So far in 10th, weapons previously designed for tank hunting such as meltaguns, fusion guns, and blasters went from wounding most tanks on a 3+ to wounding on a 4+ or 5+. Consequently, people seem to generally agree (feel free to tell me if I'm wrong here) that such weapons have shifted away from being anti-tank weapons to being anti-terminators or anti-light-vehicle weapons instead.
Now that we've been living with this change for a while, how do you feel about it? Does anyone like that a meltagun only wounds a rhino half the time and has to fish for 5s against anything tougher? Have people come to enjoy using things like melta and blasters to hunt down gravis/terminator armor? Are light vehicles proving to be prevalent enough that melta/blasters still have a role as anti-vehicle weapons?
Personally, the melta changes have kept me from fielding the sisters army I was excited to build up for 10th and have left me a little sour on some of my basic drukhari units (warriors). But if there's an upside to the situation that I haven't considered, I'd be happy to have it pointed out.
Cynically, I worry that the nerfing of man-portable anti-tank weapons may have been a result of the changes to how points work in 10th. That is, GW recognized that taking a chunk out of an expensive tank was more valuable than doing a couple extra wounds to a horde. Previously this would mean you'd charge more points for the melta compared to the flamer or the blaster compared to the shredder. But as they committed to the new points system, they ended up having to devalue the melta/blaster instead because they weren't allowed to charge more points for it.
In general, I'm ok with it. In the past weapons typically fell into either an anti-infantry or anti-tank category, consequently heavy infantry and light vehicles fell into a weird in between category where the best weapons to use against those targets were typically overkill and/or an inefficient utilizations of those weapons vs their intended role.
The recent evolution and changes to the way the mechanics function kind of creates a greater distinction between heavy infantry and light vehicles from infantry/heavy vehicles, etc. and as such creates niche for weapons that fit "in between" the two traditional ends of the spectrum. Its weird of course seeing melta weapons no longer be premier tank poppers but thats something that changed in 8th edition when a meltagun went from often being a one-hit-kill to just chunking off a piece of a vehicles wound count.
As you noted though, certain factions (Sisters) have been significantly harmed by the changes and are less capable at dealing with certain threats as a result of having their primary anti-vehicle system neutered. There are ways to fix that.
Meltaguns used to be the anti-vehicle weapons, both in rules and fluff. It's been like this since the game started.
The fact that they all got left behind at S8 (and usually with just "Melta 2") is sad. It only gets worse when your army's only real AT weapon was the Melta.
H.B.M.C. wrote: Meltaguns used to be the anti-vehicle weapons, both in rules and fluff. It's been like this since the game started.
The fact that they all got left behind at S8 (and usually with just "Melta 2") is sad. It only gets worse when your army's only real AT weapon was the Melta.
Yeah, it really peeves me to no end as my Salamanders list was neutered. Basically all my anti-tank was melta and it's isn't anti-tank at all any more.
H.B.M.C. wrote: Meltaguns used to be the anti-vehicle weapons, both in rules and fluff. It's been like this since the game started.
The fact that they all got left behind at S8 (and usually with just "Melta 2") is sad. It only gets worse when your army's only real AT weapon was the Melta.
Unfortunately it just feels like the typical GW stat whiplash.
Melta still get's the two shots, which is nice, but that range nerf hurts.
And yeah, playing Marines I have alternatives like easily accessible Las and Grav, but many other armies aren't so flexible.
I’m not sure what the point of gw doing this was? Melta always hit hard vs armour but was limited by a very short range. That was its niche. Now it doesn’t really have one. I’m not a meta chasing player at all, but with my marines there isn’t a reason to being the melta guys because they don’t have a role, they aren’t anti armour but don’t really do much of anything else useful. The melta rule is the issues really, extra damage is great if you can wound the thing. Maybe it should be extra strength or a bonus to wound at half range.
As a Sisters of battle player, it's the worst change GW has ever made ever.
In reality, it's mostly fine. They're much cheaper on the whole now, so the weight of dice helps to make up for the lower To Wound roll. AP-4 is still awesome.
The problem for me is the range nerf. Going from 24 to 18 is a massive handicap for an army that already has almost 0 long range firepower. They can leave it at S9, just pop it back up to 24 inches.
Wyldhunt wrote: So far in 10th, weapons previously designed for tank hunting such as meltaguns, fusion guns, and blasters went from wounding most tanks on a 3+ to wounding on a 4+ or 5+. Consequently, people seem to generally agree (feel free to tell me if I'm wrong here) that such weapons have shifted away from being anti-tank weapons to being anti-terminators or anti-light-vehicle weapons instead.
Now that we've been living with this change for a while, how do you feel about it? Does anyone like that a meltagun only wounds a rhino half the time and has to fish for 5s against anything tougher? Have people come to enjoy using things like melta and blasters to hunt down gravis/terminator armor? Are light vehicles proving to be prevalent enough that melta/blasters still have a role as anti-vehicle weapons?
Personally, the melta changes have kept me from fielding the sisters army I was excited to build up for 10th and have left me a little sour on some of my basic drukhari units (warriors). But if there's an upside to the situation that I haven't considered, I'd be happy to have it pointed out.
Cynically, I worry that the nerfing of man-portable anti-tank weapons may have been a result of the changes to how points work in 10th. That is, GW recognized that taking a chunk out of an expensive tank was more valuable than doing a couple extra wounds to a horde. Previously this would mean you'd charge more points for the melta compared to the flamer or the blaster compared to the shredder. But as they committed to the new points system, they ended up having to devalue the melta/blaster instead because they weren't allowed to charge more points for it.
Not at all - If I were writing it, I probably would have leaned into the Two Profile thing you see on Plasma, Brutalis Claws and the like to give some zip to both the Melta/etc and what used to be the x2 melee (Klaws, Fists, Thunderhammers, and the like)
Profile 1) Basically what it is now - potential increased a little to make room for:
Profile 2) Supercharged/high power/whatever nomeclature/game name/etc fewer attacks, for higher damage and potentially more AP.
So MultiMelta
Standard Protocol: A2, S9, -4, D6, Melta 2
Anhilation Protocol: A1, S12ish, -4 D6(rerollable or 1,2 count as 3 etc) Melta 3
Power Fist/Klaws/etc (on what was traditionally an A2 model like a SM Sergeant)
Trickle Charge: A2, S8, -2 D2
Super Charge: A1 S12, -3 D2+2
I'm hoping 11th will be better. This was a fairly large change, especially for GW who does not do change well at all.
No I don't like it, the melta change is horse gak. I'd rather fish for 5s to wound with lascannons when camping and get rewarded with 3s and 2s when i move in close for the kill with my meltas, risking my unit in the process. But now it is designed the other way around.
Same goes for powerfist, they should be damage 4 minimum and strength 12. Passive play and staying long ranged is rewarded by design.
It's because they decided to make more and more units that carry lots of these weapons.
the AT weapons of 2nd ed were powerful partly because they tended not to appear much - the unit structures limited the number you could have (aspect warriors being the exception to the rule of course).
But they've been steadily increasing the number and concentration of them in units and making +1 versions with primaris,
So now they're balancing those units by nerfing the weapons.
It would have been better if they just created less powerful profiles for the squad based ones, and left the singular AT support weapons alone.
But then your eradicator squads wouldn't look as cool.
Eradicator Squads aren't exactly tearing up the Battlefields these days.
I don't think it's because there are too many. I think it's because they're terrible at writing rules and whomever did the weapon profiles forgot what they were doing to vehicle profiles.
H.B.M.C. wrote: If fists had 2 attacks I doubt anyone would take them...
They do have 2 attacks - on the SM Sergeant stat line as I mentioned though I should have also mentioned first born, as the Tac Sgt has 2, and the Intercessor Sgt has 3
Automatically Appended Next Post: I should also add, that the S/T expansion is good for the game but not fully realized yet.
Also, its a fix to General Purpose Best In Class vs all target weapons, not the lethality in the game they were probably going for. The fix to the lethality is targeting rules. Being able to dump 2000 points of shots into 500 points of the opposition is causing the lethality problems. When you had nearest target (except for Hoop A: Tank weapons into Tank Targets, or Hoop B: pass a LD check or whatever) you rarely saw an entire army have the ability to disintigrate wide swaths of the opponent army each turn. You were chipping away at closest targets.
Gitdakka wrote: No I don't like it, the melta change is horse gak. I'd rather fish for 5s to wound with lascannons when camping and get rewarded with 3s and 2s when i move in close for the kill with my meltas, risking my unit in the process. But now it is designed the other way around.
Same goes for powerfist, they should be damage 4 minimum and strength 12. Passive play and staying long ranged is rewarded by design.
Maybe I'm just going full grognard as I age, but I do feel like the trade-offs between different weapon options felt better back in the day. Lascannons were never bad at AT, but getting in close and hitting with melta was one of the most satisfying parts of the game once upon a time. You probably had to pull off a deepstrike or get your unit danger close to do it, but a couple of successful melta attacks could mean you were about to remove a valuable target from the table.
I think I'm trying to get a feel for whether these particular changes have proven unpopular enough to get changed in 11th, or if meltaguns are just going to not be AT guns until 12 edition.
H.B.M.C. wrote: Even when they had base 2 Attacks, they still never actually had 2 attacks. You'd always end up with 3, and 4 on the charge.
They have two attacks NOW. in 10th. Which is the edition we're talking about because it included the the S/T bracket extensions.
A current Space Marine Tactical Sergeant with a powerfist - which I pretty explicitly stated was what I was using as an example for the theory of the change - has 2 attacks with their power fist, an Intercessor Sergeant in 10th edition, with a power fist has 3 attacks. In the current edition called 10th Edition. With a power fist. At Strength 8. in the current expansion. After the S/T bracket extension. Which is what we're talking about. Not previous editions where the A stat was on the model, and bonus attacks were able to be found. I'm really not sure where I'm losing you here.
A 10th Edition Tactical Sergeant has 2 S8 -2 D2 attacks when using a power fist. If I had been making the game, I would have had that be one profile, and then given a Tactical Sergeant with a Powerfist another profile with 1 Attack at S12 and -2 or -3 and D4 or so damage.
A 10th Edition Intercessor Sergeant has 3 S8 -2 D2 attacks - I would have given them a second profile with 2 S12 -2/-3 D4 attacks.
I would have repeated this concept for similar melee weapons as well as ranged weapons in this same state of neglect using the Brutalis Talons, or the Lion's sword Fealty as the guide/proof of concept.
I really don't like the idea of making more weapons dual-profile. The changes to how damage and AP work post-7th have already made weapons feel more 'samey' than they used to; giving classically specialized weapons multiple profiles so they can be anti-everything would be a further step in the wrong direction.
The main reason to have multiple profiles is when you have a weapon that isn't supposed to be cripplingly specialized, and needs a way to deal with multiple target profiles. Characters and monsters having both anti-horde and anti-tank profiles is fine.
But melta and powerfists are specialized weapons. I don't see what was wrong with just having them be effective low-volume anti-tank/anti-monster.
catbarf wrote: I really don't like the idea of making more weapons dual-profile. The changes to how damage and AP work post-7th have already made weapons feel more 'samey' than they used to; giving classically specialized weapons multiple profiles so they can be anti-everything would be a further step in the wrong direction.
The main reason to have multiple profiles is when you have a weapon that isn't supposed to be cripplingly specialized, and needs a way to deal with multiple target profiles. Characters and monsters having both anti-horde and anti-tank profiles is fine.
The idea of winding up for a big attack with a fist is kind of cool, but I pretty much agree here. My issue isn't that meltaguns aren't all-rounders; its' that they don't really do the job they've classically been used for.
But melta and powerfists are specialized weapons. I don't see what was wrong with just having them be effective low-volume anti-tank/anti-monster.
It really does feel like a weird choice. My best guesses are:
1.) It was an attempt to make vehicles more durable. Rather than giving them more wounds, just functionally give half the anti-tank weapons in the game a -1 to wound them by not scaling-up their strength.
2.) It's an awkward part of the new point system. That is, they recognized that a meltagun that can hurt tanks is probably significantly more valuable than a flamer, but both weapons are functionally competing for the same slot in a tactical squad and now aren't allowed to cost different points. So the designers made them more similar in value by nerfing/not-scaling-up meltas.
I think the way kabalite warrior squads are currently handled might kind of support theory 2. Where we were previously allowed to double-up on blasters or shredders, we're now required to take one of each and are locked into a set squad size. So rather than pricing the unit around the assumption that you're doing an anti-infantry build (shredders + splinter cannon) or an anti-tank build (blasters + dark lance), they sort of force you to take a middling option. Which means that they can price the unit around a set, suboptimal combination fo weapons rather than worrying about whether your unit is designed to kill ork boyz or battle wagons. The set squad size of 10 presumably also prevents you from spamming small, cheap stick objective units.
...Or maybe it's literally just based on what's in a single kit.
It really does feel like a weird choice. My best guesses are:
1.) It was an attempt to make vehicles more durable. Rather than giving them more wounds, just functionally give half the anti-tank weapons in the game a -1 to wound them by not scaling-up their strength.
2.) It's an awkward part of the new point system. That is, they recognized that a meltagun that can hurt tanks is probably significantly more valuable than a flamer, but both weapons are functionally competing for the same slot in a tactical squad and now aren't allowed to cost different points. So the designers made them more similar in value by nerfing/not-scaling-up meltas.
I think the way kabalite warrior squads are currently handled might kind of support theory 2. Where we were previously allowed to double-up on blasters or shredders, we're now required to take one of each and are locked into a set squad size. So rather than pricing the unit around the assumption that you're doing an anti-infantry build (shredders + splinter cannon) or an anti-tank build (blasters + dark lance), they sort of force you to take a middling option. Which means that they can price the unit around a set, suboptimal combination fo weapons rather than worrying about whether your unit is designed to kill ork boyz or battle wagons. The set squad size of 10 presumably also prevents you from spamming small, cheap stick objective units.
Was 9th edition melta in general the issue, or was it specifically multi-melta? I never really had an issue with the former. I thought it was the latter (mostly on buffed-up droppod devs) that were considered a bit much. And the main problem with multi-meltas was just that GW doubled their number of shots because "multi".
catbarf wrote: I really don't like the idea of making more weapons dual-profile. The changes to how damage and AP work post-7th have already made weapons feel more 'samey' than they used to; giving classically specialized weapons multiple profiles so they can be anti-everything would be a further step in the wrong direction.
The main reason to have multiple profiles is when you have a weapon that isn't supposed to be cripplingly specialized, and needs a way to deal with multiple target profiles. Characters and monsters having both anti-horde and anti-tank profiles is fine.
But melta and powerfists are specialized weapons. I don't see what was wrong with just having them be effective low-volume anti-tank/anti-monster.
Dual profiles are one of my big bugbears of the last few editions. It's representative of the removal of meaningful choices and decision making. Why care about your big monster or Knight being swarmed by infantry when you can just use your 12 attacks to stomp all over them at S "Enough" and AP "Plenty", then switch to your big damage swing when you fight other big things?
For melta/blasters etc, I think I'd prefer to see them do more damage when they do wound. In principle I don't have a major problem with a weapon type that has good AP and good damage, but struggles to wound. Whether Melta is the correct weapon type to represent that, I'm not so sure. The problem right now is, even when it does wound, it often feels pretty weak. I'd rather have them do a lot more damage once you wound, to at least give some sort of pay-off. Then you have lascannons with high Strength and decent damage and melta with lower Strength but much more damage. At least it would feel like a trade-off, instead of one just being flat-out better.
Tyran wrote: Melta needed to be nerfed from their 9th "everyone spams melta" iteration.
But GW in classic GW fashion nerfed them in a lazy and awkward way that mostly neutered it.
Ok, so how would you have nerfed them?
And you're not allowed to give any answer that involves a pts cost.
I have two ideas. The first one is the same Strenght nerf but Melta comes with a Strenght buff in addition to the Damage buff, so standard melta in melta range would be S11 which seems fine to me.
My other idea is give them high S as standard but nerf their damage to D3 so they are dependent on the melta Damage buf.
Either way the point it to make melta good while in melta range, but weak outside of it.
I would keep the range nerf on multi-meltas though, because melta out of deepstrike would be oppresive otherwise.
Dual profiles are one of my big bugbears of the last few editions. It's representative of the removal of meaningful choices and decision making. Why care about your big monster or Knight being swarmed by infantry when you can just use your 12 attacks to stomp all over them at S "Enough" and AP "Plenty", then switch to your big damage swing when you fight other big things?
Eh. I don't necessarily want to see dual profiles all over the place, but I feel like MCs/knights have different "styles" of attacking a given enemy makes sense. If my wraith lord is trying to kill a hive tyrant, he's probably using big attacks with more force behind them that are ideally aimed with the tyrant's vital organs and weak points in mind. If that same wraith lord just needs to clear a path through a carpet of termagaunts, big, powerful attacks that target one bug at a time are kind of overkill, and he's probably better of just sweeping his blade around, trusting in his sheer size and strength to make the motion sufficiently lethal. Having two profiles represents that pretty well.
