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Post by: Mezmorki
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Just take me to the rules!
ProHammer: Enhanced 5th Edition (Living Rules Link)
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I've played 40k on and off since 1st Edition, with the most time spent on 2nd and 4th edition. I've dabbled a bit in 8th edition and find it wanting. Not that the newer direction of 40K is bad, but for me it just doesn't capture the same gameplay feel and aesthetic character of older editions of the game. And while I like some of things about 6th and 7th edition, they also felt needlessly finicky and overwrought. 5th edition is a high watermark for a more streamlined but still classic feeling 40K - but it isn't without its faults.
So, I've embarked on a journey to find a better 40K. I'm starting to teach my own kids and nephews how to play (they are asking to learn I swear!) and given I have tons of older stuff at my disposal it seems like going with a classic version makes sense. And if Im going back to an old edition, I might as well house rule it to make it as cool as it can be.
With that, I've taken 5th edition as base and pulled in bits of 4th and 6th edition, a few inspirations from 8th edition in the name of streamlining, and even a few throw backs to 2nd edition (without getting too nuts!).
The overall design goals for this project is as follows:
Create a hybrid ruleset that brings out the epic drama of 40K but is tactically richer. Add more player choices and flexibility but set the stage for tougher, deeper decisions. Balance “fairness” with excitement. Keep players on their toes but don’t overly punish. Increase the fidelity or “logicalness” of the game, while staying as simple as possible. Restore the importance of position and maneuver - this is a miniature tactics game!
The 40k rules tend to swing a lot from edition to edition. First vehicles are too strong, then they are too weak. Assault is too weak, oops, now it's too strong. The game never felt like it landed with the right balance point baked into the rules. ProHammer tries to find that elusive sweat spot.
Additionally, I've found with new players that often times what makes sense from a logical standpoint doesn't really line up with the rules. Times when you say out loud "well that doesn't make any sense" are far too common. Or you hear someone say "that is stupidly unfair" to rules that are just randomly punitive. I've tried to sand off these rough edges while boosting the strategic depth of game and emphasizing the importance of positioning and movement and use of terrain. This is a tactical miniature game after all! But it's also a richly thematic game - and I don't want to lose the charm and wildness that makes 40K special.
Here's a link to what I've come up with:
ProHammer: Enhanced 5th Edition (Living Rules Link)
Below are some of the Key Changes at a Glance
* Movement is model-by-model for determining what counts as moving
* Can approach difficult terrain at normal speed. Can take saves from dangerous terrain
* Can take a leadership test to split fire once (i.e. unit can shoot a max of two different targets)
* Line of Sight: Hard cover uses true line of sight, soft cover blocks LoS beyond 6”
* Cover saves: 3+ fortifications, 4+ hard cover, 5+ soft cover/intervening models, 6+ light cover
* Snap Fire. Heavy weapons may move and snap fire, assault weapons may run and snap fire. Can
snap fire after going to ground.
* Declared Shooting (experimental) players must declare all shooting targets
* Overwatch can be declared instead of shooting normally, allows one “point blank” round of full strength fire against a single charging unit (with some downsides)
* Revised wound allocation process for shooting attacks - can only remove “viable” targets are in true line of sight and in range. Cover saves determined on model-by-model basis. Unified and streamlined process for resolving shooting even for complex units.
* Blast weapons use ballistic skill to hit. If shot missed, automatically scatters.
* Rapid fire weapons - once at max range or twice at half range, regardless of movement (6th)
* Close combat victors may consolidate into enemy units again.
* Units engaged in close combat may withdraw at the start of the assault phase (post-shooting) and will incur some penalties.
* Opposing unit can consolidate into enemy unit.
* Revised Vehicle damage: Uses separate modified 4th edition glancing and penetrating damage charts. Skimmers are less resilient while other vehicles remain reasonably durable. Cover saves
adjusted for vehicles.
* Defensive weapons on vehicles are Strength 5 or less.
* Hitting vehicles in melee attacks based on the speed the vehicle moved (same rules for skimmers)
* Less punishing deep strike rules (models placed under large blast template ala 4th edition)
* Slightly more predictable reserves (6th)
* Lone characters can’t be shot unless they are the closest model (4th)
* Force Weapons deal D3 wounds on successful psychic test (not instant death)
* Revised morale rules for falling back and regrouping to be more volatile but also less punishing
* Uses mission structure + objectives based on 6th edition
Lots more odds and ends in the ruleset. Please take a look and I'd love to hear your thoughts on the changes. I'm planning to make adjustments and fine tuning as I play test this more, so I'm open to suggestions! Thanks.
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Post by: aphyon
Only a couple things i see as problamatic in your over-view
1.declared fire-battletech has it and we purposely do not use it, as it slows thew game down way to much
2. consolidating into a second unit after winning combat-incredibly bad mechanic that was badly abused in 4th edition. especially hurts NON MEG armies like guard and tau.
Otherwise very solid work, and excellent layout.
It is quite similar to the rules set we use for hybrid 5th ed using the best bits of 3rd-7th.
Funny how we the players with experience playing the game can come up with a similar rules set that works better than what GW manages to pay people to write.
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Post by: Mezmorki
Thanks for taking a look.
I kept the declared fire as optional - but I used to play that way with my group all the time and everyone seemed to enjoy it. I've always had an issue in 40K and other IGOUGO games where the shooting becomes a little optimization puzzle where you work out an ideal order based on level of threat and go from there. It makes it feel a little gamey. Declaring fire forces you to make a strategic "gambit" or a plan of action in the face of uncertainty. Keep in mind, units are at most only shooting two targets (if they split fire) and so far in testing the wound allocation thing has been pretty quick to resolve. Hasn't seemed to have added much time to the game yet.
Consolidating into other units - I've tried to temper it by adding the ability for a unit to withdraw at the end of their movement phase (I think 2nd Ed had a voluntary fallback rule?). Without consolidation, it creates this equally weird situation as a melee attacker where you don't want to kill the charged unit too much, because you'd rather kill them at the end of your opponents assault phase so you could charge with them again. 8th edition has voluntary fall back moves too.
I also thought about adding in the ability to fire into melee combat in exchange for stronger consolidation moves.
Thanks for the feedback nevertheless, I'll keep tweaking things And keep this updated. I want to do some formatting to the rules and call out where the changes are a bit better.
Let me know if you have other thoughts! Cheers.
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Post by: aphyon
On the consolidating assault rules. here is an example of why it becomes a problem-back in 4th a buddy who plays IG did a game where we ended on turn 5 where my deathwing had a single chaplain and a venerable dreadnought left. we decided to play it out to see what would happen. thanks to that rule i managed to walk through the entire rest of his army with just those 2 models (even though he technically already won). because every time i won combat and they broke i would run them down with the dreadnought.
The best rules i have seen if you want the option to shoot into melee( i know guard players that think it fits the lore just fine....especially for DKOK,  ) is- shoot with a penalty and every miss hits a friendly model in the melee-armor saves apply as normal.
The only model that used to be able to do something similar with orbital strikes was inquisitor lord karamozov..so long as he targeted a friendly model in melee
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Post by: Mezmorki
I hear you. A lot depends on the size of the game relative to the table and how spaced out things are. If consolidating into units is allowed it has to be planned for. With the range limited to 3" of you can keep at least 6" between units you're usually pretty safe. If you then add options for voluntary fallback (ala 8th edition) and/or rules for firing into melee, then I think it's relatively balanced. In your example the game was already technically over before it became an issue anyway.
I do like your idea about shooting into close combat. Could also do something where if your side as many more models you'd suffer a -1 to hit (meaning you'd be more likely to hit your own models when you fail). Maybe 1's are always total misses.
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Post by: aphyon
Well shooting into melee in the way i described is used in many systems including 3.5 dnd....if you don't take the -4 penalty to avoid shooting your friends there is good chance you will.
The big difference from what you are doing and what we did is you are creating your own original rules, we just used rules that already existed in the game in various editions and put them all into the same edition. effectively picking the best core rules with the best USR/core mechanics cherry picked across the compatible editions. i think that is a lot easier for players outside your family to wrap their heads around known pre-existing rules.
IIRC 2nd ed overwatch allowed you to shoot normally at one unit in the enemy movement phase but that unit then did nothing during your own player turn. it might be best just to directly import that over to get what you are looking for.
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Post by: Mezmorki
2nd ed. overwatch required you to place your unit into overwatch at the start of your turn, with no moving or shooting or assaulting allowed that turn. They can act normally on their NEXT turn.
So you had to declare overwatch proactively / ahead of time.
Finished updating ProHammer to version 1.1 with adjustments in the following areas:
* Revised overwatch to work on non-assaulting units with additional restrictions (24” max range), other lose ends clarified.
* Clarifications to withdrawing rules adding
* Added new “Shooting into Close Combat” rule
* Added in option to use pistols in close combat (can make one pistol shot, ala 8th edition)
* Added rules for throwing grenades during shooting phase, if the unit is equipped with them. Limited to just one grenade attack per unit.
* Added optional rule for balanced force composition, requiring players to maintain at least a 2:3 troop to specialist unit ration (2nd edition throwback).
* Made vehicles one step easier to hit in assault at each step. (3+ for moving up 6", 4+ for 6-12", 5+ for over 12", etc.)
* Added clearer text notes indicated rules that were revised or new
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Post by: Mezmorki
Added a rule from 7th edition regarding overwatch fire which is that shooting in overwatch never forces the target to take a moral or pinning test.
Also clarified how vehicles work with split fire.
Last - and this is maybe a question for those more familiar with 6th + 7th edition, but it seems like if I added the additional universal special rules outside of what 5th edition covered as an appendix, players could choose to use 6th or 7th edition codex's with ProHammer.
The mechanical changes aren't that different from a codex standpoint. There are a few rule areas that I haven't included in ProHammer (challenges comes to mind) that might have some impact on certain later edition codex options, but seems like it could work reasonably well most of the time?
Thoughts?
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Post by: aphyon
That was an easy enough fix. we allow all codexes to be used from 3rd-7th but they must adhere to the 5th ed core rules. meaning some rules are flat out ignored if there is no 5th ed equivalent USR or use the most applicable USR.
An examole-dunestrider for the 7th ed mechanicus list-since all movement is fixed the effect that is supposed to represent -the ease with which they traverse terrain- is simple reverted back to "move through cover" USR instead if giving them extra movement or charge range.
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Post by: Mezmorki
I started going through the USR's for 6th + 7th. I'm going to make a compiled set for the ProHammer rules that make the appropriate adjustments to bring them all into proper alignment.
What's interesting is that I priced out a 2000 point space wolf army using the 5th edition codex. Same list was like 250 points cheaper using the 7th edition wolf list.
I wonder what to do about all the 7th edition attachment stuff. Do you just ignore that and it's always using the standard force organization charts (unless your opponent agrees of course).
You might get a kick out of this:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1al0RietrhVVuo10iuaIZCo1MjVjyEp9SviFTKkVCnNo/edit?usp=sharing
I didn't complete it for 7th edition yet, and 8th is a little sparse, but it's a general rule by rule comparrison of the different editions (focused on 4th, 5th, and 6th). I used this to help under standand what ProHammer would change to what. It's been a fun side project!
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Post by: AnomanderRake
 Mezmorki wrote:...I wonder what to do about all the 7th edition attachment stuff. Do you just ignore that and it's always using the standard force organization charts (unless your opponent agrees of course)...
The 7e detachments were badly designed; the buffs they gave ranged from the mediocre (Deathwatch: everyone can Deep Strike!) to the incredibly overpowered (Space Marines: 550pts of free Razorbacks!), some let you flat-out ignore some very important limitations (Eldar: 300pts of bikes and then you can take as many Wraithknights as you like!), and the requirements were sometimes incredibly easy and sometimes incredibly difficult.
If you want to try doing something like the specialized detachments I'd suggest reading up on 30k Rites of War; they're a much simpler, better-balanced, and generally better-built version of the same "variant detachments" idea.
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Post by: aphyon
Yeah formations/detachments/unbound in 7th were bad, like i said we try to keep it baseline 5th ed as much as possible so the old FOC is required. the nice thing about 5th though is it did allow vehicle formations with their related restrictions. So a bit more freedom but not break the game style like 7th allowed.
Taking allied detachments did exist all the way back iin 3rd (and were not broken), but most people didn't take them aside from grey knights who had their own special rules as normally you had to take the additional 1 HQ and 1 troop minimum to gain access to 1 elite/heavy/fast from the allied force.
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Post by: The Deer Hunter
I ever thought that AP against vehicles should have a role.
as you are doing, AP 3 or AP 6 are the same, I find it not fair.
as an houserule, I found very balanced and realistic that after a pen. Hit, roll a d6; if you roll equal or higher AP weapon value, you score an heavy damage, if you roll lower, then the hit is a glancing
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Post by: licclerich
your overwatch rules sound interesting, declared firing looks good but can be slow for 'many small unit armies' ie guard.CC consilidate could be too powerful.
In my version of 7th one of the main rules is you have to reduce all hull points on a vehicle to destroy it. In a single volley with different weapons ie from a leman russ/devestator squad choose most powerful weapon that hit to blow it up.
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Post by: Mezmorki
I updated the link in the subject post to point to the "living rules" (i.e. google document) version of the file, that so that it's always reflecting the latest.
Current at version 1.1 with the changes I mentioned a few posts up. Here's the link too:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1uoAUqM9mJPNqh2XX8ywAhZ5htXvM8_xkGB6OKrpZw2k/edit?usp=sharing
Still getting my head around 7th edition and what I can I can do make the core of those codex's "compliant" with ProHammer.
What's interesting with the vehicle HP's added in 6th/7th, is that the unit prices didn't change all that much. Seems like using the ProHammer vehicle damage tables (closer to 4th ed) makes vehicle durability more uncertain. Things could be destroyed faster, but they could also hold out longer. Depends on the die rolls.
