though re-inteoduce assault from stationary transports...but thats another thread).

Or, just drop the table altogether and make vehicles into T/sv models with wounds and saves.

These would be the simplest and most effective options.

 ClassicCarraway wrote:
Honestly, all vehicles should follow the same damage rules as Super Heavies, no sub-damage like crew shaken, immobilized, etc, just explodes on a 7 or loss of hull point for everything less, nothing else. This makes vehicles slightly more durable because they don't risk diminishing returns and gets rid of the annoying damage effect tracking.

On the increasingly rare occassions we play 40k we use this rule

5e vehicle damage would work fine if they also allowed for a way to wreck vehicles without the need for a lucky roll.

Perhaps add the HP system but only AP 1 or 2 weapons remove a HP. That way only a weapon designed to pierce heavy armor could actually finish off a tank.

I'm moving into the 'give vehicles toughness and wounds' camp myself. But if this was done, they should be resistant or immune to Sniper, Poison, Fleshbane and Instant Death by force weapons etc. But Ordinance, Haywire, Lance, Melta and Armorbane should inflict extra damage (just in a different way). And all vehicles should have Fearless, Relentless and Hammer Of Wrath too.

My idea would be, vehicles loose wounds like everything else, but at the end of a phase in which they lost a wound, roll a D6 (and only one D6, regardless of how many wounds they lost). On the roll of a 1, one weapon chosen by the player is destroyed. And when they loose their last wound, roll a D6 to see what happens to the vehicle:

1-2: Immobilized: Vehicle retains last wound but can no longer move and is WS:0 for the rest of the game.
3-4: Wrecked: Same as usual.
5-6: Explodes: Dido.

Also, when attacking a vehicle (except a still mobile walker) in close combat, all attacks are AP:2. This is to try and capture the current trend of vehicles being vulnerable in cc. Since vehicles will be very tough most of the time, wounding them will still be a hassle.

Lets take a Leman Russ for example:

WS:1 BS:3 S:9 T:9 W:6 I:1 A:1 LD:8 SV:3+

So as you can see, you'll need to be at least strength 5 to even hurt a Russ, and even then, you'll need sixes, and it'll probably get it's armor save.

Then there's the Rhino:

WS:1 BS:4 S:9 T:8 W:3 I:1 A:1 LD:8 SV:4+

So it's still really tough, but now it's starting to become vulnerable to auto cannons and krak grenades.

This is really WIP in progress though.

Nah, you'd be much better-off just adding 1HP to every standard vehicle in the game to mitigate the 'Glanced-to-Death by Bolters' issue, and I actually like the module damage. It's quick and intuitive and reflects what happens to vehicles in battle pretty accurately. I certainly prefer the current system to what we had in 4th ed.

Still prefer to see how 3+ armor on all vehicles except flyers/skimmers having 4+ would work. Would help mitigate the whole "glance to death" issue from those high strength AP gak weapons like scatter lasers, gauss flayers, etc.

Also I would like to see a vehicle damage table more along the lines of.
1-2 Shaken (can only fire 1 weapon at full BS while stationary, moving is all snap shots)
3-4 Stunned (only snap shots, half movement)
5 Weapon Damaged (a weapon is destroyed)
6 Engine Damaged (permanent half movement)
7 Critical Damage (D3 additional hull points)
8+ Explode (D3+3 hull points,D6" blast Str 4 AP-)

The problem that I have with most of these suggestions is that they make vehicles tougher against mid strength multi shot weapons (good) but they also make them better against single shot high strength weapons which ought to be good at killing vehicles but which already suck at it.

Personally I'd eliminate hull points and glances and add an additional +1 to the damage table for each point that you exceed the armour value.

E.g. Lascannon rolls a six to pen AV12. That's 15, 12 was needed to pen so you get +3 and +1 for being AP2.

AT weapons are now good again and all purpose guns are poor against decent vehicles (okay against weak vehicles) but might shake, stun, immobilise, weapon destroyed, etc.

Have one mechanic to govern vehicles and MCs.

Toughness, wounds, armour saves for all, as far as I'm concerned.

The issue of multiple wounds can be solved by using special anti-vehicle rules. Ones that inflict multiple wounds with single hits.

Here's some really basic suggestions:

Armorbane: Always wound a vehicle on a 2+. To wound rolls of 6 inflict instant death. (I always felt that fleshbane should be the same for living targets).

Haywire: haywire hits automatically wound vehicles with no armour saves allowed

Lance: no idea

Melta: at half range, they inflict double wounds

Ordinance: again, no idea.

I still think wounds and toughness is the wrong direction. (G)MC rules are wonky becuase non MCs are being shoved in there. doing this more would not be a fix. Applying an armor save to vehicles both a) limits the ability to glance vehicles to death with standard guns, and b) doesn't punish AT weapons as they are generally a high AP already. The same could possibly ring true if you limited the damage glances could do, however this effects every weapon that doesn't auto pen. the vehicle. If we make tanks MCs then we have to deal with things like: your rhino being poisoned, your tank being MORE vulnerable to 'basic' weaponry (unless these tanks end up being T: 9 or 10), stuff like charging with your tank, etc.


Tl;dr: making more things MCs is not a fix for currently weaker vehicle rules.

Eliminating vehicle rules fixes the weak vehicle rules.

One mechanic. Then you don't have to worry about glancing, or penetrating. All big units that currently fall under the MC or Vehicle rules gets rolled in under one unit type, and then two new USRs/unit types are introduced: Biological and Mechanical. Obviously poison wouldn't work against a riptide (like it currently does), so you assign Mechanical to a riptide, and now its affected by all the special rules that logically would hurt them more. Same thing for Biological creatures who don't really care about haywire. All heavy weapons can now be worked to fill a role of anti-big things, where some specialize in mechanical stuff (haywire) while others focus on living stuff (poison). You'd still end up with a bunch of weapons that work reasonably well against MCs and Vehicles, and other weapons that would be more specialized to dealing with the mechanical constructs and others for biological monsters.

I would keep the damage chart and dump glances alltogether.

Blacksails nailed it. That's exactly what I was thinking of, but couldn't find the words to describe it.

That fix still leaves low rof weapons out in the cold.

I see what you mean, however I dislike that in the sense that it both adds more special rules, and continues to play on the fact that at the moment MC rules are strong. In the parallel universe where vehicles are better, the opposite argument is happening

We're this change to happen, melta would have to be changed, grav would be buffed against vehicles, and other such things unless we add a TON of changes to specify what can and cannot work against mechanical units. This also leaves the problem of being able to be '6-ed' to death by small arms fire (again, unless we make them T: 9+, but that still means pulse weaponry will glance to death as well)

Large, powerful non-D weapons need to inflict multiple wounds. I hate to go all 2nd ed here, but that's the corner that GW has painted itself into.

Yes, we would need to bring back multiple wound inflicting weapons but that's not exactly difficult.

Like I said before, Armourbane could be changed to "always damages a vehicle on 2+, and to wound rolls of 6 inflict instant death" for example. With that, a Leman Russ Vanquisher would be a deadly tank hunter like it's supposed to be. Assuming that a Landraider is toughness 10 with a 2+ armour save, it easily bypasses that toughness, ignores it's armour save and has a 1 in 6 change of outright wrecking it in one hit. No further effect on non vehicles.