In other words, a wraith lord can reasonably kill a large number of little things in a short amount of time, and he can reasonably do serious damage to a big thing. But you don't want him making the same number of attacks against the big thing that he does against the little thing. In video game terms, one is a light attack, and the other is a heavy attack.
For melta/blasters etc, I think I'd prefer to see them do more damage when they do wound. In principle I don't have a major problem with a weapon type that has good AP and good damage, but struggles to wound. Whether Melta is the correct weapon type to represent that, I'm not so sure. The problem right now is, even when it does wound, it often feels pretty weak. I'd rather have them do a lot more damage once you wound, to at least give some sort of pay-off. Then you have lascannons with high Strength and decent damage and melta with lower Strength but much more damage. At least it would feel like a trade-off, instead of one just being flat-out better.
See, I'm okay with high-damage-low-strength weapons in theory, but it just doesn't feel right for meltas. You don't see meltagunners standing there, firing away at a tank to zero effect.
"Good news, sir! We've hit that tank with our meltagun twice now which means we're due for some results next time. The meltagun hasn't so much as scorched the paint job yet, but ooooh you just wait until we roll a 5 to wound."
Tyran wrote: Melta needed to be nerfed from their 9th "everyone spams melta" iteration.
But GW in classic GW fashion nerfed them in a lazy and awkward way that mostly neutered it.
Ok, so how would you have nerfed them?
And you're not allowed to give any answer that involves a pts cost.
Just keeping a lower Strength would have been fine, but they also reduced range. If it was one or the other things would be better. Both low Strength and shorter range was unnecessary.
As said before. Give melta a S10-11, but DmgD3. So that at range they're only good against heavy infantry. Then when in melta range give them an extra flat 3. It reduces DS alphas a bit. Though I feel like it should have a disadvantage vs MCs, beyond them usually having access to some kind of invul. But I don't know a good way to do that. Anti-Vehicle pisses in the haywire/emp pool... although that would be a bad time for Sisters.
Is there a reason for meltas to be less effective against monsters than machines? I know that the melta rule back in the day only worked against vehicles, but I thought that was one of the quirky points of frustration that eventually lead to monsters and vehicles being treated in a standardized fashion.
Slipspace wrote: For melta/blasters etc, I think I'd prefer to see them do more damage when they do wound. In principle I don't have a major problem with a weapon type that has good AP and good damage, but struggles to wound. Whether Melta is the correct weapon type to represent that, I'm not so sure. The problem right now is, even when it does wound, it often feels pretty weak. I'd rather have them do a lot more damage once you wound, to at least give some sort of pay-off. Then you have lascannons with high Strength and decent damage and melta with lower Strength but much more damage. At least it would feel like a trade-off, instead of one just being flat-out better.
The concept of weapons that have low S but high AP and high Dam makes no sense to me. What does that mean? It's great at penetrating armor, it's extremely damaging when it does, but more often than not even when it connects it just... doesn't do anything? Why not bump it up to high enough S to wound most vehicles on 3+, but reduce damage as appropriate? Or if it's a specialized anti-vehicle weapon, why doesn't it have the Anti-Vehicle keyword?
Maybe I'm just 'old man yells at cloud' at this point, but I really feel that the shift towards arbitrary stats with no tangible connection to the universe or internal logic to how they're modeled leads to poor outcomes like this.
Slipspace wrote: For melta/blasters etc, I think I'd prefer to see them do more damage when they do wound. In principle I don't have a major problem with a weapon type that has good AP and good damage, but struggles to wound. Whether Melta is the correct weapon type to represent that, I'm not so sure. The problem right now is, even when it does wound, it often feels pretty weak. I'd rather have them do a lot more damage once you wound, to at least give some sort of pay-off. Then you have lascannons with high Strength and decent damage and melta with lower Strength but much more damage. At least it would feel like a trade-off, instead of one just being flat-out better.
The concept of weapons that have low S but high AP and high Dam makes no sense to me. What does that mean? It's great at penetrating armor, it's extremely damaging when it does, but more often than not even when it connects it just... doesn't do anything? Why not bump it up to high enough S to wound most vehicles on 3+, but reduce damage as appropriate? Or if it's a specialized anti-vehicle weapon, why doesn't it have the Anti-Vehicle keyword?
Maybe I'm just 'old man yells at cloud' at this point, but I really feel that the shift towards arbitrary stats with no tangible connection to the universe or internal logic to how they're modeled leads to poor outcomes like this.
Personally, low-damage melta would feel a bit weird too. Melta is described as consistently damaging vehicles when it hits them (which the current rules fail to represent), but it's not described as doing small amount of damage. Like, the description is usually that you shoot a tank with a melta weapon, and then you either slag the treads or else hit something critical that makes the vehicle go boom. You don't read about a guy spending five full minutes shooting blast after melta blast before something on the tank finally breaks.
I feel like one of the proposed rules above (wounding consistently and doing solid damage while within melta range) would represent the fluff well without breaking the game.
Slipspace wrote: For melta/blasters etc, I think I'd prefer to see them do more damage when they do wound. In principle I don't have a major problem with a weapon type that has good AP and good damage, but struggles to wound. Whether Melta is the correct weapon type to represent that, I'm not so sure. The problem right now is, even when it does wound, it often feels pretty weak. I'd rather have them do a lot more damage once you wound, to at least give some sort of pay-off. Then you have lascannons with high Strength and decent damage and melta with lower Strength but much more damage. At least it would feel like a trade-off, instead of one just being flat-out better.
The concept of weapons that have low S but high AP and high Dam makes no sense to me. What does that mean? It's great at penetrating armor, it's extremely damaging when it does, but more often than not even when it connects it just... doesn't do anything? Why not bump it up to high enough S to wound most vehicles on 3+, but reduce damage as appropriate? Or if it's a specialized anti-vehicle weapon, why doesn't it have the Anti-Vehicle keyword?
Maybe I'm just 'old man yells at cloud' at this point, but I really feel that the shift towards arbitrary stats with no tangible connection to the universe or internal logic to how they're modeled leads to poor outcomes like this.
Before GW canned it, WHFB had a somewhat interesting mechanic wherein every point of strength above 4 also gave a point of AP. So a S7 weapon would have AP-3 from its strength alone. Obviously 40k has far too many high-strength weapons for this to be practical (Autocannons would turn into Plasma Cannons!), but I think it was an interesting solution for that system.
Regardless, I think issues like this highlight the weirdness of disconnecting toughness from armour save. Both represent how difficult it is to wound a model, so you'd really expect them to be represented by the same stat. You could maybe argue that toughness is about how much damage a model can take sans armour, but then you're just treading on the toes of Wounds.
Toughness and save pretty much represent the same thing. They are different for the gameplay fiction of giving the defender something to roll during the attack sequence and to get around the limitations of a D6 by making it a 2D6 roll.
catbarf wrote: I really don't like the idea of making more weapons dual-profile. The changes to how damage and AP work post-7th have already made weapons feel more 'samey' than they used to; giving classically specialized weapons multiple profiles so they can be anti-everything would be a further step in the wrong direction.
The main reason to have multiple profiles is when you have a weapon that isn't supposed to be cripplingly specialized, and needs a way to deal with multiple target profiles. Characters and monsters having both anti-horde and anti-tank profiles is fine.
But melta and powerfists are specialized weapons. I don't see what was wrong with just having them be effective low-volume anti-tank/anti-monster.
Because Monsters/Vehicles/Super Heavy Infantry aren't as overlapping as they used to be. The Powerfist/Thunderhammer type stuff used to be aimed at everything from Terminators to Land Raiders (and their parallels). I don't think one profile can still cover that range anymore - at least not in a good way - the profile that can wound Monsters and Tanks on 3's and 4's will wound Termies and Gravis on 2's, and the profile that can keep up with the model count of a unit of Termies/Gravis will bounce off the Monsters and Tanks or be death by a thousand papercuts if you roll well. There is some room to improve the Power Sword(weapons) vs the Heavy Infantry and close some of that gap too though.
The concept of weapons that have low S but high AP and high Dam makes no sense to me.
They should be rare, but I can see a spot for them. I'd enjoy seeing Haywaire/EMP style weapons work like this... they have low S because the chances of them getting through whatever shielding and defenses of a vehicle are slim, but if they do, it just cascades into massive damage.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Tyran wrote: Toughness and save pretty much represent the same thing. They are different for the gameplay fiction of giving the defender something to roll during the attack sequence and to get around the limitations of a D6 by making it a 2D6 roll.
Not really, they often overlap but they're not the same thing when you're writing the "story". Say the Incredible Hulk time travels to the yeah 41997. He's going to be a MONSTER, and like most other Greenskins he's going to have high S, Hight T, low Armor Save - and in his case probably a pretty hefty FNP - at one level it doesn't matter if it comes from T, Armor, Invulnerable or FNP, but at most levels it does matter for making things "feel" different creating a selling point deviation between Chess and 40K.
It is an illusion though. The Hulk is bullet proof, in fact his skin is tougher than tank armor.
I guess it is true that is the distinction matters for storytelling reasons, but it is nothing more than storytelling reasons and it will create discrepancies and weirdness.
Breton wrote:Because Monsters/Vehicles/Super Heavy Infantry aren't as overlapping as they used to be. The Powerfist/Thunderhammer type stuff used to be aimed at everything from Terminators to Land Raiders (and their parallels). I don't think one profile can still cover that range anymore - at least not in a good way - the profile that can wound Monsters and Tanks on 3's and 4's will wound Termies and Gravis on 2's, and the profile that can keep up with the model count of a unit of Termies/Gravis will bounce off the Monsters and Tanks or be death by a thousand papercuts if you roll well. There is some room to improve the Power Sword(weapons) vs the Heavy Infantry and close some of that gap too though.
Under the old to-wound table power fists did splat Terminators on a 2+. What's the problem with them being a melee equivalent of a lascannon, a single big swing that will probably kill if it connects? Why do power fists now need to be able to deal with whole units on their own?
Breton wrote:at one level it doesn't matter if it comes from T, Armor, Invulnerable or FNP, but at most levels it does matter for making things "feel" different creating a selling point deviation between Chess and 40K.
I don't follow. If you can't coherently articulate what sets those characteristics apart- why the Hulk should have a very high T, versus a very high W or a good FNP- then it doesn't feel any different because it's all interchangeable and meaningless. The guy's just tough.
I think you can make a solid case for 'how hard is it to hurt this thing' versus 'how much damage can this thing take'. That's a sensible distinction. Further splitting that first category into armor and biological toughness is a stretch, but maybe justifiable, until you start giving vehicles moderate stats in the former and very high stats in the latter. And dividing up damage-soaking ability into wounds and FNPs (ie wounds but less consistent) is just weird.
Again, the meltagun- what's it supposed to feel like when it only wounds a third of the time but goes right through armor and does a bunch of damage when it does? How are the chosen stats contributing to the narrative of the game?
Tyran wrote: It is an illusion though. The Hulk is bullet proof, in fact his skin is tougher than tank armor.
I guess it is true that is the distinction matters for storytelling reasons, but it is nothing more than storytelling reasons and it will create discrepancies and weirdness.
The "story-telling" is one of the bigger selling points. I don't mean the DIY Scenarios that try too hard from RTT or 2E Red Dwarf articles - but the appearance of diversity you get from Orks vs Marines, vs Guard etc. I mean I've made the point before that a 500 point bucket of Orks and a 500 Point Bucket of Imperial Knights are or should be of roughly equivalent value which is why I say the appearance of diversity. A "bucket" 20 small bases with 1W trading toughness for Mutli-wound immunity, vs a "bucket" of 20 wounds on one base trading more toughness for vulnerability to multi-damage attacks are fairly similar in the abstract. Its the story-telling or fluff or whatever you want to call the flavor text explaining the slight differences that get people invested in their armies.
Under the old to-wound table power fists did splat Terminators on a 2+. What's the problem with them being a melee equivalent of a lascannon, a single big swing that will probably kill if it connects? Why do power fists now need to be able to deal with whole units on their own?
and now they don't. Terminators are T5, and Gravis are T6. That's probably a good change, wounding on 2's should be inefficient overkill. But the Hive Tyrant went from wounding on 4's to wounding on 5's AND as has been pointed out frequently with fewer attacks per. I think Powerfists (and so on) should be able to splat Terminators etc on 3's, and when en masse (in a Terminator Squad for example) splat Land Raider and Hive Tyrants - and what I'm saying is I think the difference between a T6 Gravis target or a T12 (which crosses the 2+/3+ break point) Land Raider target would make just a base profile upgrade to the Fists to threaten the Land Raiders would make them too efficient at splatting the Terminator - so giving them a profile to splat the multi-base Super Heavy Infantry and a second profile to splat the tanks and monsters that would be inefficient vs the Super Heavy Infantry is healthier for the game.
High strength has to do a lot of gymnastics to not have an AP value. Force is pretty directly related to penetrative power. Hence the old S and ASM table.
On the other hand, you can still have low strength high AP - a tissue with a phase field that goes straight through things will ignore armour even if it doesn't have much force behind it.
I think a case can be made for high strength and low AP weapon. To me a large shockwave would fall into this category. Will it knock your power armoured ass down, yes. Does it go through your armour, no.
Gibblets wrote: I think a case can be made for high strength and low AP weapon. To me a large shockwave would fall into this category. Will it knock your power armoured ass down, yes. Does it go through your armour, no.
That would be a pinning effect, not a casualty causing one. For it to wound you, it kind of has to go through your armour first, whether impact transfer, or literally burning a hole through the armour.
For you to be killed, the force of the attack has to have gone through the armour first.
I don't follow. If you can't coherently articulate what sets those characteristics apart- why the Hulk should have a very high T, versus a very high W or a good FNP- then it doesn't feel any different because it's all interchangeable and meaningless. The guy's just tough.
I think you can make a solid case for 'how hard is it to hurt this thing' versus 'how much damage can this thing take'. That's a sensible distinction. Further splitting that first category into armor and biological toughness is a stretch, but maybe justifiable, until you start giving vehicles moderate stats in the former and very high stats in the latter. And dividing up damage-soaking ability into wounds and FNPs (ie wounds but less consistent) is just weird.
Obviously this would be too big a change to be introduced in anything short of an edition change, but I've been wondering about combining the to-wound and save rolls and just cranking up Wounds and Damage as needed. I'd probably introduce an Armored(X) keyword that modifies this new Defense roll and gets countered by AP(X), but the overall result would be less splitting of hairs over armor vs raw meaty toughness.
(Among other benefits.)
Again, the meltagun- what's it supposed to feel like when it only wounds a third of the time but goes right through armor and does a bunch of damage when it does? How are the chosen stats contributing to the narrative of the game?
Yeah. This pretty much sums up the lore side of the issue for me. In past editions, meltaguns felt very powerful but also very reliable at their job. So it made sense to dedicate a transport to rushing a squad of them up the field. Said squad would pop out danger close to the enemy and probably only get to fire their weapons once before being targeted, but that single volley of shots could be counted on to stop the rampaging daemon engine or battle wagon or what have you.
The current meltagun rules suggest that you have to like... pull the trigger and wait a while before it suddenly switches from doing nothing at all to doing more damage than a lascannon. Except when you're lucky enough to roll a 5+, in which case it starts at full power instead.
As much as i get frustrated by 10th edition handling of meltas, I do think flamers with their adjusted range and ignores cover, and blast weapons work pretty well. They have been pretty lame for the last 2 editions.
It would be nice to be actualy do something to targets that are something else then t3 or 4. I have 3 dreadnoughts with lascanon or MM mounted weapons. But in general anything with more ap then 1, would be a gigantic improvment for my dudes.
So it made sense to dedicate a transport to rushing a squad of them up the field. Said squad would pop out danger close to the enemy and probably only get to fire their weapons once before being targeted, but that single volley of shots could be counted on to stop the rampaging daemon engine or battle wagon or what have you.
TBH that also felt gamey in the other way. It was hard to imagine how daemon engines and dreadnoughts could be viable war engines if every squad with a handful of meltas could reliably blow them up.
Similalry, I don't think I recall rushing transports with meltas as a common tactic in the lore.
I wasn't even aware of this shift but it certainly makes me happy even more that I haven't touched 10th at all. Melta is supposed to be more or less the perfect anti tank weapon cause it's a meltagun. Outside of D weapons/vortex stuff used by the Eldar it's supposed to be as "anti" anti tank you can get short of maybe a Tau tank mounted railgun. Historically the more mediocre anti tank weapon would be krak anyway, in that it's supposed to be more middle of the road. Meltaguns should always shred tanks, it's why they exist.
Similalry, I don't think I recall rushing transports with meltas as a common tactic in the lore.
SoB, Salamanders and Minotaurs do it. And w40k the game is not very lore accurate anyway. If it was lore accurate, then demons should be taking damage just by being able to draw LoS to a unit of GK, and stuff like GK demon hammers (not existing in the game at the moment), or GK heavy weapons just ravage demon engines and everything chaos. In the game they don't even scratch the paint on chaos stuff.
