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.

Few friends and I discussing the limp nature of blast weapons in the new setting but how to tackle this without re-introducing templates.

Simple solution I came up with (not sure if it's been broached before) - how about allowing the wounds to spill over, much in the same was a mortal wounds? Either that or we just get the whole 'it does double shots against infantry units of 10 or more' go.

IE, I shoot a battle cannon at a unit of Boyz. It hits 6 times, does 5 wounds and gets 10 damage at -2 AP. Normally that would only kill 5 boyz but in this instance, because the weapon is also the 'blast' type, it actually does 10.
OR
IE I normally get D6 shots with the battlecannon but because I am targeting an infantry unit with 11 models I get 2D6.

I prefer the wounds spilling over but both could work.

The only other suggestion I could think of is that the 'blast' type would get an extra hit for every roll of 6+ when rolling to wound against infantry units of 10 or more.

Thoughts? Opinions?

I believe the way to make Blast weapons useful is to bring back templates, but remove scatter. I believe they should work like the following:

When firing Blast weapons you pick a point within range. There, you place a template (based on the weapon). For many weapons I would work with two profiles. One would be the direct shell that would fall at the unit under the center of the template if there was one.

For example an earthshaker or the like may look like this:

Heavy 1, S7, AP-3, D6 Damage.

Then, for every unit under the template, you get the following Profile:
Heavy 1, S6, Ap-1, 1 Damage, For every 5 models in the unit being shot at, add 2 to the number of shots.

I think Blasts could be improved, particularly when we get to Apocalypse levels. One idea I had was the following:

To fire a Blast weapon, place the marker over the unit of your choice and make a to-hit roll. If you roll a hit every model under the marker takes a hit. If you miss, then roll a dice for every model under the marker, on a 4+ they take a hit.

However, one thing I liked about the removal of blasts is how it levelled out the field a bit, in that a Demolisher Cannon for example, could one-shot a Land Raider but only do 1 wound to a Carnifex. Going back to using Blasts would require a solution that would avoid this scenario.

I was an advocate of the split profile for blasts, and I still am.

My suggestion would be to make the blast significantly less powerful, but more numerous, and make the single hit more powerful/as powerful as the current one.

Split profiles aren't unheard of - most combi-weapons fire both, but with a -1 to hit. same principle, no -1 to hit.

EG a battlecannon would be:
Heavy 1 S8 AP-3 3D3 damage (to give reliable stopping power)
Heavy 4D3 S4 AP-1 1 damage (to give reliable volume of shots)

I don't want blasts to come back... ...well, I do want blasts to come back, but only for nostalgia purposes. from a game standpoint, not having to measure gaps between models and argue over who is under and who isn't is a better system. But, "blast" weapons as they are are a bit of a half-arsed effort to reflect their previous potential. "replace a blast marker with D6 shots" reeks of lazy writing to me.

Allowing damage to roll over is alright but, let's say you roll lucky and score 6 shots at 6 damage, that's 36 dead models. having a battlecannon wipe out a green tide in one shot, whilst unlikely, is too powerful. Particularly as each successful wound roll then multiplies. If you had a rule stating "each hit is multiplied into D3 hits" it would allow the law of averages to reduce the likelihood of extreme results somewhat.

All in all, I prefer the 2-profile direct hit & blast approach, with bigger, weaker blasts and a single, powerful hit. Dual-cannon type weapons can have multiple direct shots and larger blasts.

Better solution: blast weapons automatically hit, up to one hit per model in the target unit. Remove the shoot twice rule from the tanks that have it, re-balance point costs as necessary. Blast weapons are now good for anti-horde duty and guaranteeing that you can't miss entirely, but can't stack up tons of hits on single-model targets. You're either in the blast or you aren't, no counting twice.

 Peregrine wrote:
Better solution: blast weapons automatically hit, up to one hit per model in the target unit. Remove the shoot twice rule from the tanks that have it, re-balance point costs as necessary. Blast weapons are now good for anti-horde duty and guaranteeing that you can't miss entirely, but can't stack up tons of hits on single-model targets. You're either in the blast or you aren't, no counting twice.

Every time someone suggests some variation on auto-hits in these sorts of threads, it feels a little odd to me. In previous editions, it was pretty easy to miss with a small blast, and even large blasts weren't guaranteed a hit. So suddenly hitting up to 6 times with a frag missile just seems like a strange change. Plus, eliminating the chance of missing (and the ability to penalize to-hit rolls) on superheavy blast weapons makes them that much more deadly.


@Semper:
I'd worry that allowing damage to spill over would reduce the design space for blast weapons. The blast that lands a high number of low strength hits would be redundant with the blast that lands a few high strength, high damage hits. In fact, a higher strength and better AP shot would probably often be better against hordes than the anti-horde profile unless you gave it a ton of extra shots.

@SirHeckington:
I'm really glad we don't have to agonize over 2" spacing and argue over how many models are directly under a template any more. I'm not sure getting more use out of my green plastic circles is worth going back to that.

Wyldhunt wrote:
Every time someone suggests some variation on auto-hits in these sorts of threads, it feels a little odd to me. In previous editions, it was pretty easy to miss with a small blast, and even large blasts weren't guaranteed a hit.

