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I feel that the save system is completely screwed up, and I am going to explain why.

A Predator fires it's destructive lascannon at a squad of Fire warriors, to harry them. The powerful shot slams into the dirt trench that the Firewarriors are hiding behind, turning the dirt and sand into glass, but at the cost of the weapon itself losing strength. But what's this? The Fire-warrior squad finds themselves naked! it seems the evil trench smurfs has stolen their protective armor! The less powerful laser now slams into Shas'la Bob, who melts to a goo. If only those damn dirty smurfs didn't take his armor, if only the shield drones did not randomly shut down.

Now tell me my fellow Dakkaiets....

Why doesn't saves work like this? If you have more than one save possible, why can you not use them all? What happens to the armor when the shot hits the terrain, but keeps going. I mean, the shot would obviously lose power slamming through matter.

Why not use all saves possible?

I concur, I would like to see 40k implement a save system similar to fantasy where if your invul save fails, you still get your armor save though depending on the strength of the weapon, it would degrade your armor value (as in fantasy).

Because tau don't get saves vs lascannons, there Ap2.

I think the cover save represents the cover stopping the shot. Also, considering how much cover there is, if you were to have MEQ's fight each other, how long would it take for the game to end (if was to the death I mean) if you could take multiple saves?

Edit: to add something useful to the discussion, I think cover modifiers would be good; but 40K is meant to be simpler and easier to pick up than fantasy (IMO). Having complex cover and armour rules would make it quite hard to learn for some.

I was thinking perhaps a -1 modifier to your armor save if your cover save fails.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

wizard12 wrote:Because tau don't get saves vs lascannons, there Ap2.

I think the cover save represents the cover stopping the shot. Also, considering how much cover there is, if you were to have MEQ's fight each other, how long would it take for the game to end (if was to the death I mean) if you could take multiple saves?

Trench warfare....if you cannot dig someone out of cover you assault the posisiton? No cover save weapons?

EDIT

They already made this game. It was called 2nd edition.

Go and play that for awhile.

Then, when you break down in tears, come back to 5th edition.

Avrik_Shasla wrote:
Trench warfare....if you cannot dig someone out of cover you assault the posisiton?

If I fire a gun at you and your in a trench, the round hits the dirt and your safe.

If I jump into the trench with you, and hit you over the head with a trench club, then you can consider yourself assaulted.

Hth combat is used a lot in trench warfare. Look at WW1 and you'll see lots of examples of weapons designed (mostly on the field) for hth combat in trenches.

DarknessEternal wrote:They already made this game. It was called 2nd edition.

Go and play that for awhile.

Then, when you break down in tears, come back to 5th edition.

Lets leave all sarcasm to the side lines, but I am sure you are implying that an actual sense of realism and physics will make me break down in tears? I agree with the original replier to this post. If the cover save fails, the shot passes through, but you get a -1 or -2 modifier to your save.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

wizard12 wrote:

Avrik_Shasla wrote:
Trench warfare....if you cannot dig someone out of cover you assault the posisiton?

If I fire a gun at you and your in a trench, the round hits the dirt and your safe.

If I jump into the trench with you, and hit you over the head with a trench club, then you can consider yourself assaulted.

Hth combat is used a lot in trench warfare. Look at WW1 and you'll see lots of examples of weapons designed (mostly on the field) for hth combat in trenches.

That is my point, say the dirt doesn't stop the round? Why do we have highly sophisticated armor? Why do space marines hold positions if their ancient and gloriously religious armor means nothing.

Yes the Tau defiantly need help, we should nerf shooting to force people into close combat

Avrik_Shasla wrote:

Automatically Appended Next Post:

wizard12 wrote:

Avrik_Shasla wrote:
Trench warfare....if you cannot dig someone out of cover you assault the posisiton?

If I fire a gun at you and your in a trench, the round hits the dirt and your safe.

If I jump into the trench with you, and hit you over the head with a trench club, then you can consider yourself assaulted.

Hth combat is used a lot in trench warfare. Look at WW1 and you'll see lots of examples of weapons designed (mostly on the field) for hth combat in trenches.

That is my point, say the dirt doesn't stop the round? Why do we have highly sophisticated armor? Why do space marines hold positions if their ancient and gloriously religious armor means nothing.

Never underestimate the power of dirt! It is very effective. Anyway, you have to realize, it is pretty much impossible to make 40K a balanced game while incorporating RL aspects. You see how little fluff effects game play; and that's just fiction!

wizard12 wrote:

Avrik_Shasla wrote:

Automatically Appended Next Post:

wizard12 wrote:

Avrik_Shasla wrote:
Trench warfare....if you cannot dig someone out of cover you assault the posisiton?