Anyways, Rhino wise. I don't think so. At least I see no options for that in the BT index....
But I suppose you could put two 5 man Crusader squads, each armed with a MM, in a Rhino - then drive around firing both MMs via the firing deck.
Or do 1 man squad with a MM & Melta instead.
So better than a Razorback!
I like what they did with the Leviathan instruction booklet rules, where the combi-weapons weren't just one amalgamated profile but instead had distinct roles without having different profiles.
They were all the same, but the Combi-Flamer had "Anti-Infantry", the Combi-Melta had "Anti-Vehicle", and the Combi-Plasma had "Anti-Monster".
Gave each type of weapon a preferred target. I do wonder what would have happened if that had carried into the greater game, with Melta weapons getting Anti-Vehicle, and all plasma weapons getting Anti-Monster.
And no, I have no idea what Combi-Grav would have been. Grav has always sat outside the main special weapons because it was shoe-horned into the game as a new hat for Malibu Stacy, and has sat awkwardly in the Marine roster ever since. New Sternguard don't even have Combi-Grav bits in the kit.
Grav was specifically made to confront the supremacy of MCs in a paradigm where Lascannons could only do a single wound. In 6th and 7th it was the go-to. In 8th and 9th it remained very strong from a numbers perspective, and was the most lethal choice against most many targets barring the few that Melta did better at.
Gitdakka wrote: As much as i get frustrated by 10th edition handling of meltas, I do think flamers with their adjusted range and ignores cover, and blast weapons work pretty well. They have been pretty lame for the last 2 editions.
The blast weapons are getting closer, but I'm still not a fan of flamers. They're continuing to be on the hind teat if they get one at all. The short range is good, but their output compared to longer range non-torrent is not. 24 inch range, the flamer gets 3.5 shots and 3.5 hits or so on the second turn, meanwhile the bolter(-equivalents) get 4 shots, 2 and a half "better" shots as they usually include some AP. Comparing the flamer to the Plasma or Melta gun, leaves the flamer feeling not-very-special. The Infernus Squad is a pretty good example of how lackluster the flamer is - you don't see a whole lot of people taking them - of course the squad itself is bad. They should have Close Assault or Battle Line (not Heavy Support) shoulderpads (which is I admit just a fluff issue) they should have OC2 per model and probably have the Battle Line keyword for more than 3 (i.e. they should basically be Intercessors with flamers) to make them a viable "Tactical Squad" slot in. Unless they overtune Flamers to be a special/elite choice for an entire squad to have them. Personally I'd make them stronger so they splat Guard/Gaunts/Grots pretty hard but peter out very quickly vs MEQ+ including Warriors, MANZ and such.
Gave each type of weapon a preferred target. I do wonder what would have happened if that had carried into the greater game, with Melta weapons getting Anti-Vehicle, and all plasma weapons getting Anti-Monster.
The problem with Anti-Monster is what it would do to Nids as an army, and assorted Chaos and Loyalist Marines. I think they should have created a new Keyword like Brute for Monstrous Characters - Nid HQ's, Daemon Princes, Primarchs and the like. Those models can rarely join units to get Look Out Sir type of protection. Making them BRUTE, adding BRUTE to the various Big Guns etc rules allows the monstrous CHARACTERS to be monstrous without opening them up to a crippling weakness like ANTI-MONSTER X that would be entirely too easy to Suicide Squad into position.
Otherwise yeah, absolutely Keywords and a specialized Anti-X for the "elements" of 40K (Flame, Melt, Plas, Grav) would have made the game much better. Until you get to extremes, the more choices we have to make the better.
Breton wrote: The problem with Anti-Monster is what it would do to Nids as an army, and assorted Chaos and Loyalist Marines.
Why is that a problem? Right now every Tyranid out there laughs at anti-vehicle weapons which doesn't make any sense. Is that fair to vehicle heavy armies? Anti-Monster on the other hand is incredibly rare.
Yeah. The only real difference I see between monsters and vehicles is that one is organic. So haywire shouldn't work on a carnifex, but poison should. Of course, drukhari poison currently doesn't work on monsters so...
Breton wrote: The problem with Anti-Monster is what it would do to Nids as an army, and assorted Chaos and Loyalist Marines.
Why is that a problem? Right now every Tyranid out there laughs at anti-vehicle weapons which doesn't make any sense. Is that fair to vehicle heavy armies? Anti-Monster on the other hand is incredibly rare.
Again you ask something I just painstakingly explained. Because their characters, the Primarchs, and the Daemon Princes are MONSTER and CHARACTER AND generally can't join a bodyguard unit - and should be something else and CHARACTER so that a suicide squad doesn't hit them with a vulnerability normal characters don't have. Also as I explicitly mentioned (After that change to balance the MONSTER CHARACTERS) it would absolutely be good for the game to add ANTI-MONSTER X to plasma as part of an Elemental - ANTI grouping.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Wyldhunt wrote: Yeah. The only real difference I see between monsters and vehicles is that one is organic. So haywire shouldn't work on a carnifex, but poison should. Of course, drukhari poison currently doesn't work on monsters so...
Aside from Old One Eye most Carnifex are not characters. My point is split out the characters to be effectively MONSTERs except when it comes to ANTI-MONSTER, then add ANTI-MONSTER.
Wyldhunt wrote: Is there a reason for meltas to be less effective against monsters than machines? I know that the melta rule back in the day only worked against vehicles, but I thought that was one of the quirky points of frustration that eventually lead to monsters and vehicles being treated in a standardized fashion.
It's one of those weird game mechanics things.
Back when monstrous creatures and vehicles were separate entities, they each had their pro's and cons. Vehicles were faster, more heavily armed, near immune to small arms (and often, medium arms), and could in theory, take more damage. Ironically, they were more vulnerable to being shaken if they took a glancing or penetrating blow.
Monstrous creatures tended to be slower, less heavily armed, more resilient to a single high damage attach, but they were essentially giant units--they were susceptible to having their armor outright ignored (in a time where invulnerable saves were extremely rare), overwhelmed by small arms fire, or tied up in melee.
It's also not like the melta really needed any help either. The melta rule only applied when under half range, but a hit and penetration would not be a guarantee of a vehicle's death in the earlier editions. A melta hitting any monstrous creature, short of a wraithlord or GUO, at any range would almost certainly wound on a 3+ or even 2+.
You could chalk it up to a monstrous creature being a living thing might see a melta coming at it and defend its vulnerable pieces. Either that, or it does take massive damage, but it has redundant organ systems or regeneration or space elf magic that keeps it going. A vehicle kill, however, could be the result of hitting the ammo, engine, or reactor; or killing the crew; or just reducing the vehicle to a pile of slag by stripping all its weapons off.
I don't think as many people had a problem with MC's vs. Vehicles as they did with how GW classified some things as vehicles and some things as monstrous creatures. And then created a hybrid category of walker. A lot of people didn't like that their tank could get hit by a, y'know, anti tank weapon and then die, but those people also probably never had the joy of watching a carnifex get mowed down by a single las-plastac squad.
Plasma having Anti-monster would've been a nice bit of rock paper scissoring, to the weapon choices. Although I think Grav weapons should get anti-monster if anything does because big water filled bugs squish best. Which would leave plasma out as a general choice which risks invalidating the others if too good.
To me the reasons a melta wouldn't get the same bonus to a monster as a vehicle; is that a vehicle will be meltable and even combustible. Whereas a monster will take a what? 5inch hole through it like a missing plug but will be cauterized from the heat. If you didn't get skeletal structure, movement muscles, or nervous system, that creature can probably still kill you in the ?5 mins? simulated game time that a 5 round game represents.
Breton wrote: Again you ask something I just painstakingly explained. Because their characters, the Primarchs, and the Daemon Princes are MONSTER and CHARACTER AND generally can't join a bodyguard unit - and should be something else and CHARACTER so that a suicide squad doesn't hit them with a vulnerability normal characters don't have. Also as I explicitly mentioned (After that change to balance the MONSTER CHARACTERS) it would absolutely be good for the game to add ANTI-MONSTER X to plasma as part of an Elemental - ANTI grouping.
Those units are already vulnerable to incoming fire. I can't imagine that this change would have that big an impact.
The problem isn't that they would become too vulnerable. The problem is that Lone Operative isn't more common.
To be fair, part of the reason I didn't like the MC/Tank distinction is that you couldn't hit skeleton/nerves/crucial muscles. You could blow the leg off a 'naught, or the track off a Russ, or the grav plates off a Wave Serpent, but you couldn't even bruise a Hive Tyrant's shins (not in a way that way that was meaningfully different from bruising one of its arms). Even crazy Tyranid regen will probably take a minute to really have an effect, that still leaves a round where it'll limp. Also, organic matter can be plenty melty. I'm fine with them not being melty enough to take a Melta bonus or something, but it still feels weird that the Melta could instagib a tank but did the same damage as a heavy bolter against MCs.
Breton wrote: Again you ask something I just painstakingly explained. Because their characters, the Primarchs, and the Daemon Princes are MONSTER and CHARACTER AND generally can't join a bodyguard unit - and should be something else and CHARACTER so that a suicide squad doesn't hit them with a vulnerability normal characters don't have. Also as I explicitly mentioned (After that change to balance the MONSTER CHARACTERS) it would absolutely be good for the game to add ANTI-MONSTER X to plasma as part of an Elemental - ANTI grouping.
Those units are already vulnerable to incoming fire. I can't imagine that this change would have that big an impact.
The problem isn't that they would become too vulnerable. The problem is that Lone Operative isn't more common.
Those units usually have Lone Operative in some form or they should, but that doesn't provide the same defense when you've got a Drop Pod Bomb of Anti-Monster 3+ able to land close enough to negate it plus chew through the monster wounds. Its second level fall out - these monsters were designed and pointed for this environment, and proliferating anti-monster without protecting them from that proliferation is likely to have unintentional consequences for that balance. Now Morty, Angron, Magnus, and the larger Nid Monster Characters like Norn Whatevers have enough wounds they're probably not one-turn vulnerable to a Drop Pod Bomb - 10 Hellblasters, 2 shots per, 20 shots, 13ish hits, 15ish after a to-hit reroll, Anti Monster 3+ gets you 10ish woundings for 20 damage before saves so about 10 get through a 4++. Again not enough to 1 Turn Angron, but it costs you 275 for that Pod Bomb, while the WE player is watching most of 500 points melt from one unit's shooting. Things get even worse when you get into the 8-12ish wound Monster characters, especially if they can't join a group and rely on Lone Operative, or worse a wish and a prayer. Winged Hive Tyrants, loyalist primarchs, Daemon Princes who unfortunately have nothing, and should have something.. they should all have some version of the Loyalist Primarch "If within 6" of (whatever), they have Lone Operative" at the least. That Hellblaster Pod Bomb only has to land (or start, don't even need the pod) within 24" of some poor Daemon Prince counting on his T10 and a stiff upper lip to keep him safe, only those Plasma Incinerators now wound on 3's instead of 5's.
Again, plasma (and differently named xenos parallels) absolutely should have Anti-Monster X to it. But before that can happen, they'd have to figure out a way to immunize the MONSTER CHARACTER units from ANTI-MONSTER to maintain balance for those units and armies. The simplest way is to make them OTHER KEYWORD that is then added to every MONSTER rule except ANTI-MONSTER
Automatically Appended Next Post:
waefre_1 wrote: To be fair, part of the reason I didn't like the MC/Tank distinction is that you couldn't hit skeleton/nerves/crucial muscles. You could blow the leg off a 'naught, or the track off a Russ, or the grav plates off a Wave Serpent, but you couldn't even bruise a Hive Tyrant's shins (not in a way that way that was meaningfully different from bruising one of its arms). Even crazy Tyranid regen will probably take a minute to really have an effect, that still leaves a round where it'll limp. Also, organic matter can be plenty melty. I'm fine with them not being melty enough to take a Melta bonus or something, but it still feels weird that the Melta could instagib a tank but did the same damage as a heavy bolter against MCs.
That was there for a little while, Monsters had wound tiers like Vehicles. It wasn't much better.
waefre_1 wrote: ...but it still feels weird that the Melta could instagib a tank but did the same damage as a heavy bolter against MCs.
It was the paper/scissors/stone logic - the anti-tank gun is efficient against tanks, not monsters or mass infantry.
Though oldhammer didn't make it as pronounced as it could have been. T5 multi-wound elites and T7/2+ monsters react very differently to melta/missile/small arms fire than the old T4 and T6/3+ commonly used stat-lines, but also exaggerate list tailoring.
I don't know. I get the gamey appeal of having plasma handle monsters while melta handles vehicles, but it still feels weird from a fluff perspective.
Is there something about (at least partly) biological big things that makes them especially susceptible to damage from plasma? Or especially resistant to damage from a meltagun? The older distinction of having melta be more potent but shorter range and with fewer shots vs plasma having more range/shots and being more flexible seems like a more intuitive distinction, no?
In fact I think plasma has particular electromagnetically disruptive attributes, making it possibly more useful against targets with sensitive electronics. IIrc the US had some brief ideas about shooting satellites with a plasma weapon, not to blow them up, but more to fry sensors and circuit boards.
Only grav should have anti-monster. Plasma is too similar to melta (and way too common on the table) in real world effects to justify it having anti monster. Grav is hard to spam and could realistically be called a specialist hunting unit then.
Why do monster characters need to be immune to weapons which are designed to kill monsters?
Should any character that can fly also be protected from anti-fly? Should my Tau commanders in XV8 armour be immune to anti-vehicle and anti-fly because they are characters?
Grav is super awkward. It kind of stopped having a niche when the rules changed after 7th. If I were to try to give it a purpose these days, I'd probably turn it into a debuff gun. That is, make it do less damage than a plasma gun, but have it debuff the movement and offense of vehicles and monsters.
Gibblets wrote: Only grav should have anti-monster. Plasma is too similar to melta (and way too common on the table) in real world effects to justify it having anti monster. Grav is hard to spam and could realistically be called a specialist hunting unit then.
Grav is still easy to spam with Tacs and Devastators, used to be that Sternguard could get it too, but we all know how that went.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Wyldhunt wrote: Grav is super awkward. It kind of stopped having a niche when the rules changed after 7th.
Grav Cannons were just the short-ranged anti-everything weapon in 8th and 9th. The normal grav guns have been the odd one out.
Meltas were far more effective against monsters than Heavy Bolters in 4th edition.
If you asked me what I would trust to stop a charging Carnifex, a unit with 4 multimeltas/meltas or a unit with 4 Heavy Bolters, I would have said the melta unit hands down, not "idk too close to call".
Don't confuse "only takes one wound away" with "is just as effective as". It's crappy hyperbole like that that broke 40k in the first place.
MC/Vehicle balance was fine in 4e, but broke towards vehicles in 5e and then towards MC in later editions with the addition of hull points.
And so many armies can spam Grav... no wait... Grav is quite rare, so making Grav "Anti-Monster" would give a distinct advantage to Marine armies, Marine armies, and Marine armies. And maybe some AdMech stuff.
Not to be too flippant but tactical squads and devastators aren't ripping up the meta or even feature in tourney lists. However there is an entire unit of space marines called Hellblasters which have nothing but plasma, there is nothing stopping someone from taking 30. As a dark angels player my plasma choices are quite extensive. Grav is harder to access then plasma, so would be a softer hit on the meta if on them.Nothing stopping grav from having a -2 to move penalty, just reduce the base Strength of the weapon to compensate.
Breton wrote: Again you ask something I just painstakingly explained. Because their characters, the Primarchs, and the Daemon Princes are MONSTER and CHARACTER AND generally can't join a bodyguard unit - and should be something else and CHARACTER so that a suicide squad doesn't hit them with a vulnerability normal characters don't have. Also as I explicitly mentioned (After that change to balance the MONSTER CHARACTERS) it would absolutely be good for the game to add ANTI-MONSTER X to plasma as part of an Elemental - ANTI grouping.
Those units are already vulnerable to incoming fire. I can't imagine that this change would have that big an impact.
The problem isn't that they would become too vulnerable. The problem is that Lone Operative isn't more common.
any character with sub 10 wounds should get "lone operative", not even "if within x of a unit" just flat out give it to them. many need to be in a unit to be worth having, would even go so far as ones with sub five wounds maybe have "stealth" as well when alone as a small target, again they won't do a lot when alone and it provides some semi-fluff justification for how any survive their first battle
the bigger stuff probably needs some ways to screen against incoming fire as well but needs care otherwise the buff characters become impossible to kill while the combat ones are just as vulnerable as now so its very disproportionate.