Haywire can be auto wounds a vehicle with no armour saves at all.

AP:1 weapons can inflict 2 wounds on a model (so they become decent at taking out MCs as well).

Melta weapons can inflict extra wounds at half range.

Lance can inflict extra wounds at any range.

I beleive vehicle HP should be doubled, the current AV turned into an equivilant Toughness and vehicles be given an Armor Save. Might want to give MC's some extra HP (maybe +2) considering the next step.

Likewise, weapons with Strength 7-8 should deal D3 wounds (to a single target) and weapons with Strength 9-10 should deal D6 wounds (to a single target). Strength D would deal 2d6 wounds (to a single target). Because of this, you could dump the Instant Death rule for weapon Strength exceeding double toughness.

This would make vehicles more resistant to just being glanced out, and turn anti-vehicle weapons into the nightmare weapons they should be. Likewise, the MC vs. Walker debate becomes mostly moot (except for a few effects, like poison, haywire and such).

And most of all, gets rid of the annoyingly archaic Vehicle Damage table.

Before we throw the metaphorical baby out with the bath water, vehicles have an advantage monstrous creatures don't, they are immune to anything having to do with leadership and initiative. This makes them immune to a good chunk of maledictions, and quite a few special effects. You can't get rid of the vehicle damage table without addressing that, or vehicles will turn into monstrous creatures +1, and the power creep will continue unabated.

The issue is that monstrous creatures are so good, and compete for the same roles, that they make vehicles look like garbage. So Instead of trying to bring vehicles up to monstrous creatures, why not bring them down to vehicles.

So here is my if I ran the zoo suggestion, make low ap weapons just as effective against MC as they are against vehicles. AP 2 weapons should be strength D for MCs on a 6 to wound, and AP 1 weapons will be strength D on 5 or a 6 to wound.

 Stormonu wrote:
I beleive vehicle HP should be doubled, the current AV turned into an equivilant Toughness and vehicles be given an Armor Save. Might want to give MC's some extra HP (maybe +2) considering the next step.

Likewise, weapons with Strength 7-8 should deal D3 wounds (to a single target) and weapons with Strength 9-10 should deal D6 wounds (to a single target). Strength D would deal 2d6 wounds (to a single target). Because of this, you could dump the Instant Death rule for weapon Strength exceeding double toughness.

This would make vehicles more resistant to just being glanced out, and turn anti-vehicle weapons into the nightmare weapons they should be. Likewise, the MC vs. Walker debate becomes mostly moot (except for a few effects, like poison, haywire and such).

And most of all, gets rid of the annoyingly archaic Vehicle Damage table.

Its ether that or things do additional wounds for how much you roll above what you needed.
kinda like the warmachine kinda thing.

would give a great bonus to single shot high str weapons.

though this would hurt a lot of multi wound low T models.

though this would change a lot of the core mechanics :/

No to the 1st suggestion and yes to the second.

The Vehicle Damage Table is okay with me, but I do agree Glancing Hits should only take 1/2 a hull point instead of 1 full hull point.

I feel like an armour save for vehicles, but only for pens. If you pass the save for the pen, then it's reverted to a glance. You don't get saves for glances.

 QuazzaP wrote:
I feel like an armour save for vehicles, but only for pens. If you pass the save for the pen, then it's reverted to a glance. You don't get saves for glances.

But its insanely easy to glance. its literally the biggest weakness of vehicles in the first place. i dont get the logic.

I agree with the others on this. Do away with glancing vehicles and go back to 5th edition and use 7th edition rules/damage table.

 Desubot wrote:

 QuazzaP wrote:
I feel like an armour save for vehicles, but only for pens. If you pass the save for the pen, then it's reverted to a glance. You don't get saves for glances.

But its insanely easy to glance. its literally the biggest weakness of vehicles in the first place. i dont get the logic.

I'm not sure I follow your math,
Armor 14 = T10
armor 13 = T9
armor 12 = T8

Generally speaking, vehicles have higher toughness equivalents than similarly priced MCs. The problem isn't that it's insanely easy to get glances, anymore than it's insanely easy to get wounds on toughness 8 MCs. Armor save is a no go as well, since most s7+ weapons will have a decent AP value (3 and below). The Big difference is the chance to bypass the hull points of a vehicle by using low AP weapons. We can either get rid of this, or we can add it to MC in the form of low AP weapons getting a chance to have Strength D against MCs, say on a wound roll of 6 for AP 2, and on a 5 or 6 for AP 1.

 Glitcha wrote:
I agree with the others on this. Do away with glancing vehicles and go back to 5th edition and use 7th edition rules/damage table.

Doesn't that make them stupid durable?

Fundamentally do we want the same guns that are good at killing MCs to be good at killing vehicles or do we want them to be different categories of target.

That needs to be decided before any potential fixes can be evaluated.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Grimgold wrote:

 Desubot wrote:

 QuazzaP wrote:
I feel like an armour save for vehicles, but only for pens. If you pass the save for the pen, then it's reverted to a glance. You don't get saves for glances.

But its insanely easy to glance. its literally the biggest weakness of vehicles in the first place. i dont get the logic.

I'm not sure I follow your math,
Armor 14 = T10
armor 13 = T9
armor 12 = T8

Generally speaking, vehicles have higher toughness equivalents than similarly priced MCs. The problem isn't that it's insanely easy to get glances, anymore than it's insanely easy to get wounds on toughness 8 MCs. Armor save is a no go as well, since most s7+ weapons will have a decent AP value (3 and below). The Big difference is the chance to bypass the hull points of a vehicle by using low AP weapons. We can either get rid of this, or we can add it to MC in the form of low AP weapons getting a chance to have Strength D against MCs, say on a wound roll of 6 for AP 2, and on a 5 or 6 for AP 1.

Firstly you're forgetting side armour. Lots of vehicles are 10 or 11 on the sides.

Secondly, there are lots of AP4 mid strength weapons. Vehicles are dying to loss of hull points (which they don't have enough of thanks to no armour save and less access to cover saves) not to destroyed results on the damage table. This is why the traditional anti tank weapons are out of favour for mid strength high RoF weapons. If the damage table was the big weakness of vehicles then AP1/2 weapons would be the premier vehicle killers. They are not.

Which vehicles have 10 side armor, rhinos? Seriously there are four types of vehicles:

1.) Those with good armor (land raiders/monolith)
2.) Those that can jink (skimmers)
3.) those who have good armor and can jink (necrons/tau)
4.) those with poor armor and no jink (rhinos)

You are not going to make a good argument for balance with vehicles from number 4, because whatever you do to make them workable, will overpower 1-3 (especially 3).

pm713 wrote:

 Glitcha wrote:
I agree with the others on this. Do away with glancing vehicles and go back to 5th edition and use 7th edition rules/damage table.

Doesn't that make them stupid durable?

Glancing hits would no longer matter, only pins.

Grimgold wrote:
Which vehicles have 10 side armor, rhinos?

Chimeras are 12/10/10
Rhinos are 11/11/10
Predators are 13/11/10
Tau vehicles are 12/11/10 and 13/12/10
Necrons vehicles are 11/11/11 (which is good armour according to you)

There are only a handful of vehicles with side armour better than 11 (Russ, hammerhead) and incredibly few better than 12 so you're saying that virtually all non-skimmer vehicles should be rubbish so as not to overpower landraiders and skimmers?