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Post by: Nurglitch
Are Shaken and Stunned cumulative as well?
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Post by: Mezmorki
ProHammer does this:
Shaken = can shoot but only hits on. 6 (aka snap fire)
Stunned = shaken + cant move next turn
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Post by: Nurglitch
So if a model takes two stunned results, what happens then?
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Post by: Mezmorki
Oh, nothing further happens. It's stunned for it's next turn only, no matter how many stunned results it suffers. They don't stack and accumulate.
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Post by: Mezmorki
I wanted to mention something as I was revising my rules.
People have expressed concerns by allowing units to consolidate into new enemy targets (like in 3rd edition).
Bear in mind, that the ProHammer rules also let you voluntarily withdraw from any combats (albiet with a penalty) on the start of your turn. This is similar to rules in 2nd edition for voluntary fallback / breaking off, as well as in 8th/9th where you can just "move away" on your turn.
There is also stronger (potentially) overwatch fire AND even a rule for firing into close combat at the risk of hitting your own unit.
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Post by: Mezmorki
Hello all. Quick update on ProHammer, now version 1.2.
* Added simplified rule for Deny the Witch
* Added 6th/7th edition compatibility rules (see last section) - including universal special rules. Players can use any codexes from 3rd-7th edition.
* Added a new unit type summary chart section
* Added Smash rule to monstrous creatures
* Clarified how vehicles split fire (treated as Ld 10, each weapon can fire at a target within its arc)
* Clarified what counts as a viable target model when allocating a wound pool during shooting
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Post by: jeff white
I am following this thread. Interesting...
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Post by: meatybtz
As a long time player, since RT days. I have a very long memory.
At the core, the basic mechanics of the game as presented in 3rd-7th are pretty solid. A few issues that are more linguistic vagueness and outright intentional widespread misreading and misrepresentation of certain rules that resulted in some serious abuses.
I suppose what is even more interesting is with a little bit of wrenching, 8th was pretty solid too. Again, badly written and ham-fisted rules cause the only "core" issues.
9th isn't really any worse off than 8th but it again suffers from ham-fisted approach rather than a refined sense of consideration of issues and moves towards "logical and consistent application changes" as solutions.
Everything else is rather a result of two things:
Power Creep and Model Selling Tactics influencing individual codex/supplement/unit rules.
It's all over the place with love children, mass buffs to sell certain new or low sales/high inventory items, and just rules that are not only not internally consistent but illogical even in the face of "trying to sell models".
Reading through what you've done fairly matches up with what I've done on my own as far as attempting slow, careful, logical changes. Looking at how to make things across the board logical and rational without "love children".
Sometimes a rule change isn't needed so much as a direct removal of the abuse there of with the rule mostly intact. This gets back to consistent application and logic.. aka GW made a Codex or Supplement that did not consider a core rule and gave an army a major abuse of an otherwise fine rule. I can write more later. But for starts I would encourage you to look towards backporting certain concepts from 8th. KeyWording in an "extensible" language (like extensible programming) allows for some very consistent and controlled rules use and modification. GW implemented the idea and then threw it to the wind and went hog wild and ham-fisted and the results were a mess. But getting back to its basic concept and working from there can yield very good results. But it can be tricky as you have to do your best to conceptualize groups and who should inherit from where and why rather than just mass key-wording till you get spaghetti, rules duplication, confusion.. or 9th where now you have an FAQ that has melta changes only to one group of models but not others so now its crazy. Or some space marines get 2w, but others (regular grey knights) don't.. neither do chaos marines? what? why?
When you conceptualize Astartes as a class and all Astartes start as: 4/4/4/4/2/4/2/8 (yes initiative is in there) And logically, Heretic extends Astartes, there for all basic Chaos Marines have the same Stat-line. For example even Primaris works here.. Primaris extends Astartes and becomes 4/4/4/4/3/4/2/8.. the Primaris extension adds 1w. A Captain is also an Astartes so his base stat line is the same but Captain adds: +1/+1/etc.. So if you make a Captain Primaris Astartes his statline should be easy to understand WHY, where it comes from, etc.
You can do vehicles in a similar fashion and even include exclusionary clauses.. such as a Vehicle can be Skimmer (extends Vehicle) but a Skimmer cannot be "heavy", but it can be "light" or "fast". Using some of the older designations here as keywording examples allowing a very complex and flexible system but one that also has boundaries, controls, and consistency. Those "controls" are important. Just like limitations on Heavy Weapons and movement were important to reduce the excessive power there of.. or limits on vehicle fire arcs and number of weapons fired when moving because it prevented them from being Last Starfighter Death-Blossom mode all the time.
This works for weapons for example and gets to a major complaint about the recent FAQ. All "melta" weapons should be consistent, even if you "extend" into something special it should be.. something special. Like Astartes Grenade Launcher vs Guardsman Grenade Launcher.. or the Dark Angels Grenade Launcher. Those were all logical extensions and could be understood.. as Astartes Shotgun vs a Regular Shotgun.
So it is less "core rules" and more Abuse there of and a complete lack of consistent application and logical nature to the rules and codexes. Just getting back to that fixes a lot of things with ALL editions.
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Post by: AnomanderRake
I've been looking back over some of my own oldhammer projects recently, and it's struck me as I've been doing so that the play environment (assumptions made by the Codexes) is at least as important as the core rules. I've also noticed that for most armies there's usually one idealized version of their Codex in the same way that people sometimes hold up 5e as the idealized time when the game worked correctly.
I'm considering building a few Codexes specifically for this rulebook as an exercise, try and go digging for the best version of the army and then make them all compatible with each other.
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Post by: Mezmorki
 meatybtz wrote:
So it is less "core rules" and more Abuse there of and a complete lack of consistent application and logical nature to the rules and codexes. Just getting back to that fixes a lot of things with ALL editions.
Thanks for the long and thoughtful reply. That's a lot of good stuff to mull over.
For my part, I must admit that I don't have the best grasp of the various abuses in the codex's over the years - which does put me at a bit of a disadvantage with respect to writing ProHammer. The reason is that I've always played with a good jovial group of friends and none of us are the sort to try and deliberately bring out full on cheesy lists. We play to win but we don't care about winning enough to squeeze the rules to their limit. Frankly a lot of the egregious balance issues people bring up with various editions we've just never had to deal with.
All this said, I'm really not looking to re-do codexes with ProHammer - although I could see potentially starting to keep track of a list of errata-like adjustments to be considered in some cases. But I think someone far more knowledgeable than me would need to take it on.... maybe the next post....? Automatically Appended Next Post:  AnomanderRake wrote:I've been looking back over some of my own oldhammer projects recently, and it's struck me as I've been doing so that the play environment (assumptions made by the Codexes) is at least as important as the core rules. I've also noticed that for most armies there's usually one idealized version of their Codex in the same way that people sometimes hold up 5e as the idealized time when the game worked correctly.
I'm considering building a few Codexes specifically for this rulebook as an exercise, try and go digging for the best version of the army and then make them all compatible with each other.
I'm curious where you might go with this - especially given my response directly above this message.
As said, I'm not looking to redo the codexes myself, but I'd love to see what others come up with and what sorts of issues arise in a given codex with the ProHammer rules. If problems can be addressed through the core ProHammer rules instead of having to modify a codex, I'd be open to exploring those changes too.
I've been playing a few more games with ProHammer using some 6th and 7th edition codexes - and running into some compatibility issues. Mostly this has to do with psykers (and I've added a bit to the rules to clarify this more) and also with certain weapon profiles, namely melee weapons like power weapons.
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Post by: aphyon
For my part, I must admit that I don't have the best grasp of the various abuses in the codex's over the years - which does put me at a bit of a disadvantage with respect to writing ProHammer. The reason is that I've always played with a good jovial group of friends and none of us are the sort to try and deliberately bring out full on cheesy lists. We play to win but we don't care about winning enough to squeeze the rules to their limit. Frankly a lot of the egregious balance issues people bring up with various editions we've just never had to deal with.
You will never counter the power of WAAC players no matter what you do. it seems like your group already has figured out the right attitude towards playing 40K.
Many of the big issues in the older editions was directly related to codex release schedule. hence the reason why the term bandwagon jumper became a thing. as the newest codex often had rules/units that were better in the edition it was designed for VS people who were still waiting on their updates who were still using old codex. this was pretty well solved by the time every codex got it's update release. the problem was that about that time GW would switch editions and start the process over again.
I've been playing a few more games with ProHammer using some 6th and 7th edition codexes - and running into some compatibility issues. Mostly this has to do with psykers (and I've added a bit to the rules to clarify this more) and also with certain weapon profiles, namely melee weapons like power weapons.
Curious, i have not run into any of those problems, but then again we are using the bog standard 5th ed psyker rules. no deny the witch shenanigans all the powers from 6th/7th are allowed. although we discourage the stupid game breaking ones that do things like create the "can only hit me on a 6+/re-roll all my saves" deathstar one.
When it comes to melee weapons power weapons are all treated as being bog standard AP3 for simplicity. we just use the strength modifiers for things like axes/mauls etc.. from 6th/7th leaving the big hitter like power claws/fists/hammers etc.. the only ones AP2/initiative 1.
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Post by: AnomanderRake
Mezmorki wrote: AnomanderRake wrote:I've been looking back over some of my own oldhammer projects recently, and it's struck me as I've been doing so that the play environment (assumptions made by the Codexes) is at least as important as the core rules. I've also noticed that for most armies there's usually one idealized version of their Codex in the same way that people sometimes hold up 5e as the idealized time when the game worked correctly.
I'm considering building a few Codexes specifically for this rulebook as an exercise, try and go digging for the best version of the army and then make them all compatible with each other.
I'm curious where you might go with this - especially given my response directly above this message.
As said, I'm not looking to redo the codexes myself, but I'd love to see what others come up with and what sorts of issues arise in a given codex with the ProHammer rules. If problems can be addressed through the core ProHammer rules instead of having to modify a codex, I'd be open to exploring those changes too.
I've been playing a few more games with ProHammer using some 6th and 7th edition codexes - and running into some compatibility issues. Mostly this has to do with psykers (and I've added a bit to the rules to clarify this more) and also with certain weapon profiles, namely melee weapons like power weapons.
Most of it's just bookkeeping/math, taking all the options from the version of the book with the most options and doing whatever math is needed to check it against everything else. Most Flyers, MCs, and superheavies need broad stat reworks across the unit type, the high-T/low- Sv niche needs to be explored more, Skyfire needs to be handed out more broadly, and the role of Initiative needs to be fiddled with some.
The major sticking points aside from restatting are psykers, Primaris Marines, and sub-factions. I prefer 4e/5e-style psykers where you had what were usually fairly minor powers that you paid points for and rolled a psychic test to use; the WHFB-inspired mechanics run on the assumption that everyone's got about the same amount of wizards in any given build, so armies with many more/less tended to be useless. As to Primaris there would be three approaches: say "this is oldhammer, no Primaris", try and interpret them as a resculpt and stat units that could be either Primaris/old-Marines, or try and continue the parallel army structure. I'd prefer the second just to keep with the theme of making sure you can use as many things as possible, but an argument could be made for just ignoring the Primaris. And as to sub-factions the problem there is that the Space Marines and to a lesser extent CSM have a really broad and well-developed set of sub-factions with distinct models, but nobody else does, which leaves me either saying "no sub-factions" and trying to roll the special units back into the generic faction, making up a lot of stuff out of whole cloth for everyone else, or giving SM/ CSM way too much screen time.
It might be interesting to see if you folks agree with me on what the "definitive" edition of a given book is as well; a summary:
Space Marines: 4e. Endlessly customizable units, managed to be "jack of all trades, master of none" better than any implementation since.
Blood Angels: 5e. Massive range expansion plus the first appearance of Descent of Angels.
Dark Angels: 6e. Deathwing/Ravenwing extended from "Fearless version of generic unit" to a selection of stuff you might be able to build an army out of.
Space Wolves: 30k rules. The wolfwolfwolf stuff in the 40k Codexes since 5e feels too cartoony, the aggro-melee-foot-blitz ambush vikings of the 30k rules feel much better to me.
Imperial Guard: Toss-up. I want the regimental doctrines out of the 3.5e book or the 30k Militia rules and the simplified Platoons/large rifle squads of the Solar Auxilia, but the Orders that have come to define the Guard as well as almost the entire plastic motor pool came out of the 5e book initially.
Inquisition: 3e Malleus/Hereticus book, plus this one 5e fandex I ran across that redid them and added the Ordo Xenos for 5e. The Grey Knights have never been the same since the 5e book mangled their statlines and tried to stretch them into a standalone book, the Acts of Faith system in those books was simple, elegant, and effective in a way it's never been since, and the Deathwatch from back then had a lot of toys that felt right at the 40k scale rather than the overcomplicated mess of mixed squads.
CSM: 3.5e book, plus 30k rules. Loaded with interesting and characterful stuff, plus sub-faction rules that made playing Undivided much more interesting.
Daemons: 30k Ruinstorm list: Strange Chaos-y overly-customizable monstrosities rather than GW's four bland one-dimensional mini-Codexes.
Renegades and Heretics: Toss-up. There are so many different versions of this army that do slightly different things that I can't point to one that makes a better starting point.
Eldar: Unsure. Most units change very little between books and the mission statement ("army of specialized scalpel units that need to operate in concert") wasn't well-filled by any of them; what tends to happen is that GW accidentally makes one unit too efficient against too many targets and the Eldar become a spam army. Maybe the 4e book with 3e Craftworlds' sub-faction material.
Dark Eldar: 5e. Massive range expansion, masses of strange and interesting tech, army-wide buffs that alter the way they play, some of which hasn't been seen since.
Necrons: 5e, largely for the alternate Cryptek tech.