I wonder if something like how Flames of War has "mistaken target" could work, if a [monster, character] is within 8" of another [monster] and gets hit, before rolling to wound have an unmodifiable and un-rerollable 3+ chance to transfer the hit to the other [monster], ditto with vehicles. fog of war, misheard orders etc. so say an attack with six hits is made, say four of them could go to the poor unfortunate standing nearby. (Flames does it slightly differently but thats the principle)
can still splat with volume of fire, and hits no longer just vanish, but would provide some protection to a "thing" character around similar "things"
Gibblets wrote: Not to be too flippant but tactical squads and devastators aren't ripping up the meta or even feature in tourney lists. However there is an entire unit of space marines called Hellblasters which have nothing but plasma, there is nothing stopping someone from taking 30. As a dark angels player my plasma choices are quite extensive. Grav is harder to access then plasma, so would be a softer hit on the meta if on them.Nothing stopping grav from having a -2 to move penalty, just reduce the base Strength of the weapon to compensate.
A reduction in Strength would be an uneccessary move, since it's already been nerfed in the AP and num-shots this edition, making it worse against most units, and it ignores Strength for hurting Vehicles anyways.
They finally made it not automatically better than a Heavy Bolter against most Infantry.
A Town Called Malus wrote: Why do monster characters need to be immune to weapons which are designed to kill monsters?
Because characters get extra protection from Rank And File, and instead of keeping various Look Out Sir rules that uniformly protect characters they tried to piece together several different rules for differently themed characters.
Should any character that can fly also be protected from anti-fly? Should my Tau commanders in XV8 armour be immune to anti-vehicle and anti-fly because they are characters?
Anti-Fly is not spammable on 10 Dudes In A Squad. Most if not all Tau Commanders in XV8(X) suits can join squads while most MONSTER CHARACTERS - as I've pointed out - cannot.
A Town Called Malus wrote: Why do monster characters need to be immune to weapons which are designed to kill monsters?
Because characters get extra protection from Rank And File, and instead of keeping various Look Out Sir rules that uniformly protect characters they tried to piece together several different rules for differently themed characters.
Should any character that can fly also be protected from anti-fly? Should my Tau commanders in XV8 armour be immune to anti-vehicle and anti-fly because they are characters?
Anti-Fly is not spammable on 10 Dudes In A Squad. Most if not all Tau Commanders in XV8(X) suits can join squads while most MONSTER CHARACTERS - as I've pointed out - cannot.
I don't like the "make plasma anti-monster" idea in general because it feels hard to justify in terms of fluff. But that said, if we were to make plasma Anti-Monster, and if it did prove to be too hazardous for monstrous creatures' health in the meta, the simpler solution would probably be to just give MCs a few extra wounds.
leopard wrote:
any character with sub 10 wounds should get "lone operative", not even "if within x of a unit" just flat out give it to them. many need to be in a unit to be worth having, would even go so far as ones with sub five wounds maybe have "stealth" as well when alone as a small target, again they won't do a lot when alone and it provides some semi-fluff justification for how any survive their first battle
Giving stealth to an infantry-sized character feels like a bandaid fix. If a character is too squishy to survive without being attached to a squad, giving them -1 to being hit probably won't be enough of a mathematical shift to make a difference. If an infantry character is intended to wander around on their own, you should probably make them untargetable outside of X" or just give them a ton of wounds to represent their plot armor.
I'm not sure if sub 10 wound MC characters actually need extra help right now. Assuming they do, however, you could basically give them 8th/9th edition character screening rules. Probably cranked up to reflect their larger size. So no targeting them while they're within X" of a unit of at least 10 infantry models or a unit with the monster or vehicle keyword. Something like that.
I wonder if something like how Flames of War has "mistaken target" could work, if a [monster, character] is within 8" of another [monster] and gets hit, before rolling to wound have an unmodifiable and un-rerollable 3+ chance to transfer the hit to the other [monster], ditto with vehicles. fog of war, misheard orders etc. so say an attack with six hits is made, say four of them could go to the poor unfortunate standing nearby. (Flames does it slightly differently but thats the principle)
can still splat with volume of fire, and hits no longer just vanish, but would provide some protection to a "thing" character around similar "things"
Not sure how long you've been playing, but it sounds like you're describing the 7th edition version of "Look Out Sir!".
Honestly, I just think the character rules in 10th are completely borked.
I know some people celebrated it but IMO the return to characters joining units was a massive step backwards. Even moreso given how completely hamfisted the rules are.
In the past, characters could at least switch between units during the battle. Now they're completely locked into a single unit and can never join a different one even if the unit they're in is completely wiped out. Hell, they can't even voluntarily leave the unit they're in.
Then you've got abilities that don't work if the character isn't attached to a unit. If a Necron Overlord is in a unit and is personally wounded, his Resurrection Orb will heal him just fine. But then if he's not in a unit, suddenly the inanimate orb will have itself a big sulk and refuse outright to heal him for the remainder of the game.
Tyran wrote: It definitely is half cooked, although GW has always struggled with Monstrous Characters and what they are allowed to join and be protected by.
I think it would have been better to tweak 8th's system to go by toughness, rather than wounds.
So rather than 10+ wounds being an arbitrary cut-off (which bears zero relation to a model's size), you instead say that a model can only be protected by models with the same or higher toughness. Thus, a Hive Tyrant can hide amidst Carnifexes but not Warriors or Gaunts; Guilliman can hide behind a dreadnought but no a unit of ordinary Space Marines etc.
Though I would add also that the need for this highlights how much lethality has jumped since around 3d-5th - such that even the toughest monsters can't expect to last through a single round of enemy shooting if exposed.
Though I would add also that the need for this highlights how much lethality has jumped since around 3d-5th - such that even the toughest monsters can't expect to last through a single round of enemy shooting if exposed.
Eh depends on the army. Tyranids have never really been able to survive a round of enemy shooting if exposed. That's why Tyrant Guard is a thing.
There are two things they've screwed up trying to re-system:
Joining Units, and Legal Target.
Lethality is up because all 2,000 points can pour fire into the most "important" 500 points of opposing army. They need to go back to nearest target with few exceptions - LD check, Heavy vs Monster/Vehicle, etc.
Going back to earlier character joining is also the way to go - join just about anything, come and go as you please
Automatically Appended Next Post:
vipoid wrote: If a Necron Overlord is in a unit and is personally wounded, his Resurrection Orb will heal him just fine. But then if he's not in a unit, suddenly the inanimate orb will have itself a big sulk and refuse outright to heal him for the remainder of the game.
It's such asinine design on every single level.
That's the quick and dirty way (or Rules as we think we're supposed to have Interpreted way) but I'd check with the Rules forum. If Character A joins Unit B, they're a combined unit. There is no rule (in the BRB, individual codexes may be different- see later on) saying the Character is no longer leading that unit even after the unit is destroyed. Its an easy jump of logic, but its not a rule - in fact the rule says the opposite he is leading that unit for the rest of the battle. Now as I mentioned the codex may say differently - if Loyalist Captain A joins Squad B, and Loyalist Lieutenant C also joins Squad B, the rule allowing Lieutenant C to join also specified that if Squad B is destroyed Captain A and Lieutenant C now DO go back to being loners not leading anything. Edit To Add: Which implies Captain A continues to "lead" even after the death of the squad, and joining the Lieutenant has the obivous advantages and stripping the LEADER stuff as a drawback. Or that they just reiterated what the logic jump that technically runs counter to the rule as written had us believing.
You don't need to be able to come and go as you please with characters.
The bigger failing with characters is how they're useless when not joined to units. Like how the Librarians psychic barrier only works when he's leading a squad. Even his Psychic Hood stops functioning unless he's got some buddies with him. There's even a Marine enhancement that does literally nothing unless the model is leading a unit.
I wonder if something like how Flames of War has "mistaken target" could work, if a [monster, character] is within 8" of another [monster] and gets hit, before rolling to wound have an unmodifiable and un-rerollable 3+ chance to transfer the hit to the other [monster], ditto with vehicles. fog of war, misheard orders etc. so say an attack with six hits is made, say four of them could go to the poor unfortunate standing nearby. (Flames does it slightly differently but thats the principle)
can still splat with volume of fire, and hits no longer just vanish, but would provide some protection to a "thing" character around similar "things"
Not sure how long you've been playing, but it sounds like you're describing the 7th edition version of "Look Out Sir!".
sort of yes, but not as reliable, especially when it comes to big things
leopard wrote: Not sure how long you've been playing, but it sounds like you're describing the 7th edition version of "Look Out Sir!".
Going back further there was target priority, leadership test or be forced to fire at the closest target (or closest 'large target').
"My lascannon heavy weapon squad will shoot the onrushing landraider carrying Abaddon and his personal retinue" (flips coin)
"... my lascannon heavy weapon squad will shoot the empty, unarmed rhino idling in heavy cover"
That's the quick and dirty way (or Rules as we think we're supposed to have Interpreted way) but I'd check with the Rules forum. If Character A joins Unit B, they're a combined unit. There is no rule (in the BRB, individual codexes may be different- see later on) saying the Character is no longer leading that unit even after the unit is destroyed. Its an easy jump of logic, but its not a rule - in fact the rule says the opposite he is leading that unit for the rest of the battle. Now as I mentioned the codex may say differently - if Loyalist Captain A joins Squad B, and Loyalist Lieutenant C also joins Squad B, the rule allowing Lieutenant C to join also specified that if Squad B is destroyed Captain A and Lieutenant C now DO go back to being loners not leading anything. Edit To Add: Which implies Captain A continues to "lead" even after the death of the squad, and joining the Lieutenant has the obivous advantages and stripping the LEADER stuff as a drawback. Or that they just reiterated what the logic jump that technically runs counter to the rule as written had us believing.
I was initially thinking that this wasn't correct:
P39 - "While a Bodyguard unit contains a Leader, it is known as an Attached unit"
It seems clear that you need both Bodyguard and Leader in order to constitute an Attached unit.
However, this being GW, they can't stick to any sort of consistent language even while writing everything in overly verbose legalese.
Thus, when we look at the Resurrection Orb:
"Resurrection Orb: While the bearer is leading a unit . . ."
Not the fact that "Attached unit" is not mentioned in any capacity.
Instead, we have "Leading a unit", which is only mentioned once throughout the core rules:
"...for each Leader in your army, if your army also includes one or more of that Leader’s Bodyguard units, you can select one of those Bodyguard units. That Leader will then attach to that Bodyguard unit for the duration of the battle and is said to be leading that unit."
So is "Leading a unit" interchangeable with "Attached unit" or are they separate things? Does a model continue to count as leading a unit even when that unit is not longer attached (because there is no unit left to lead)? It sounds ridiculous but the term glossed over and never properly defined.
Your leader questions are clearly addressed in the Rules Commentary.
While This Model is Leading a Unit: These rules only apply while the model with that rule is part of an Attached unit, and otherwise have no effect. While a model with such a rule is part of an Attached unit, it will also benefit from its own rule. If an Attached unit contains more than one model with such a rule, both models are considered to be leading that Attached unit, and so all such rules apply. Such rules cease to apply if that unit ceases to be an Attached unit (such as when the last Bodyguard model in that unit is destroyed) – if this is as the result of an enemy unit’s attacks, all ‘while this model is leading a unit…’ rules cease to apply after the attacking unit’s attacks have been resolved.
alextroy wrote: Your leader questions are clearly addressed in the Rules Commentary.
While This Model is Leading a Unit: These rules only apply while the model with that rule is part of an Attached unit, and otherwise have no effect. While a model with such a rule is part of an Attached unit, it will also benefit from its own rule. If an Attached unit contains more than one model with such a rule, both models are considered to be leading that Attached unit, and so all such rules apply. Such rules cease to apply if that unit ceases to be an Attached unit (such as when the last Bodyguard model in that unit is destroyed) – if this is as the result of an enemy unit’s attacks, all ‘while this model is leading a unit…’ rules cease to apply after the attacking unit’s attacks have been resolved.
Oh sorry, I forgot that a company that writes all its rules in legalese so there's no misunderstanding also needs a supplemental commentary to tell you what they actually mean.
Regardless, this means my original point regarding Leader abilities was entirely correct.
tneva82 wrote: Ah yes. Every other company is fine using glossary but for gw its bad.
Lol. People are so desperate to bash gw they bash it for doing what others do and get praised for doing.
And if players have trouble parsing meaning "while leading unit" gw has to spell english basics for them
Except that they didn't use a glossary. That's the point.
If they had used a glossary in the first place, they wouldn't have needed a commentary to define terms they couldn't be bothered defining in the core rules.
leopard wrote: Not sure how long you've been playing, but it sounds like you're describing the 7th edition version of "Look Out Sir!".
Going back further there was target priority, leadership test or be forced to fire at the closest target (or closest 'large target').
"My lascannon heavy weapon squad will shoot the onrushing landraider carrying Abaddon and his personal retinue" (flips coin)
"... my lascannon heavy weapon squad will shoot the empty, unarmed rhino idling in heavy cover"
Thank you for illustrating why this idea is so awesome.
Command and control breakdowns can cripple an army - and if your army is no better than a coin flip at interpreting and following orders, then perhaps the army should be better trained then some farmers with Lascannons.
I love the idea that the local farmers have no idea what a Land Raider is or that the much closer (=more dangerous, farmers remember?) Rhino is actually empty - heck, the Land Raider is so festooned with guns they may not even know it is a transport!
Fortunately, you can buy your army actual radios to allow orders to be given more clearly and precisely (or simply bring an experienced Captain, since your armor already includes radios if you have Power Armor).
a_typical_hero wrote: This might run into the same narrative problem as leadership. Who is this army of farmers supposed to be?
I can see it for GSC, some cultists and maybe Orks. Everybody else in the setting is a highly trained professional.
"Crappy" armies appear within the setting, they just don't have a codex representation in the modern era. There used to be a unit/force called the Frateris Militia, and that was made up of regular civilians or just ***t men-at-arms.
I feel like there's room for some sort of targeting priority rule in the game, but I don't particularly like randomizing it. Having your expensive anti-tank squad flub a Ld check and waste their shots on a nearer non-threat or severely sub-optimal target just sounds like a feels-bad moment.
It also doesn't seem like it would be good for representing the fluff of most armies. My centuries-old drukhari scourges that have been raiding realspace their whole lives probably shouldn't get confused about whether to shoot the chimera or the leman russ with their dark lances. But with Ld 6+ (which is considered quite good Ld at the moment), they'd end up making that mistake about 28% of the time.
But having like, binary screening rules (either you can target the russ or you can't based on whether something else is threatening you) and then having strats or character rules to allow units to ignore those limitations could be interesting. For armies that have cheap, "low-ranking" characters like lieutenants, warlocks, fireblades, etc., I could see that being a decent niche.
Unit1126PLL wrote: Thank you for illustrating why this idea is so awesome.
In practice you would just get arbitrarily boned at the whim of the dice - not just failing to hit or wound, now you weren't even shooting in the right direction.
It's one of those things that got heavily gamed in terms of unit positioning - there was some peak silliness in very early editions where you'd line up stuff so that your heavy weapon couldn't draw line of sight anything except the enemy HQ model standing in the middle of their unit, and as the only valid target...
My centuries-old drukhari scourges that have been raiding realspace their whole lives probably shouldn't get confused about whether to shoot the chimera or the leman russ with their dark lances. But with Ld 6+ (which is considered quite good Ld at the moment), they'd end up making that mistake about 28% of the time.
Dark Eldar are also a bunch of self-serving and backstabbing a-holes, so if that chimera is directly threatening them by being closer then it make sense they would need a Ld check to target a Russ that is farther away (and thus someone's else problem).
My centuries-old drukhari scourges that have been raiding realspace their whole lives probably shouldn't get confused about whether to shoot the chimera or the leman russ with their dark lances. But with Ld 6+ (which is considered quite good Ld at the moment), they'd end up making that mistake about 28% of the time.
Dark Eldar are also a bunch of self-serving and backstabbing a-holes, so if that chimera is directly threatening them by being closer then it make sense they would need a Ld check to target a Russ that is farther away (and thus someone's else problem).
But a Chimera isn’t scary to them, while a Russ is.
Plus, it’s not like the Russ is impossibly far away to shoot. It’s maybe a football field away at most-that’s a clear and present danger.
Also, if they disobey their superior, that could be a LOT worse than getting killed by a tank or transport. Dark Eldar can come back from that without much trouble-but a superior being angry with you? That’s a rough time for you.
My centuries-old drukhari scourges that have been raiding realspace their whole lives probably shouldn't get confused about whether to shoot the chimera or the leman russ with their dark lances. But with Ld 6+ (which is considered quite good Ld at the moment), they'd end up making that mistake about 28% of the time.
Dark Eldar are also a bunch of self-serving and backstabbing a-holes, so if that chimera is directly threatening them by being closer then it make sense they would need a Ld check to target a Russ that is farther away (and thus someone's else problem).
But a Chimera isn’t scary to them, while a Russ is.
That doesn't make sense. Multilasers and Heavy Bolters should be plenty scary to light infantry.
Now should they have a high Ld to represent their ability to discern targets and retain discipline under fire? Sure they should. But a "mere" Chimera should be a non-trivial thing to ignore, especially if it's blazing away at them.