Since landraiders and skimmers weren't over powered in 3rd and 5th (the editions where vehicles were most powerful) that clearly isn't correct.

All marine vehicles effectively are AV 11. Their side arcs are so huge that their fronts don't matter.

My major concern is that glances are the one of the only ways Orks can destroy vehicles. Outside of close combat with Power Klaws and Kill Saws, some of the only (semi)reliable sources of anti-vehicle weaponry the Orks have are Rokkits and Deffgunz. And those largely rely on glances. Bringing back the old Deff Rolla might help, but every other high strength weapon either kills its wielder, isn't actually high strength sometimes, or is wildly inconsistent and unpredictable.

S8 is perfectly capable of penetrating most vehicles.

What orks lack is AP1/2 on decent strength (a bigger problem in 5th than in 7th).

Lets also not forget about those Glancing weapons like haywire and grav.

it does quite a lot of work.

they really need to fix the whole grav double immobilized sillyness. (also immobilize really need to be temporary or otherwise given to MC as well.

I like the idea of having an armour save against glancing hits, means that an AP2 glance should still strip a hull point every time, but massed fire will be significantly weaker.


The other big improvement would be for GW to get their heads out of their asses and stop using the Monstrous Creature rules for things that clearly aren't creatures. It makes little sense that a Wraithknight should ignore the melta rule but be highly vulnerable to poison. Also force weapons seem to be one of the most dangerous weapons to them, though that might make a little more sense fluff-wise.

They should just be walkers like everyone else, as at least that way they could actually suffer weapon damage and such like the rest of us, as right now an MC fights at 100% effectiveness even on its last Wound.


I would also support a larger change towards ditching the vehicle specific rules in favour of defining Toughness/Wounds based vehicles properly, as this would also fix "this is clearly a vehicle to everyone but GW" MC's, e.g- we should finally get an Immune to Poison rule (I mean, what was the point of defining separate Poison and Fleshbane effects without poison immunity?), have them suffer damage or fire fewer weapons as they lose Wounds etc.

 Haravikk wrote:
I like the idea of having an armour save against glancing hits, means that an AP2 glance should still strip a hull point every time, but massed fire will be significantly weaker.


The other big improvement would be for GW to get their heads out of their asses and stop using the Monstrous Creature rules for things that clearly aren't creatures. It makes little sense that a Wraithknight should ignore the melta rule but be highly vulnerable to poison. Also force weapons seem to be one of the most dangerous weapons to them, though that might make a little more sense fluff-wise.

They should just be walkers like everyone else, as at least that way they could actually suffer weapon damage and such like the rest of us, as right now an MC fights at 100% effectiveness even on its last Wound.


I would also support a larger change towards ditching the vehicle specific rules in favour of defining Toughness/Wounds based vehicles properly, as this would also fix "this is clearly a vehicle to everyone but GW" MC's, e.g- we should finally get an Immune to Poison rule (I mean, what was the point of defining separate Poison and Fleshbane effects without poison immunity?), have them suffer damage or fire fewer weapons as they lose Wounds etc.

There are so many classification issues its not even funny. its why the straight T and armor save idea + bio/mechanical would be the most straight forward. it streamlines the game which can only be a good thing at the moment. (not to say a super streamlined game is a good thing)

 Scott-S6 wrote:

Grimgold wrote:
Which vehicles have 10 side armor, rhinos?

Chimeras are 12/10/10
Rhinos are 11/11/10
Predators are 13/11/10
Tau vehicles are 12/11/10 and 13/12/10
Necrons vehicles are 11/11/11 (which is good armour according to you)

There are only a handful of vehicles with side armour better than 11 (Russ, hammerhead) and incredibly few better than 12 so you're saying that virtually all non-skimmer vehicles should be rubbish so as not to overpower landraiders and skimmers?

Since landraiders and skimmers weren't over powered in 3rd and 5th (the editions where vehicles were most powerful) that clearly isn't correct.

Necron vehicles have 13/13/11 until they take their first pen (something that would require actual tank hunting weapons to accomplish), they also have jink (effectively doubling their 4 hull points), and ignore shaken and stunned results. So yes, they are among the toughest vehicles currently in game. As for your list, the first two are transports, and unless your argument is that transports should be able to soak massive amounts of fire, I think it's safe to exclude them. The third is the lamest battle tank in the game that isn't piloted by orks, and the last two have jink and better armor than you stated.

With that out of the way, let me correct a few misconceptions before I restate my point. First you got causality wrong on why high strength multishot weapons are coming into favor, it's not because they are awesome against vehicles (they are demonstrably not), it's because they are effective against MCs. The current Meta is loaded with MCs, they are tough, have a host of rules that make them awesome, and generally carry huge amounts of firepower. You need high strength and a lot of shots to take them down, lances, las cannons and melta are laughably bad at getting the required number of wounds. So this forces armies to choose between weapons that are good against vehicles only, or weapons that might be ok against vehicles and good against MCs. Which leads to my second issue, vehicles aren't bad, but anytime there is a competition between MCs and vehicles, vehicles loose. The Tau and the eldar are two good examples, eldar vehicles aren't bad, but compared to the stupid good wraith knights, they are subpar weapons platforms, rocking a similar price. Hammerheads aren't bad, they are fairly tough, have decent fire power, but with riptides on the same army list you would have to be touched in the head to take them. With vehicles being rare, and loads of MC, it's a no brainer as to whether to take lots of shots or a single low AP shot.

Which brings me to my point, vehicles are bad in comparison to MCs, and they are competing for the same slots/points on your army list. Your answer is to effectively raise all vehicles armor by 1, and get rid of the damage chart, in an effort to bring them up to monstrous creatures. This is a bad idea, because the game doesn't need more power creep, it needs to be hit with a cheese grater. My answer is to make MCs more vulnerable, because they need a nerf in the first place, and second it will allow vehicles a place on the battle field, because MCs won't be autopicks. If you can one/two shot a riptide, the whole dynamic of how the tau play changes.

 Scott-S6 wrote:
S8 is perfectly capable of penetrating most vehicles.

What orks lack is AP1/2 on decent strength (a bigger problem in 5th than in 7th).

Not as well as you might think, especially given that most S8 is single shot.

I think that any suggested change that involves re-lease of every Codex is an exercise is futility. It will never happen. How about we find a solution that requires as few changes as possible and occurs just to the BRB.

For Example: Why not have Glances simply not cause hull points at all, but instead cause "Crew Shaken"? Maybe "Crew Stunned" on the second Glance done per phase?
This can bring back the old vehicle suppression tactics of 5th ed, while also encouraging players to field more weapons that can cause Pens and also making upgrades like Extra Armour, Spriri Stones and Deamonic Possesion more relevant.

--

Because vehicles would still suck, because you can't suppress MCs.

Martel732 wrote:
Because vehicles would still suck, because you can't suppress MCs.

Most MCs easily cost 3-6x more than most vehicles.
MCs are also living things (or otherwise VERY integrated into a suit in the case or DK, WK & Riptides), while vehicles are just being driving.

MC's should be better than vehicles, but by taking away the HP caused by Glances, some vehicle become virtually unkillable. Imagine a Necron army trying to fight a Gladuis with tons of Rhinos, the Necrons could never win.

