Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

The more I think about it, the more I believe that Hit/ Wound /Armour Save is completely wrong ! It should, Logically be Hit /Armour Save/ Wound, however this will never work because we are too far along with this to ever change. However i justify my beliefs thus:-

1. You roll to hit. This is sensible all weapons need to actually hit their target in order to be effective = GOOD.

2. You roll to wound. What? So now your deciding if it wounded? Even if it is armoured?

3. You roll to armour save. You have already decided it has wounded but now your deciding it maybe stopped by armour?

In reality, you fire a bullet, the bullet strikes an Enemy soldier wearing body armour. He staggers abit, but is not wounded because the body armour stopped the bullet. He is not wounded.

If you fire a .50cal at an Enemy soldier wearing body armour, it hits, it then penetrates his body armour, he is wounded by the heavy bullet.

A round could potentially penetrate armour, but have too little energy to cause a wound.

Therefore logically speaking it should be:-

1. Roll to Hit
2. Roll to penetrate armour (skip this step if the target has no armour!)
3. Roll to wound.

Am I completely Mad?

Nope, not mad.

Though read some rogue trader rules (where 40k came from)...

Then the discussed rule will feel completely normal...

(twitches slightly, mumbles something about chaos and jervis...)

1. It's a game, it's not supposed to be realistic or what not.
2. Gameplay, it's easier for you to finish all of your rolling then have the opponent roll.
3. If there is not enough stopping power of the attack to kill you outright then there was no need for armor to begin with or some sort of logic like that.

That is the order I would say.

Didn't we have this thread a few weeks ago?

Either way works actually.

If you couldn't even wound the person regardless of armor, then there's no point of taking an armor save, so the current setup still works.

Thems the breaks. Im more Concerned with cover saves. Shouldnt by rights you get a cover save then an armor save? Cover doesnt make armor useless you know. unless physics has changed...

Ah, here it is:

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/305623.page

How bout cover though?

I think cover is fine as it is. Allowing both cover and armor saves to be taken at the same time means that armor will become exponentially more effective-- imagine having to go through a 4+ cover save AND a 3+ armor save in order to cause casualties.

I am aware cover isnt really there for Space marines. they are walking buildings after all. But it just doesnt click right rules wise when compared to RL. But i do accept it for lesser guys like Kroot who have no armor and such.

No, what I'm saying is that being able to take both cover and armor saves benefits those with good armor far more than it does those with bad armor. So it's actually MORE beneficial to, say, Orks and Guard, to keep it this way.

Balance is a very important concern.

As for the hit/wound/armor versus hit/armor/wound thing, does it really matter? Either way can be made to make sense if you think about them.

Melissia wrote:I think cover is fine as it is. Allowing both cover and armor saves to be taken at the same time means that armor will become exponentially more effective-- imagine having to go through a 4+ cover save AND a 3+ armor save in order to cause casualties.

Agree

I had enough problems getting through my friends daemon princes armour i can't imagine what i would do if he another save of 4+

And what about feel no pain? do we then get 3 saves for our men?

I think it's in that order largely to make the game flow more smoothly. but, it also seems logical if you think of it like
1. You roll to see if you hit the target.
2. You roll to see if that hit has the potential to cause a mortal wound (in the head, in the abdomen, NOT in the hand/shoulder, or ear or something)
3. Opponent rolls to see if his armor stops the shots that would hit something vital.

Melissia good spot, I close this thread and refer to you the following and i completely agree with his original post. And yes I am well aware this is a hobby and we (read I am) getting to deep, but I was musing on this subject and wondered how many people agreed?
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/305623.page

Adanis is right, it's smoother.

You roll to hit 99% of the time.
You roll to wound 99% of the time.
You take an armour save if available.

With multiple weapon types going off in the same shooting phase/initiative, it makes the allocation of wounds (the most complicated of the three simple steps) just a little bit easier.

There's a wall of three layers.

Air
Armor
Flesh

I've always thought the same about the armour save/ wound order. It's much more logic to see if the model gets saved by his armour BEFORE he gets a punctured stomach with internal bleeding or whatever.

It does make sense and I have also thought about this many times. It is a simplicity thing though.

Yeah, I get it. It works both ways. You're still rolling everything, so really, it doesn't matter too much what order. You could even roll armor saves first then wounds then to hit. It's all the same.

You'd also thing that it would be easier to wound something the more successfully something was hit. And some stuff doesn't need to be a direct hit to annihilate you. So why a separate hit/wound roll?