That doesn't make sense. Multilasers and Heavy Bolters should be plenty scary to light infantry.
Now should they have a high Ld to represent their ability to discern targets and retain discipline under fire? Sure they should. But a "mere" Chimera should be a non-trivial thing to ignore, especially if it's blazing away at them.
Admittedly it probably also needs a further condition beyond simply being "closer", if the Chimera is only an inch closer than the Leman Russ then it doesn't make much sense, it needs to be a blatantly direct threat to the Scourges.
Yeah, there's some work that needs to be done, but in general the idea is better than "I shoot those five men over there behind a building to deny the objective (silly man touched the ruin base with his base, the fool!) , because that makes more sense to the hive mind I am currently a part of than shooting the unit literally six inches in front of me screaming like madmen and waving bayonets or chainblades"
A.T. wrote: In practice you would just get arbitrarily boned at the whim of the dice - not just failing to hit or wound, now you weren't even shooting in the right direction.
Lascannon firing on a Titan at point blank range, an easier target than the broad side of a barn, whiffs half the time and does nothing: Yeah sure.
Lascannon hitting a Guardsman rolls a 1 to wound, no effect: Totally fine.
Lascannon bounces off power armor rolling a 6 to save, zero damage: Also reasonable.
Lascannon fails a target priority test that you could completely avoid taking with good positioning, and merely fires on the closest target of appropriate type: Whoah buddy you can't have that, that's a FEELS BAD moment at the whim of the dice.
I never thought the target priority test as implemented was particularly elegant design, but wargamers have some weird ideas of which things are acceptable to leave up to dice and which aren't. There are about thirteen million mechanics in this game where a bad die roll can just screw you over and there's no way to prevent it, and players complained about the one where (1) you had the power to avoid having to roll entirely, and (2) still got to shoot something even if you failed.
I think the real reason 40K players disliked target priority, and to a lesser extent the old fall-back morale system, is a general expectation that they be in perfect omnipotent control of their dudes at all times. It has nothing to do with whether you 'get arbitrarily boned at the whim of the dice'; the game is chock-full of mechanics that do that, and nobody seems to complain when they roll a 1 to hit and the whim of the dice is that their artillery shell vanishes into thin air. It's only mechanics that take control away from players and limit what they can do with their units that draw this sort of criticism.
Wyldhunt wrote: But having like, binary screening rules (either you can target the russ or you can't based on whether something else is threatening you) and then having strats or character rules to allow units to ignore those limitations could be interesting. For armies that have cheap, "low-ranking" characters like lieutenants, warlocks, fireblades, etc., I could see that being a decent niche.
Many historicals use troop ratings and then have rules apply differently to the different ratings, rather than using stat checks. Having better quality troops allows circumventing restrictions applied to lesser quality ones. So maybe an army like Marines could have free targeting army-wide, while an army like Guard would need officers, strats, or tests to freely target.
You could also tie these capabilities into morale pretty easily. Intact units can target whatever, suppressed units can only target the nearest visible enemy. So instead of needing to pass dice rolls, you have perfect control of your forces until the bullets start flying, and then friction gradually limits your options. Elite troops get better morale and are harder to suppress, so have more freedom to engage as they see fit and are more likely to remain fully capable until the bitter end, while green forces are more susceptible to morale.
Or just focus on screening like you said. Maybe the game doesn't need something as strict as needing a Ld check to target anything other than the closest enemy, but it's silly when you can freely target a lone dude hiding at the back of the table when there are a hundred other dudes in between you and him.
Although that gets into the issue of giving Marines (aka the most common army) ways to ignore a mechanic quickly means said mechanic becomes irrelevant.
catbarf wrote: Lascannon firing on a Titan at point blank range, an easier target than the broad side of a barn, whiffs half the time and does nothing: Yeah sure. Lascannon hitting a Guardsman rolls a 1 to wound, no effect: Totally fine. Lascannon bounces off power armor rolling a 6 to save, zero damage: Also reasonable. Lascannon fails a target priority test that you could completely avoid taking with good positioning, and merely fires on the closest target of appropriate type: Whoah buddy you can't have that, that's a FEELS BAD moment at the whim of the dice.
I have that song from Sesame Street stuck in my head. You know the one:
"One of these things is not like the others. One of these things does not belong..."
Your fourth example isn't related to the first three, and you even know the reasons why:
catbarf wrote: It's only mechanics that take control away from players and limit what they can do with their units that draw this sort of criticism.
Precisely! You're taking away the player's choice of actions.
It's one thing to choose to do something and then fail at it (those first three examples). But it's another entirely to choose to do something, and then have the game tell you that you can't and you have to do something else. You can call it battlefield omnipotence or whatever you want, but at the end of the day people like to control their troops. They can't control the dice, but they can at least control what their units do, or try to do. Take that away? Of course people are not going to be happy.
"... not like the others. One of these things does not belong!"
But if you had to do it, then it would need to be integrated with the command/leader rules, so that players could have their command figures (or synapse, magical kabal nonsense, or collective Waaagh! energy, or whatever) allow for it, but players could make the choice not to bother with that. So I choose to have a command unit order a Devastator Squad to split fire, or I choose not to, realise I need to split fire, and maybe can't. And also the morale side of things you also mentioned.
But a choice has to be involved somewhere along the road, especially when you are taking control of units away from the player.
^Eh, in my view the choice has already been made by way of positioning.
Tyran wrote: Although that gets into the issue of giving Marines (aka the most common army) ways to ignore a mechanic quickly means said mechanic becomes irrelevant.
Disagree. For starters if you have suppression rules that effect these tests, an opposing player can strive to make the Marines have a harder time by putting a lot of firepower into them, for instance.
catbarf wrote: There are about thirteen million mechanics in this game where a bad die roll can just screw you over and there's no way to prevent it
Hit and wound rolls were cumulative odds. Firing one bolter at a grot on an objective could easily go wrong, firing 20 bolters was highly unlikely to.
Target priority was one dice roll upon which your whole action was determined. One bolter or twenty, made no difference.
In terms of being able to avoid the roll entirely... not so much. Old heavy weapons were often immobile and your opponents only criteria was to move something closer.
It probably would have worked better as a screening rule with the test made to shoot over intervening units. GW ultimately chose to simplify it down to a screening cover save instead.
Without re-writing 40k from the ground up, I don't think this mechanic would make the game more fun.
With that said - the argument "it isn't a choice" feels flawed. The player has chosen to shoot unit X instead of unit Y, split fire, or whatever else is forcing you to take a leadership/cool test. The test then decides if they can or they can't.
Its not obvious why failing this is different to say failing a charge or battle shock test, failing a 2+ psychic power activation etc. (Or, stripped down, failing to do damage with a lascannon). I think the hostility is just that you don't have to do it at the moment - so it would feel lame.
Like if Heavy went back to -1 to hit on moving. Or snapshots only. Or can't shoot at all. Saying "but this rewards cleverly deploying your devastators (etc) in a big tower with LOS of the whole board" feels kind of false.
catbarf wrote: There are about thirteen million mechanics in this game where a bad die roll can just screw you over and there's no way to prevent it
Hit and wound rolls were cumulative odds. Firing one bolter at a grot on an objective could easily go wrong, firing 20 bolters was highly unlikely to.
Target priority was one dice roll upon which your whole action was determined. One bolter or twenty, made no difference.
But at the same time, the single Laacannon in a Tac Squad was only one weapon. You also sacrificed your bolter shots as your squad tageted the Lascannon at a vehicle. And then you roll a one. No "padding out the cumulative odds" there. It's a feelsbadman moment, sure, but you also hopefully weren't just relying on that one Lascannon to make the magic happen either, right?
Same with target priority. It's one roll per unit, but your unit shouldn't be isolated and unsupported. You as the player get to set your priorities by moving units together to ensure a degree of support and redundancy. And in the case of lesser troops you might even have more units to support each other because each unit is cheaper.
Insectum7 wrote: But at the same time, the single Laacannon in a Tac Squad was only one weapon.
You were shooting one lascannon, you were getting one lascannon odds. If it was a four lascannon devastator squad you were getting four lascannon odds.
Think of it like playing poker - one lascannon is placing a bet with one ace, four lascannons is placing a bet with four aces. You can win or lose with either but the odds are not the same.
Target priority was more like having to pull a card out of the deck after betting, but before the hand was played, and if it was a club you just lost.
H.B.M.C. wrote: Precisely! You're taking away the player's choice of actions.
It's one thing to choose to do something and then fail at it (those first three examples). But it's another entirely to choose to do something, and then have the game tell you that you can't and you have to do something else. You can call it battlefield omnipotence or whatever you want, but at the end of the day people like to control their troops. They can't control the dice, but they can at least control what their units do, or try to do. Take that away? Of course people are not going to be happy.
Well, if we're all on the same page that this is the real reason players don't like it, then the previous explanation of 'you just get arbitrarily boned at the whim of the dice' is nonsense. At best it's a more objective-sounding justification than just not liking when your dudes don't get to do exactly what you want.
The distinction is splitting hairs in any case. The game will also have dice tell you that you don't get to move where you want (roll a 1 to Advance), that you don't get to charge what you want (snake eyes on the charge roll), that you don't get to use stratagems on who you want (failed a Battleshock test), or that you don't get to use psychic powers that you want (rolled a 1 on an ability that needs a 2+ to go off). These don't seem to get criticized as a categorically different sort of dice punishment from whiffing shots, they're just consequences of a game gating your full capabilities behind dice checks. Sometimes your troops move at the double, sometimes they don't. Sometimes they sprint into combat, sometimes they don't. Sometimes they shoot at a Cultist two miles away instead of the horde of Berserkers in front of them, sometimes they don't.
If the charging mechanic allowed you to redirect a failed charge into a unit your roll can actually reach, would that actually make it feel worse? It'd be shifting from 'I chose to do something and failed' to 'I chose to do something and the game told me I can't and have to do something else'.
Six of one, half dozen of the other.
A.T. wrote: Hit and wound rolls were cumulative odds. Firing one bolter at a grot on an objective could easily go wrong, firing 20 bolters was highly unlikely to.
Target priority was one dice roll upon which your whole action was determined. One bolter or twenty, made no difference.
See above. If players can handle charge rolls as one dice roll upon which your whole action is determined, I think there could be a viable mechanism for similarly handling target priority. Except less punishing, because again, if you failed the test you still got to shoot, whereas currently if you fail a charge you sit there with a thumb up your rear.
The actual, mechanical difference between advance rolls, charge rolls, and target priority is that as it was implemented, only the latter was a binary pass/fail against a fixed value. You still get to move an additional distance no matter what you roll for advance, and you can mitigate the risk in charging by minimizing the distance to the target and/or stacking bonuses and re-rolls. A target priority system where the likelihood of being able to engage a target was variable depending on the circumstances rather than just a straight Ld check would create more dynamic results.
But it's still a clunky mechanic in any case. Most wargames don't do target priority this way anymore; they either set hard limits on what a unit can do or bake penalties into the firing mechanics. If the goal is just to penalize targeting units in the backfield, then screening mechanics accomplish it without adding more rolling. If the goal is to better model troop quality as discussed, tying targeting capabilities either directly to quality or to morale status does the job.
You can even get both at the same time if screening penalties apply to your to-hit chance- the sniper with a 2+ to hit can handle a -2 penalty a lot better than Guardsmen with a 4+ base to hit. But then you're using BS as a proxy for troop quality, which may not always be appropriate.
The main difference, to me, between a target priority test and the various attack resolution rolls is that the attack resolution rolls not going my way tell me that the thing I tried didn't work out whereas a failed target priority roll tells me I'm not allowed to try attacking my preferred target in the first place.
This is, admittedly, a matter of presentation/interpretation. However, presentation/interpretation does matter when it comes to enjoying the mechanics of a game.
Games are often described as being "a series of interesting choices." I accept that having all my attacks be successful 100% of the time would make for a less interesting game, so I'm fine with failing a to-hit roll even though the outcome might not favor me. Failing a target priority test doesn't (seem like it would) make the game more engaging. It randomly removes rather than adds interesting decisions *unless* you happen to be in a scenario where you can negate the targeting roll in some way.
With that said - the argument "it isn't a choice" feels flawed. The player has chosen to shoot unit X instead of unit Y, split fire, or whatever else is forcing you to take a leadership/cool test. The test then decides if they can or they can't.
The thing is, shooting unit X instead of Y isn't a real choice (unless there are additional factors to determining if you can shoot straight that we haven't discussed so far.)
If it's clear that shooting the russ is the smart decision, then the target priority test is just a random chance to be forced to go with the bad decision instead. Voluntarily making the worse play so you don't have to roll to see if you're forced to make said play is just... protecting yourself from disappointment by not trying for the desirable outcome in the first place I guess.
Lascannon fails a target priority test that you could completely avoid taking with good positioning, and merely fires on the closest target of appropriate type: Whoah buddy you can't have that, that's a FEELS BAD moment at the whim of the dice.
Two things here:
A.) *Can* you avoid the test with good positioning though? If my lascannon devastators want to shoot at the russ in your backfield, there's only so much I can do to keep you from "screening" it with your chimera. If the alternative is to suicide rush my devs up the table to make the russ the closest target, I feel like that option is impractical (and unfluffy) enough to be a non-option.
B.) If the intention is to make successfully targeting preferred targets a reward for good positioning (or use of abilities or what have you), then a random Ld test still doesn't support that goal. You'd be better off expanding on solid rules that empower players to meet the conditions needed to target what they want.
So for instance, maybe remaining stationary lets you target whatever unit within range you want. That means I can make the choice to hold my scourges still for a turn rather than flying them onto an objective in order to guarantee they can go after their preferred target. Or maybe I spend a command point to call out a priority target, thus letting every unit in my army target the enemy russ this turn without worrying about screens. In both cases, the result feels like a decision I made rather than the dice randomly forcing my army to behave inefficiently.
catbarf wrote: See above. If players can handle charge rolls as one dice roll upon which your whole action is determined, I think there could be a viable mechanism for similarly handling target priority.
Random charge distances weren't exactly popular either, helping to further 6th editions legacy of adding more dice rolls to everything.
Target priority being like a random charge roll where you always need to roll 6+ on 2d6, regardless of whether your target is 1" away or 12.
Insectum7 wrote: But at the same time, the single Laacannon in a Tac Squad was only one weapon.
You were shooting one lascannon, you were getting one lascannon odds. If it was a four lascannon devastator squad you were getting four lascannon odds.
Think of it like playing poker - one lascannon is placing a bet with one ace, four lascannons is placing a bet with four aces. You can win or lose with either but the odds are not the same.
Target priority was more like having to pull a card out of the deck after betting, but before the hand was played, and if it was a club you just lost.
I understand the distribution of probabilities and the redundancy of 4 Lascannons vs. one, that's part of my point. For target priority tests you gain redundancy by bringing more units, and/or mitigate risk by implementing Ld buffs.
And no you don't "just lose", you don't lose the ability to shoot. You just lose the freedom to shoot beyond the closest (most immediate percieved threat) target.
H.B.M.C. wrote: I like what they did with the Leviathan instruction booklet rules, where the combi-weapons weren't just one amalgamated profile but instead had distinct roles without having different profiles.
They were all the same, but the Combi-Flamer had "Anti-Infantry", the Combi-Melta had "Anti-Vehicle", and the Combi-Plasma had "Anti-Monster".
Gave each type of weapon a preferred target. I do wonder what would have happened if that had carried into the greater game, with Melta weapons getting Anti-Vehicle, and all plasma weapons getting Anti-Monster.
And no, I have no idea what Combi-Grav would have been. Grav has always sat outside the main special weapons because it was shoe-horned into the game as a new hat for Malibu Stacy, and has sat awkwardly in the Marine roster ever since. New Sternguard don't even have Combi-Grav bits in the kit.
The issue I have with the idea of discriminating monsters and vehicles in the first place is that anything that's anti vehicle should be anti monster as well. It's just firepower scaling which to a point is why we have weapon strength in the first place and there was no need to reinvent the wheel. What makes more sense is giving a bonus to hit, or rather a penalty to hit, more nimble infantry which could also do well to alleviate the chronic issue of TEQ fragility in 40k over the ages. Thus weapons like lascannons or meltaguns become less friendly for rudimentary anti heavy infantry roles.
Tyran wrote: Then add a second condition to add further play
E.g. you only need to roll for target priority if your target is more than twice away than the closest enemy unit.
That way you can counterplay by moving away because maths baby.
Yeah. If you were to reintroduce targeting limitations, you'd want to do something in the vein of this. Preferably with a handful of limitations and ways of overcoming those limitations.
So for instance, maybe weapons with sufficiently high strength or the right keyword or whatever can always choose to prioritize vehicles/MCs oversmaller targets. So no worrying about your lascannon devastators being forced to shoot into some hormagaunts. Maybe units that hold still can shoot at whatever they want (because they're taking the time to "aim".) Maybe shooting at whatever they want becomes a common ability for "veteran" units like Chosen to represent them being a cut above their peers. Maybe units stop interfering with target priority once they're down to X or fewer models.