Orks: It's been an incredibly under-supported army for as long as I've been playing, lots of design space left unexplored. I kind of want to do a clean sweep here.
Tyranids: 4e. The build-a-bug biomorphs really gave the sense of the hive mind tailoring broods of troops for specific tasks.
Tau: Unsure. There are a lot of places I'd want to take the Tau that GW's never gone; expanded client races, gun-fu melee battlesuits, that kind of thing.
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Post by: aphyon
Space Marines: 4e. Endlessly customizable units, managed to be "jack of all trades, master of none" better than any implementation since.
I prefer the 5th ed book better because it had more unit options. both 4th or 5th editions could work better if you add in the expanded rules from the index astartes books(lots of people forget how great they are).
There were a lot of complaints about the 4th ed trait system allowing abuse because the negative traits you could choose from had no real negative impact.
Blood Angels: 5e. Massive range expansion plus the first appearance of Descent of Angels.
Totally agree- the best and most thematic and lore focused BA book.
Dark Angels: 6e. Deathwing/Ravenwing extended from "Fearless version of generic unit" to a selection of stuff you might be able to build an army out of.
Nope gonna have to say the 3.5 mini dex was the best lore based rules for deathwing/ravenwing, battle standards and characters for my unforgiven.
Space Wolves: 30k rules. The wolfwolfwolf stuff in the 40k Codexes since 5e feels too cartoony, the aggro-melee-foot-blitz ambush vikings of the 30k rules feel much better to me
I am actually quite happy with the 5th ed codex, the next codex that turned logan grimnar into santa with an actual sleigh got a bit stupid.
Imperial Guard: Toss-up. I want the regimental doctrines out of the 3.5e book or the 30k Militia rules and the simplified Platoons/large rifle squads of the Solar Auxilia, but the Orders that have come to define the Guard as well as almost the entire plastic motor pool came out of the 5e book initially.
Having a good friend who has played guard since 3rd, while he liked the doctrines in the previous codex he still rates the 5th ed codex as the best ( i do as well). although i do like the original chapter approved book for the IG armored company list as well as the rules for schaffers last chancers.
Inquisition: 3e Malleus/Hereticus book, plus this one 5e fandex I ran across that redid them and added the Ordo Xenos for 5e. The Grey Knights have never been the same since the 5e book mangled their statlines and tried to stretch them into a standalone book, the Acts of Faith system in those books was simple, elegant, and effective in a way it's never been since, and the Deathwatch from back then had a lot of toys that felt right at the 40k scale rather than the overcomplicated mess of mixed squads.
Yep, still have both the demon hunters and witch hunters codex. still the best most lore inspired rules.
My list of best codexes to use-
.Space marines-5th
.Black templar-armageddon
.Salamanders-armageddon or 4th
.Blood angels-5th
.White scars-index astartes 1
.Dark angles 3.5 mini dex
.Demon/witch hunters-3rd
.Space wolves 5th
.Custodes-7th
.Oks-4th hands down the most orky book
.Tau-4th (back when they were good even without riptiides)
.Tyranids-4th hands down best use of biomorphs/synapse
. IG-5th
.Chaos 3.5(also the best book for almost a pure demon army..just play with the word bearers rules)
.Adeptus mechanicus/skitarii-7th
.Necrons-7th (they needed the expanded line before that they were pretty 2 dimensional)
.Eldar.-i'm gonna go with 4th
.Dark eldar- not sure, never fought them enough in any edition to know which one was best.
For expanding the lines for say adding something not in those codexes like a helldrake in a chaos marine force using the 3.5 dex.. just use the points cost listed from it's entry in the book it appears in but use the upgrade costs and related rules from the 3.5 codex.
I wouldn't use primaris at all in any manner except as stand in proxies for regular marines/units. the 8th ed system is completely incompatible with 3rd-7th especially using 5th edition core rules like pro-hammer.
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Post by: A.T.
I would have thought the 4e codex with the errata, unless the intent was to just plug the zeal and vow rules on top of the 5e book?
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Post by: aphyon
Looking at the rules for comparison. the 4th rulebook is really good and adds the characters, blessed hulls on land raiders as well as keeps the vows. the biggest change really is to the righteous zeal special rule and be pure in mind, body, and soul is replaced by abhor the witch.
In the armageddon codex zeal requires 25% casualties to trigger but it is always passed, and it also effects jump infantry. the distance moved towards the enemy is 2d6 (3d6 for jumpers)
The codex triggers on a single casualty but they do not auto pass, it does not apply to jump troops and failure forces them to fall back. success only grants a 1d6 move towards the enemy.
The vow used to let them go after psykers getting an extra 2d6 move towards a psyker (including their vehicles) before normal moves. the change gives them a 5+save against psyker powers.
It is a trade off as to which version you like better. i thought the original was more in line with the lore.
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Post by: meatybtz
I simply want to point out that I was not saying to try to win against WAAC players. As was stated you cannot.
However the best defense is not to specifically try to counter them but instead work at writing consistent rules, avoid "exceptions", work on fluffy for armies, accept that not all armies are going to be equal (and you don't want that anyways), avoid "special snowflake" concepts,
Always seek internally consistent balance and consistent rules applications. This alone will prevent most abuses, not all, just most. All rules abuse and WAAC centers around extreme abuse of niche rules written without proper testing or realization of interactions. Usually OP codexes or OP "special exception powers of uber to sell models".
Examples of poorly written rules being abused was 7th (lots of abuse in this edition, dunno why, maybe how long it ran). From Invisibility (which was SUPER EASY TO FIX, but wasn't) to "to-tipping cover" or "conga lines" or other ridiculous activities. All which were easily solved by SMALL changes that were not heavily impactful on game operation and did not significantly change the game play or core rule.
Oh and as a note, the overwatch changes in 9th so far are something I fully support. With a little tweaking it could be as close to as "ideal" as we can get.
Examples of "off the cuff" fixes:
Invisibility:
Warp Charges Cost: 3
6's to hit unless the unit shot or charges, note this is not snap firing so blast weapons may be used as normal, if so their position is revealed and they instead gain a non-alterable 4+ cover save, weapons that ignore cover are not effected by invisibility.
Still power, still open to abuse, but not like before. The cost opens up a much higher chance of Perils.
Toe-Tipping: In order to benefit from "area terrain" a model must be "fully within the area", fully within is defined by the model's WHOLE base being within a defined zone of Area Terrain.
Conga-Lines: See 9th Edition Coherency Rules.
Scatter Dice too slow/ arguments (bullcrap from players, but easy fix): Import Rules.Warmachine
With a little modifications that is.
Your standard GW template has "clock" markings. Anyone notice that? I present two options: one D12 one D6, both work equally well.
Blast D6
1-Declare Target
2-Place Template as desired on Target
3-Roll to Hit as normal
4a- If a Hit is rolled resolve the attack against the models under the template. Blast will hit ONLY those models under the template. Models not under the template may not be assigned wounds. Models partially under the template are only hit on a 4+ rolled for each model.
4b- If a Miss is rolled, roll a D6 and consult the clock on the template. 6 always points towards your opponents table edge, 3 always points to your table edge. Roll 2D6 and subtract the models BS from that number. Move the template along the direction rolled that number of inches and resolve attack as normal. This may impact friendly units or even hit multiple units.
Blast D12
1-Declare Target
2-Place Template as desired on Target
3-Roll to Hit as normal
4a- If a Hit is rolled resolve the attack against the models under the template. Blast will hit ONLY those models under the template. Models not under the template may not be assigned wounds. Models partially under the template are only hit on a 4+ rolled for each model.
4b- If a Miss is rolled, roll a D12 and consult the clock on the template. 12 always points towards your opponents table edge, 6 always points to your table edge. Roll 2D6 and subtract the models BS from that number. Move the template along the direction rolled that number of inches and resolve attack as normal. This may impact friendly units or even hit multiple units.
Of the two D6 is faster but the clock is more limited in direction, enough so as to be predictable to an extent. D12 offers more "reasonable" scatter granularity but it breaks the "D6" game rule so that is the biggest argument against it.
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Post by: A.T.
 aphyon wrote:The vow used to let them go after psykers getting an extra 2d6 move towards a psyker (including their vehicles) before normal moves. the change gives them a 5+save against psyker powers.
4e still had that, but it was a d6" move. I'm guessing the change was to reduce the first turn charges that sometimes plagued 3rd edition (see blood angels).
With zeal I believe the amageddon templars had to fail their leadership test to use it. The odds of which are slim and anyone led by a chaplain never fell back (and therefore would never zeal).
By comparison the 4e templars would virtually always zeal forward if you so much as looked at them funny - it was actually a point of contention as some players insisted zeal was a forced maximum move rather than following the consolidation move rules (interpreting 'must' move towards the enemy as overriding the distance as well as the direction of the rule).
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Post by: aphyon
Models partially under the template are only hit on a 4+ rolled for each model.
Absolutely NEVER use this- it was the way it was in the original template rules and was fixed (if you get touched by the template you are hit) because it caused to many problems.
The additional rub, if i have to roll to hit in the first place i should not have to roll to hit again on the same targets.
DUST uses the reverse rule-the template never scatters so you have to roll for all models touched by it to see if they are hit. but that system does not have a roll to wound. hits are also wounds automatically-saves taken as normal based on weapon profile. \
A.T.
both rules for zeal have their own merits. i would say it is a toss up between the original armageddon mini entry and the full 4th ed codex. i would have no problem fighting against either version under the 5th edition based super edition he is trying to make with pro-hammer (although i prefer our version better since it is only 20 specific bullet point fixes by using existing rules combined into 5th)
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Post by: AnomanderRake
@Mezmorki: A few quibbles as I read the rules in depth:
Unit types: P5: A few:
As written Jetbikes can go to ground and can't turbo-boost?
You've included Jink in the USR summary but three of the main unit types that had it (bikes, jetbikes, skimmers) don't, is it your intention that it'd be added to unit datasheets individually?
Monstrous Creatures aren't natively Fearless, is it your intention that it'd be added to unit datasheets individually?
Artillery type: It's not a common type in 40k but it's always got a pile of unnecessarily complicated rules. I'd really like to be able to write gun+crew as a single multi-wound model to make them faster and easier to use if possible, if you're amenable I'll send my proposal?
Overwatch: P7: Why no morale/pinning from overwatch fire? A unit breaking and running as they fail to advance past a hail of bullets seems like a perfectly logical interaction to me.
Shooting into melee: P9: As written monsters can be freely shot while in melee, even when engaged with monsters or walkers, but walkers can't?
Heavy weapons: P10: As written a unit with Relentless can't charge after firing Heavy weapons, is this intentional?
Blasts: P10: 2d6- BS scatter makes it very difficult for a blast weapon (particularly a large blast) to entirely miss; I worry that using that on top of the normal roll to hit is going to make blasts way too accurate (a BS4 model firing this way has an 87% chance to have the blast land exactly where they want it to, 2/3 chance of hitting on BS plus 1/9 misses but then rolls a hit on the scatter die plus 5/54 shot scatters 0"). I'd suggest either removing the to-hit roll like in the original 5e or dropping BS from the scatter roll like in 4e.
Assault phase morale (P13): I'm curious as to why you've dropped the morale penalty for losing more models here. I'm a little worried about things being too hard to sweep if they're testing on Ld7-8 before factoring in flags/morale buffs.
Vehicle damage tables (P16): I'm a little worried about making AP1 the bar for getting a +1 to the damage table and a little worried about allowing glancing hits to wreck vehicles while still letting Haywire glance on 2s. It's not necessarily very urgent but I may switch a few AP2 weapons to AP1 and/or give some Haywire weapons AP- with these tables.
Vehicle squadrons: P16: Why does the defender allocate hits evenly across the squadron? It seems inconsistent with requiring wounds to other units to hit the wounded models first, and seems like you risk making vehicle squadrons too durable.
Deny the Witch: P18: The d6+ Ld roll-off makes me a bit twitchy, I worry that it'll make it too easy for someone to take a random chump psyker (an Astropath, say) and shut down a Lord of Change, or too hard for the Lord of Change to eat the Astropath's brain. I could fiddle around with Ld more but I'd almost rather introduce a "psychic mastery" mechanic just for deny rolls.
Jink: P19: You've got 6e Jink (gains a cover save after moving) here but almost 7e Jink (choose to jink to gain cover but then fire snap shots next turn) in the flyer rules on page 22. I'd strongly advise going to the 7e version for everyone; I spent a lot of 6e very frustrated by my Eldar not getting their cover saves top of turn one and getting alpha-struck down much too easily.
Chariots: P23: It'd be much, much easier just to say "this vehicle fights in melee like a walker" and then stat them accordingly.
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aphyon wrote:Space Marines: 4e. Endlessly customizable units, managed to be "jack of all trades, master of none" better than any implementation since.
I prefer the 5th ed book better because it had more unit options. both 4th or 5th editions could work better if you add in the expanded rules from the index astartes books(lots of people forget how great they are).
There were a lot of complaints about the 4th ed trait system allowing abuse because the negative traits you could choose from had no real negative impact...
I think what they thought was "everyone's going to pick one set of chapter traits and stick with them, which will limit what kind of army builds they can use!" and everyone else thought "great, we can revise our chapter traits to tailor them to whatever list build we're using today!"
Addendum: Am skimming the Index Astartes docs and I'm amused at how much the 30k Legion appendixes look like the CSM 3.5/Index Astartes Chapter rules. Automatically Appended Next Post: Snipers: I'd like to be able to rethink them as special weapons/small teams rather than 40k's usual massed sniper squads; I can give everyone the ability to pick out targets a la the 3e Vindicare on my end, but would you consider putting that into the Sniper rule?