It was actually pretty hard to miss with small blasts. It was hard to hit more than once unless your opponent couldn't space out their models, but they were certainly more accurate than rolling to hit normally. My proposal hits more often than blast weapons used to hit, but it also removes the possibility to pile up a ton of hits on tightly grouped targets (for example, after disembarking from a destroyed vehicle). It's probably about the same end result on average with fewer dice to roll. And TBH why does it matter so much how it worked in previous editions? We aren't playing those editions anymore and IMO the idea does a good job of representing what blast weapons are doing fluff-wise.

So suddenly hitting up to 6 times with a frag missile just seems like a strange change.

Frag missiles are an odd exception, getting D6 shots instead of D3 like most of the other small blast weapons. It's not entirely consistent but given how utterly useless they are in the current rules I'm not too concerned about them getting a bit of a buff. Maybe with D6 automatic hits in frag mode they'd be worth taking when a lascannon has the same point cost and a much better anti-tank shot.

Plus, eliminating the chance of missing (and the ability to penalize to-hit rolls) on superheavy blast weapons makes them that much more deadly.

That's why I mentioned adjusting point costs if necessary. The Baneblade series should probably lose the extra die the codex gave them over the index version, knights should probably keep their 2D6 guns but see a major point increase to balance it, etc. Individual unit balance is not an issue, if the concept is solid as a basic rule of the game you can always adjust the individual unit rules to reflect their power.

 Peregrine wrote:
Better solution: blast weapons automatically hit, up to one hit per model in the target unit. Remove the shoot twice rule from the tanks that have it, re-balance point costs as necessary. Blast weapons are now good for anti-horde duty and guaranteeing that you can't miss entirely, but can't stack up tons of hits on single-model targets. You're either in the blast or you aren't, no counting twice.

Hopefully you're meaning models under a template? Allowing a vindicator to wipe out one unit per turn, no matter how big it is, is just silly.

There could be scope for an overruling "blast" rule, which would apply to all the old template weapons. This has been discussed with fairly universal support when trying to improve flamers:

Blast: A blast weapon fires a number of shots equal to either it's profile or the number of models in the target unit; use whichever is lowest.

So, a Heavy Blast 8 would get 1 shot vs a single model, 5 against a tactical squad, 8 against a 10 man squad, and 8 against a 100-ork blob.

a Flamer (Assault Blast 6) would do the same, but as per it's rules, would auto-hit with a maximum of 6 hits.

Heavy Blast 2D6 would be an interesting weapon to run.



Combining this with the dual-profile, you might end up with:

Battlecannon:
~Shell Heavy 1 S8 AP-3 Dam 2D3
~Blast Heavy Blast 8 S4 AP-1 Dam 1

This would add so much design space for these fairly flat and frankly boring to use weapons. You can have armour piercing cannons for tank hunting:
~Shell Heavy 1 S10 AP-5 Dam 6
~Blast Heavy Blast 3 S4 AP- Dam 1
you can have quad-cannons for clearing infantry:
~Shell Heavy 4 S5 AP-1 Dam 2
~Blast Heavy Blast 16 S4 AP- Dam 1

and these weapons will actually be better when fired at their designated targets.

 some bloke wrote:
Hopefully you're meaning models under a template? Allowing a vindicator to wipe out one unit per turn, no matter how big it is, is just silly.

No, the shot count would still apply. A blast D6 weapon would get D6 hits or one hit per model in the unit, whichever is less. It's just like a flamer, except that it can't get more than one hit per model.

(And of course you could have multi-shot weapons like a knight battle cannon. A heavy 2 blast D6 weapon would roll D6 automatic hits up to the number of models in the target unit, then do it again.)

 Peregrine wrote:

 some bloke wrote:
Hopefully you're meaning models under a template? Allowing a vindicator to wipe out one unit per turn, no matter how big it is, is just silly.

No, the shot count would still apply. A blast D6 weapon would get D6 hits or one hit per model in the unit, whichever is less. It's just like a flamer, except that it can't get more than one hit per model.

(And of course you could have multi-shot weapons like a knight battle cannon. A heavy 2 blast D6 weapon would roll D6 automatic hits up to the number of models in the target unit, then do it again.)

I have to say, I prefer the idea of an exact shot count (barring crazy weapons like the shokk attack gun) with a limit of the number of models in the unit - I think it will speed the game up a bit, and make such weapons more reliable. But, it does seem we're on the same page with having "1 shot per model in the target unit, up to X shots".

Am I right in thinking that you would still have flamers score multiple hits on individuals? I'm not such a fan of that, personally, I feel that the flamer weapons need to be kept as anti-horde type weapons. On fire is on fire, and whilst I realise that a long burst on an individual model is likely to do more damage, I also realise that a guy with a flamer is unlikely to focus it on an individual - they will sweep with it, even if there's only one guy to hit. flamers are already dumbed down from reality as it is - no one remains on fire, and flamers used to be surprisingly long ranged weapons, for killing people in buildings & trenches. Think fire engine hose, but on fire. so we're already a far cry from realism.

I think that flamers could do well by inflicting a -1 to leadership on the unit they hit, as it will increase the models that "flee" in the morale phase - but they instead were on fire and die. same effect.

Why is it you want the random amounts of hits to remain? is it just because it's close to how it is now? I think that reducing the amount of rolls and the amount of variance in blast weapons can only improve things - orks have to roll for number of shots, then to hit as well, and that really hurts their chances. blasts used to be an improvement in accuracy for orks!