If I fire a gun at you and your in a trench, the round hits the dirt and your safe.

If I jump into the trench with you, and hit you over the head with a trench club, then you can consider yourself assaulted.

Hth combat is used a lot in trench warfare. Look at WW1 and you'll see lots of examples of weapons designed (mostly on the field) for hth combat in trenches.

That is my point, say the dirt doesn't stop the round? Why do we have highly sophisticated armor? Why do space marines hold positions if their ancient and gloriously religious armor means nothing.

Never underestimate the power of dirt! It is very effective. Anyway, you have to realize, it is pretty much impossible to make 40K a balanced game while incorporating RL aspects. You see how little fluff effects game play; and that's just fiction!

Well, I do believe that it would work quite well if it had a minus 2 modifier, because the shot is just that powerful, so your average infantry will just die, because they don't have good armor.

But Space marines, would still get a second save at 5+, Tau would get a 6+ save.

How about;

For every point for strength above S6 -1 from cover saves,

And

If the Ap value is 1 point higher than the armour value, -1 from armour saves vs [insert weapon]

Then add; You may take a combination of cover and armour or cover and invulnerable saves.

So for example;

A SM captain with storm shield is hit in some ruins by an autocannon. His armour save becomes 4+, his cover becomes 5+ and his invun stays a 3++. He takes his cover save followed by his invulnerable save.

Or we could have to hit modifiers for cover and strength modifiers for armour and invuns...

Or we could just keep it simple and quick...

The short answer is that models in cover would never die and shooting would become quite weak in a game that already favors more bodies and more dice over quality bodies and quality dice.

The short answer is this. You have simple and fast playing rules for a simple game.

Wound allocation is already a huge and complicated process with some units. Imagine if you then had to calculate how much your cover was reduced, how much you armor is reduced and then take 3-4 rolls just to resolve ONE shot. Then multiply that by a large unit shooting a variety of different weapons, (Marines firing a Plasma Gun, Missile lancher, and Bolters)

In the end the rules for cover and saves were streamlined in order to simplify them so you can play a 2,500 point game without it taking a LONG time.


What I would not mind seeing, is some Balanced and fun Kill Teams rules with more real to life rules for cover and saves.

In my experience players can quickly get to grips with dice roll modifiers and such. In fact, the grinding mechanical process of rolling To Hit, To Wound, To Save, FNP can often be slower than a quick calculation and a single die roll.

However the current mechanics of 40K rely on the D6, which is too blunt a tool for the job.

Short answer is that a cover save is not meant to simulate the shot necessarily hitting the terrain in front of a model. The logic is more that the intervening objects (be it terrain, other models, smoke, etc) obscures the sight of the firers or otherwise spoils their aim (paraphrased from pg.21). A bush is not going to stop a Lascannon any more than Tau armour will, but that's not the point. That's also why models in a unit that is providing cover for another unit don't get hit by any shots.

Many people have discussed a BS modification for cover saves rather than a replacement for an armour/invulnerable save, and I think that makes more sense than reducing the S of the weapon. If you're interested, try matching up the various cover saves (3+, 4+, 5+) with corresponding BS modifications (-3, -2, -1) but I think you'll find it quickly becomes VERY hard to hit anything in terrain.

If you find out that you like playing that way then rock on, but be warned that it completely changes the metagame and makes cover just too powerful in most situations.

DoW

DarknessEternal wrote:They already made this game. It was called 2nd edition.

Go and play that for awhile.

Then, when you break down in tears because of awesomeness, you won't need to come back to 5th edition.

I don't think its so complicated to just use all available saves, and it makes the most sense from a fluff perspective as well.

Avrik_Shasla wrote:I feel that the save system is completely screwed up, and I am going to explain why.

A Predator fires it's destructive lascannon at a squad of Fire warriors, to harry them. The powerful shot slams into the dirt trench that the Firewarriors are hiding behind, turning the dirt and sand into glass, but at the cost of the weapon itself losing strength. But what's this? The Fire-warrior squad finds themselves naked! it seems the evil trench smurfs has stolen their protective armor! The less powerful laser now slams into Shas'la Bob, who melts to a goo. If only those damn dirty smurfs didn't take his armor, if only the shield drones did not randomly shut down.

Now tell me my fellow Dakkaiets....

Why doesn't saves work like this? If you have more than one save possible, why can you not use them all? What happens to the armor when the shot hits the terrain, but keeps going. I mean, the shot would obviously lose power slamming through matter.

Why not use all saves possible?

Because you use the best save possible. If a marine is taking a 4+ cover save, it means whatever is shooting him would already ignore his armor. If you fail the best save you have available, you would've failed any others you have too.