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Post by: Mezmorki
AnomanderRake wrote:
Eldar: Unsure. Most units change very little between books and the mission statement ("army of specialized scalpel units that need to operate in concert") wasn't well-filled by any of them; what tends to happen is that GW accidentally makes one unit too efficient against too many targets and the Eldar become a spam army. Maybe the 4e book with 3e Craftworlds' sub-faction material.
Eldar has always been one of my main factions (also Space Wolves and Orks). Having spent some time recently comparing Eldar codexes across editions, I think the 6th edition one I like the most. There are some subtle things and extra options that make it feel a bit more in flavor with 2nd edition. Automatically Appended Next Post: aphyon wrote:Models partially under the template are only hit on a 4+ rolled for each model.
Absolutely NEVER use this- it was the way it was in the original template rules and was fixed (if you get touched by the template you are hit) because it caused to many problems.
What was the issue caused by partially touched models being a 4+? Confusion about whether a model was wholly or only partially covered?
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Post by: Mezmorki
AnomanderRake wrote:@Mezmorki: A few quibbles as I read the rules in depth:
Unit types: P5: A few:
As written Jetbikes can go to ground and can't turbo-boost?
You've included Jink in the USR summary but three of the main unit types that had it (bikes, jetbikes, skimmers) don't, is it your intention that it'd be added to unit datasheets individually?
Monstrous Creatures aren't natively Fearless, is it your intention that it'd be added to unit datasheets individually?
Artillery type: It's not a common type in 40k but it's always got a pile of unnecessarily complicated rules. I'd really like to be able to write gun+crew as a single multi-wound model to make them faster and easier to use if possible, if you're amenable I'll send my proposal?
Good comments.
* Fixed Jetbikes special rules (same as bikes)
* Jink. In 5th edition, those units didn't have Jink, and I kept it that way. I included Jink is the USR's to be used as special rule where applicable to individual datasheets
* I don't think they were natively fearless in 5th - so this is left to the data sheets
* Artillery is tricky, I agree it could be simplified. I'll add that to the list.
Overwatch: P7: Why no morale/pinning from overwatch fire? A unit breaking and running as they fail to advance past a hail of bullets seems like a perfectly logical interaction to me.
I was trying to keep overwatch from being too powerful frankly. The idea too is that the shots are taken based on the unit in their final move position, representing them taking shots while running, but making it to their final destination nonetheless (i.e. adrenalin on the run overcoming your desire to turn and flee at that moment). I also didn't want to introduce units breaking during your own turn. Also, since overwatch can be triggered after any move (including an assault move), I didn't want casualties to cause a charging unit to retreat mid-charge. Too strong.
Shooting into melee: P9: As written monsters can be freely shot while in melee, even when engaged with monsters or walkers, but walkers can't?
I'll fix that! I forgot that walkers are counted as infantry models in CC and are thus locked/engaged.
Heavy weapons: P10: As written a unit with Relentless can't charge after firing Heavy weapons, is this intentional?
* Fixed! Relentless units can still charge after shooting a heavy weapon.
Blasts: P10: 2d6-BS scatter makes it very difficult for a blast weapon (particularly a large blast) to entirely miss; I worry that using that on top of the normal roll to hit is going to make blasts way too accurate (a BS4 model firing this way has an 87% chance to have the blast land exactly where they want it to, 2/3 chance of hitting on BS plus 1/9 misses but then rolls a hit on the scatter die plus 5/54 shot scatters 0"). I'd suggest either removing the to-hit roll like in the original 5e or dropping BS from the scatter roll like in 4e.
My group and I were talking about this exact thing. We're going to remove the BS modifier from the scatter roll and see how that goes.
Assault phase morale (P13): I'm curious as to why you've dropped the morale penalty for losing more models here. I'm a little worried about things being too hard to sweep if they're testing on Ld7-8 before factoring in flags/morale buffs.
* Well, if you lost more models / suffered more wounds, you have a -1 to your Ld. It just doesn't scale worse than that. Maybe it's not strong enough of a morale check for larger horde units that lose? The original 5E rules (-1 Ld per wound you lost by) can be pretty harsh and too often leads into a guaranteed route. I was trying to tip it so that melee fights are more often going to last more than 1 round of combat.
Vehicle damage tables (P16): I'm a little worried about making AP1 the bar for getting a +1 to the damage table and a little worried about allowing glancing hits to wreck vehicles while still letting Haywire glance on 2s. It's not necessarily very urgent but I may switch a few AP2 weapons to AP1 and/or give some Haywire weapons AP- with these tables.
* Haywire as AP- makes sense. What units tend to use haywire the most? Harlequins mostly?
Vehicle squadrons: P16: Why does the defender allocate hits evenly across the squadron? It seems inconsistent with requiring wounds to other units to hit the wounded models first, and seems like you risk making vehicle squadrons too durable.
* Maybe I worded this wrong - but I intended it to mirror the normal wound allocation changes I in ProHammer. It says the defender allocates the penetrating and glancing hits , which is after the penetration rolls are made (which is analogous to after the wound rolls are made). I think the wound allocation rules in ProHammer, for both vehicle squads and normal units, should make them a little more durable versus shooting. Or at least give the defender more choice/flexibility over what models take what wounds. Do you think this should work such that you roll on the damage tables and then allocate those results evenly?
Deny the Witch: P18: The d6+Ld roll-off makes me a bit twitchy, I worry that it'll make it too easy for someone to take a random chump psyker (an Astropath, say) and shut down a Lord of Change, or too hard for the Lord of Change to eat the Astropath's brain. I could fiddle around with Ld more but I'd almost rather introduce a "psychic mastery" mechanic just for deny rolls.
* i was contemplating that. In this 6th/7th edition compatibly section I made note that mastery level is equivalent to how many powers your psyker knows for backward compatibility with older editions. Maybe that can be pulled into the main section. Or else the deny the witch is just a 6 on a d6 roll unless you have some spiffy wargear. Keep in mind, the default deny the witch only works if the psyhic power targets the psyker (or the unit it's in).
Jink: P19: You've got 6e Jink (gains a cover save after moving) here but almost 7e Jink (choose to jink to gain cover but then fire snap shots next turn) in the flyer rules on page 22. I'd strongly advise going to the 7e version for everyone; I spent a lot of 6e very frustrated by my Eldar not getting their cover saves top of turn one and getting alpha-struck down much too easily.
* I'll take another look at that 
Chariots: P23: It'd be much, much easier just to say "this vehicle fights in melee like a walker" and then stat them accordingly.
* Ditto - can probably be simplified more.
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Post by: aphyon
Trying to fix GWs screwups...who knew it would become a second career for you. you already did better than their design team, although to be fair marketing probably doesn't want a "perfect edition" that doesn't need constant updates/fixes.
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Post by: AnomanderRake
Mezmorki wrote:Overwatch: P7: Why no morale/pinning from overwatch fire? A unit breaking and running as they fail to advance past a hail of bullets seems like a perfectly logical interaction to me.
I was trying to keep overwatch from being too powerful frankly. The idea too is that the shots are taken based on the unit in their final move position, representing them taking shots while running, but making it to their final destination nonetheless (i.e. adrenalin on the run overcoming your desire to turn and flee at that moment). I also didn't want to introduce units breaking during your own turn. Also, since overwatch can be triggered after any move (including an assault move), I didn't want casualties to cause a charging unit to retreat mid-charge. Too strong.
I think Overwatch instead of shooting is already enough of a nerf.
Vehicle damage tables (P16): I'm a little worried about making AP1 the bar for getting a +1 to the damage table and a little worried about allowing glancing hits to wreck vehicles while still letting Haywire glance on 2s. It's not necessarily very urgent but I may switch a few AP2 weapons to AP1 and/or give some Haywire weapons AP- with these tables.
* Haywire as AP- makes sense. What units tend to use haywire the most? Harlequins mostly?
Massed Haywire is available to Harlequins (haywire-cannon bikes), Dark Eldar (haywire-cannon Scourges and haywire grenades on Wyches), Craftworld Eldar (haywire grenades on Swooping Hawks), and potentially Mechanicum/Marines depending on how I end up implementing grav-weapons (30k grav is all Haywire).
Vehicle squadrons: P16: Why does the defender allocate hits evenly across the squadron? It seems inconsistent with requiring wounds to other units to hit the wounded models first, and seems like you risk making vehicle squadrons too durable.
* Maybe I worded this wrong - but I intended it to mirror the normal wound allocation changes I in ProHammer. It says the defender allocates the penetrating and glancing hits , which is after the penetration rolls are made (which is analogous to after the wound rolls are made). I think the wound allocation rules in ProHammer, for both vehicle squads and normal units, should make them a little more durable versus shooting. Or at least give the defender more choice/flexibility over what models take what wounds. Do you think this should work such that you roll on the damage tables and then allocate those results evenly?
Vehicle squadrons are going to be a lot harder to handle than this; how do you deal with squadrons with different armour facings where vehicles are facing in different directions, on top of figuring out how to write "must allocate hits to damaged vehicles first" without hull points (do you need to allocate hits to shaken/stunned vehicles first?). I'd almost suggest just dropping vehicle squadrons as a concept and making everything that would be a squadron work like 30k Dreadnaught Talons (multiple vehicles to a slot, deploy together but act as individual units during the game).
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Automatically Appended Next Post:
aphyon wrote:Models partially under the template are only hit on a 4+ rolled for each model.
Absolutely NEVER use this- it was the way it was in the original template rules and was fixed (if you get touched by the template you are hit) because it caused to many problems.
What was the issue caused by partially touched models being a 4+? Confusion about whether a model was wholly or only partially covered?
That, plus it's an extra resolution step that doesn't really add anything to the game. There's also the fact that that rule was written when almost everything was on a 25mm base, trying to use that rule with whole armies on 32mm or 40mm bases risks blasts generally being too weak.
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Post by: MagicJuggler
>Under no circumstances may more than two powers be used per player turn. (Revised)
Is this 'per Psyker?' If so, then that seems like it would inordinately hurt some armies (read: Tyranids) more than others.
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Post by: Mezmorki
Yes, each psyker is limited to no more than two per turn. I'll correct that.
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Post by: aphyon
Mezmorki wrote:Yes, each psyker is limited to no more than two per turn. I'll correct that.
It's just the base 5th editon rule you had 2 tiers of librarians base had 1 power top had 2, i think the only exception was special characters like eldrad and ahriman who i think could do 3 or 4.
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Post by: AnomanderRake
Mezmorki wrote:Yes, each psyker is limited to no more than two per turn. I'll correct that.
You might alternately stick to "mastery level" as the rule for controlling how many powers a unit can cast. Going back to 5e everyone was limited to one, but there were costed upgrades for Farseers, Librarians, Sorcerers, and GK characters to get more, and core mechanics are there for things you don't want to have to copy-paste across a bunch of different unit entries.
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Post by: meatybtz
Mezmorki wrote: AnomanderRake wrote:
Eldar: Unsure. Most units change very little between books and the mission statement ("army of specialized scalpel units that need to operate in concert") wasn't well-filled by any of them; what tends to happen is that GW accidentally makes one unit too efficient against too many targets and the Eldar become a spam army. Maybe the 4e book with 3e Craftworlds' sub-faction material.
Eldar has always been one of my main factions (also Space Wolves and Orks). Having spent some time recently comparing Eldar codexes across editions, I think the 6th edition one I like the most. There are some subtle things and extra options that make it feel a bit more in flavor with 2nd edition.
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aphyon wrote:Models partially under the template are only hit on a 4+ rolled for each model.
Absolutely NEVER use this- it was the way it was in the original template rules and was fixed (if you get touched by the template you are hit) because it caused to many problems.
What was the issue caused by partially touched models being a 4+? Confusion about whether a model was wholly or only partially covered?
If memory serves me the issue was 2-fold. Considered Excessive Dice rolling (slow) and people were "abusing" and intentionally mis-representing the rule (a common problem). The first one is not solve-able. The other one is an issue with sportsmanship. However, in light of 8ths, and even 9ths excessive dice faffing... It's not as slow as endless re-rolls.
It should be noted that Warmachine used similar rules and doesn't have a problem with sportsmanship in that regard but the lower model count made dice rolling lower so that isn't totally fair.
Point is people have dicked around in 8th with the whole aura, wholly within/just touching crap as well such that even GW had to fix it in FAQs requiring a the entire unit to be "within".
In the end we try to balance things. Without the 4+ rule you need deviation to be much higher to prevent template weapons from obliterating horde armies. While it is reasonable that a horde would take more hits, it is also less fun. Always the balance of fun/crunchy. We do the best we can. It's just that blast weapons and template weapons can be very powerful when they are not made "special" with scatter and scatter causes all kinds of arguments between people of poor sportsmanship. More than the 4+ does tbh. Which is why GW tried the whole Dice instead of Templates.. but it leaves a lot wanting and takes a good bit out of the game.
I still don't see a "perfect" solution. Scatter Dice are BAD, always been BAD. The fact though that under old rules an Ork was as likely to get a "hit" on the actual dice as a Space Marine left a lot to be wanted, but to try and counter that they used the subtract BS method. But to get away from scatter requires a clock dice of some kind. How then to determine hit or or scatter? The fastest is the BS roll, but again that will make Marine blast extremely accurate and devastating towards hordes. Which kind of makes sense but is less "fun".
Wandering around in dark places of game design. It's kind of fun. Though in summation our friend has another good point about the base size problem. GW's scale creep has resulted in some crazy bases. Let alone GW's almost random use of base shape and size prevents the PP method of cylinders of logic about LOS and visibility. I mean who here doesn't recall the models on a tournament guard army all laying on their bases and similar slowed things.
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Post by: AnomanderRake
meatybtz wrote:...Without the 4+ rule you need deviation to be much higher to prevent template weapons from obliterating horde armies...
To be fair you could also prevent template weapons from totally obliterating horde armies by fiddling with stats. Make more weapons AP6/- so 5+ armour is more valuable, for instance.
