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Seriously, cover is just a pain. It's making the game a lot less fun. I want lots of things to die when I play 40k, mine and my opponents alike. Sure, we can play on boards without terrain, but even models provide cover, so ... a change to the current rules with 6th edition is rumored! What changes do you want to see?

What do you think? Keep it as it is? Reduce the save's effectiveness to a 5+ max?

Or, if they really want to swing the meta change (please), make it a to-hit modifier, like cover is counted for in NEARLY ANY OTHER GAME SYSTEM. It stands to reason that anything obscured from cover should benefit from every shot at it; thus, a Space Marine benefits from cover against a Boltgun as much as it does against a Lascannon.

They can retrofit rules in previously printed codices that have 4+, 3+ cover saves etc to to hit modifiers without too much trouble as well. Stealth would still be awesome, just 5's & 6's to hit. And, don't give cover to EVERYTHING!

(oh, noes, it's kinda like Warhammer Fantasy! ghasp)

BS opposed Evasion. Cover grants evasion bonuses. Table is tilted towards to-hit negating total effectiveness of Evasion, but still allowing for super awesome evasive units like wyches and eldar pathfinders to do their thing.

If I remember those first games I had with a friend who started 40k with me, we tought that every unit gets a cover save as well as an armor save and FNP

The system with the modified to-hit roll sounds really nice but I'm afraid that this would be too much in the eyes of the designers...

It would be simple, 6+ cover becomes -1 to BS, 5+ cover becomes -2, etc, to a minimum of 1. Maybe reduce cover to 3 levels of effectiveness, based on cover type.

Light = -1 BS (grass, fences)
Medium =-2 BS (standard 4+ now, woods, ruins, etc)
Heavy = -3 BS (fortifications)

If they get used to modifying the BS scores, there could be some cool Psychic Powers that modify balistic skill, too. Acute Senses/sniper rifles could negate one "Layer" of cover.

Another possibility ... what if cover was -1 BS if 1/2 obscured, or -2 BS if you could just BARELY see it? like, 1/4 or less? That way cover is far less of an issue, still a benefit. 3rd ed had rules sorta like this, albeit with a save.

Fast skimmers Flat out? -2 BS to hit. Smoke launchers? -2 to hit. Stealth? -1 to hit. Suddenly, the game starts to make sense, and it would flow very well after it "clicks".

Always made more sense to me for cover to impact hitting rolls and not armour saves so i think cover modifying Ballistic skill is probably the best way to go and its how many other game systems handle cover makes more sense then:

Marine hits dark eldar in the face with bolter, wounds dark eldar, tree branch then dives in the way with the ability to apparently reverse time....

WHFB does its with a BS modifier... So its not to far out of the realm of warhammer 40k in general..

Most people who play WHFB prefer shooting in it to 40k's.

I dont like how WS has a flat 4+ to hit over a large range, whereas shooting has gak to hit over a large range. As I said above, modify the shooting table so that 3+ and 4+ to hit are more prevalent across the board, with cover moving a lot of 3+ into 4+ without affecting the good 2+'s or volume of fire 5+'s too much.

Cover could say "no better than 4+ to hit", or what have you for said class of cover. Of course, that would nerf lots of Marine BS armies, depending on the qualifiers for who is in cover.

evildrspock wrote:It would be simple, 6+ cover becomes -1 to BS, 5+ cover becomes -2, etc, to a minimum of 1. Maybe reduce cover to 3 levels of effectiveness, based on cover type.

Light = -1 BS (grass, fences)
Medium =-2 BS (standard 4+ now, woods, ruins, etc)
Heavy = -3 BS (fortifications)

If they get used to modifying the BS scores, there could be some cool Psychic Powers that modify balistic skill, too. Acute Senses/sniper rifles could negate one "Layer" of cover.

Another possibility ... what if cover was -1 BS if 1/2 obscured, or -2 BS if you could just BARELY see it? like, 1/4 or less? That way cover is far less of an issue, still a benefit. 3rd ed had rules sorta like this, albeit with a save.