--

 Galef wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Because vehicles would still suck, because you can't suppress MCs.

Most MCs easily cost 3-6x more than most vehicles.
MCs are also living things (or otherwise VERY integrated into a suit in the case or DK, WK & Riptides), while vehicles are just being driving.

MC's should be better than vehicles, but by taking away the HP caused by Glances, some vehicle become virtually unkillable. Imagine a Necron army trying to fight a Gladuis with tons of Rhinos, the Necrons could never win.

--

If you think a Tyrannosaur would be better than an M-1 Abrams, you are crazy. The T-Rex would get one shotted by a 120 mm cannon.

 Galef wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Because vehicles would still suck, because you can't suppress MCs.

Most MCs easily cost 3-6x more than most vehicles.
MCs are also living things (or otherwise VERY integrated into a suit in the case or DK, WK & Riptides), while vehicles are just being driving.

MC's should be better than vehicles, but by taking away the HP caused by Glances, some vehicle become virtually unkillable. Imagine a Necron army trying to fight a Gladuis with tons of Rhinos, the Necrons could never win.

--

most MC cost 2x more unless you are counting rhinos.. but they also almost always have 4x the survivalist and 10 times the fire power.
(hyperbolic amounts but really they are much more survivable and MUCH stronger while costing less than they should for it)

it really comes down to the fact that MC dont have ANY diminishing returns and cant for the most part get 1 shotted from across the table while also being able to claim cover better or just straight having some of the best saves in the game.

 Galef wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Because vehicles would still suck, because you can't suppress MCs.

Most MCs easily cost 3-6x more than most vehicles.
MCs are also living things (or otherwise VERY integrated into a suit in the case or DK, WK & Riptides)
--

So is a dreadnought and most Daemon vehicles. Why aren't they MC then?

Martel732 wrote:

 Galef wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Because vehicles would still suck, because you can't suppress MCs.

Most MCs easily cost 3-6x more than most vehicles.
MCs are also living things (or otherwise VERY integrated into a suit in the case or DK, WK & Riptides), while vehicles are just being driving.

MC's should be better than vehicles, but by taking away the HP caused by Glances, some vehicle become virtually unkillable. Imagine a Necron army trying to fight a Gladuis with tons of Rhinos, the Necrons could never win.

--

If you think a Tyrannosaur would be better than an M-1 Abrams, you are crazy. The T-Rex would get one shotted by a 120 mm cannon.

I am not sure what an M-1 Arbrams is, I assume it's a WW2 tank, but if it was in 40k, it would probably be like a Leman Russ tank, which can in fact, 1 shot an MC. I may have my tanks mixed up, but I know a friend of mine has a FW all tank Imperial Guard army that has an Instant-Death weapon.

This issue is that MOST 40k vehicles are not this kind of vehicle. Rhinos, Venoms, Chimeras, etc should be killable by most weapons. It doesn't even represent them getting permanently wrecked, just taken out of commission during the battle at hand. Most of everyone else suggestions to "make vehicles better" would either A) involve an entire system "do-over' or B) create yet another imbalance that puts vehicles way above everything else.

If A happens, there will surely be stuff to complain about.
If B happens, there will eventually be a thread about why MC's suck so bad vs. vehicles.

pm713 wrote:

So is a dreadnought and most Daemon vehicles. Why aren't they MC then?

A better question that I often ask myself is why aren't Riptides & DKs Walkers

--

Pretty sure I could kill a T-Rex with a Bradley as well.

It's got this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M242_Bushmaster

This is what it fires: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M242_Bushmaster#/media/File:US_Navy_090529-N-5345W-126_Gunner%27s_Mate_2nd_Class_Michael_Miller_downloads_an_ammo_belt_from_an_MK_38_25mm_gun.jpg

That would mess up something made of flesh and bone.

This is an M-1 Abrams:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M1_Abrams

What if Ordiance weapons simply inflict multiple wounds on MCs?

One rule: for every three points of strength that an ordinance weapon has, it inflicts one extra wound. So Demolisher and Earthshaker Cannons would inflict three wounds, whilst a Battlecannon would inflict 2. So if you really want to kill MCs, aim your artillery at it.

Or, for every point of strength above 7 that an ordinance weapon has, it inflicts 1 extra wound. So S:8 is 2 wounds, S:9 is 3 wounds, and S:10 is 4 wounds.

 Future War Cultist wrote:
What if Ordiance weapons simply inflict multiple wounds on MCs?

One rule: for every three points of strength that an ordinance weapon has, it inflicts one extra wound. So Demolisher and Earthshaker Cannons would inflict three wounds, whilst a Battlecannon would inflict 2. So if you really want to kill MCs, aim your artillery at it.

Or, for every point of strength above 7 that an ordinance weapon has, it inflicts 1 extra wound. So S:8 is 2 wounds, S:9 is 3 wounds, and S:10 is 4 wounds.

As I am a fan of simpler rules, how about making it so that Ordinance inflicts D3+1 wounds against everything, not just MC's

Another note about Glancing no causing HPs, but "crew shaken" instead: the only reason I would make a Glance do something is because so many rules in other books do something on a "Glancing" hit. If you make Glances do nothing, those rules become irrelevant.
----------
So in summary, here is what I would change:
a) Glances cause "crew stunned" instead of an HP. any Glances after the first in a phase will do "crew-stunned" instead.
b) I would make AP1 weapons only add +1 and AP2 do nothing to the Pen result. Having AP1 add +2 and AP2 add +1 is just silly.
c) Ordinance weapons cause D3+1 wounds

I am very confident that these 3 changes are all that is needed to bridge that gap between MC's & vehicles. MCs will still have an advantage, but vehicle (all vehicles) will have a significant rise in use

--

That's an incomplete fix. Lascannons should be deadly to MCs as well. And Tau heavy rail guns. There are so many problems with the GW system.

Martel732 wrote:
That's an incomplete fix. Lascannons should be deadly to MCs as well. And Tau heavy rail guns. There are so many problems with the GW system.

And there always will be, unless we take small steps to a solution. Rewriting the whole system overnight causes just as many problems as there currently are. There are just too many sources of rules that need to be addressed.

Wraith knights cost 240, less expensive than a landraider, and way more than twice as durable. To add insult to injury riptides (5 wounds) are 180 base, or just slighly more than a kitted our predator.

Galef, M-1 Abrams is Americas primary battle tank, and it's a monster. I'll try not to get all fanboy about it, but without a doubt it's the best tank created in human history, fast, heavily armored, and sporting enough firepower to smoke any other tank in the world before they can say "Hey is that a...". It's much closer to a Tau hammerhead than a leman russ.

Another note about Glancing no causing HPs, but "crew shaken" instead: the only reason I would make a Glance do something is because so many rules in other books do something on a "Glancing" hit. If you make Glances do nothing, those rules become irrelevant.
----------
So in summary, here is what I would change:
a) Glances cause "crew stunned" instead of an HP. any Glances after the first in a phase will do "crew-stunned" instead.
b) I would make AP1 weapons only add +1 and AP2 do nothing to the Pen result. Having AP1 add +2 and AP2 add +1 is just silly.
c) Ordinance weapons cause D3+1 wounds

Yes, now we're getting somewhere!

Glancing hits cause crew shaken, and that's it.