And then by the time you add in all those rules to create counterplay, I feel like the Ld test might do more harm than good. Because you're basically creating a % chance for the targeting limitations to not matter or for the counterplay to not matter.
I like the idea of limiting targeting options. I'm just not sure a Ld test needs to be part of it, and I kind of wonder if some of the people pushing Ld tests might be doing so out of a sense of nostalgia?
If there's this talk of a "target priority system"*, why is it limited to shooting? Some of y'all say "well, mitigate that by repositioning your units" - but why should you be able to have control then too? Surely your units should revert to some kind of "movement priority" or they just move towards the nearest enemy? Who cares if that's not what they'd realistically focus on, 'get good?'
If shooting can't be allowed to be controllable, or at least somewhat less randumb, why shouldn't movement be the same?
*which is already pretty flawed, seeing as a priority target isn't all about what's closer anyways - a single ripper swarm base isn't going to be more threatening to a unit of guardsmen than the throng of hormagants descending on them just behind the rippers - in the same way a grot isn't going to be distracting the Space Marine Devastators, but that battlewagon will - unless you bake into a unit WHAT it going to be causing it to feel threatened, "closest target" isn't enough
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Wyldhunt wrote: So for instance, maybe weapons with sufficiently high strength or the right keyword or whatever can always choose to prioritize vehicles/MCs oversmaller targets. So no worrying about your lascannon devastators being forced to shoot into some hormagaunts. Maybe units that hold still can shoot at whatever they want (because they're taking the time to "aim".) Maybe shooting at whatever they want becomes a common ability for "veteran" units like Chosen to represent them being a cut above their peers. Maybe units stop interfering with target priority once they're down to X or fewer models.
And then by the time you add in all those rules to create counterplay, I feel like the Ld test might do more harm than good. Because you're basically creating a % chance for the targeting limitations to not matter or for the counterplay to not matter.
I like the idea of limiting targeting options. I'm just not sure a Ld test needs to be part of it, and I kind of wonder if some of the people pushing Ld tests might be doing so out of a sense of nostalgia?
Now THESE I like - less randumb, still might not hit what you're intending, but you won't be firing at completely useless targets.
If shooting can't be allowed to be controllable, or at least somewhat less randumb, why shouldn't movement be the same?
Because shoting in w40k has a huge edge over any other phase in the game, especialy after the removal of psychic phase. What 10th proves right now is that A moving without shoting or melee to a lesser degree, gives a weak army, no matter how good the movement is. B in order to melee to be even close to shoting,either the movment of melee units has to be turned in to turn 1, max turn 2 whole army charges, or the army has to be horde enough to be able to cover half+ of the table with models. Controlable shoting, is what gives us 10th eldar or Imperial Knights, end 8th ed Iron Hands, or 9th ed post codex eldar harlequins.
And it only gets worse if the shoting army, also has movment and good melee. The most "fair" shoting army in w40k is IG, and it only stays "fair" as long as it can't move. If IG could move in an aggresive maner and support strong shoting, we get something like Tau, but with ally options and melee units.
Wyldhunt wrote: I'm just not sure a Ld test needs to be part of it, and I kind of wonder if some of the people pushing Ld tests might be doing so out of a sense of nostalgia?
The target priority test conversation usually arises from discussion on how to make elite troops feel different from green ones in a game system where otherwise Guardsmen and Marines act pretty much identically. It's an example of how the Ld stat functioned as a soft factor in earlier editions, giving units and armies with better Ld more tactical flexibility, not just a lesser chance of fleeing off the table.
As I've said before I don't really like the mechanic and think there are better alternatives, but I appreciate what it was trying to do- make screening and relative positioning important, but also make elite armies feel elite in a manner different from just having better guns or armor.
Sgt_Smudge wrote: *which is already pretty flawed, seeing as a priority target isn't all about what's closer anyways - a single ripper swarm base isn't going to be more threatening to a unit of guardsmen than the throng of hormagants descending on them just behind the rippers - in the same way a grot isn't going to be distracting the Space Marine Devastators, but that battlewagon will - unless you bake into a unit WHAT it going to be causing it to feel threatened, "closest target" isn't enough
I find it very funny how every discussion of the old target priority system will inevitably descend into someone complaining about a flaw that didn't actually exist. Devastators (or anyone else) could, in fact, ignore grots and fire on a battlewagon without needing to test; being able to prioritize vehicles/monsters over infantry was part of the rule.
Tyran wrote: Then add a second condition to add further play
E.g. you only need to roll for target priority if your target is more than twice away than the closest enemy unit.
That way you can counterplay by moving away because maths baby.
Yeah. If you were to reintroduce targeting limitations, you'd want to do something in the vein of this. Preferably with a handful of limitations and ways of overcoming those limitations.
So for instance, maybe weapons with sufficiently high strength or the right keyword or whatever can always choose to prioritize vehicles/MCs oversmaller targets. So no worrying about your lascannon devastators being forced to shoot into some hormagaunts. Maybe units that hold still can shoot at whatever they want (because they're taking the time to "aim".) Maybe shooting at whatever they want becomes a common ability for "veteran" units like Chosen to represent them being a cut above their peers. Maybe units stop interfering with target priority once they're down to X or fewer models.
And then by the time you add in all those rules to create counterplay, I feel like the Ld test might do more harm than good. Because you're basically creating a % chance for the targeting limitations to not matter or for the counterplay to not matter.
I like the idea of limiting targeting options. I'm just not sure a Ld test needs to be part of it, and I kind of wonder if some of the people pushing Ld tests might be doing so out of a sense of nostalgia?
Oh I think some amount of wiggle-room is necessary, for sure. I don't think anyone wants to force a Lascannon to fire at Hormagaunts, and the older systems likewise had mechanics to help that. I also agree about "closest" potentially needing some wiggle room so that the Land Speeder 1/4 of an inch closer than the Land Raider isn't always prioritized. So you'd want conditions involved in the process, but for ease-of-use sake not overly complicated ones.
As for "nostalgia" for using Ld? I mean what else is Ld supposed to represent other than clear-minded initiative under duress? It seems pretty straight forward.
My ideal would also involve suppression and morale mechanics acting as modifiers. The squad that's broken and actively under heavy fire would have a harder time maximizing target priority decisions.
Oh I think some amount of wiggle-room is necessary, for sure. I don't think anyone wants to force a Lascannon to fire at Hormagaunts, and the older systems likewise had mechanics to help that. I also agree about "closest" potentially needing some wiggle room so that the Land Speeder 1/4 of an inch closer than the Land Raider isn't always prioritized. So you'd want conditions involved in the process, but for ease-of-use sake not overly complicated ones.
Fair. Seems like we're on the same page in regards to that then.
As for "nostalgia" for using Ld? I mean what else is Ld supposed to represent other than clear-minded initiative under duress? It seems pretty straight forward.
I know that that's what Ld is *supposed* to represent, but just because the stat exists doesn't mean a random die roll is necessarily the best mechanic for determining what you're allowed to shoot at. Initiative used to exist, but I wouldn't have enjoyed needing to pass an init test to see if I'm allowed to advance or charge every turn.
Having to weigh the value of jumping through a few hoops in order to shoot at an optimal target seems like it could add interesting decisions to the game. Randomly being able to ignore those trade-offs seems like it would reduce the value of those interesting decisions. You'd go from having some interesting tactical choices to make to making those same chocies but having an X% chance of said choices not mattering.
My ideal would also involve suppression and morale mechanics acting as modifiers. The squad that's broken and actively under heavy fire would have a harder time maximizing target priority decisions.
I like the idea of suppression/morale factoring in in some way. Still, I don't think making them modifiers to a random roll is the way to go. If you go to the trouble of suppressing your opponent and positioning your forces such that they only have a 10% chance of being allowed to shoot at your leman russ... Then it's going to be that much more frustrating when they roll hot and get to ignore your hard work and the suppression weapons/tactics you invested in to just shoot the russ anyway.
Like, at that point you've put in the work to suppress me, and I've failed my suppression check or whatever. I should probably just not be allowed to shoot your russ at that point unless I've similarly invested in suppression-prevention wargear and spent a CP to snipe out your russ, or whatever.
Why not just implement some form of what the Flash Gitz have for everything in the game? If you are unaware, Flash Gitz get an extra shot if they are shooting at the closest target.
I think this would add more positioning tactical gameplay, help reduce lethality, without adding yet another layer dice rolling to the game.
It doesn't even need to be exclusive to number of shots, could have increased chance to hit, or increased damage or AP, depending on the weapon type.
Also, obviously if a system like this was implemented into every ranged weapon in the game, then you would have to rebalance the existing profile.
Here are a couple examples to illustrate the point:
Heavy Bolter: Damage 1, but damage 2 when shooting closest target.
Intercessors: BS4, but BS3 when shooting closest target.
Also, Having played more Warmaching Mk 4 recently... I think that all flamethrower or spray type weapons should copy their system as opposed to the d6 shots that auto-hit (which I haven't liked since the introduction in 8th). Warmachines spray attacks (flamers etc) are draw a line equal to the range of the weapon, and each model the line passes gets hit.
Oh I think some amount of wiggle-room is necessary, for sure. I don't think anyone wants to force a Lascannon to fire at Hormagaunts, and the older systems likewise had mechanics to help that. I also agree about "closest" potentially needing some wiggle room so that the Land Speeder 1/4 of an inch closer than the Land Raider isn't always prioritized. So you'd want conditions involved in the process, but for ease-of-use sake not overly complicated ones.
Fair. Seems like we're on the same page in regards to that then.
👍🍻🌈
Spoiler:
As for "nostalgia" for using Ld? I mean what else is Ld supposed to represent other than clear-minded initiative under duress? It seems pretty straight forward.
I know that that's what Ld is *supposed* to represent, but just because the stat exists doesn't mean a random die roll is necessarily the best mechanic for determining what you're allowed to shoot at. Initiative used to exist, but I wouldn't have enjoyed needing to pass an init test to see if I'm allowed to advance or charge every turn.
Having to weigh the value of jumping through a few hoops in order to shoot at an optimal target seems like it could add interesting decisions to the game. Randomly being able to ignore those trade-offs seems like it would reduce the value of those interesting decisions. You'd go from having some interesting tactical choices to make to making those same chocies but having an X% chance of said choices not mattering.
My ideal would also involve suppression and morale mechanics acting as modifiers. The squad that's broken and actively under heavy fire would have a harder time maximizing target priority decisions.
I like the idea of suppression/morale factoring in in some way. Still, I don't think making them modifiers to a random roll is the way to go. If you go to the trouble of suppressing your opponent and positioning your forces such that they only have a 10% chance of being allowed to shoot at your leman russ... Then it's going to be that much more frustrating when they roll hot and get to ignore your hard work and the suppression weapons/tactics you invested in to just shoot the russ anyway.
Like, at that point you've put in the work to suppress me, and I've failed my suppression check or whatever. I should probably just not be allowed to shoot your russ at that point unless I've similarly invested in suppression-prevention wargear and spent a CP to snipe out your russ, or whatever.
I have to admit I don't see the distinction between what you're describing and a situation where you put your tank in a hull-down position in LOS of only one unit to mitigate counter-fire from the remainder of the enemy, and then having that one unit roll boxcars or whatever and blow up the tank despite your actions/choices.
As I see it, much of the game is about taking actions to mitigate risk, but still involving a dice roll to represent the fact that you don't have total control, and the stats to create meaningful differences between units.
Sgt_Smudge wrote: If there's this talk of a "target priority system"*, why is it limited to shooting? Some of y'all say "well, mitigate that by repositioning your units" - but why should you be able to have control then too? Surely your units should revert to some kind of "movement priority" or they just move towards the nearest enemy? Who cares if that's not what they'd realistically focus on, 'get good?'
If shooting can't be allowed to be controllable, or at least somewhat less randumb, why shouldn't movement be the same?
*which is already pretty flawed, seeing as a priority target isn't all about what's closer anyways - a single ripper swarm base isn't going to be more threatening to a unit of guardsmen than the throng of hormagants descending on them just behind the rippers - in the same way a grot isn't going to be distracting the Space Marine Devastators, but that battlewagon will - unless you bake into a unit WHAT it going to be causing it to feel threatened, "closest target" isn't enough
.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Wyldhunt wrote: So for instance, maybe weapons with sufficiently high strength or the right keyword or whatever can always choose to prioritize vehicles/MCs oversmaller targets. So no worrying about your lascannon devastators being forced to shoot into some hormagaunts. Maybe units that hold still can shoot at whatever they want (because they're taking the time to "aim".) Maybe shooting at whatever they want becomes a common ability for "veteran" units like Chosen to represent them being a cut above their peers. Maybe units stop interfering with target priority once they're down to X or fewer models.
And then by the time you add in all those rules to create counterplay, I feel like the Ld test might do more harm than good. Because you're basically creating a % chance for the targeting limitations to not matter or for the counterplay to not matter.
I like the idea of limiting targeting options. I'm just not sure a Ld test needs to be part of it, and I kind of wonder if some of the people pushing Ld tests might be doing so out of a sense of nostalgia?
Now THESE I like - less randumb, still might not hit what you're intending, but you won't be firing at completely useless targets.
Charging is already a random, not-guaranteed affair. It's not that out-there of a suggestion.
I find it kind of funny that people in the Old World rumour thread made a big deal about Orcs and Goblins needing Animosity, a rule that prevented them from activating, as incredibly fun and fluffy but suggesting something similar for 40k to tone down the lethality of shooting is sacrilege
FlubDugger wrote: I find it kind of funny that people in the Old World rumour thread made a big deal about Orcs and Goblins needing Animosity, a rule that prevented them from activating, as incredibly fun and fluffy but suggesting something similar for 40k to tone down the lethality of shooting is sacrilege
Unless it's the same people arguing for Animosity in TOW and against Target Priority here, I see nothing contradictory about that.
Different people have different opinions. Dakka's not a monolith.
Tittliewinks22 wrote:
...Why not just implement some form of what the Flash Gitz have for everything in the game? If you are unaware, Flash Gitz get an extra shot if they are shooting at the closest target.
I think this would add more positioning tactical gameplay, help reduce lethality, without adding yet another layer dice rolling to the game.
It doesn't even need to be exclusive to number of shots, could have increased chance to hit, or increased damage or AP, depending on the weapon type...
Well, you could do something like that, but you'd be looking at a lot of work to basically just debuff each stat of every gun by 1 pip. And I suspect you'd then run into issues where giving every weapon a bonus when shooting at the nearest enemy favors certain armies (such as those that have the defense or numbers to throw themselves into point-blank range with the enemy.) You'd probably want to make exceptions for at least some heavy weapons too; it seems weird to reward sniper rifles and plasma cannons for firing at point-blank range instead of shooting downfield.
It's an interesting idea, but I think you probably create more problems than you solve going that route.
Also, Having played more Warmaching Mk 4 recently... I think that all flamethrower or spray type weapons should copy their system as opposed to the d6 shots that auto-hit (which I haven't liked since the introduction in 8th). Warmachines spray attacks (flamers etc) are draw a line equal to the range of the weapon, and each model the line passes gets hit.
Has the same downside the old templates did in that you're punished for not wasting everyone's time while you painstakingly make sure your models are all exactly 2" apart to mitigate the impact of enemy weapons. At the risk of turning this into another flamer thread, I feel like the role of flamers should either be to let them bypass cover or to let them excel against hordes. The drawing a line thing doesn't particularly play into either of those.
Insectum7 wrote:
As I see it, much of the game is about taking actions to mitigate risk, but still involving a dice roll to represent the fact that you don't have total control, and the stats to create meaningful differences between units.
It's probably mostly just personal preference. If I had to identify a difference, I guess it would be that damaging a unit (rolling boxcars) is already accepted to be a core part of the game, plus unkillable enemies aren't much fun to face. So in your example, you've taken steps to protect yourself, but it's better for the game if there always remains at least a slim chance of me damaging your vehicle. In the case of target priority, being able to choose an optimal target is a slightly less core part of the game, plus I'm picturing there already having been at least one failure point previously. To become pinned, for instance, I presumably had to fail a Ld check already and/or had to fail enough saves to be forced to roll morale or something. So having to roll yet again to see if I can pick out a target of my choice feels redundant. And also, if we're already introducing a handful of new rules to support making units targetable/untargetable, then adding yet another mechanic on top of that (the target priority test) just for the sake of adding randomness feels unnecessary. And worse than unnecessary, it potentially renders any other decisions you made regarding target priority (ex: opting to hold still with a lascannon unit) pointless.
Choosing to hold still or issue an order to target a key enemy feel like rewarding trade-offs. Knowing that there's an X% chance you didn't have to hold still or didn't have to spend the command point. sours that a little. But reasonable people might disagree.