Like with most threads of this type, the issue is that you don't understand what the rules actually represent occurring. Or do you think that a tank using smoke launchers, and then successfully saving against a penetrating hit means that the smoke was an impenetrable barrier that not even a melta could cut through?

Avrik_Shasla wrote:

DarknessEternal wrote:They already made this game. It was called 2nd edition.

Go and play that for awhile.

Then, when you break down in tears, come back to 5th edition.

Lets leave all sarcasm to the side lines, but I am sure you are implying that an actual sense of realism and physics will make me break down in tears? I agree with the original replier to this post. If the cover save fails, the shot passes through, but you get a -1 or -2 modifier to your save.

Just ignore the sarcasm, then you willl find that what is left is: 2nd edition has almost exactly what you describe.

It has:
- to-hit modifiers for cover, so if someone is obstructed, he is harder to hit,
- armour save modifiers, so when you get hit by a plasmagun, you are less likely to pass the armour save and
- multiple saves, ie you take your armour save first, then if that fails, you take your ward save.

What it does not have is a cover save - cover is represented only by the to-hit modifier.


In general, I think the current system is absolutely fine. 2nd edition is nice for skirmishes, but anything beyond roughly four troops squads is too much for it, imo. And since there will always be some abstraction involved, and the amount of abstraction used in 5th is not that much more than the amount in 2nd, I like 5th.

Avrik_Shasla wrote:Why not use all saves possible?

Because if it worked that way it woud take over 100 Lascannon shots to kill a unit of 10 TH/SS terminators

100 shots -> 66.6 hit -> 55.5 wound -> 27.25 failed 4+ cover saves -> 9.25 failed 3+ invunerable saves.

It's purely done for game ballance.

Why should Marines get stronger saves?

Personally, I would prefer something like the 2nd ed rules, Armour Save modifiers and all.

Melissia wrote:Why should Marines get stronger saves?

With this change, Power Armour can be made into a 4+ and Marines T3 as originally intended to compensate.

And what to do about Sisters, or eldar with power armor, or Guard carapace armor, which will also benefit from this? Or any other high save unit. This idea is very poorly thought out with huge ramifications for the game.

Warhammer is a game of Abstract concepts its one of the many reasons we have the grenade rules. This reminds me of the grenade question that someone asked earlier.

The fact of the matter is 40k is first off meant to be easier than Fantasy, and second meant to be more streamlined.

I can see the cover mechanics being rationalized like this, Space Marines in a ruin get a 4+ cover save, keep in mind that if they are using the cover save the weapon is therefore ignoring their armor as well, so if they fail the 4+ cover save from a Lascannon then they are vaporized. Likewise their regular armor save of a 3+ is meant to represent both cover AND armor. So if you shoot them with a Bolter the 3+ save they get is representing the Bolter round bouncing off a tree or the armor (again Abstract concepts).

If cover were allowed to be taken with Armor saves and even with Invulnerables some units would be invincible. I would just sit a unit of TH/SS Termies in cover and they would never die 4+ cover, 3+ Invulnerable, 2+ armor! You would have to assault them (which is what I want) and then the game would just be stupid.

Melissia wrote:And what to do about Sisters, or eldar with power armor, or Guard carapace armor, which will also benefit from this? Or any other high save unit. This idea is very poorly thought out with huge ramifications for the game.

I was joking, but the ramifications would be Marine sales take a drop.

It would also mean a dramatic re-write of the fluff.

It's like 40 000 years in the future dude! Even dirt is made of adamantium in those days

I liked the previous posters idea of how saves should work, but with a bit of difference.

Here is my proposed rule.

Any infantry unit may take their allowed cover save and then their armor save as normal. However, for every point of strength above 6, reduce the armor save modifier by one. This is to show that heavier weapons that blew through dirt would be moving simply to quickly to be stopped by armor.

Example. A Las-cannon is firing at a Crisis battle-suit in cover. The tau player rolls his cover save and fails. The Las cannon is a strength 9 weapon, which subtracts the Tau's armor save modifier by three, giving him a armor save of only 6+.

That, too is done by 2nd edition rules. Every weapon has an armour save modifier. A lascannon had -6, iirc. Just go and buy 2nd edition off ebay, why don't you?

By the way, you are using the word 'modifier' wrong. A 4+ armour save is an armour save. When that armour save is modified by a weapons armour save modifier, that is a modifier...

The only thing I have a problem with is just not taking a save in general after being in cover. I mean, does being in cover remove your armor or something? If I fired a lasgun at a space marine, and I went through his cover, does that mean that his power armor is now suddenly worthless?