AP:1 weapons add +1 to the vehicle damage chart and that's it. Now they have an advantage over AP:2 weapons. Maybe bring back AP:- weapons do -1 on the vehicle damage chart?

Ordiance weapons inflict D3 wounds to keep it really simple? Most of the time they'll inflict instant death, but now big monsters will fear the artillery too. This would make standard russes and demolishers worth it now!

@ Grimgold

The Challenger 2 says hello.

Grimgold wrote:
Wraith knights cost 240, less expensive than a landraider, and way more than twice as durable. To add insult to injury riptides (5 wounds) are 180 base, or just slighly more than a kitted our predator.

Galef, M-1 Abrams is Americas primary battle tank, and it's a monster. I'll try not to get all fanboy about it, but without a doubt it's the best tank created in human history, fast, heavily armored, and sporting enough firepower to smoke any other tank in the world before they can say "Hey is that a...". It's much closer to a Tau hammerhead than a leman russ.

The Leopard II might be more economical. It doesn't give it's crew cancer, and can snorkel, too. At any rate, they both make a mess of a T-Rex. The Hammerhead is one of the biggest jokes in the game because low ROF sucks now. Which is the opposite of real life. Of course.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Galef wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
That's an incomplete fix. Lascannons should be deadly to MCs as well. And Tau heavy rail guns. There are so many problems with the GW system.

And there always will be, unless we take small steps to a solution. Rewriting the whole system overnight causes just as many problems as there currently are. There are just too many sources of rules that need to be addressed.

Burn them all. Now.

Grimgold wrote:
Wraith knights cost 240,

Pretty sure it's a fair bit more than that now.

It's less than 300 base. Criminal. Make me want to physically stomp every WK model I see. Which sucks because it's a sweet model, but I hate it because of the rules for it.

I'm not sure we should bring the WK into this discuss 1) because we all accept that it is underpriced and 2) because it is technically a GMC.

I agree that "tanks" and "walkers" should be on par with MCs, but we need to make sure any changes we make don't over-inflate how good regular vehicle become. Remember that most non-tanks/non-walkers are a good bit less than 100 pts

Got it. Here's a new damage chart:

1. Crew shaken
2. Crew stunned
3. Weapon Destroyed
4. Hull Damage (lose a hull point)
5. Immobilised
6. Wrecked
7+. Explodes

Roll on this when you equal or beat the armor. Glancing hits have a -2 penalty on this table. So now, whilst they might stun the vehicle or blow off a weapon, they'll only have a 25% chance of actually inflicting a wound on it. Meanwhile, I'd feel safer taking plasma weapons on a tank now.

AP:1 weapons have a +1 bonus on this chart, AP:- have a -1 penalty on it. And maybe armorbane can have a +1 bonus on the table as well as the extra D6 armour penetration. So now, the Vanquisher cannon can explode enemy tanks in a way a normal lascannon cannot.

If a vehicle that's already immobilised is immobilised again, it loses a hull point instead. And if a weapon destroyed result is rolled when it doesn't have any weapons left, again it loses a hull point instead.

 Future War Cultist wrote:
Got it. Here's a new damage chart:

1. Crew shaken
2. Crew stunned
3. Weapon Destroyed
4. Hull Damage (lose a hull point)
5. Immobilised
6. Wrecked
7+. Explodes

Roll on this when you equal or beat the armor. Glancing hits have a -2 penalty on this table. So now, whilst they might stun the vehicle or blow off a weapon, they'll only have a 25% chance of actually inflicting a wound on it. Meanwhile, I'd feel safer taking plasma weapons on a tank now.

AP:1 weapons have a +1 bonus on this chart, AP:- have a -1 penalty on it. And maybe armorbane can have a +1 bonus on the table as well as the extra D6 armour penetration. So now, the Vanquisher cannon can explode enemy tanks in a way a normal lascannon cannot.

If a vehicle that's already immobilised is immobilised again, it loses a hull point instead. And if a weapon destroyed result is rolled when it doesn't have any weapons left, again it loses a hull point instead.

I like this. It is very similar to the pre-hull point vehicle chart, but incorporates HPs nicely. You get an Exalt, sir

-

If I understand how this works, Lascannons, Brightlances, etc. would have to be changed to AP1 to be good dedicated tank-hunting weapons if AP2 gives no bonus on the chart. Otherwise the AP2 ranking is only good for kills TEQ's, and there are better weapons to do that than these single-shots.

 Grimgrub Dregdakka wrote:
If I understand how this works, Lascannons, Brightlances, etc. would have to be changed to AP1 to be good dedicated tank-hunting weapons if AP2 gives no bonus on the chart. Otherwise the AP2 ranking is only good for kills TEQ's, and there are better weapons to do that than these single-shots.

Also I am kind of glad nobody has brought up the ridiculous "Open Topped' rule. By itself that rule makes Open topped vehicles almost unplayable unless they have a 4+ jink save.

Since 40k's anti-vehicle weapons are all tied to vehicle rules, a while ago I came up with a basic conversion for MC's that are clearly vehicles into, you know, actual vehicles:

• Type becomes Vehicle (Walker). Jump Monstrous Creatures are Fast and ignore dangerous terrain unless they start/end their move within it. Models with Psyker have Psychic Pilot instead. If the vehicle design clearly has an exposed pilot then it's Open Topped.
  
• Front and Side Armour is equal to Toughness + 5, Rear Armour is equal to Toughness + 4 (max 14 in both cases).
  
• Wounds carry across as Hull Points (couldn't find a good method of conversion). For anything with 4 or more Hull Points the Explodes! damage result is D3 Hull Points, only causing an explosion if reduced to zero (though this should really be the default for all vehicles IMO).

This is really just a quick and dirty guideline for converting them, as most will need some discussion. Wounds to Hull Points is far from perfect for example, though a Nemesis Dreadknight does come out of it as a 12/12/11 HP 4 Open Topped, so it's got a pretty mixed durability that may not be an issue.


But yeah, I'd prefer no separate vehicle rules at all for simplicity, but that's a lot more work overall.

@ Galef

Thank you, much appreciated.

@ Grimgrub Dregdakka

Maybe the AP:2 and AP:1 bonuses can stay the same. AP:- should definitely be -1 though. And I think I have a way to make extra amour worth it. Here's a suggested table:

Glancing Hit: -2
AP - : -1
Extra Armor: -1
Open Topped: +1
AP 2: +1
AP 1: +2

Extra armor is now more universally useful. It doesn't just turn Stunned into Shaken. It lets you ignore Shaken all together, turns Immobilized into Hull Damage, and Explodes into Wrecked.

@ Haravikk

I'd rather have no separate vehicle rules either, but it is too big of a change. And I like what you've done with the MC to Vehicle conversion idea there.

Why should AP- have a negative effect?

Because it's terrible at penetrating armor. It wouldn't make too much a difference to living creatures who feel pain, but against vehicles they wouldn't be as effective.

Grimgold wrote:
First you got causality wrong on why high strength multishot weapons are coming into favor, it's not because they are awesome against vehicles (they are demonstrably not), it's because they are effective against MCs.