FlubDugger wrote:
I find it kind of funny that people in the Old World rumour thread made a big deal about Orcs and Goblins needing Animosity, a rule that prevented them from activating, as incredibly fun and fluffy but suggesting something similar for 40k to tone down the lethality of shooting is sacrilege
There are interesting, fluffy ways to tone down shooting. I just don't think randomly failing a Ld test is one of them. Back in the day, eldar wraith units had a 1 in 6 chance of freezing up for the turn if you didn't have a psyker near them. This was purely a disadvantage, but it was a fluffy one (their souls have trouble focusing without the guidance of a psyker), and it changed up how you built your army in an interesting way. It almost felt like your eldar had their own take on tyranid synapse when you were doing a wraith-heavy army. Fluffy. Leaves you with a lot of control over whether or not your wraiths find themselves isolated enough to have to worry about wraithsight. Not a terrible rule.
The way necron units currently handle things with their only detachment is interesting too. They basically nerfed most of the army's BS/WS, but you can get it back to its former glory by simply attaching a character ot that unit. Fluffy (the crons with free will are basically micro-managing their warriors). Gives you a fair bit of control over which units will actually feel the nerf.
Now compare those to your expensive, likely squishy, anti-tank unit suddenly deciding to shoot at an irrelevant chimera instead of taking out the russ or dorn that's winning the game for your opponent.
I guess I just don't really see the difference between a Wraith unit freezing up because a Psyker's not around vs a guard unit freezing and panic-shooting at the wrong giant tank that can paste them regardless.
Probably a good lesson to not put all your eggs in one very squishy anti-tank unit
As someone who's against this, but for animosity, I feel the issue is that animosity has been a key feature of Orcs and Goblins for decades. Clearly some people pick the army because they like the models etc - but others will know what they are getting into.
I feel there's a difference from deliberately picking an army of goblins with low leadership, animosity, fanatics, squig hoppers, warmachines and wizards that are all likely to "go wrong" (and over an ever expanding number of games, certainly will) - and playing regular 40k as you have for years, but now being told "no, that unit can't do this unless you pass a leadership test, and sometimes you will fail".
It would be like saying "shouldn't every army in WHFB/TOW get animosity". Well.. no?
In practice, this rule would inevitably be ignored for an ever increasing number of units and factions. As has been the story of 40k for 10 editions. Getting to the point where it just makes Ork Shooting even more of a casino than it already is, doesn't obviously make the game more interesting or fun.
The obvious comparison was the same thread showing how no one much liked the High Elves random general rule. Because it just amounted to "roll a dice, some of the time your army is worse, the end". Its not fun - you can't obviously embrace it.
FlubDugger wrote: I guess I just don't really see the difference between a Wraith unit freezing up because a Psyker's not around vs a guard unit freezing and panic-shooting at the wrong giant tank that can paste them regardless.
To me, the key difference here is that (at the time) you could generally keep your wraiths near a seer pretty easily. So if you ended up out of range of a psyker and actually failed wraithsight, it usually meant that you had opted into that gamble by not taking more psykers or moving them closer to your wraiths. Or it meant your opponent had put in a respectable amount of work to somehow kill off all your psykers. There's a sense that you have control over whether or not the wraiths will freeze up.
In comparison, those guardsmen shooting the wrong thing would (presumably) be the result of them just taking a few casualties and flubbing a leadership check. You can't really do much to ensure that guardsmen avoid taking casualties in 40k, so there isn't that sense of "opting into" the loss of unit control. Instead, it just comes across as, as Tyel put it, "roll a dice, some of the time your army is worse, the end".
Probably a good lesson to not put all your eggs in one very squishy anti-tank unit
Let's not confuse the discussion by pretending anyone is proposing an unreasonable build or something. So far, we've been talking about things like taking a humble devastator squad with lascannons or scourges with dark lances. I'm pretty sure you don't actually want to make the case that taking such units should be seen as some sort of misstep
It is one of those issues of if 40k is supposed to be a game or war game.
Because this kind of loss of control is expected in actual warfare. War is chaos, information is unreliable, communication is unreliable and thus even veteran troops tend to make mistakes, attack the wrong target or outright get lost.
But on the other hand, a game will more often than not try to give the player an absurd amount of control because control while unrealistic is fun.
Tyran wrote: It is one of those issues of if 40k is supposed to be a game or war game.
Because this kind of loss of control is expected in actual warfare. War is chaos, information is unreliable, communication is unreliable and thus even veteran troops tend to make mistakes, attack the wrong target or outright get lost.
But on the other hand, a game will more often than not try to give the player an absurd amount of control because control while unrealistic is fun.
Personally, I like my 40k to have more of a small-scale feeling. Neither a 2k army nor the board it's played on is really big enough for me to feel like communication should be breaking down or what have you. I know that scale gets wonky on the tabletop, but more often than not it seems like my units are within shouting distance of each other. Coms breaking down and units getting lost would feel more at home in a more "zoomed out" game.
Scourges shooting at the wrong target feels less like a breakdown in communication more like someone messing up their execution of a football play.
"No, Lethriel. We told you. Shoot at the big tank first, then the little tank."
"This elaborate plan is far too confusing!"
Wyldhunt wrote: Neither a 2k army nor the board it's played on is really big enough for me to feel like communication should be breaking down or what have you. I know that scale gets wonky on the tabletop, but more often than not it seems like my units are within shouting distance of each other.
Not at all true. Communication breaks down fast on a battlefield as soon as you are out of direct line of sight. As for shouting? War is really, really loud when the shooting starts.
For an example of this, look at the attack on Foye by Easy company in WW2. Their CO froze and then split his forces, sending half of them on a flanking assault around the town, which resulted in them getting pinned down and the attack completely stalling. This hesitation resulted in communication and co-ordination between E and I company breaking down, which risked the assault failing completely if I company pulled back. This co-ordination was restored by a new CO taking command, relinking the two halves Easy into a frontal attack, as planned, then running through the enemy forces in the town to get to I company and then running back, again through the enemy forces, to E.
That is a complete breakdown in command and communication between 2 companies of men attacking a small town which was only salvaged by what should have been a suicide run. That is well within the scope of a 40K force nowadays.
Tyran wrote: It is one of those issues of if 40k is supposed to be a game or war game.
Because this kind of loss of control is expected in actual warfare. War is chaos, information is unreliable, communication is unreliable and thus even veteran troops tend to make mistakes, attack the wrong target or outright get lost.
But on the other hand, a game will more often than not try to give the player an absurd amount of control because control while unrealistic is fun.
Personally, I like my 40k to have more of a small-scale feeling. Neither a 2k army nor the board it's played on is really big enough for me to feel like communication should be breaking down or what have you. I know that scale gets wonky on the tabletop, but more often than not it seems like my units are within shouting distance of each other. Coms breaking down and units getting lost would feel more at home in a more "zoomed out" game.
Scourges shooting at the wrong target feels less like a breakdown in communication more like someone messing up their execution of a football play.
"No, Lethriel. We told you. Shoot at the big tank first, then the little tank."
"This elaborate plan is far too confusing!"
I picture an entirely different scenario. One where the closer Chimera is charging towards the scourges, multilaser and heavy bolter firing away, the scourges taking casualties and pinned in cover. But somehow the scourges manage to ignore that immediate threat and shoot instead at the distant Leman Russ that's not even paying attention to them.
That should at least take a Leadership test or something similar.
VladimirHerzog wrote: Just give units a "Height" stat and make units block any other unit thats behind them with an equal or smaller height.
And create a "Suppressive" USR which forces a battleshock test, and then make being battleshocked actually relevant for things other than scoring
"Height stat" is more of an LOS thing rather than target priority.
Agree with "battleshocked" not being relevant enough, but really I lean towards a more comprehensive overhaul.
Yeah, i started mixing up stuff, but at least with height, there is no random targetting i guess, its all up to the players to position properly
Well, maybe entertainingly the only edition that used Ld checks to determine whether or not a unit could engage the closest target of <class> also happened to be the only edition that used height categories for LOS.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Tyel wrote: As someone who's against this, but for animosity, I feel the issue is that animosity has been a key feature of Orcs and Goblins for decades. Clearly some people pick the army because they like the models etc - but others will know what they are getting into.
I feel there's a difference from deliberately picking an army of goblins with low leadership, animosity, fanatics, squig hoppers, warmachines and wizards that are all likely to "go wrong" (and over an ever expanding number of games, certainly will) - and playing regular 40k as you have for years, but now being told "no, that unit can't do this unless you pass a leadership test, and sometimes you will fail".
It would be like saying "shouldn't every army in WHFB/TOW get animosity". Well.. no?
In practice, this rule would inevitably be ignored for an ever increasing number of units and factions. As has been the story of 40k for 10 editions. Getting to the point where it just makes Ork Shooting even more of a casino than it already is, doesn't obviously make the game more interesting or fun.
The obvious comparison was the same thread showing how no one much liked the High Elves random general rule. Because it just amounted to "roll a dice, some of the time your army is worse, the end". Its not fun - you can't obviously embrace it.
My counter would be that it would open up playstyle options for players, particularly when I think in the context of Guardsmen and their great 3.5 Doctrines codex.
You could play with standard, cheaper Guardsmen and YOLO it by spamming them. You could invest in more leaders and/or Vox casters so that you had a more reliable C&C network to keep your troops more disciplined. OR you could even give them all Chem Inhalers as a Doctrine, pay some extra points, but have your Guardsmen be immune to certain Morale effects. Different players could choose the style of force they wanted to play, finding their own way of dealing with the fact that their troops weren't inherently 100% reliable.
FlubDugger wrote: I guess I just don't really see the difference between a Wraith unit freezing up because a Psyker's not around vs a guard unit freezing and panic-shooting at the wrong giant tank that can paste them regardless.
To me, the key difference here is that (at the time) you could generally keep your wraiths near a seer pretty easily. So if you ended up out of range of a psyker and actually failed wraithsight, it usually meant that you had opted into that gamble by not taking more psykers or moving them closer to your wraiths. Or it meant your opponent had put in a respectable amount of work to somehow kill off all your psykers. There's a sense that you have control over whether or not the wraiths will freeze up.
In comparison, those guardsmen shooting the wrong thing would (presumably) be the result of them just taking a few casualties and flubbing a leadership check. You can't really do much to ensure that guardsmen avoid taking casualties in 40k, so there isn't that sense of "opting into" the loss of unit control. Instead, it just comes across as, as Tyel put it, "roll a dice, some of the time your army is worse, the end".
Do you think it would be reasonable for nearby HQs to negate the need for units to make the Ld check?
This would give HQs something to do beyond very gimmicky buffs.
Insectum7 wrote:
I picture an entirely different scenario. One where the closer Chimera is charging towards the scourges, multilaser and heavy bolter firing away, the scourges taking casualties and pinned in cover. But somehow the scourges manage to ignore that immediate threat and shoot instead at the distant Leman Russ that's not even paying attention to them.
That should at least take a Leadership test or something similar.
I see your point, but the key thing in that situation is that the scourges are actively being shot at by the chimera. And to take that a step further, I think the major distraction there is that the scourges are being shot at at all; not that they're being shot at by an alternative tank target to the russ specifically. If they're getting peppered by lasgun shots from an infantry squad, I'd think their instinct would be to do something about said infantry squad; not to shoot the chimera ignoring them on the left flank.
Definitely open to pitches for how to model that in-game, although I worry we're rapidly approaching, 'big guns never fire at optimal targets because small enemies are distracting them" territory.
Do you think it would be reasonable for nearby HQs to negate the need for units to make the Ld check?
This would give HQs something to do beyond very gimmicky buffs.
The Warlord definitely. But I'm unsure about other HQs as they aren't fully in charge, but would at least provide their Ld.
A page or so ago, I tossed out the idea that this would be a good niche for cheap HQs, yeah. I wouldn't make it be the warlord specifically. Rather, I would make this an incentive for taking more of your cheap lieutenant/warlock/platoon commander types. Or providing mechanics for letting a smaller number of characters count as standing near distant allies through mechanics like synapse or 'crons doing robot stuff. Heck, you could even argue for getting rid of some of the offensive buffs more mundane characters provide in favor of letting them hand out the ability to shoot straight to multiple or distant units. Thinking of autarchs or captains here. Let the commanders' roles on the battlefield actually be commanding rather than requiring them to be beatsticks or magically making their friends guns shoot harder.
And then that in turn incentivizes you to field snipers and assassin types so you can shut down the enemy's ability to go after your screened units. Honestly, I'm really like the thought of this.
Definitely open to pitches for how to model that in-game, although I worry we're rapidly approaching, 'big guns never fire at optimal targets because small enemies are distracting them" territory.
Units can be suppressed by a number of successful Hits (or Wounds) scored against them (even if successfully saved) equal to their LD stat in a single shooting phase (counting all of the hits/wounds scored, across all firing enemy units).
Suppressed units must take a LD check to fire at anything that isn't the closest unit that shot at them, and add a further -1 to the check if they try to shoot at a unit that didn't even participate in suppressing them
Insectum7 wrote:
I picture an entirely different scenario. One where the closer Chimera is charging towards the scourges, multilaser and heavy bolter firing away, the scourges taking casualties and pinned in cover. But somehow the scourges manage to ignore that immediate threat and shoot instead at the distant Leman Russ that's not even paying attention to them.
That should at least take a Leadership test or something similar.
I see your point, but the key thing in that situation is that the scourges are actively being shot at by the chimera. And to take that a step further, I think the major distraction there is that the scourges are being shot at at all; not that they're being shot at by an alternative tank target to the russ specifically. If they're getting peppered by lasgun shots from an infantry squad, I'd think their instinct would be to do something about said infantry squad; not to shoot the chimera ignoring them on the left flank.
Definitely open to pitches for how to model that in-game, although I worry we're rapidly approaching, 'big guns never fire at optimal targets because small enemies are distracting them" territory.
Aww yeah. Now we're getting somewhere Yeah I agree, there ought to be conditions regarding engagement, proximity, and the like. Swinging too far in the other direction is of course not ideal either.
I would however make the case for a basic "If unit is nearby (12-18") and within LOS assume some level of engagement." I think it's safe to assume some amount of fire exchange can be going on even if it's not directly rolled for.
And yeah, class of weapon should be taken into account in some way or another. I think that ought to be taken as a given.
Definitely open to pitches for how to model that in-game, although I worry we're rapidly approaching, 'big guns never fire at optimal targets because small enemies are distracting them" territory.
Units can be suppressed by a number of successful Hits (or Wounds) scored against them (even if successfully saved) equal to their LD stat in a single shooting phase (counting all of the hits/wounds scored, across all firing enemy units).
Suppressed units must take a LD check to fire at anything that isn't the closest unit that shot at them, and add a further -1 to the check if they try to shoot at a unit that didn't even participate in suppressing them
Wyldhunt wrote: Definitely open to pitches for how to model that in-game, although I worry we're rapidly approaching, 'big guns never fire at optimal targets because small enemies are distracting them" territory.
Part of the problem with target priority tests is that they were put in to replace the old intervening model LoS rules... but didn't just apply to intervening models. It led to weirdness (and with no pre-measuring anyone with a poor eye for distance had quite a disadvantage).
In terms of adding a suppression mechanic it would probably have been easiest to just tie it into the existing leadership test taken for suffering casualties and add a little nuance like eliminating broken/pinned/solo units and immobile vehicles from consideration.
----
The thing is that you really didn't fail target priority tests all that often in practice in 4th edition but you would make a lot of 'weird' moves trying to game it, like a defender running a damage/inconsequential vehicle into the no-mans land to serve as an effective 5++ save for anything shooting your big guns, or an attacker throwing heavy fire down on a couple of random grunts to clear them from the target priority of other units, or vehicles playing tetris trying to wall off the line of sight of their own teams guns.
Mostly for tests you would have passed anyway but then every so often you'd take a shot for the game or have some kind of sure thing set up to swing things in your favour and the priority test would bite you in the ass and remind you of why you were jumping through all of these odd hoops in the first place.
It's also quite a different rule in the context of a 4th edition game where you got 3 total heavy support slots and usually sparse long ranged heavy weapons outside of them, and pretty sparse long ranged guns in general - target priority with small arms in 4th was usually stuff like being forced to fire on the two gaunts standing marginally closer than the charging pack of genestealers or warriors, where you would be scouring your list for some rhino half a board away to try and stormbolter the little guys out of the way first.
Another option would be to make it the core rule that you can only target the closest visible legal target, with units being one of a few types - generalist, anti infantry, or anti tank determining what their legal closest counts as.
And offer a basic strategem that allows command to force units to attack strategic rather than tactical targets.
Try playing a game where you feint with units forward to draw compulsory fire, while manouevring your other units around the flanks.
The game becomes more challenging and you lose the "feels bad" notion of testing, replacing with a certainty strategem cost.
Hellebore wrote: Another option would be to make it the core rule that you can only target the closest visible legal target
Both 2nd ed and 3rd ed had variants on this.