Fast skimmers Flat out? -2 BS to hit. Smoke launchers? -2 to hit. Stealth? -1 to hit. Suddenly, the game starts to make sense, and it would flow very well after it "clicks".

What you're proposing is in no way unreasonable, although medium cover would cripple a shooty Ork list, Tau would have a particularly hard time too due to their reliance on gun lines. Maybe modify it slightly so that a roll of a 6 when rolling to hit always succeeds, regardless of the level of cover?

The_Happy_Pig wrote:

evildrspock wrote:It would be simple, 6+ cover becomes -1 to BS, 5+ cover becomes -2, etc, to a minimum of 1. Maybe reduce cover to 3 levels of effectiveness, based on cover type.

Light = -1 BS (grass, fences)
Medium =-2 BS (standard 4+ now, woods, ruins, etc)
Heavy = -3 BS (fortifications)

If they get used to modifying the BS scores, there could be some cool Psychic Powers that modify balistic skill, too. Acute Senses/sniper rifles could negate one "Layer" of cover.

Another possibility ... what if cover was -1 BS if 1/2 obscured, or -2 BS if you could just BARELY see it? like, 1/4 or less? That way cover is far less of an issue, still a benefit. 3rd ed had rules sorta like this, albeit with a save.

Fast skimmers Flat out? -2 BS to hit. Smoke launchers? -2 to hit. Stealth? -1 to hit. Suddenly, the game starts to make sense, and it would flow very well after it "clicks".

What you're proposing is in no way unreasonable, although medium cover would cripple a shooty Ork list, Tau would have a particularly hard time too due to their reliance on gun lines. Maybe modify it slightly so that a roll of a 6 when rolling to hit always succeeds, regardless of the level of cover?

Yeah, that's what I was thinking (aka, maybe BS reduced to Minimum of 1 via cover rules). Also, why I proposed few different ways it could be treated. I'm not sure what the best choice would be.

I would prefer a system that depended on the actual weapon firing, and the protection offered by the cover. A target being fired at by a bolter is going to get more protection behind a hard cover item like a wall, than if they were just behind a soft item like a hedge or similar. By the same token the same wall thats providing good cover against the Bolter is going to offer much less protection against a firer with a Lascanon.

A small modifer to the roll to wound roll would cut down on time for extra saves and speed the game up. so targets behind soft cover could +1 toughness and hard cover +2. simple but effective.

5+ max cover is frankly bs, squishy armies need to rely on cover to survive, guardsmen with toughness 3 and a 5+ armour save will drop like flies when facing bolter fire regardless of cover if it is 5+ max. My suggestion is to let specific things ignore or lessen cover/give cover save modifiers. For example one could have volume fire lessen cover saves, perhaps a unit firing 20-29 shots gives a -1 modifier to any cover save rolls, 30-39 shots a -2 cover save roll, 40-49 shots a -3 cover save roll etc. Also perhaps have BS 6+ models ignore cover completely. EITHER do that or simply bump everything up by +1, fortifications are now 4+, most things are 5+, barbed wire and stuff are a 6+ save.

Edit: It isn't as if most of the armies using cover need a nerf sans guard, the armies that would probably benefit the most are marine armies with high armour saves that are already fairly good, Grey Knights, vanilla marines, Blood Angels, Space Wolves.

If you change cover saves back to a To Hit Modifier, you need to change armor saves from an AP system to an armor save modifier. Otherwise MEQ and the like will benefit too much. They keep their tough armor save, but get even harder to hit while in cover. A whole mess of changes would probably be needed to rebalance things after that.

5+ as standard would suffice. Universal 4+ is just stupid.

I like the idea but IMO, to implement it would require a huge overhaul of the rules to balance it. If we just implemented it as suggested shooting armies would be a lot less viable and high save armies would get a great advantage against squishy armies (on account of the fact that they would still get their 3+'s vs small arms while the squishys would most likely not get they're 5's and 6+ saves.)

Put it the other way and give a save modifier like in Fantasy and MEQ become obscelete. Suddenly they only have a 5+ save against Heavy Bolters...ouch.

5+ Cover save max, unless it's a fortification.

A crumbling building shouldn't have a 50/50 chance to save you from getting hit from a blast from a Vindicator.