No, mid-strength multishot weapons are both better and more reliable at dealing with the vast majority of vehicles (which have AV12 or worse on the sides) then traditional anti-tank weapons. Even against higher armour it's better to be hoping for glances with your multi-shot gun than hoping for a destroyed result on your single shot gun. The damage chart simply doesn't favour trying to get a destroyed result with single shot weapons vs. peeling off hull points with 3-4-5 shot guns. When those guns (mid-strength multi-shot) are also better at killing MCs, infantry, etc. then we have a whole class of weapons that is redundant.

Grimgold wrote:
Which brings me to my point, vehicles are bad in comparison to MCs, and they are competing for the same slots/points on your army list. Your answer is to effectively raise all vehicles armor by 1, and get rid of the damage chart, in an effort to bring them up to monstrous creatures.

No, I didn't propose either of those things. I proposed a change that would make high strength low-ap weapons more effective against vehicles and mid-strength multi-shot guns worse.

That leaves us with a class of weapon that's effective against vehicles and a class of weapon that's effective against MCs and good infantry.

I had a think and, what about this change:

1. Crew Shaken
2. Crew Stunned
3. Weapon Destroyed
4. Immobilized
5. Hull Damage (lose a hull point)
6. Wrecked
7+. Explodes

Modifiers:
-2 if Glancing Hit
-1 if attack is AP -
- 1 if vehicle has extra armor
+ 1 if armor penetration score is 17+ (so more reason to use melta and armorbane weaponary)
+ 1 if attack is AP:2
+2 if attack is AP:1

The result cannot be lower than 1. If an immobilized vehicle suffers another immobilized result it suffers hull damage instead. And if a vehicle suffers a weapon destroyed result and it has no weapons (left), it also suffers hull damage instead.

With this change, it is now largely impossible to destroy a vehicle with Glancing Hits unless you're using a proper anti tank weapon. And no longer will a vehicle destroy itself just by using plasma weaponry. But if you're using a melta or armorbane weapon against a vehicle and you manage to score a ridiculously high armor penetration result, now that will be rewarded. Oh, and hopefully Extra Armour will be a worthwhile upgrade now.

One other suggestion: when rolling against an open topped vehicle, you gain +1 to your armor penetration score and that's it. No other bonuses. So now, lasguns can damage a AV:10 open topped vehicle, but not by much due to their -3 penalty for the Damage Chart (-1 for being AV -, and -2 because they can only score a glancing hit). So they'll destroy a weapon (probably by killing the operator rather than damaging the weapon) at best.

If you want to kill a Land Raider then you'll need to break out the big guns, literally.

 Future War Cultist wrote:
6. Wrecked
7+. Explodes

I think we should move away from instant Wrecked/Explodes results personally. I think a vehicle should only be Wrecked if it has zero Hull Points remaining, meanwhile the Explodes result should actually be renamed Magazine/Fuel Explosion, inflicting D3 Hull Points, and only dealing area damage if the vehicle is reduced to zero Hull Points as a result. I'd also say that hull points should only be lost on penetrating hits and weapon destroyed/immobilised results, with Hull Damage coming before weapon/engine damage. I actually also liked the old fire damage which could be neat to see again, leaving us with:

1-2. Crew Shaken (0 HP damage on glance)
3. Crew Stunned (0 HP damage on glance)
4. Hull Damage (1 HP damage)
5. Weapon Destroyed (1 HP damage)
6. Immobilised (1 HP damage)
7. On fire (1 HP damage now, add fire counter, roll D6 for each counter at start of turn, on 4+ suffer another HP in damage, otherwise discard).
8+. Magazine/Fuel Explosion (D3 HP damage, explodes/crashes if reduced to 0 HP)

So both 7 and 8 will inflict extra damage, the difference is in how immediate that damage will be.

 Scott-S6 wrote:

Grimgold wrote:
First you got causality wrong on why high strength multishot weapons are coming into favor, it's not because they are awesome against vehicles (they are demonstrably not), it's because they are effective against MCs.

No, mid-strength multishot weapons are both better and more reliable at dealing with the vast majority of vehicles (which have AV12 or worse on the sides) then traditional anti-tank weapons. Even against higher armour it's better to be hoping for glances with your multi-shot gun than hoping for a destroyed result on your single shot gun. The damage chart simply doesn't favour trying to get a destroyed result with single shot weapons vs. peeling off hull points with 3-4-5 shot guns. When those guns (mid-strength multi-shot) are also better at killing MCs, infantry, etc. then we have a whole class of weapons that is redundant.

Grimgold wrote:
Which brings me to my point, vehicles are bad in comparison to MCs, and they are competing for the same slots/points on your army list. Your answer is to effectively raise all vehicles armor by 1, and get rid of the damage chart, in an effort to bring them up to monstrous creatures.

No, I didn't propose either of those things. I proposed a change that would make high strength low-ap weapons more effective against vehicles and mid-strength multi-shot guns worse.

That leaves us with a class of weapon that's effective against vehicles and a class of weapon that's effective against MCs and good infantry.

Not even against rhinos is a high strength multi shot weapon better than a multi melta, when I said demonstrably, that meant I had already done the math.

rhino av 11
vs
Scatter laser
vs
multimelta

scatter laser st 6 heavy 4, 4 shots bs 4, 2.66 hits
1/3 glance and or pen without an extra hull point, .88 hull points per round of shooting.

MultiMelta st 8 melta ap 1, 1 shot at bs 4, .66 hits
24 in 36 chance to glance or pen and do a single hull point of damage (.66 HP), 1 in 36 chance to miss, 11 in 36 chance to pen and destroy vehicle effectively doing 3 hull points(.91 HP),
for a total of 1.57 hull points/hit with a .66 chance of hitting = 1.04 hull points per round.

So even against arguably the weakest vehicle armor one will regularly encounter, a scatt laser is not as good as a MM, It's just math. So why are tables everywhere flooded with such weapons? One, because outside of certain factions like crons, vehicles aren't played very often (my prior post talks a bit about that). Two, it takes Volume of fire to take down MCs, and GMCs, something multimeltas and las cannons can't manage. Finally, anti-tank heavies are also being replaced by D weapons (an abomination made necessary by the leak of Armageddon rules/models into 40k), and grav in space marine armies.

Everybody is just going off of gut feel in this thread, nobody is looking at the math.

Scatterlaser has 12" extra range, so its doing damage for a turn that the MM is doing nothing. Scatterlaser wins.

Just lower point cost to vehicles that lack jinking as they seem to be the ones that no one likes


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Haravikk wrote:
Since 40k's anti-vehicle weapons are all tied to vehicle rules, a while ago I came up with a basic conversion for MC's that are clearly vehicles into, you know, actual vehicles:

• Type becomes Vehicle (Walker). Jump Monstrous Creatures are Fast and ignore dangerous terrain unless they start/end their move within it. Models with Psyker have Psychic Pilot instead. If the vehicle design clearly has an exposed pilot then it's Open Topped.
  
• Front and Side Armour is equal to Toughness + 5, Rear Armour is equal to Toughness + 4 (max 14 in both cases).
  
• Wounds carry across as Hull Points (couldn't find a good method of conversion). For anything with 4 or more Hull Points the Explodes! damage result is D3 Hull Points, only causing an explosion if reduced to zero (though this should really be the default for all vehicles IMO).

This is really just a quick and dirty guideline for converting them, as most will need some discussion. Wounds to Hull Points is far from perfect for example, though a Nemesis Dreadknight does come out of it as a 12/12/11 HP 4 Open Topped, so it's got a pretty mixed durability that may not be an issue.