3rd ed the closer models would block LoS, but with limitations - gaunts weren't tall enough to screen warriors, a pair of grots weren't wide enough to screen an orc horde (later returning as cover saves in 5th onwards)
2nd ed you had to shoot the closest valid target but 'valid target' was defined as within the 90 degree fire arc you picked and included a set of exceptions (small/man-sized/vehicle/monster, broken or not, in cover or in the open).
4th was unique in the direction of fire not being a factor outside of vehicle fire arcs.
Hellebore wrote: Another option would be to make it the core rule that you can only target the closest visible legal target, with units being one of a few types - generalist, anti infantry, or anti tank determining what their legal closest counts as.
And offer a basic strategem that allows command to force units to attack strategic rather than tactical targets.
Try playing a game where you feint with units forward to draw compulsory fire, while manouevring your other units around the flanks.
The game becomes more challenging and you lose the "feels bad" notion of testing, replacing with a certainty strategem cost.
I'm not sure tying that to units is the best idea - that just seems tailor-made to feth over anything with a mixed loadout/profile (eg Infantry Squad with attached Lascannon, anything with a Missile Launcher, a Predator with Twin Lascannon/2x Heavy Bolter, etc.). It might be better to break down targetting by equipped weapon (eg. a Tac Squad with a Flamer and Grav-Cannon would be broken down into a group of 6 or 7 Boltguns, 1 Flamer, 1 Grav-Cannon, and maybe 1 Whatever The Sergeant Has If They Have Anything Special, each of which picks targets separately). It'd be more work, but IMO it'd be preferable to the old "no, your lasguns can't target the grots 6" away because your lascannon is shooting a Battlewagon on the side of the board" bullgak.
Unit1126PLL wrote:
I would however make the case for a basic "If unit is nearby (12-18") and within LOS assume some level of engagement." I think it's safe to assume some amount of fire exchange can be going on even if it's not directly rolled for.
And yeah, class of weapon should be taken into account in some way or another. I think that ought to be taken as a given.
I could see that working. Each unit within x" counts towards the total "pressure" being put on an enemy unit. And then you would tie that into whatever targeting mechanics you end up going with. Ex:
A.) Bring back Cool. Cool is basically the threshold for how much pressure you can be under before your targeting options are limited. Ex: Cool 3 can be under pressure from 3 sources and act normally. At pressure 4, the unit can only target the nearest enemy unless he has a character/strat/etc. letting him shoot normally.
B.) Do a target priority check with pressure serving as a negative modifier (and nearby characters or the use of a universal targeting strat serving as positive modifiers.)
C.) A binary, "Units under at least X pressure may only target the closest enemy unit or the closest enemy unit of their preferred target types." Target types presumably being keyword-based.
I guess you could give each unit a "pressure" stat to reflect how threatening their proximity. And/or have larger squads exert more pressure to avoid favoring MSU too much. The main downside is that it might force you to pause and check pressure distances in a few places during your shooting phase so you can figure out your preferred firing solution.
Vibe check: do we think this is getting too complicated to be practical?
Definitely open to pitches for how to model that in-game, although I worry we're rapidly approaching, 'big guns never fire at optimal targets because small enemies are distracting them" territory.
Units can be suppressed by a number of successful Hits (or Wounds) scored against them (even if successfully saved) equal to their LD stat in a single shooting phase (counting all of the hits/wounds scored, across all firing enemy units).
Suppressed units must take a LD check to fire at anything that isn't the closest unit that shot at them, and add a further -1 to the check if they try to shoot at a unit that didn't even participate in suppressing them
Hmm. I don't know. Assuming we converted Ld back to a flat number instead of an X+, something like my dark eldar would be looking at Ld8 on most units. Landing 8 hits is pretty easy, and 8 wounds isn't that much harder. So I feel like you'd end up with a bunch of suppression checks every turn. So I'd worry that alpha striking might become a bigger problem. Spend turn one peppering a big chunk of your opponent's army with shots, force a bunch of Ld tests, now a sizeable percentage of their army can only shoot at your disposable front-line chaff meaning they're less likely to cause significant suppression to you in return. Then you just keep doing that all game, with it getting easier and easier every turn due to the advantage you secured at the top of turn 1. Granted, this is less of concern if having the right character around or using the right stratagem lets you bypass the target priority test.
The bookkeeping also seems like an issue. You're talking about tracking the number of hits or wounds a unit received plus which units those attacks came from in a game with lots of long-ranged units capable of splitting fire.
Maybe this is a bad idea, but what if we did something like:
* Some weapons have the suppression rule. When your unit is hit by a suppression weapon, put a token next to it.
* When an enemy unit shoots at you, for every X attacks being made, add a suppression token to your unit.
* During your Command phase, roll a Leadership test for any friendly units with one or more suppression tokens. Subtract 1 from the result for each token after the first. Units that fail the test are suppressed until the start of their next Command phase.
* Suppressed units can only fire at the nearest enemy unit unless some other rule says otherwise. And such rules would commonly take the form of certain characters being nearby, specialized units being allowed to target the nearest tank/monster instead of the nearest non-tank/non-monster, a universal strat that lets any suppressed units target a single enemy unit of your choice, etc.
Idk. It feels like this is getting kind of complicated fast. A simpler version might be to simply say:
* Vehicles can screen for nearby vehicles. I.e. you can't shoot Tank A if Tank B is within X inches of Tank A unless Tank B is closer. 8th/9th edition character rules, more or less, but you're screened by units of a similar unit type/weight class. So monsters and vehicles can probably screen for each other. Bikes, and cavalry probably screen for each other. Infantry and beasts. And then maybe swarms get to be special and are screened by everybody.
* You can ignore the bullet point above if you have a special rule. Such as from a nearby character, a strat, a preferred target special rule, a "hold still and aim at your target of choice" rule, etc.
I feel like that's less complicated and still adds a lot to the game. Cheaper vehicles or infantry squads become extra useful by making your expensive vehicles/infantry squads harder to target. Holding still, including cheap characters, and opting whether or not to pop the new "shoot at this unit even if you normally couldn't" strat all create interesting choices that let you bypass this screening at a cost.
Wyldhunt wrote: Neither a 2k army nor the board it's played on is really big enough for me to feel like communication should be breaking down or what have you. I know that scale gets wonky on the tabletop, but more often than not it seems like my units are within shouting distance of each other.
Not at all true. Communication breaks down fast on a battlefield as soon as you are out of direct line of sight. As for shouting? War is really, really loud when the shooting starts.
For an example of this, look at the attack on Foye by Easy company in WW2. Their CO froze and then split his forces, sending half of them on a flanking assault around the town, which resulted in them getting pinned down and the attack completely stalling. This hesitation resulted in communication and co-ordination between E and I company breaking down, which risked the assault failing completely if I company pulled back. This co-ordination was restored by a new CO taking command, relinking the two halves Easy into a frontal attack, as planned, then running through the enemy forces in the town to get to I company and then running back, again through the enemy forces, to E.
That is a complete breakdown in command and communication between 2 companies of men attacking a small town which was only salvaged by what should have been a suicide run. That is well within the scope of a 40K force nowadays.
The other thing you're missing is scale. Nothing says the 2 inch tall miniature means 2 inches of lateral distance is 6 feet - that would make 24 inch range bolters good to 72 feet.
The other thing you're missing is scale. Nothing says the 2 inch tall miniature means 2 inches of lateral distance is 6 feet - that would make 24 inch range bolters good to 72 feet.
Nitpick but 2 inches would scale to around 10-12 feet. IIRC Primaris Marines are 1.6 inches tall and they are supposed to be 8-9 feet in "real scale".
The other thing you're missing is scale. Nothing says the 2 inch tall miniature means 2 inches of lateral distance is 6 feet - that would make 24 inch range bolters good to 72 feet.
Nitpick but 2 inches would scale to around 10-12 feet. IIRC Primaris Marines are 1.6 inches tall and they are supposed to be 8-9 feet in "real scale".
I was guesstimating/rounding - plus not really picking a single mini - and didn't really pull out a mini and measure it, but OK. Now apply that scale to a bolter range, does it make a significant difference in a combat rifle that likely measures in yards not feet?
Vibe check: do we think this is getting too complicated to be practical?
For me, yes. Any rule that needs a lot of exceptions is a bad rule. That's the guideline I'd point you to.
The whole closest target thing falls foul of the above very easily, because it quickly devolves into:
You may only select the closest target except if:
* It's a not a vehicle and there's a vehicle available
* It's not a monster and there's a monster available
* It's in cover and a more distant target is not
* It's under half strength and a more distant target is not
* Your unit is a HQ * Your unit is attached to a HQ * You spent CP on a stratagem
* You rolled well on your leadership test
* You maneuvered your unit into a position where it can't see the closest target that you want to ignore
* You maneuvered your other units into a position that block line of sight to the closest target that you want to ignore
* Your unit is from a certain codex
* It's a Tuesday
As for the idea you were exploring about Cool and Pressure. That also gets complicated very quickly because it turns into something like OC from 10th, but applied to all units always.
I must shoot the closest unit, except that closest unit is 3 grots worth 3 pressure, and there's a mob of boys behind the grots. How many models are left in that mob? 17? Okay, that's 17 pressure. But what about the 5 mega nobs behind them? They have a total of 20 don't they, because each is worth 4 pressure? Oh but they've got broken moral, so it's halved? Sod it, I'll just use a stratagem so I can target the lootas in the corner. That's what I wanted to shoot in the first place.
The concept is rooted in trying to mimic some sense of realism, but most implementations fall foul of the 'yes but that's doesn't make it a good game' clause. There's a reason we don't try to accurately model physics in D&D (for example).
So now that I've torn down your ideas, how can I be constructive?
Have you considered just applying range bonuses/penalties again?
Make me WANT to shoot the closest thing. Don't tell me I have to.
Indeed. Either it should be treated as a poll, or be allowed to turn into a sprawling discussion of potential alternatives. I was enjoying the discussion but I seem to have killed it with my reacting too Gibblets's comment.
While the discussion was more suited to the proposed rules forum, these days there is so little traffic on dakka that I personally think proposed rules could happily be part of general discussion.
While it's clear from my earlier post that I'm no fan of 'shoot the closest target', that's far from the only way too boost melts weapon value.
In the interest of keeping the rules simple, I like the idea that melta gains strength at short range in addition to gaining damage.
Honestly, I do think the new melta rule is an improvement over just d6 damage, but then again I've only been here since 8th edition.
I'd also rather it have 2d3 damage instead of d6.
As mentioned earlier in this thread, meltas would be served greatly by a bonus to-hit when up close and/or against a large target. Alas, that's probably a topic for a different thread.
Wyldhunt wrote: So far in 10th, weapons previously designed for tank hunting such as meltaguns, fusion guns, and blasters went from wounding most tanks on a 3+ to wounding on a 4+ or 5+. Consequently, people seem to generally agree (feel free to tell me if I'm wrong here) that such weapons have shifted away from being anti-tank weapons to being anti-terminators or anti-light-vehicle weapons instead.
Now that we've been living with this change for a while, how do you feel about it? Does anyone like that a meltagun only wounds a rhino half the time and has to fish for 5s against anything tougher? Have people come to enjoy using things like melta and blasters to hunt down gravis/terminator armor? Are light vehicles proving to be prevalent enough that melta/blasters still have a role as anti-vehicle weapons?
Personally, the melta changes have kept me from fielding the sisters army I was excited to build up for 10th and have left me a little sour on some of my basic drukhari units (warriors). But if there's an upside to the situation that I haven't considered, I'd be happy to have it pointed out.
Cynically, I worry that the nerfing of man-portable anti-tank weapons may have been a result of the changes to how points work in 10th. That is, GW recognized that taking a chunk out of an expensive tank was more valuable than doing a couple extra wounds to a horde. Previously this would mean you'd charge more points for the melta compared to the flamer or the blaster compared to the shredder. But as they committed to the new points system, they ended up having to devalue the melta/blaster instead because they weren't allowed to charge more points for it.
Not at all - If I were writing it, I probably would have leaned into the Two Profile thing you see on Plasma, Brutalis Claws and the like to give some zip to both the Melta/etc and what used to be the x2 melee (Klaws, Fists, Thunderhammers, and the like)
Profile 1) Basically what it is now - potential increased a little to make room for:
Profile 2) Supercharged/high power/whatever nomeclature/game name/etc fewer attacks, for higher damage and potentially more AP.
So MultiMelta
Standard Protocol: A2, S9, -4, D6, Melta 2
Anhilation Protocol: A1, S12ish, -4 D6(rerollable or 1,2 count as 3 etc) Melta 3
Power Fist/Klaws/etc (on what was traditionally an A2 model like a SM Sergeant)
Trickle Charge: A2, S8, -2 D2
Super Charge: A1 S12, -3 D2+2
I'm hoping 11th will be better. This was a fairly large change, especially for GW who does not do change well at all.
there are 2 problems with this a there would be almost no reason to us the annihilation protocol because a conditional +1 to damage isn't worth being assured another d6 of damage. 9-12 will make a difference as a lot of tanks have a toughness at or around 11 how ever that isn't going to do much. another problem is that this is the plasma weapons gimmick but with less risk as it doesn't have a hazardous test
Wyldhunt wrote: So far in 10th, weapons previously designed for tank hunting such as meltaguns, fusion guns, and blasters went from wounding most tanks on a 3+ to wounding on a 4+ or 5+. Consequently, people seem to generally agree (feel free to tell me if I'm wrong here) that such weapons have shifted away from being anti-tank weapons to being anti-terminators or anti-light-vehicle weapons instead.
Now that we've been living with this change for a while, how do you feel about it? Does anyone like that a meltagun only wounds a rhino half the time and has to fish for 5s against anything tougher? Have people come to enjoy using things like melta and blasters to hunt down gravis/terminator armor? Are light vehicles proving to be prevalent enough that melta/blasters still have a role as anti-vehicle weapons?
Personally, the melta changes have kept me from fielding the sisters army I was excited to build up for 10th and have left me a little sour on some of my basic drukhari units (warriors). But if there's an upside to the situation that I haven't considered, I'd be happy to have it pointed out.
Cynically, I worry that the nerfing of man-portable anti-tank weapons may have been a result of the changes to how points work in 10th. That is, GW recognized that taking a chunk out of an expensive tank was more valuable than doing a couple extra wounds to a horde. Previously this would mean you'd charge more points for the melta compared to the flamer or the blaster compared to the shredder. But as they committed to the new points system, they ended up having to devalue the melta/blaster instead because they weren't allowed to charge more points for it.
Not at all - If I were writing it, I probably would have leaned into the Two Profile thing you see on Plasma, Brutalis Claws and the like to give some zip to both the Melta/etc and what used to be the x2 melee (Klaws, Fists, Thunderhammers, and the like)
Profile 1) Basically what it is now - potential increased a little to make room for:
Profile 2) Supercharged/high power/whatever nomeclature/game name/etc fewer attacks, for higher damage and potentially more AP.
So MultiMelta
Standard Protocol: A2, S9, -4, D6, Melta 2
Anhilation Protocol: A1, S12ish, -4 D6(rerollable or 1,2 count as 3 etc) Melta 3
Power Fist/Klaws/etc (on what was traditionally an A2 model like a SM Sergeant)
Trickle Charge: A2, S8, -2 D2
Super Charge: A1 S12, -3 D2+2
I'm hoping 11th will be better. This was a fairly large change, especially for GW who does not do change well at all.
there are 2 problems with this a there would be almost no reason to us the annihilation protocol because a conditional +1 to damage isn't worth being assured another d6 of damage. 9-12 will make a difference as a lot of tanks have a toughness at or around 11 how ever that isn't going to do much. another problem is that this is the plasma weapons gimmick but with less risk as it doesn't have a hazardous test
It also had a reroll damage, or min damage roll of 3 (1,2 or 3 count as 3) Melta 3 - in other words they'd do 6-9 damage per MELTA shot - and the trade off is going from multiple to single/fewer shot. I'm not a fan of hazardous. Finally the numbers I picked were somewhat thin-air-concept not math hammered out. The "standard" profile does 2.5ish damage per shot, 5ish damage per round vs T5-8 where you'd use a MM on TEQ, small Monsters and the like The Anhilation Protocol would do 4ish damage per shot, or 4 damage per round against T5/6 TEQ/Gravis - slightly less against the T7Centurions Meanwhile Standard vs a T12 tank does about one and a quarter damage per shot, or 2 and a half per round. While the supercharged profile does 2.345 damage per shot - suggesting the Anhilation Protocol profile isn't buffed enough for its preferred target of T12s - probably add more damage per shot to the Anilation Protocol that would be lost on TEQ/Gravis etc. The point is to give the Upjumped profile the ability to chew up the T12 vehicle monsters while also preventing any added efficiency vs those mid rangeT5-7 Super Heavy Infantry/Light Monster Vehicles - the primary method for that is Rate of Fire, Wound Rolls, and Lost Wounds based on number of models/wounds/pool,
).
to the weapon choices. Although I think Grav weapons should get anti-monster if anything does because big water filled bugs squish best. Which would leave plasma out as a general choice which risks invalidating the others if too good.