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Post by: MagicJuggler
Flamers were incredibly dangerous in 5th edition but far less so in 7th due to the differences in shooting resolution.
5th was "All hits, all wounds, allocate wounds, save."
7th was:
"Batch weapons by type."
-For Each Batch, "Roll to hit. Roll to wound. Roll to save."
On one hand, 7th had slower resolution. On the other hand, it required flamers to fire first, and it prevented the issue of nuking a horde by tank-shocking a clump, mass-flamering it, and spilling-over to the rest of the horde.
If you want hordes to be more resilient versus templates/AOEs, allow unengaged units to consolidate 'as though' there were no enemies after assaulting a vehicle, regardless of whether or not they destroyed the vehicle or not. Optionally, the explosion damage for such vehicles resolves AFTER those consolidate moves, so you don't lose half your Tankbustas to a Rhino.
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Post by: Mezmorki
Honestly, I've had much issue with the 4+ for partially covered models using template + blast weapons. It's an extra step in the die rolling, but just doesn't take all much time in the scheme of things and I think strikes a better balance than other options.
I finished a ProHammer game last night of Eldar vs. Blood Angles (Lamenters technically) with a stupid amount of hand flamers Template resolution was fine.
 MagicJuggler wrote:
5th was "All hits, all wounds, allocate wounds, save."
7th was:
"Batch weapons by type."
-For Each Batch, "Roll to hit. Roll to wound. Roll to save."
ProHammer is:
"All hits, all wounds, allocate wounds by weapon batch and/or saves, saves"
Kind of a hybrid of the two approaches.
MagicJuggler wrote:If you want hordes to be more resilient versus templates/AOEs, allow unengaged units to consolidate 'as though' there were no enemies after assaulting a vehicle, regardless of whether or not they destroyed the vehicle or not. Optionally, the explosion damage for such vehicles resolves AFTER those consolidate moves, so you don't lose half your Tankbustas to a Rhino.
.
Interesting idea. I'll consider allowing consolidation moves after assaulting a (non-walker) vehicle.
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Post by: AnomanderRake
First draft of a Space Marine book for these rules: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dfQUz1frMJcFd8N73UTPm_oUF0_mqsRf7k7QX-Wt2jM/edit?usp=sharing
There are no Forge World units or Flyers in this document right now; the FW units are left out to keep the size down, the Flyers because I'm not sure I agree with Mezmorki's core flyer rules. I tried to minimize datasheets otherwise, and ended up drawing more on 30k than 40k for a lot of Chapter Tactics.
This is very much a first draft and everything (especially points) is subject to change. The document has open comment permission so you can post there if you want.
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Post by: Mezmorki
Update to ProHammer, bringing it up to version 1.5
See below for bigger changes, but lots of other minor clarifications added throughout. Playing another game tonight to see how it goes.
=========================================================================
Version 1.5
(1) Adjusted rules for shooting into close combat - now based on rolling to hit as normal, and then adding an additional step and D6 roll, hitting your own units on a 1-3, and intended target on 4-6.
(2) Adjusted rules for resolving blast weapons (no more BS subtraction to scatter distance), since it uses normal to hit roll for determining initial placement.
(3) Reorganized the universal special rules and combined 5th/6th/7th rules into organized lists.
(4) Clarified psyker handling between editions. Incorporates a “mastery level” concept into core rules that is backward compatible with older codexs
(5) Withdrawing from close combat moved to the start of your own assault phase (before charges). Helps keep melee units alive and sets up a choice.
(6) Morale checks for shooting and assault moved to the end of the turn. Units only take one test per turn. Slight tip in favor of melee units so you don't have charge targets break and run before you can finish the assault.
=========================================================================
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Post by: Mezmorki
Just a little ProHammer update...
I'm currently writing a whole new set of missions and mission setup instructions. After reviewing how different editions handled it, I'm learning towards going back to the way VP's worked in 4th edition but blending this with the variety of mission types found across later editions.
For those who don't know or recall, in 4th edition a greater range of units could count as "scoring units" (unlike 5-8th? - 9th seems to have expanded the range of scoring units again?). What was cool is that you earned the unit's actual point value for killing it or 50% of its value if below 50% strength.
In addition to getting VP's for kills, the mission objectives were also worth a variable amount of points depending on the size of the game. I.E, a single "capture the center" of the table objective in 2,000 point game would be worth 2,000 points! In a mission with 4 objective markers, each marker would be worth 500 points, and so on.
The result is cool because the missions were a careful balance between objective scoring and killing enemies while preserving you own force strength (to prevent your opponent from scoring points on kills). It added a tactical depth that I feel later missions lack a bit. The whole thing scales perfectly depending on the size of the game being played too.
==============================
I'm also working on an alternative turn structure format for the game, which would be optional of course. Played one game with it so far and it's pretty interesting!
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Post by: Brutallica
Sorry... i really like what you have done, but fallback... that plenty reason to disgard it for me as a khorne/WE player.
Edit: post shooting i can live with. Didnt notice the 1.5 change.
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Post by: Mezmorki
So I'm trying to think through the rules for deep striking a bit.
I do like that in 8th/9th units have a "chance" to be able to deep strike and also assault on the turn that they deep strike. I also like that there is NOT a deep strike disaster table - which can be very punishing and unfun overall.
I wonder in the context of 5th edition / ProHammer if there is a way to allow assaulting after deepstriking AND also minimize the disaster chances.
Here's an idea I'm kicking around, and looking for feedback.
=======================================================================================
(1) When deepstriking, place one model, designed the "center model", from the deepstriking unit on the table 6" or more away from an an enemy unit (for vehicles measure from all points of the hull)
(2) Roll a 2D6 + Scatter. If a hit is rolled, go to (3), is a scatter direction is rolled, go to (4)
(3) If a hit is rolled, place remaining models in the unit per step (5)
(4) If a scatter direction is rolled, determine the adjusted location for the center model, which is 2D6" in the direction shown by the scatter die (don't move the center model yet!).
* If the center model's adjusted location is on top of a friendly model, set the adjusted location as far as possible, stopping 2" short of the friendly model(s) it would be on top of.
* If the center model's new location is in impossible terrain, off of the table, or on top of or within 2" of an enemy model, your opponent instead chooses the scatter direction and sets the adjusted location based on the distance rolled. The chosen direction cannot result in the adjusted location being on impassible terrain, off the table, or within 2" of an enemy model. If no viable direction exists, the unit returns to the reserve pool and will attempt to arrive again next turn.
(5) Once the adjusted location is determined, move the center model to that location. All other models in the deepstriking unit must now be placed within 2" of the center model. Models may not be placed on impassible terrain or within 2" of enemy models. Any models which cannot be placed within 2" of the center model may be placed in base-to-base contact with a model that is within 2" of the center model. Should there be no space available to place a given model, that model is instead destroyed.
Models entering play from deepstriking, or disembarking from deep striking vehicles, may not take a normal move after arriving. However, they may shoot, run, and assault as normal.
* Drop Pod special rule allows you to stop the scatter distance short in the event of conflicts with enemy models, impassible terrain, etc. Drop pods, if open-topped, DO allow units to assault out of them the turn they arrive.
=======================================================================================
How this works in practice...
With the center model being setup up 6" away, and placing other models in the unit within 2", if you roll a hit (1/3 chance) you'll likely be in charge range after deepstriking.
However, it's also possible of course that you get an unlucky scatter roll that brings you too close to an enemy model, in which case they get to dictate the direction you scatter instead! I like that interactive aspect. The effect is that you "can" try to squeeze a unit in close and within assault range, but you only have a 1/3 chance to hit that spot and there is the potential for your opponent to pick a really unpleasant direction for it to scatter instead.
Obviously opening up the opportunity to assault from deep-striking is a big change for 5th, but it's allowed in 8th/9th with the risk that your charge distance won't get you far enough to assault. Here, there is a similar risk of scattering too far away and/or your opponent getting to place your model's in a worse location.
Thoughts?
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Post by: AnomanderRake
My preference is to keep the chance for disaster if you just Deep Strike anywhere, but allow the player to mitigate it with teleport homers. I dislike 8e/9e's decision to allow predictable risk-free Deep Striking anywhere you want, it's turned Deep Strike into an efficient way to hide all kinds of units from alpha-strikes to the point that there's a whole bunch of stuff you should never deploy on the table instead of a high risk/high reward strategy for possibly getting a surprise shot off.
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Post by: Amishprn86
aphyon wrote:
My list of best codexes to use-
.Space marines-5th
.Black templar-armageddon
.Salamanders-armageddon or 4th
.Blood angels-5th
.White scars-index astartes 1
.Dark angles 3.5 mini dex
.Demon/witch hunters-3rd
.Space wolves 5th
.Custodes-7th
.Oks-4th hands down the most orky book
.Tau-4th (back when they were good even without riptiides)
.Tyranids-4th hands down best use of biomorphs/synapse
.IG-5th
.Chaos 3.5(also the best book for almost a pure demon army..just play with the word bearers rules)
.Adeptus mechanicus/skitarii-7th
.Necrons-7th (they needed the expanded line before that they were pretty 2 dimensional)
.Eldar.-i'm gonna go with 4th
.Dark eldar- not sure, never fought them enough in any edition to know which one was best.
For expanding the lines for say adding something not in those codexes like a helldrake in a chaos marine force using the 3.5 dex.. just use the points cost listed from it's entry in the book it appears in but use the upgrade costs and related rules from the 3.5 codex.
I wouldn't use primaris at all in any manner except as stand in proxies for regular marines/units. the 8th ed system is completely incompatible with 3rd-7th especially using 5th edition core rules like pro-hammer.
3rd and 5th are both great but would both need a couple things changed, 7th would be the easiest to plug in and still had some of that 5th edition feel but lost some units and rules that you want if going retro psuedo 5th/7th rules.
I would do 5th but take out the harlequins and make the PfP chart either 7th's or just modify it so when a vehicle kills something the riders gets the token.
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Post by: Mezmorki
AnomanderRake wrote:My preference is to keep the chance for disaster if you just Deep Strike anywhere, but allow the player to mitigate it with teleport homers. I dislike 8e/9e's decision to allow predictable risk-free Deep Striking anywhere you want, it's turned Deep Strike into an efficient way to hide all kinds of units from alpha-strikes to the point that there's a whole bunch of stuff you should never deploy on the table instead of a high risk/high reward strategy for possibly getting a surprise shot off.
Well, the counter-point for ProHammer is that when the shooting phase rolls around, units you place on overwatch can fire at deepstriking units. So maybe they can assault now, but they'll weather a bit of fire in the process.
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Post by: aphyon
Considering there were only a hand full of units in the game that can assault from "deepstrike" in 5th, only if they land close enough which is risky with the scatter dice and mishap table, i don't think doing that is necessary.
The units that can off the top of my head
.dreadnoughts in lucius pattern drop pods
.vanguard veterans
.callidus assassin
.boss zagstrukk (and his unit)
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Post by: AnomanderRake
Mezmorki wrote: AnomanderRake wrote:My preference is to keep the chance for disaster if you just Deep Strike anywhere, but allow the player to mitigate it with teleport homers. I dislike 8e/9e's decision to allow predictable risk-free Deep Striking anywhere you want, it's turned Deep Strike into an efficient way to hide all kinds of units from alpha-strikes to the point that there's a whole bunch of stuff you should never deploy on the table instead of a high risk/high reward strategy for possibly getting a surprise shot off.
Well, the counter-point for ProHammer is that when the shooting phase rolls around, units you place on overwatch can fire at deepstriking units. So maybe they can assault now, but they'll weather a bit of fire in the process.
The problem there is that you end up with an army trapped in a corner scared to move because if it doesn't sit there on overwatch it'll get mangled by someone's deep-striking alpha strike. Or someone will put down deep-strike skew that will bulldoze through someone else's overwatch. 8e/9e has "overwatch" stratagems too, and they're really not enough to meaningfully interact with someone who's willing to put thirty or forty Stormtroopers in deep strike so they can pop up in good range without ever getting shot.
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Post by: Mezmorki
AnomanderRake wrote:The problem there is that you end up with an army trapped in a corner scared to move because if it doesn't sit there on overwatch it'll get mangled by someone's deep-striking alpha strike.
Well, if they hide in a corner then they aren't using those units to move on objectives up field. You gotta take some exposure to play the game.
AnomanderRake wrote:Or someone will put down deep-strike skew that will bulldoze through someone else's overwatch. 8e/9e has "overwatch" stratagems too, and they're really not enough to meaningfully interact with someone who's willing to put thirty or forty Stormtroopers in deep strike so they can pop up in good range without ever getting shot.
Well there isn't much to be done about that either way then.
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Post by: AnomanderRake
Unless you allow risk-free Deep Strike. Things in Deep Strike can't be interacted with before they hit the table.
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Post by: Mezmorki
I did another massive update to ProHammer, after iterating through a number of tweaks and changes.
Long story short, I've gone about as far as I'm willing to go in changing the core game flow - stopping short of adding in a proper alternating activation (AA) system. What I've been grappling with lately is the realization that 40K probably needs a better series of "reaction" options layered into the game. While AA systems are great - they require more substantial adjustments to points and stats, and that isn't what ProHammer is about. Instead, I want to create more interplay between players by posing them with tougher choices and more options, many of which relate to "reactions."
Adding in pre-mediated overwatch in lieu of normal shooting was one initial step. Last version I added in different steps in the firing process - an idea lifted from Epic. Units that don't move get to "fire first" and resolve casualties simultaneously with overwatch fire. In the newest version (1.7) I added reactive fire, which occurs after a unit is hit by normal fire, and allows them to return fire with their attacker - but it means they can't shoot normally on their NEXT turn. Reactive fire can also be triggered when a unit is charged (replacing the 8th/9th edition style overwatch). It's a stronger shooting attack, but leaves the unit more vulnerable in the resulting melee (and they still can't shoot next turn). Again, the idea is giving players more interesting choices to juggle.