But yeah, I'd prefer no separate vehicle rules at all for simplicity, but that's a lot more work overall.

This just adds more models to the don't get played pile. As vehicles die to fast if they are less than AV 13. Your Dreadknight will most likely die turn one or two tops and the storm surge becomes a over costed rhino with guns it gets to fire at best one turn.

Oldmike wrote:

 Haravikk wrote:
This is really just a quick and dirty guideline for converting them, as most will need some discussion. Wounds to Hull Points is far from perfect for example, though a Nemesis Dreadknight does come out of it as a 12/12/11 HP 4 Open Topped, so it's got a pretty mixed durability that may not be an issue.

This just adds more models to the don't get played pile. As vehicles die to fast if they are less than AV 13. Your Dreadknight will most likely die turn one or two tops and the storm surge becomes a over costed rhino with guns it gets to fire at best one turn.

I've kept the most relevant part of my quote; I'd assume this would be combined with some of the other suggestions in this thread to make vehicles more viable, such as damage table changes/restoration of damage table for glances.

That said, I'd much rather see people not using MC "vehicles" than having to play against "vehicles" using rules that make no sense whatsoever and completely contradict various important parts of the game, so in that respect converting MC's to vehicles as-is (and exactly as written) serves my needs perfectly

If vehicles move to a T and W system, the whole game will need to change, otherwise virtually every weapon in the game will destroy a Leman Russ Demolisher and there will be little to no distinction between different vehicles. A Lord of War will only be harder to kill than a tank because it has more Wounds, not better armour. Lascannons will become uber-death weapons, meaning power gamers, which the majority of people seem to be, will simply give everyone heavy weapons then moan there are too many heavy weapons dominating the game and have yet another reason to bitch ceaselessly about the GW and 40K.

 NoPoet wrote:
If vehicles move to a T and W system, the whole game will need to change, otherwise virtually every weapon in the game will destroy a Leman Russ Demolisher and there will be little to no distinction between different vehicles. A Lord of War will only be harder to kill than a tank because it has more Wounds, not better armour. Lascannons will become uber-death weapons, meaning power gamers, which the majority of people seem to be, will simply give everyone heavy weapons then moan there are too many heavy weapons dominating the game and have yet another reason to bitch ceaselessly about the GW and 40K.

I'd be inclined to disagree: most systems proposed would have AV14 translating to T9 or T10. T9 outright ignores anything below S6. Usually, translated vehicles wind up with more Wounds than they had HP, and really tough vehicles could get various mechanics like invulnerable saves or Feel No Pain. Also, if you remove Explodes!, lascannons arguably become less deadly to vehicles than they currently are - yes, that hit will almost certainly cause some damage, but you won't auto-die (unless it's a T4 vehicle, which I think is unlikely. Even AV10 probably translates to T5-T6).

Yeah that's what I imagined to be the case. I imagined that a Land Raider would be Toughness 10 with a 2+ armour save and something like six wounds for example.

But switching vehicles to toughness, wounds and armour saves would require the whole game to be rewritten.

Give vehicles a saving throw vs glancing, call it a day.

Either set a flat saving throw (3/4+) or release a list with each vehicle and its saving throw.

Stomp wrote:
Give vehicles a saving throw vs glancing, call it a day.

Either set a flat saving throw (3/4+) or release a list with each vehicle and its saving throw.

But most weapons that can damage vehicles have an ap so low you probably won't get a save against it. It's different when the vehicle has fixed wounds, and can therefore take a few hits, but when one penetration hit can wreck you and you can't get a save due to AP you might as well not have the save.

 Future War Cultist wrote:

Stomp wrote:
Give vehicles a saving throw vs glancing, call it a day.

Either set a flat saving throw (3/4+) or release a list with each vehicle and its saving throw.

But most weapons that can damage vehicles have an ap so low you probably won't get a save against it. It's different when the vehicle has fixed wounds, and can therefore take a few hits, but when one penetration hit can wreck you and you can't get a save due to AP you might as well not have the save.

I don't think the aim is to add protection against anti-tank weapons (since those are supposed to hurt tanks after all), but rather to give protection against borderline stuff that people spam in order to glance vehicles to death. Gauss weapons, anything with enough Strength to glance etc. Concentrated fire with stuff designed to hurt vehicles absolutely should still hurt vehicles.

Vehicles/AV in 40k has one basic problem.

It uses a complete different mechanic like everything else. The problem is not that it has no save, but that S+D6 VS AV = glancing hit = removing 1 HP makes it impossible to balance weapons for both mechanics.

So either tanks are to hard or wo weak in this game because you cannot change the weapons that are balanced for non-AV mechanics


First you need to bring Vehicles back in line.

They get AV instead of Toughness+Armour, but the “to wound roll” need to be the same like for Toughness ( because they have no save, they are more difficult to wound to balance this) and they have wounds like every other model in the game

S VS AV (S9 VS AV10 = 5+ to wound)

Now we have the problem that we have no S14 weapons in the game to wound a Land Raider.
GW once said, let’s roll an additional D6 for all weapons to compensate.
But now we make it a little bit more elegant and in line with the available weapons stats and mechanics.

Against AV we add a flat 7 to the Strength and subtract the AP value. A Melter has S8+7-1 = 14 and wound a Land Raider on 4+, an autocannon S11 and wounds a Rhino on 4+.
Special Anti Tank rules (melter, armour bane etc) add +X to the weapons strength against AV (armour bane +1, melter +2 etc) so that a melter in short range has S16 and wound a Land Raider on 2+.


Something that has nothing to do with Vehicles but the game in general:
And to make make single shot Anti Tank weapons like Lasercannons and Melter more deadly (like they should be), they remove always 2 Wounds instead of 1 from any model.

I have a couple ideas for solutions, but my view is all should not require total rewrites of all the codexes.

So! Sticking with changes to the BRB.

Against weapons you must pen a vehicle to damage it. If Str + d6 = Armor then the vehicle suffers no damage. Suddenly the main battle tanks (AV 12) are immune to anti-personnel weaponry, stand a better chance against higher shot/poor AP weapons (since they need 5's and 6's) and anti-tank weapons become a lot more important. This also means that standard marines/orks/etc can't just beat a tank to death with their bare hands.

Glancing hits still exist...but only from things like Haywire, the Serpent Shield ability, etc. They do damage to the vehicle, but don't totally cripple it.

Graviton changes to "May not move, even turning in place, during the vehicle owner's next turn. Flyers suffer a crew shaken result instead. The vehicle may not jink for the remainder of the current player turn." They also don't lose a hull point. Now they are hampered by gravity weapons, but gravity weapons become dedicated heavy anti-infantry weapons, and only an annoyance to vehicles.

Give Melta weapons in "Melta" range the instant death special rule. So if they get really close to those MC's, they pose a serious threat, but you have to get close, and you're getting single shots. This gives a reason for MCs to stay away or risk getting ripped to shreds. Even GMCs would have to worry about a squad of Melta-packing dudes. Melta type weapons become "Elite unit" killers.

Change Crew Shaken to reduce BS by 1 or 2. This way vehicles that rely on blast or template weapons aren't crippled if they get shaken. You may not be so accurate as you are jostled around, if you are using a flamer, who cares? If you're using something else, you may just be horrifically inaccurate.