CalgarsPimpHand wrote:If you change cover saves back to a To Hit Modifier, you need to change armor saves from an AP system to an armor save modifier. Otherwise MEQ and the like will benefit too much. They keep their tough armor save, but get even harder to hit while in cover. A whole mess of changes would probably be needed to rebalance things after that.

Was going to make this exact point. I'd also argue that the 5+ max is a bit painful as armies that rely on using cover to get to their targets would just take a penalty to their army with no overall benefit, even going from 4+ to to 5+ would require an overhaul on armies such as orks or nids.

I'd like to see the rules for modifying BS take place but armor saves modify taking a wound. So it's harder to hit a model in cover and harder to wound a model with high armor though a strong gun could still punch through AP and armor could still have a factor and that armor isn't considered if the AP beats it.

So a strength 5 gun with AP 5 would be strength 3 when firing at 3 armor save. while a strength 7 gun with AP 5 would be strength 5.

So everyone can benefit but not in an absurd manor and if the player roles well they still get their kills.
It also wouldn't benefit monsters as anti tank could still take them down but small arms would be pretty much useless. No more large creatures taking 4 rockets and dying to a pistol lol.
Invulnerable saves should really be the only saves

Your AP thing confused me. Why not just make it so that AP is simply a modifier value to the armour save. For example an AP 2 weapon automatically makes an opponent fail armour saves, so nothing needs to be changed, but an AP 3 and 4 weapon might subtract say 2 from any armour save rolls, while AP 5 and 6 might subtract 1 from any armour save rolls.

For example if 10 Imperial Storm Troopers at BS 4 fire their hot-shot lasguns and 1 hot-shot laspistol at some terminators in medium (-2 BS) cover they will get 19 strength 3 AP 3 shots. Those 19 shots will be fired at BS 2 and lets say 7 hit. You proceed to roll to wound and get 3 wounds. Finally the enemy makes his armour saves which due to the HSLG being AP 3 has -2 subtracted from any armour saves, effectively making it a 4+ save. Thanks to the gods of luck being on your side only one armour save is made and two terminators go down.

The good part about Trance_Phoenix's system is that degrees of AP above the Armor level matter. It also make AP 5 always better than AP 6 unless the weapon strength is so high or low it doesn't matter.

CC attacks would suffer without an overhaul of melee weapons as they have no AP. You can't just ignore armor in CC, because that would make Power Weapons a waste. I guess you could lay down a blanket AP for CC. Rerolls to wound would be a massive buff, also poison and snipers would effectively ignore armor.

I'm also not sure about the huge swing in variability that losing that one die roll would cause. The more rolls you make for an attack the outcome will be closer to the expected outcome.

I never liked how you hit the target and determine that the shot would wound it yet somehow the armor intervenes afterward, saves should be rolled before rolling to wound. In theory this wouldn't make a difference, however in practice a high armor save would have to suffer though the higher number of hits, and high toughness models would be more survivable. (Go go 'nids!)

As for cover, I say leave it how it is except make to hit rolls of 6 ignore cover saves, making torrenting even more effective in that case. Blast weapons and snipers should force rerolls of successful cover saves. This would give us a few more ways to negate or lessen cover, while buffing weapon types that could use buffing.

I don't get why people need such a literal interpretation of the rules, just because cover IRL relies more on effecting your accuracy than stopping a shot and armour must be penetrated before one gets wounded doesn't mean it needs to be played that way. Going hit roll => wound roll => save roll speeds up the game since one guy rolls, he rolls again and the opponent only has to roll once after the guy.

I honestly do not see the allure of cover being a to hit modifier or having saves go before wounding rolls. Honestly all I would like is simply save modifiers, bumping all cover so 4+ is now 5+, 3+ is now 4+ etc. Less rules to learn when 6th ed. comes out.

Hi Buttons.
If you have the chioce of playing a rule set that is elegant efficient AND intuitive.
OR one that is counter intuitive over compicated and diffuse.

AND they both gover the game play ,which one do you pick?