I also revised the close combat resolution and fallback sequence, inspired by a mysterious source (and also warhammer fantasy battle). No more instantly wiping out units on a sweeping advance but you now get some different pursuit options.
I also added a suppression mechanic to the game based on "hail of fire" idea. If you take more wounds (before saving throws) than you have wounds in the unit, you have to take a pinning test.
Next, I've been playing with a rule where if the AP of a weapon equals your Armor Save, you STILL get the armor save but it suffers a -1 to the roll. Overall, it helps non-marine armies a bit more because of how many AP5 and Sv 5+ matchups there are. Those 5+ saves become 6+which is worth something.
I'm trying to make it so that across the game, things are a bit less deadly, allowing more time for units to make counter-players instead of just getting wiped out and rendered useless on the field. These changes also all make morale and leadership a bit more important, as there are more instances where leadership tests are required.
Finally - I adapted the mission structure from 9th edition into a full process and system for building customized missions, with a bit of tweaking and refining to minimize first player advantage. I think it turned out pretty well.
At this point, I think the rules are really about cleanup. I'd like to eventually re-organize the ProHammer rules and fill in the gaps so that they are mostly a standalone ruleset. But that will be a bigger undertaking and take more time. Likely, that will be part of a big "2.0" version for ProHammer.
Thanks for listening!
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Post by: MagicJuggler
I notice that your rules include both Reactive Fire and Overwatch, and that may lead to "bloat." What I mean by that is, your current flow is this:
-First Fire
-Overwatch
-Shooting/Reactive Fire.
First notable question:
-You explicitly state that Reactive Fire does not preempt First Fire. However, one "could argue" that Overwatch triggers it. A more notable question is whether a unit can use Overwatch and Reactive Fire in the same turn.
-Can Overwatch work with Barrage or Ignore LOS weapons (e.x. Hive Guard Impaler Cannons?)
-The rules for stating that "a unit can only make one shot with a weapon/one reaction fire" has unclear RAW. Say a unit of 5 Tactical Marines is shot at up-close. They have 4 Bolters and a Heavy Bolter. Does the unit only get to fire one weapon at one shot, or does the unit get to fire its weapons, each at only one shot? Also, do Vehicles get to use Reactive Fire? Can Reactive Fire be used against Psychic Shooting Attacks, or any other "attacks" that fall outside the realm of shooting/charging (e.x. 5th ed Reaver Bladevanes)?
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Post by: Mezmorki
Under the reactive fire section it defines when you can take reactive fire, either (a) in response to a "normal" shooting attack (not overwatch or first fire) or in response to (b) a charge being declared against you.
I will clarify that a unit can only ever make one shooting attack in a turn regardless of the type. Each model in the unit can make one ranged attack with one weapon, which only shoots once (ie an assault 2 weapon would only get to shoot once as if it was assault 1).
Over watch shouldn't be allowed for indirect fire weapons. I'll add that in.
Vehicles would also not get to use reactive fire.
I think reactive fire should also NOT work again psychic powers.
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Post by: The Warp Forge
Following. I plan on also playing with 5th ed. (Not going to fully revamp the rulebook like you have, just update with current model ranges and update all codex's to be consistent with external balance), so this looks like something to watch it's progress
118765
Post by: A.T.
 The Warp Forge wrote:Following. I plan on also playing with 5th ed. (Not going to fully revamp the rulebook like you have, just update with current model ranges and update all codex's to be consistent with external balance), so this looks like something to watch it's progress
I was working on something similar, though at a snails pace. If you need any of the old FAQs and errata from the era and can't find them on the net let me know and i'll see if I can't upload them somewhere. The pre 5e errata in particular can be tricky to find and some things only appear in tournament faqs or indirectly (such as the firepoints on the 3e immolator)
105437
Post by: The Warp Forge
A.T. wrote: The Warp Forge wrote:Following. I plan on also playing with 5th ed. (Not going to fully revamp the rulebook like you have, just update with current model ranges and update all codex's to be consistent with external balance), so this looks like something to watch it's progress
I was working on something similar, though at a snails pace. If you need any of the old FAQs and errata from the era and can't find them on the net let me know and i'll see if I can't upload them somewhere. The pre 5e errata in particular can be tricky to find and some things only appear in tournament faqs or indirectly (such as the firepoints on the 3e immolator)
Yeah just send me as many as you can thanks!
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Post by: A.T.
Done. Just the 3-5e errata, faq, and supplemental pdf files that GW released (that I have).
I have forgeworld dataslates but they aren't sorted by edition and my journals and physical copies but don't contain anything relevant to 5th edition unless you wanted to port in the sisters named characters.
114912
Post by: Mezmorki
ProHammer in 2021
So, for now, I feel like ProHammer is in a pretty good spot. I managed quite a few games over the past months to test and tweak the system, and it seems to be working really well across the board. We've played games with a range of lists and different era codexes, and it's worked quite well. I think it hit it's goal of taking 5th edition (i.e. classic feeling 40K) and addressing a few of its issues (wound allocation perhaps the biggest) while adding a little more tactical depth and interesting player decisions along the way. I'm really happy with the way shooting turned out.
So what's next?
I have a couple of ideas in the works, and not sure which ones I'm going to advance (so looking for some feedback!).
#1 - Re-write the ProHammer rules from the ground up as a complete, standalone rulebook.
This would be done so that the rules could be presented in a more logical and coherent manner. It would lower the bar to accessing the rules and potentially make it easier for people to try it. I also think the rules could be written more in the style / structure of 8th and 9th and be consolidated a bit in the process.
#2 - Give 9th edition the ProHammer treatment.
I'm getting pressure (nephews!) to play more of 9th edition (despite my hesitancy). But perhaps by taking up the challenge of re-working 9th edition with the ethos of ProHammer in mind would give me the encouragement I need. The good news is that the core rules are CONSIDERABLY shorter than older editions (as you all probably know), so the writing side should be pretty quick. The bigger challenge though is that with stratagems and so many codex specific rules and unit specific rules affecting core rules, it's going to be hard to thread the needle on changes that don't just result in a convoluted mess.
There doesn't appear to be any major comprehensive efforts to rework 9th edition (at least I haven't seen it) in a way that addresses some of the core issues in the game's design (too much lethality, shooting still a little too strong, too much randomness, etc.) and boosting the importance of tactical position and maneuver. The idea too, as with ProHammer, is that it doesn't require any codex-level modifications or FAQs - just modifications to the core rules.
I recently picked up the Middle Earth strategy battle game and rulebook and have been reading that. The turn structure is lot like Epic and I'm thinking of how that might be adapted to 9th edition as a possible starting point. I got a list going of other changes to start testing out as well.
Thoughts from people?
Happy holidays!
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Post by: AnomanderRake
Mezmorki wrote:...There doesn't appear to be any major comprehensive efforts to rework 9th edition (at least I haven't seen it) in a way that addresses some of the core issues in the game's design (too much lethality, shooting still a little too strong, too much randomness, etc.) and boosting the importance of tactical position and maneuver. The idea too, as with ProHammer, is that it doesn't require any codex-level modifications or FAQs - just modifications to the core rules...
I've got a checklist of things you'd have to do to fix 8th, and it was pretty horrible, loads of work, and would require burning down every Codex and starting over. 9th is worse (because you have to fix all the same problems as 8th, plus badly-written missions and terrain rules that punish specific unit types and non-skew army builds). I don't think there's a quick fix approach where you do a pass through the core rules and make 9th better. They've offloaded so much bloat into datasheets and stratagems it'd be a band-aid over a badly broken system at best.
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Post by: Mezmorki
Any chance you can post your checklist here for my edification? Cheers.
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Post by: AnomanderRake
Non-Codex-specific points (these apply to pretty much every Codex):
-Blasts: Revise to FW Conversion Beamer standard (one shot, then do a random number of extra hits at a different profile if the initial shot kills someone). This makes blast weapons much less effective against single-model targets, and expands the design space such that blast weapons don't have to be such efficient anti-everything guns as most ordnance is in 8th/9th.
-Stratagems: Move to a system more like Sigmar's command abilities; instead of five pages of text you need to read and memorize to understand an army put stratagems that affect a unit on its datasheet and stratagems that buff other units on characters' datasheets. Instead of "no duplicate stratagems" to control people blowing through their whole CP allowance in one turn move to 1CP at the start of the game and then 1CP/turn so there is no big pool to blow through unless you refrain from using stratagems at all until the endgame.
-Lethality: Drop about a point of AP from pretty much everything. Small arms should be AP-1 at best and most weapons should cap out at -2, -3 should be reserved for dedicated AT. At the moment the save stat is pretty pointless in a lot of places because of how much random AP-3 is floating around.
-Terrain: The whole system needs an overhaul. Vehicles need to be able to benefit from cover. 18+ wound vehicles need some way to hide. Terrain needs to be able to affect movement (I'm in favour of a flat -X" penalty on the terrain datasheet).
-Snipers: At the moment it's nigh-impossible to interact with characters; the S4/AP-/mortal wounds on 6+ standard for "sniper rifles" is spectacularly irrelevant against pretty much everything. More armies need multi-damage snipers that look like the Vindicare/Eradicator/Transuranic Arquebus if you're going to keep 9th's incredibly powerful character bubbles.
-Vehicles/Monsters: 10W is a spectacularly irrelevant statline against the kind of D2/Dd3-spam floating around. There needs to be a broad rethink of the relationship between vehicles and anti-infantry weapons. I've tossed around a few ideas (double all vehicle wounds/all Dd6 becomes Dd6+3, DR on the statline/facing-dependent DR) but you might also be able to create a similar effect by fiddling with the S/T table. I have yet to do enough math to figure out if there's a fix I like here.
-Antenna-to-antenna LOS: This is just purely stupid, it makes the game tremendously difficult to play (you need to make sure no tiny part of your unit is visible from any position to avoid LOS) and punishes creative modeling (taller base? add banners? fancier weapon? good job, you've just made your unit easier to kill!). I've considered requiring LoS to be drawn to/from the center of the target as a fix, but haven't really settled on a good answer for this either.
-Reserves: Risk-free reserves with the 9" restriction creates a degenerate metagame where the first person to plonk models on the table is screwed because you're guaranteeing the other guy is going to get the alpha strike on you with a unit you haven't had a chance to interact with the unit in any way. Two ideas on this one: Either require reserves to appear at the end of your turn (giving your opponent their turn to react, maybe with some penalties so arriving from reserves isn't an instant death sentence), or require teleport homers/equivalent near where you want to land to deploy reserves at all (so you can't just risk-free appear behind your opponent if they don't camp in a corner and can interact with your teleporting units before they arrive), or possibly some mix of both.
-One detachment: 9th particularly effectively has no limitations on what you can put in an army. If you're not going to drastically revise the game to give certain unit types glaring weaknesses (ex. vehicles die fast if a unit with anti-tank grenades touches them) you need something like 4e/5e's one detachment to control spam lists.
-Double-action: Move-again, shoot-again, and fight-again powers are tremendously unfun; almost independent of what the actual stats attached to the action are just having the double-action ability makes the unit straight-up better at what it does than anything else that exists. Remove them completely.
-Movement: Even without the move-again powers getting 2d6+22" on a Skyweaver unit or 2d6+30" on a Heldrake makes first-turn charges from outside LOS way, way too easy. Lots of things need to be slower.
-Speed of play: Needing to roll hit, hit reroll, wound, wound reroll, save, FNP almost every time you attack makes the game take much, much longer than it needs to. Exploding hits make it much worse. The buff stack generally needs to be cracked down on.
-Quantity of dice: Stat inflation is getting out of control in lots of ways but RoF/Attacks inflation is particularly bad. A single infantryman shouldn't have any way of getting more than 3-4 attacks, no matter how many buffs you stack on them.
There's a lot more, but that should give you the beginning of an idea of why more people are looking to fix pre-8th than 8th/9th.
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Post by: Mezmorki
Awesome stuff. Let me see what I can tackle.
AnomanderRake wrote:-Blasts: Revise to FW Conversion Beamer standard (one shot, then do a random number of extra hits at a different profile if the initial shot kills someone). This makes blast weapons much less effective against single-model targets, and expands the design space such that blast weapons don't have to be such efficient anti-everything guns as most ordnance is in 8th/9th.
Count me among the people who still like the templates. Not sure if there is a way to go back to them though, considering how many other rules hook into the current blast template system.
AnomanderRake wrote:-Stratagems: Move to a system more like Sigmar's command abilities; instead of five pages of text you need to read and memorize to understand an army put stratagems that affect a unit on its datasheet and stratagems that buff other units on characters' datasheets. Instead of "no duplicate stratagems" to control people blowing through their whole CP allowance in one turn move to 1CP at the start of the game and then 1CP/turn so there is no big pool to blow through unless you refrain from using stratagems at all until the endgame.
I really like this. What if your pool of available points is divided by five (for 5 game turns) and you get that amount per turn. Details on handling on fractions of points (when to round up/down)
AnomanderRake wrote:-Lethality: Drop about a point of AP from pretty much everything. Small arms should be AP-1 at best and most weapons should cap out at -2, -3 should be reserved for dedicated AT. At the moment the save stat is pretty pointless in a lot of places because of how much random AP-3 is floating around.
Hard to address without massive re-writing of weapon stats. Part of me is tempted to port the older style AP system back into the game with some tweaking, such that AP -1 = AP5, AP -2 = AP4, AP -3 = AP3, and so on. The additional tweak (which I’ve tested before in ProHammer) is to make it that if your save equals the AP, instead of penetrating it reduces your armor save roll by 1.
The above would do a lot to address lethality from shooting attacks as well.