By doing this you can still use krak grenades in close combat, or something like a T-Hammer or something along those lines to do some damage, but vehicles become a lot harder to kill if you don't.

For Example
AV 10 (Light Armor) - Regular bolters and equivalents can't do anything. Heavy Bolters or Heavy Flamers need 6's, Auto-cannons need 5's, Las Cannons need 2's
AV 11 (Medium Armor) - Las Cannons need 3's, Most Anti-Infantry weapons are useless, Scatter Lasers/Shuriken Cannons need 6's
AV 12+ (Heavy Armor) - You basically need dedicated Anti-tank weapons, Auto-cannons have a chance, but not much of one (needing 6's for AV 12, worthless above)

It isn't a save, but it means if you don't bring dedicated anti-tank, you are going to have some serious problems against heavy armor. Things like Land-Raiders and Lehman Russes become a whole lot scarier because if you don't have dedicated anti-tank you aren't going to be doing much to them.

Edit: oh, last change which could help them would be for all vehicles to be able to fire different weapons at different targets. Secondary guns become a lot more valuable and gives vehicles an edge in versatility in what doesn't seem to be a game breaking fashion.

What if "Lose 1 Hull Point" was on the vehicle damage table, just under "Explodes!"? Not sure what the overall effect would be, but it does put vehicles out of reach of weapons that can't pen. I'm just a newbie snotling, so I'm genuinely wondering what would happen if this was the case.

 Grimgrub Dregdakka wrote:
What if "Lose 1 Hull Point" was on the vehicle damage table, just under "Explodes!"? Not sure what the overall effect would be, but it does put vehicles out of reach of weapons that can't pen. I'm just a newbie snotling, so I'm genuinely wondering what would happen if this was the case.

That's what I was suggesting earlier. Add lose one hull point to the table, and you roll on the table if you got a glancing hit but with penalties that prevent the top end results.

I have some ideas, some of which were inspired by other responses in this thread (I didn't read the whole thing though):
-Glancing hits cannot remove the final hull point of a vehicle. No more glancing vehicles to death with bolters/Necron warrior guns/other low strength weapons. A good alternative would be a suggestion from early in the thread to make it where vehicles can only lose 1 HP from glances per turn.
-Grav weapons only Immobilize vehicles for one turn and do no HP damage (still nasty to flyers, but Land Raiders/Russes don't really care too much)
-Against MC's, if a weapons's Strength is higher than the MC's Toughness, a To Wound roll of 6 does D3 wounds instead of 1. Now MC's have to be afraid of high strength weapons just like vehicles do. Same applies to GC's. BOOM! Headshot!
-Tanks and Walkers get some kind of armor save, perhaps depending on the AV in each facing. Non-tank skimmers should probably be a bit more fragile.
-Transports should have Assault Vehicle if they do not move at all during the turn. This would make Rhino Rush more relevant again, but Drop Pods would count as moving and so would not become even more scary.

Lendys wrote:
I have a couple ideas for solutions, but my view is all should not require total rewrites of all the codexes.

So! Sticking with changes to the BRB.

Against weapons you must pen a vehicle to damage it. If Str + d6 = Armor then the vehicle suffers no damage. Suddenly the main battle tanks (AV 12) are immune to anti-personnel weaponry, stand a better chance against higher shot/poor AP weapons (since they need 5's and 6's) and anti-tank weapons become a lot more important. This also means that standard marines/orks/etc can't just beat a tank to death with their bare hands.

Glancing hits still exist...but only from things like Haywire, the Serpent Shield ability, etc. They do damage to the vehicle, but don't totally cripple it.

Graviton changes to "May not move, even turning in place, during the vehicle owner's next turn. Flyers suffer a crew shaken result instead. The vehicle may not jink for the remainder of the current player turn." They also don't lose a hull point. Now they are hampered by gravity weapons, but gravity weapons become dedicated heavy anti-infantry weapons, and only an annoyance to vehicles.

Give Melta weapons in "Melta" range the instant death special rule. So if they get really close to those MC's, they pose a serious threat, but you have to get close, and you're getting single shots. This gives a reason for MCs to stay away or risk getting ripped to shreds. Even GMCs would have to worry about a squad of Melta-packing dudes. Melta type weapons become "Elite unit" killers.

Change Crew Shaken to reduce BS by 1 or 2. This way vehicles that rely on blast or template weapons aren't crippled if they get shaken. You may not be so accurate as you are jostled around, if you are using a flamer, who cares? If you're using something else, you may just be horrifically inaccurate.

By doing this you can still use krak grenades in close combat, or something like a T-Hammer or something along those lines to do some damage, but vehicles become a lot harder to kill if you don't.

For Example
AV 10 (Light Armor) - Regular bolters and equivalents can't do anything. Heavy Bolters or Heavy Flamers need 6's, Auto-cannons need 5's, Las Cannons need 2's
AV 11 (Medium Armor) - Las Cannons need 3's, Most Anti-Infantry weapons are useless, Scatter Lasers/Shuriken Cannons need 6's
AV 12+ (Heavy Armor) - You basically need dedicated Anti-tank weapons, Auto-cannons have a chance, but not much of one (needing 6's for AV 12, worthless above)

It isn't a save, but it means if you don't bring dedicated anti-tank, you are going to have some serious problems against heavy armor. Things like Land-Raiders and Lehman Russes become a whole lot scarier because if you don't have dedicated anti-tank you aren't going to be doing much to them.

Edit: oh, last change which could help them would be for all vehicles to be able to fire different weapons at different targets. Secondary guns become a lot more valuable and gives vehicles an edge in versatility in what doesn't seem to be a game breaking fashion.

Ok, I mostly like this idea, with the proviso that outside of things like Haywire and Gauss, AV14 was not getting sanded to death by six-to-glance fishing as it is.

Maybe I'd amend this to add that all Skimmers and Flyers have a 4+ Armor Save, while land-bound vehicles have a 3+ Armor Save. Now you have decent protection against Gauss and Haywire (yes, Gauss Blasters have AP4 - so Jink, when those Immortals come within double-tap range!), but they can still be effective. Without that, Haywire becomes the go-to answer for vehicles, even more than it already is. Most proper anti-tank weapons, of course, ignore these saves, so you usually won't get saves against penetrating hits. But sometimes, like that weird-ass S9 AP5 large blast a Stormsurge can throw around, you still will.

Also, while I like the Melta idea, I'd replace "half range has ID" with "half range is treated as Strength D, treat rolls of 6 as 5". Less all-or-nothing, but still a big threat. Treating rolls of 6 as 5, here, rather than -1 on the chart, because we're not looking to wound on a 3+ when you'd wound on a 2+ at max range (Melta versus Carnifex, say), but we also don't generally want "take 12 wounds, no saves of any kind allowed" from a 10 point weapon. So, if you roll a 6, it's a 5. Congratulations, two Sisters just barbecued an Exocrine in two shots, enjoy your buff

I'd also like to add a new special rule that means that high-S proper AT weapons - lascannons, railguns, brightlances, kustom mega-blastas, supa-cannons, battle cannons, etc - would cause 2 wounds, saved separately, on a successful roll to wound. Then maybe have Ordnance and Primary Weapon make that "double all inflicted wounds on a 6 to wound", but at this point we're adding a lot of shinies. And Knights get scary...