The problem in 40k is the rules are applied in such an abstracted way it leads to confusion about what IS actualy supposed to be happening.And as 40k is SUPPOSED to be suitable for new players this is a seriuos fault IMO.(Older more mature gamers can see the reasoning behind it , but they could deal with modifiers anyway!)

IMO 6th ed should be a compete overhaul , using the much better Epic Armageddon rules as a starting point. (It delivers an much closer synergy to the 40k background with much more straightforward rules !)

An obscured target is simply harder to see/ therfore harder to hit.This is intuitive and logical.

Giving a fixed chance of missing after a fixed chance of hitting is a clunky counter intuitive alternative.

The ONLY reason GW got rid of modifiers from 40k is because they thought the new demoghrapic ,(11 to 16 year olds,) couldnt deal with maths of any sort.AND the ONLY resolution method they could use is roll a D6...

Lanrak wrote:The problem in 40k is the rules are applied in such an abstracted way it leads to confusion about what IS actualy supposed to be happening.

Not really, rolling to hit is seeing if a shot is hitting anything, rolling to wound is seeing if the shot will wound the target, saves are whether or not the armour, cover, or blessing of the Gods or something prevents the shot from even having harmed you in the first place. The latter simply takes place in the middle in real time, also it seems more suspenseful if you will, rolling savings rolls at the end, since your luck with that roll can decide whether only one of your terminators die or your whole squad is wiped out.

And as 40k is SUPPOSED to be suitable for new players this is a seriuos fault IMO.(Older more mature gamers can see the reasoning behind it , but they could deal with modifiers anyway!)

Not that serious. TBH I am quite new, started in 5th ed. at the very least, and I saw no problem with the rule. From a purely pragmatic standpoint it makes sense, GW wants to keep increasing the size of the game, but they don't want it to take so long that the larger games can't be played, so they do everything they can to speed it up including removing modifiers that might take half a second for someone to solve because the time adds up.

IMO 6th ed should be a compete overhaul , using the much better Epic Armageddon rules as a starting point. (It delivers an much closer synergy to the 40k background with much more straightforward rules !)

Never played epic, but I did manage to read through a rogue trader book and I found those rules quite interesting, think armour saves were a modifier instead of a solid value and whatnot.

An obscured target is simply harder to see/ therfore harder to hit.This is intuitive and logical.

Doesn't mean that the current rules are crippling. They work and they are efficient, either way I would go with that as long as MEQs get a nerf to their armour save like the kind of modifer I mentioned AP1 and AP2 auto penetrate, AP3 and AP4 subtract 2 from armour save rolls, and AP5 and AP6 subtract 1 from armour save rolls. Also invulnerable saves would need to be nerfed as well.

Actually, the BRB explicitely states that the rules are very abstracted, and the models as well are abstract representations of a range of areas your units could be. The 'hit' and 'wound' rolls simply represent the culmination of your attacks' effects - they're not the actual hits of the weapon, just like casualties are not always deaths.

@ Buttons. To true. A lot of armies rely on cover saves and for the most part the ones who really needed would just burn to even a simple flamer. So unless you nerf the marines removing the option to hide in buildings would break the game. Guard, and orks would be bones without their cover saves. And since every army out there has a way to make cover meaning less its not that big of a deal. It even makes sence that your las cannon isn't useful since you cant draw a clean sight on the person so there may well be a 50/50 chance that what you aimed at wasn't what you though it was.

This is the exact problem I am talking about.
The rules have been absracted to make explaining the resolution simple.(Roll a dice.)
BUT in the process the degree of granularity has decreased, and the some areas have become unexpectedly co-dependant AND over complicated.
(Eg instead of roll a dice + modifiers, we get roll dice several times, for abstracted and poorly explained interaction.)

As' WHFB in SPAAAACE', RT and 2nd ed were decent RPG/skirmish rule sets.(Still overcompicated, but the 'No Limits' rule set would be the natural progression of 2nd ed IMO.)

BUT when 40k moved to a battle game , the WHFB game mechanics became less than suited to the new game play.And as the game switched to unit interaction, a new set of game mechanics focusing on unit interaction would have been much more elegant and efficient.