AnomanderRake wrote:-Terrain: The whole system needs an overhaul. Vehicles need to be able to benefit from cover. 18+ wound vehicles need some way to hide. Terrain needs to be able to affect movement (I'm in favour of a flat -X" penalty on the terrain datasheet).
Agreed. Lord of the Rings just has difficult terrain cost 2” of movement for each 1” moved through. Pretty simple solution.
Would be easy enough to grant vehicles cover saves again for being 25%+ and 50%+ obscured. I’d like to see terrain provide more ranges of cover save bonuses or hit modifiers.
AnomanderRake wrote:-Snipers: At the moment it's nigh-impossible to interact with characters; the S4/ AP-/mortal wounds on 6+ standard for "sniper rifles" is spectacularly irrelevant against pretty much everything. More armies need multi-damage snipers that look like the Vindicare/Eradicator/Transuranic Arquebus if you're going to keep 9th's incredibly powerful character bubbles.
Not familiar enough with these to say what to do yet!
AnomanderRake wrote:-Vehicles/Monsters: 10W is a spectacularly irrelevant statline against the kind of D2/Dd3-spam floating around. There needs to be a broad rethink of the relationship between vehicles and anti-infantry weapons. I've tossed around a few ideas (double all vehicle wounds/all Dd6 becomes Dd6+3, DR on the statline/facing-dependent DR) but you might also be able to create a similar effect by fiddling with the S/T table. I have yet to do enough math to figure out if there's a fix I like here.
I think using something more like the old wound table would be better across the board. Generally it means that marginally weaker weapons have a harder time wounding marginally tougher targets, and marginally stronger weapons better at wounding marginally weaker. It creates more variability in the strength ness-toughness match ups across the board, and is better IMHO in every way.
Example, toughness 7. Right now, Strength 4, S5, and S6 weapons all wound on a 5+. S3 or weaker wound on a 6+. With the old table, S4 + S5 would wound on a 6+, and S6 on a 5+. S3 or weaker can’t wound it at all.
I also like the idea of adding damage reduction to front and side hits for vehicles on top of adjusting the wound roll to cut down on the lethality of weapons that do multiple points of damage.
AnomanderRake wrote:-Antenna-to-antenna LOS: This is just purely stupid, it makes the game tremendously difficult to play (you need to make sure no tiny part of your unit is visible from any position to avoid LOS) and punishes creative modeling (taller base? add banners? fancier weapon? good job, you've just made your unit easier to kill!). I've considered requiring LoS to be drawn to/from the center of the target as a fix, but haven't really settled on a good answer for this either.
Yeah, this is just stupid and lazy rule writing. Mind boggling really.
LoS should be drawn from the center of the shooting model (for infantry and the like, and/or drawn from their head) and you must be able to see the body, head, upper legs, or upper arms of the target. In the case of vehicles, LoS should be drawn from weapon barrels and you must be able to see the hull of the vehicle. Seems like an easy fix.
AnomanderRake wrote:-Reserves: Risk-free reserves with the 9" restriction creates a degenerate metagame where the first person to plonk models on the table is screwed because you're guaranteeing the other guy is going to get the alpha strike on you with a unit you haven't had a chance to interact with the unit in any way. Two ideas on this one: Either require reserves to appear at the end of your turn (giving your opponent their turn to react, maybe with some penalties so arriving from reserves isn't an instant death sentence), or require teleport homers/equivalent near where you want to land to deploy reserves at all (so you can't just risk-free appear behind your opponent if they don't camp in a corner and can interact with your teleporting units before they arrive), or possibly some mix of both.
Another thing that would seem easy to fix. I don’t even know why first turn reserves are a thing. I’d like a system that allows you to either get a guaranteed subset of reserves to enter on a given turn, with an option to defer to a subsequent turn, and/or going back to a more random reserve roll starting on turn 2.
AnomanderRake wrote:-One detachment: 9th particularly effectively has no limitations on what you can put in an army. If you're not going to drastically revise the game to give certain unit types glaring weaknesses (ex. vehicles die fast if a unit with anti-tank grenades touches them) you need something like 4e/5e's one detachment to control spam lists.
Totally agree. Personally, if playing under the ProHammer banner, which seeks to create a more classic feeling game, I would just have it so that all armies must use and fit within a standard Battalion Detachment. Players would have to agree to using alternative or supplemental detachments in a single army.
AnomanderRake wrote:-Double-action: Move-again, shoot-again, and fight-again powers are tremendously unfun; almost independent of what the actual stats attached to the action are just having the double-action ability makes the unit straight-up better at what it does than anything else that exists. Remove them completely.
Ugh. Yes, eliminate or somehow restrict.
AnomanderRake wrote:-Movement: Even without the move-again powers getting 2d6+22" on a Skyweaver unit or 2d6+30" on a Heldrake makes first-turn charges from outside LOS way, way too easy. Lots of things need to be slower.
I think in general movement needs to be normalized a bit more, and made more reliable and predicable. Slower units need a it more speed and flexibility, (i.e. 3+D3” for advance, or always advance up to half their base move speed, etc.). Units able to move really fast need some breaks on what they can do at faster speeds. Fast moving vehicles shouldn’t be able to move flat out and shoot all their weapons with no penalty.
AnomanderRake wrote:-Speed of play: Needing to roll hit, hit reroll, wound, wound reroll, save, FNP almost every time you attack makes the game take much, much longer than it needs to. Exploding hits make it much worse. The buff stack generally needs to be cracked down on.
I’d port in ProHammer’s shooting attack resolution process, which handles mixed weapon profiles and mixed target profiles/saves all in one set of rolls. I’d also, while I’m at it, ditch the ability for units to inherently be able to split fire, as that greatly slows down play - e.g. rolling attacks one at a time to inflict just an exact amount of damage you want on a given target, and then shoot a different unit with your remaining models, etc. Give me a break. Players should have to make some tough choices.
I’d stil allow split firing on a successful leadership test, or allow the unit to split fire and target at most two units. This is another nerf to shooting and injects some more interesting decision making into the gameplay.
AnomanderRake wrote:-Quantity of dice: Stat inflation is getting out of control in lots of ways but RoF/Attacks inflation is particularly bad. A single infantryman shouldn't have any way of getting more than 3-4 attacks, no matter how many buffs you stack on them.
There's a lot more, but that should give you the beginning of an idea of why more people are looking to fix pre-8th than 8th/9th.
The big thing I’m contemplating as well is trying to play 40k using LotR turn structure. Abilities that allow for double actions (above) could be repurposed to allow units to act out of their normal turn order (i.e. shooting first in lieu of shooting later).
Much to think about!
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Post by: AnomanderRake
The point I'm trying to make is that people aren't trying to "fix" 9th because it's so badly broken at this point that it'd be easier to start from scratch. 7th, at least, had a sensible 3rd-derived framework under all the silliness that you can go back and use as a starting point.
I'm not sure LotR turn order is going to help a whole lot; in LotR there is no "attacking first" in combat (models roll off, the winner gets to roll to wound) and shooting isn't usually a big part of the game (models tend to get one shot, only 1/3 of your army can have ranged attacks most of the time, and individual shots seldom have better than about 1/9 chance to kill an armoured infantryman, even if you're an Uruk crossbowman or an elf archer). Going first doesn't have a big impact on how much stuff you're able to kill that turn in the way it would in 40k if you just implement LotR turn order without also burning down all the statlines and starting over to address shooting output.
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Post by: Pointed Stick
AnomanderRake wrote:The point I'm trying to make is that people aren't trying to "fix" 9th because it's so badly broken at this point that it'd be easier to start from scratch. 7th, at least, had a sensible 3rd-derived framework under all the silliness that you can go back and use as a starting point.
This was my conclusion as well. Back in 8th, I tried house-ruling things to make the game fun again but we found that we ended up rewriting half the game, and returning the other half to 4th edition. I don't think the 8th-9th edition rules are salvageable, sadly. And certainly none of the codices are. Unfortunately the tight coupling between the core rules, the codices, and the latest models pushes you inexorably towards the conclusion that the whole game is unsalvageable. :(
I think 40K has reached the stage of full sociopath takeover according to the cycle of subcultures described at https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths.
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Post by: Mezmorki
Pointed Stick wrote: AnomanderRake wrote:The point I'm trying to make is that people aren't trying to "fix" 9th because it's so badly broken at this point that it'd be easier to start from scratch. 7th, at least, had a sensible 3rd-derived framework under all the silliness that you can go back and use as a starting point.
This was my conclusion as well. Back in 8th, I tried house-ruling things to make the game fun again but we found that we ended up rewriting half the game, and returning the other half to 4th edition. I don't think the 8th-9th edition rules are salvageable, sadly. And certainly none of the codices are. Unfortunately the tight coupling between the core rules, the codices, and the latest models pushes you inexorably towards the conclusion that the whole game is unsalvageable. :(
Well, in all fairness, the core rules even in 9th edition aren't that long. I could see myself simply re-writing the core rules from scratch. The upside of this effort is that it would let people still tap into the "newness" of the latest model releases, codex's, and all of that. There also seems to be a lot of people dissatisfied with 9th edition, but seemingly content to just carry on regardless. If there is a way to get people to enjoy the hobby more and build up some momentum around an improved ruleset, it seems like it would be worthwhile.
Personally, I have no interest in playing more of vanilla 9th edition (though I still will at times). But I would totally be on-board with a reimagined 9th edition. I don't think it's an impossible task at all.
Maybe. In which case we just need to start our own sub-sub-counter-culture so all the cool kids can get back together an be geeky and excited about this game again. Waiting for GW to do it isn't gong to happen.
Honestly, part of the issue is that we all put too much stock on GW's official word on things - we assume they know what's best for the players, but really they are just doing what they think is best for their bottom line. Too many people gripe about GW's handling of things, but convince themselves there is nothing to be done about it. The beautiful thing about analog hobbies is that you can make them your own. Don't like what GW is doing? Take it back.
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Post by: Pointed Stick
Yeah. And like you (and many other people, I presume) I've been working on my own total re-do of the rules: https://github.com/Pointedstick/wasteland-tactics/
It's not based on 5th edition but rather a completely new system. It's sufficiently different from classic 40K that I imagine it won't appeal to everyone, which is fine. At this point I'm mostly doing it for myself and my group, and if anyone else finds it fun, that's a nice bonus.
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Post by: kirotheavenger
I don't think rewriting 9th's core rules alone would achieve much - a lot of those rules is very closely linked to faction rules.
For example, you can't change detachments without making many armies illegal, like Knights.
I actually prefer the newer AP system though.
I dislike the old "all or nothing" system, and I think the newer one is more realistic and can interact with cover in a more satisfying and realistic way.
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Post by: AnomanderRake
 kirotheavenger wrote:...For example, you can't change detachments without making many armies illegal, like Knights...
One Codex. Everyone else has at least Troops/ HQ. Unless you want to get hung up on whether every single possible list build is going to remain legal, which probably isn't doable if you also want to fix any problems.
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Post by: Mezmorki
^^^^
Yes exactly.
Per my suggestions I'd also suggest standardizing the FOC - which means a LOT of lists aren't going to be valid under these revised changes. But the point of such changes is to even the playing field and narrow the range of conditions you're trying to account for.
If the goal is to try and have a somewhat balanced and challenging competitive game, then the variance in lists needs to be reigned in a bit.
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Post by: flakpanzer
Really cool that you are doing this.
5th is my favorite edition, but I always wanted to add things (like thrown grenades) into it. Glad to see the work you have done.
The only thing that keeps me playing more 5th is all of the models/units I have that weren't available until 6th edition or later. I wish I had
a handy formula for converting points of later edition units back to 5th.
I have played a good deal of 8th, and currently playing some 9th using only 8th codices and the 2020 Munitorum Field Manual for points.
I enjoy it well enough, but it just doesn't scratch the tactical detail itch like previous editions. I hope you working on a 9th rewrite doesn't
mean moving on from your 5th rework.
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Post by: Mezmorki
 flakpanzer wrote:Really cool that you are doing this.
...
I wish I had a handy formula for converting points of later edition units back to 5th.
...
I hope you working on a 9th rewrite doesn't mean moving on from your 5th rework.
Thanks for checking it out!
Regarding points between editions, my experience is that comparable list's don't swing all that much in points between editions, and the point differences are somewhat a wash anyway given that unit abilities, stats, effects are changing alongside of it. I also feel like the difference between the extreme strongest and weakest lists are always going to be greater than the variation you'd have between editions of a codex or between "good" armies from different codexes. In other words - it's not even worth worrying about. I've been playing ProHammer and we've used 5th edition codexes against 7th edition ones. Or 4th edition books against 6th. Doesn't matter as much as people think it does in my experience.
So for ProHammer, it is kind of of the dream in that it lets you use anything 3rd - 7th, with just a few exceptions (no formations for example).
Regarding the future - I've actually started to completely re-write ProHammer "Classic" so that it will be it's own standalone ruleset and not require referencing back to the 5th edition book. It's chance to clean up a bunch of it. I'm also making the language and format more like 8th/9th edition so if and when I do a 9th edition version of ProHammer, it will be a smoother transition. For now, I'm continuing to refine and develop ProHammer classic.
Cheers!
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Post by: flakpanzer
Thanks for the reply! Glad you are continuing work.
What do you do about Special Rules from later codices (6th, 7th) that didn't exist in 5th?
What about Flyers from 6th/7th - Do you just make them all Skimmers?
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Post by: Mezmorki
The current version of ProHammer includes a unified set of universal special rules that covers up through 7th edition, with a few adjustments for compatibility and balance relative to other editions. Let me know if you see something that appears to be missing.
Regarding flyers, I recently updated the rules for those and they are handled fully in the Vehicle section. I made a few tweaks here and there (so you're less reliant on needing to use skyfire to hit zooming skimmers in case you are using an older codex without those abilities). We've used them in a couple of games now with no major problems.