Why should 6s be better than 1s? 6 on 1D6 is 1/6, why not just have 1 as 1/6?

Why roll to hit for each shot? It's not like you're shooting at individual models: Units are targets, but models are casualties.

Etc.

Samus_aran115 wrote:Yeah, I get it. It works both ways. You're still rolling everything, so really, it doesn't matter too much what order. You could even roll armor saves first then wounds then to hit. It's all the same.

Let's not get too krazy here.
How can you tell how many wounds you cause w/o rolling to see how many times you hit?

No, wouldn't work if you took your armour first.

the idea is to wear down the amount of hits actually taken.

HI all.
The order of reduction to potential wounds , from inability to cause wound or armour save are two seperate functions that can be taken in any order.
The reason they are in the order they are , is because this system was developed for low tech close combat weapons used in WHFB.

Attacker swings his sword,it is on target (roll to hit,) will it wound the target if it is not stopped,(roll to wound) the target may block or dodge to put armour in the path of the attackers blade.(Roll to save.)

It doesnt realy fit that well with more modern high tech weapons and armour where the attack is that fast the defender has no time to react.

Projectile fired , 0.06 seconds later it impacts with target,the armour reduces the damaging effect of the projectile impact, (0.003 seconds later,) 0.03 seconds later the target registers the hit as pain...all in less than 1/10th of a second....

40k realy should have its own rules set , rather than a WHFB kludge IMO.

TTFN

It doesn't work both ways since we've got rules which depend on the sequence of rolling (Rending anyone?).

And then there's the comfort of the defender having the final say, as GW justifies it

I don't see what's wrong with it, myself. I mean, it works, for a start.

yeah it works and your playing with plastic soldiers 38000 years in the future and you want realism?

@Lanrak: I don't see it as the target reacting and managing to "put armor in the way" because a space marine is (for example) all armor. I would say the order is more like:

Do the shots hit my target (to hit roll)?
Do my shots have a chance of wounding/killing the target if they get through his armor (to wound)?
Does my opponents armor/what-have-you stop the killing blow (save)?

That is how I always think of it.

A few thoughts, from the earlier versions:

In the older games, some armour saves were more complex than they are now. So, terminator armour and other equivalents were taken on 2d6. You had to roll for each individual model.

Secondly, some field saves had extra effects: The conversion field, if triggered, would cause a flash of light that blinded nearby troops. The displacer field caused the model to scatter in a random direction.

Thirdly, you had to modify the dice roll for the save according to the individual weapon's profile.

Wounds were always wounds. S vs T. Nothing fancy.

As a result, it made a heck of a lot more sense to get all the straightforward rolls out of the way first, then only take the complex ones you needed.

And I think it's carried on in both games as none have been an entire re-writing of the rules.

The order works as is perfectly. and thank god your opponent is only ever allowed 1 save. cover, armor or, invunerable excluding fnp. some models would just be impossible to kill. maybe though they could remove roll to wound all together and consider hits wounds. that would work favorably for crappy shooting armies allowing them to score more wounds than normal. On the reverse side good shooting units with high bs would be rape. Nah leave it as is I say.

Melissia wrote:Didn't we have this thread a few weeks ago?

Either way works actually.

If you couldn't even wound the person regardless of armor, then there's no point of taking an armor save, so the current setup still works.

Yes, we had this earlier, and I explained to you in that thread that your reasoning above is faulty. You ask why bother taking an armour save for a shot that couldn't wound... well why bother rolling to hit for a shot that couldn't beat armour... we should roll the armour save first!



Meanwhile, there's no particularly good reason to roll to wound second and for the armour save last. GW have said they want the defender to have a roll of his own, to help him identify with his models... which is a pretty interesting piece of design - but why tie that to the armour save? Do you identify with a model because he's got good armour, more than you do if he's particularly tough? Why not roll to hit, roll to beat armour, then hand the dice over to the other player to see if his models can make toughness saves?

Ultimately, outside of odd rules like rending, the order of the dice rolls don't really matter... but it is indicative of the strange and largely haphazard design process 40K has gone through over a couple of decades.

sebster wrote:Yes, we had this earlier, and I explained to you in that thread that your reasoning above is faulty. You ask why bother taking an armour save for a shot that couldn't wound... well why bother rolling to hit for a shot that couldn't beat armour... we should roll the armour save first!

Exactly.

Your argument proves my point for me-- that it technically doesn't matter which order they're in.

Or the armor is a negative modifier towards something being able to wound. *ducks*