EG using the ones from EPIC (large scale battles in MODERN warfare.)Then ADDING detail , would have resulted in a better defined , more concise and intuitive rule set.
Rather than taking a rule set for ANCIENT warfare , and choping out great lumps and applying lots of patches to fix up the gaping holes.


MOST modern rule sets use FEWER and SIMPLER resolution methods , and manage far more gameplay than 40k does.

IF we brought back LIMITED modifiers, it could speed the game up IF they were aplied correctly.

In over 20 years of wargaming, adding or subtracting 1 from a dice roll has NEVER slowed down a game as much as arguments of the RAW vs RAI found in 40k....
(Poor definition to lead to arguing over rules IS part of the design to apeal to teens you know! )

essentially a d6 is the best dice for a game like this but to small of a variable. We get variance in the number of dice we role. A modifier on a d6 of +1 is 16% while a d20 would be 5%. This is actually pretty huge so anymore than 2 or 3 modifiers becomes a drastic change to a d6's randomization. However adding multiple roles or dice gives you less of a drastic increase in some cases.

So when a game like warhammer 40K wants to include
shooting
wounding
armor
and cover
all as their own separate entity you get a tone of abstract explanations and dice roles.

I don't think cover saves could be fixed with a simple modifier in any regard. To properly fix it they would need to streamline all of their options into one. Each seems to work seperately, they have to work together.

Like said above if you have an overall modifier that could set a standard you could streamline it.

armor and toughness melded into one could be one way.
or armor and cover.

It would be nice to see one roll for killing and one for defending (I mean one as in one mass role from a unit)

Perhaps guns even simply adding a characteristic to a unit and not a specific "gun" so people stop simply spamming certain weapons. (but that's another topic)

Lanrak wrote:This is the exact problem I am talking about.
The rules have been absracted to make explaining the resolution simple.(Roll a dice.)
BUT in the process the degree of granularity has decreased, and the some areas have become unexpectedly co-dependant AND over complicated.
(Eg instead of roll a dice + modifiers, we get roll dice several times, for abstracted and poorly explained interaction.)

As' WHFB in SPAAAACE', RT and 2nd ed were decent RPG/skirmish rule sets.(Still overcompicated, but the 'No Limits' rule set would be the natural progression of 2nd ed IMO.)

BUT when 40k moved to a battle game , the WHFB game mechanics became less than suited to the new game play.And as the game switched to unit interaction, a new set of game mechanics focusing on unit interaction would have been much more elegant and efficient.

EG using the ones from EPIC (large scale battles in MODERN warfare.)Then ADDING detail , would have resulted in a better defined , more concise and intuitive rule set.
Rather than taking a rule set for ANCIENT warfare , and choping out great lumps and applying lots of patches to fix up the gaping holes.


MOST modern rule sets use FEWER and SIMPLER resolution methods , and manage far more gameplay than 40k does.

IF we brought back LIMITED modifiers, it could speed the game up IF they were aplied correctly.

In over 20 years of wargaming, adding or subtracting 1 from a dice roll has NEVER slowed down a game as much as arguments of the RAW vs RAI found in 40k....
(Poor definition to lead to arguing over rules IS part of the design to apeal to teens you know! )

You're missing the point. Subtracting from the too-hit would throw the shooting mechanics in the air. -2 to hit for cover would make marines in cover (i.e. most of the time) nigh-on unkillable. -1 to hit would make hordes too easy to kill from range.
A possible solution would be making it easier for everything to hit in the first place. But then being in the open-would be insta-death for most unit.

Cover has to change. How come a unit can get cover from a demolisher/LRBT main gun? This sort of round is lobed onto infantry, just as arttilery rounds are.

Also, a devistator with lasgun shoots at my vehicle, He is more than two inches into cover, shoots over all sorts of wreckage on the battlefield, my tank is halfway behind a building, and I only get a 4+, that should be like a 2+ with that many obsticles.

Not sure how to solve the issue, but, come on, someting needs to be fixed, other than my spelling.

Joey wrote:
A possible solution would be making it easier for everything to hit in the first place. But then being in the open-would be insta-death for most unit.

Just like real warfare.