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Post by: PieInTheSky
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Post by: aphyon
@Flakpanzer
I mentioned this in another topic but i will re-post it here
Mezmorki has done some fine work, it's a bit more than i am willing to do as i prefer to stick to already existing rules, just putting all the best ones into the base 5th framework(so yes things like grenade throwing, snap fire and overwatch etc..). in my topic about the older editions, our group narrowed it down to just 15 rules imported from FW/3rd/4th/6th/7th to improve 5th.
.On points cost-
GWs approach is a bit weird but the points costs are based on how the models in your own army compare to other models in your own army book not how they compare to other armies/units in the game. so the points costs between edition changes are for the most part pretty much a non-issue.
We currently play using any codex from 3rd -7th with everything based in the 5th ed core rules/USRs. if the rules do not exist in 5th they either fall under the 5th USRs or they are not used (i always use the easy example of dunestrider that gives an extra 3" movement to represent the units ability to traverse rough ground with it's 5th ed counterpart-move through cover).
It is also a very simple formula to bring in a single unit from a 7th ed codex into one you want to base your army on(our chaos players use the 3.5 dex for obvious reasons) base points costs from 7th ed codex +points costs and effects for upgrades taken out of the parent codex of choice for the army=success
A side note on flyers
the 7th ed rules are pretty good for flyers but we decided that the original FW rules had a few items that needed to remain-
.jump infantry can assault flyers-normal vehicle movement to hit in assault rules apply (we use the ones from 4th)
.flyers are up high so they never benefit from cover(everybody can see them and they can see everybody) so they have to jink and snap fire or take the hit
however in the old rules there was no such thing as vector lock-you could destroy them with a destroyed result or with an immobilized result (passengers take a S10 AP1 hit from a crash-roll to wound as normal) FW included a 15 point one use chaff/flare launcher that allowed for a re-roll of the damage result much like venerable dreads.
.lastly because they are "up high" all units shooting at them take a 12" range penalty meaning things like pistols and flamer templates can never shoot at them, it is also tied to the reason why dedicated AA units had extended ranged version of the normal guns. hydras had "long barrel" autocannons and the eldar firestorm had a comparable 60" range scatter laser array
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Post by: Darnok
Good stuff going on here!
Anybody got a retro-codex for Death Guard for 5th? CSM didn't even have cultists then, and all the DG specific vehicles would need the VDR. Most of the characters would be nice Chosen I guess?
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Post by: aphyon
 Darnok wrote:Good stuff going on here!
Anybody got a retro-codex for Death Guard for 5th? CSM didn't even have cultists then, and all the DG specific vehicles would need the VDR. Most of the characters would be nice Chosen I guess?
All you will ever need is the 3.5 chaos codex it has all you need to make a viable nurgle army that also fits the lore. if you want more demon variants you can always retro them into the 3.5 codex from the 4th ed stand alone demon codex. If you want to use cultists the easy way is to just use corrupted imperial guard with the 5th ed allied rule(1 HQ, 1 troop required, 1 of everything else allowed)
The vehicles are the same as i mentioned above-take the base costs + weapons/profiles and then take all upgrades out of the 3.5 codex.....imagine a nurgle vehicle with the regular plague carrier upgrade for being a nurgle vehicle, then give it mutated hull and parasitic possession so it is tougher and re-grows damage, heck if it is not a transport give it demonic possession as well so it cannot be stunned/shaken. it gets expensive but it feels so right.
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Post by: Darnok
aphyon wrote:All you will ever need is the 3.5 chaos codex it has all you need to make a viable nurgle army that also fits the lore. if you want more demon variants you can always retro them into the 3.5 codex from the 4th ed stand alone demon codex. If you want to use cultists the easy way is to just use corrupted imperial guard with the 5th ed allied rule(1 HQ, 1 troop required, 1 of everything else allowed)
The vehicles are the same as i mentioned above-take the base costs + weapons/profiles and then take all upgrades out of the 3.5 codex.....imagine a nurgle vehicle with the regular plague carrier upgrade for being a nurgle vehicle, then give it mutated hull and parasitic possession so it is tougher and re-grows damage, heck if it is not a transport give it demonic possession as well so it cannot be stunned/shaken. it gets expensive but it feels so right.
I think it is really not that easy.
3.5 can indeed make a "viable Nurgle army" - it fails at covering quite a few DG things though. There is nothing in it for Poxwalkers, and Cultists need to use the AL entry. To be fair: I'd simply use the 6th edition codex to fix this part. It has Cultists, and Typhus can make "Plague Zombies" available, which always were Poxwakers in al but name.
What I do like about 3.5 is the ability to take Terminator Champions in any number, making them an "easy fix" for Deathshrouds. It also comes with most of the Daemons already, another good point.
My main issue are the vehicles. The PBC is kind of easy to do, but both MBH and FBD give me some serious headache. Replicating them with the VDR is tough, unless you are happy with singular model entries and ridiculously overpriced units.
And I have no real idea for all the infantry characters outside of lord, scorceror and Typhus - other than fancy unit champions (while already having those!) or completely made up houserules.
So yeah, it would be all over the place, and still have not covered a good part of the DG line-up.
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Post by: aphyon
From the experience of actually doing it for the past several years...yes it is actually that easy.
the 3.5 dex is hands down the best chaos dex, but it is missing some of the new characters and vehicles that some players may want to use. if you don't want to do the quick conversion from the new codexes for specific units into 3.5 you are free to use the parent codex they come from for your list instead while adhering to the the 5th ed core rules set/USRs. that's the great thing about how all those editions are cross compatible.
Keep in mind that playing 40K this way is not only more about the old style tabletop tactics but it is also for the immersive lore players. if your looking for power gaming and cheesing out your lists (while it is possible) this isn't really what you are looking for. the focus is more about what 40K used to be- a tactics based tabletop wargame you can enjoy with your friends for some great social activity that still feels like it is in the 40K universe..
When khorne berserkers seize the game winning objective....and then the blood frenzy takes them and they run it towards the nearest enemy unit so they can hit them with a stick....it's funny, not always a good tactic...but absolutely what they would do in universe.
Since we play as a group of friends nobody is looking to be a jerk. And if we want to play something odd we (like the normal social contract of wargaming) plan it out ahead of time with our opponent similar to how FW used to suggest (circa 3rd ed) getting "permission" before you drop a superheavy or flyer on your opposite number without warning.
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Post by: Darnok
aphyon wrote:From the experience of actually doing it for the past several years...yes it is actually that easy.
Nice!
Genuine question: do you play using the DG vehicles? They only ever had rules for 8th and 9th, so...
aphyon wrote:if you don't want to do the quick conversion from the new codexes for specific units into 3.5 you are free to use the parent codex they come from for your list instead while adhering to the the 5th ed core rules set/ USRs. that's the great thing about how all those editions are cross compatible.
... does not apply. I was playing around with the VDR, but other than the Plagueburst Crawler I wasn't able to "emulate" the other vehicles... yet.
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Post by: aphyon
Not true, DG vehicle upgrades in 3.5 apply to all normal chaos vehicles, there were several DG specific ones from FW and 7th ed that are cross compatible. if your trying to use 8th ed+ you are right it does not work as they are not cross compatible.
A few examples of nurgle units you can use
FW-book 5 the seige of Vraks
.mamon incarnate demon prince of nurgle
.necrosius-space marine character
FW book-13 war machines of the lost and the damned
.all standard chaos space marine vehicles
.all chaos space marine superheavy tanks
.all chaos space marine flyers, dread claws etc..
.chaos dreadnoughts, hellbrutes
.plague hulk of nurgle
.blight drones (the good ones)
Chaos guard including
.plague zombie mob
.blight ogryns(mark of nurgle)
.demon lord scabeiathrax
.spined chaos beast
Etc... there is more than enough stuff for you to use or use "counts as" for the 8th ed vehicles in 5th. .
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Post by: AnomanderRake
Darnok wrote:...but other than the Plagueburst Crawler I wasn't able to "emulate" the other vehicles...
The Plagueburst Crawler is a corrupted version of the Arquitor Bombard, which does have 30k/7e rules ( https://www.forgeworld.co.uk/resources/PDF/Datasheets/Arquitor_Bombard.pdf) if you're curious about how your emulation matched up to the 30k team's.
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Post by: Darnok
Now I see where some misunderstanding was coming up: I was talking specifically about Codex: Death Guard from 8th and 9th edition. I didn't even think of the FW stuff that came before.
As much as this is a thought experiment only for now, I'm actually tempted to do some conversions of stuff that never made it into 8th... bikes and whatnot. Goddammit folks, I have too many projects already!
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Post by: AnomanderRake
The Arquitor's actually newer, just written for an older version of the rules and lore-wise technically older. I brought it up because trying to back-fit 8e vehicles into older editions simply based on their 8e stats can be challenging, the translation to 8e lost a lot of data (12/12/10 Dreadnaughts are T7/3+ with 8W, but 11/11/10 Rhinos are T7/3+ with 10W?) and you do end up needing to do a lot of improvisation. Having some more detailed stats, even if they were written for 7e, may provide a more helpful starting point.
(There are no uncorrupted Blight Haulers or small blight drones as far as I know, the big FW flying blight drone had rules as far back as the original Imperial Armour books.)
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Post by: Mezmorki
FWIW, I've been considering a project to convert Primaris marines, as their own codex, into a 5th Ed compliant codex book.
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Post by: flakpanzer
Wanted to ask about another wrinkle here when using newer stuff with older rules...
How do you folks handle base sizes and the flame and blast templates?
IIRC - Space Marines went to 32mm bases mid or late 7th edition, with other armies following. Orks changed over sometime in 8th....
I know a lot of people hand wave it, but it does change the number of models affected when it comes to blasts and flamers.
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Post by: A.T.
flakpanzer wrote:I know a lot of people hand wave it, but it does change the number of models affected when it comes to blasts and flamers.
It's a mixed bag. There is a lot of stuff in early editions where the big bases are a disadvantage - trying to stack up behind cover, trying to deepstrike or disembark in tight areas, etc.
IIRC I think it was also permissable in earlier editions to 'over-base' you models as going up base sizes wasn't generally percieved as an advantage.
In the system I was toying with a while back i'd also added a maximum hits element to blasts and templates (to reduce the drawn out positioning), something similar would further cut back on any advantage to be had by large bases if it is still a concern.
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Post by: AnomanderRake
flakpanzer wrote:...How do you folks handle base sizes and the flame and blast templates?...
I don't find it makes that much difference. In my own larger-scale rewrites I'm a bit more generous about handing out large blasts and I try to give people more incentive to fight in close order, but I've played a lot of 30k and I don't find that 32mm bases dramatically alter the usefulness of templates. Though I would recommend dropping the "partial hits" mechanic if anyone wants to go back to 3e or 4e.
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Post by: aphyon
flakpanzer wrote:Wanted to ask about another wrinkle here when using newer stuff with older rules...
How do you folks handle base sizes and the flame and blast templates?
IIRC - Space Marines went to 32mm bases mid or late 7th edition, with other armies following. Orks changed over sometime in 8th....
I know a lot of people hand wave it, but it does change the number of models affected when it comes to blasts and flamers.
Not an issue. as far back as 3rd the rule was-models must be based on the minimum size base they originally came with but could always be put on larger bases(this was primarily for scenic/mod reasons).
It's your choice as a player to base the models however you like so long as it isn't smaller than the original size. as rake said it has both positives and negatives under 5th edition rules.
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Post by: AnomanderRake
Personally I think there's not enough incentive to put models close together in most editions of 40k. Cover is all well and good, but all that really makes you do is put the guys not in the cover in the back so they can't be more easily seen. Casualties-from-the-front in 6th/7th did help some (closer-packed units didn't lose as much move/charge distance when the front of the unit got killed off), but I'd really like to see more shield-wall/defensive-line type rules (like Fortress of Shields on the 6e Deathwing Knights) where there's a mechanical advantage to not just keeping everyone at maximum spread all the time.
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Post by: Mezmorki
So, after working away at this for a long while (couple months now!) I finally have a draft of the next version of ProHammer ready:
ProHammer: Classic (v2.0)
The long and the short of it is that this is a FULL rules re-write (almost 70 pages!). The gameplay is mostly the same as what was in the prior ProHammer edition, but it now covers all the rules you'd need to play. There are minor tweaks, some more notable adjustments, and the like. I've dispensed with trying to track all of those changes and just needed to start clean with this release.
Overall, I tried to write all of this more in the style and approach of 8th/9th edition rules - which keeps things more direct and avoids fluffy descriptive text. I've used a bullet point method throughout to make the rules as easy to navigate as possible and avoid having easy to miss rules buried in paragraphs of rule text. Let me know what you think.
Things still to do:
- Needs a proper editing pass (consider this a draft of rules)
- Continue to track if anything crucial is missing
- Long term I want to make some of my own diagrams and graphics to help convey the rules
- Need to pull together a set of new mission briefings. For now, you can use 9th edition GT missions - or really missions from whatever edition you like. Works with the Open War deck too.
Take a look and let me know if you have any feedback on it!
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Post by: Bishop_Blank
This is exactly what I have been looking for with the current codex slump in 9th. Thanks for putting this together!
Is there any additional work on the mission briefings to review? I'd be greatly interested in seeing a collated mission pack from 4th-7th.
Cheers.
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Post by: Mezmorki
Did you see the ProHammer 2.0 thread linked right above your post? That has updated rules.
Here's the newer discussion thread for 2.0:
https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/796101.page
I do have the the bones of new two new missions briefings for ProHammer 2.0. The way the new briefings are structured they are really diverse with a bunch of variables within each one. The two briefings I've done so far have more variability built into them then the entire mission pack for marched play in 9th edition has in total. So it should give you a good set to start with.
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