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I like the Precision rules for narrative reasons. However, it seems useless most of the time. It's supposed to represent being able to pick out high-value targets, so why limit it to attached characters. Why not let Precision weapons direct fire at ANY member of a squad? Is the enemy Sergeant not also high value (especially when there isn't an attached character)? Is the guy with a missile launcher not high value?

Sniper rifles used to be able to do this in past editions of the game and it hardly made snipers OP. Why limit it so much in 10th edition?

Yeah, I can see a 10-man Ratling unit castrating a Tactical squad by saying "Three hits on the Sergeant, three on the melta, one on the lascannon" might be a bit harsh. If it was "all directed hits must be on the same model" it wouldn't be too bad.

As you yourself have identified, it can be kind of harsh to neuter a unit's best offense by killing the most valuable models first. Guardian defenders pay 100(?) points for a single heavy weapon and a bunch of bolter-like shots. Sniping out that weapon platform first thing could be feels-bad.

Some aspect warrior units rely on the exarch (the sergeant) to do most of the heavy lifting. Taking out the executioner banshee exarch, for instance, basically cuts a 5-girl squad's offense in half. And it's just kind of hard to make that *fun* for the player on the receiving end.

Depending on the army, there's also the argument that killing the special weapon guy would just result in the not-special guy picking up his wargear. It's the same logic behind letting players choose how wounds get allocated from non-precision attacks. Brother Meltagunneus got sniped? Brother Boltarion picks up his much more valuable gun and is now mechanically identical to brother Meltagunneus.

Also worth noting that in editions where snipers could assign their hits as they pleased, they only got to do so on to-hit(?) rolls of 6.

I think there's a workable way to bring back snipers' ability to snipe out specific non-character models, but it would be a pretty big change that would require some kind of significant balancing factor, be it a big points increase to snipers or something that limits how often they get to do it. (Core stratagem maybe?)

Generally, it's probably less of a headache for the designers to not have to worry about it.

It would also have an issue of Haves and Have-Nots.

Guard? Decent amount of Precison.
Marines? Same.
Chaos? With one glaring exception, none.
Emperor's Children? Almost everything.

At least give it to the overpriced Vindicare Assassin.

Something like a vindicaire would already have a high points cost and limited availability as baked-in limiters. So it's easy enough to have a rule like this as a rare and special thing for expensive units that can only put out so many attacks.

But making it a default part of the precision rule or sniper weapons in general would mean it would have to be balanced when people are fielding 30 rangers or ratlings or whatever.

Using precision to target non-character models throws up a problem with multi-wound units.

Let's say your Ratlings manage to deal one wound that they assign to the Eldar gunplatform.

Now, effectively any followup shooting from another unit 'gains' precision because you're forced to finish off wounded models before assigning wounds elsewhere.

And now that multi-wound squads are standard fare in 40k that's a big problem. Whereas multi-wound squads used to be very rare in previous editions.

 kirotheavenger wrote:
Using precision to target non-character models throws up a problem with multi-wound units.

Let's say your Ratlings manage to deal one wound that they assign to the Eldar gunplatform.

Now, effectively any followup shooting from another unit 'gains' precision because you're forced to finish off wounded models before assigning wounds elsewhere.

And now that multi-wound squads are standard fare in 40k that's a big problem. Whereas multi-wound squads used to be very rare in previous editions.

Okay, been a while since I've read the rules so I might be forgetting something, but how is this different from a sniper putting one wound on a character in the current rules?

 cuda1179 wrote:

 kirotheavenger wrote:
...

Okay, been a while since I've read the rules so I might be forgetting something, but how is this different from a sniper putting one wound on a character in the current rules?

Characters can only be allocated to if they're the last ones left, even if they're wounded.

 kirotheavenger wrote:

 cuda1179 wrote:

 kirotheavenger wrote:
...

Okay, been a while since I've read the rules so I might be forgetting something, but how is this different from a sniper putting one wound on a character in the current rules?

Characters can only be allocated to if they're the last ones left, even if they're wounded.

Yep, forgot that. Sorry this edition has been 100% theoretical for me with no actual games played.

Logically speaking, yes, it feels hella dumb that "Precision" doesnt actually do what its supposed to do, its just a gotcha for wounding characters. But thats modern 40K for ya, logic doesnt play into it

One possible speculation why precision got nerfed would be the game design paradigms GW use which try to eliminate "feelsbad" moments from the game.. resulting in blandness.. "fair", boring blandness..

 tauist wrote:
Logically speaking, yes, it feels hella dumb that "Precision" doesnt actually do what its supposed to do, its just a gotcha for wounding characters. But thats modern 40K for ya, logic doesnt play into it

One possible speculation why precision got nerfed would be the game design paradigms GW use which try to eliminate "feelsbad" moments from the game.. resulting in blandness.. "fair", boring blandness..

I mean. Old precision meant that you could pretty easily end up with a unit that just didn't get to do the cool stuff you paid points to do. That combat squadded tac squad with a missile launcher was suddenly just a bolter squad. The modern approach means that you won't suddenly lose the missile launcher guy, but you have to be careful about how you position the character giving your squad lethal hits or whatever.

I have a little nostalgia for the old approach, but feelbad moments *are* something to try and avoid with your game design.

If snipers were generally presented as characters rather than rifle squads, I think you could probably bring back model sniping relatively painlessly. I don't necessarily mind when something expensive like a vindicaire or a death jester snipes out that missile launcher. But rangers can come in squads of up to 10. If only your expensive solo snipers could snipe out specific models, then it would basically turn into a challenge of hiding your better wargear from 1 or 2 models in the enemy army. Doable. Interesting. Still has a chance of failure. But a whole firing squad deadset on removing all your special guns as soon as they show up is going to be frustrating for the player who suddenly doesn't get to use his coolest toys. And it's going to suck for some armies more than others. Tyranids and necrons tend to have homogenous loadouts across a unit, whereas armies with special weapon guys and sergeant types have a lot of their value loaded up in a small number of models.

Or again, this could maybe work as a core strat. 1CP. When you target a unit with one or more precision weapons, choose one model in the enemy unit that is visible to the attacking unit. Wounds must be allocated to that model. So it costs the attacker some CP, and the defender has counterplay in the form of positioning his more importnat models where the snipers can't see them.

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
At least give it to the overpriced Vindicare Assassin.

If I recall that was his big thing back in 4e.

 Orkeosaurus wrote:

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
At least give it to the overpriced Vindicare Assassin.

If I recall that was his big thing back in 4e.

He could select the specific model to shoot.

But it wasn't overpowered, as you only get x amount of shots per turn and the Vindicare wasn't going to target Vehicles.

 Wyldhunt wrote:


If snipers were generally presented as characters rather than rifle squads, I think you could probably bring back model sniping relatively painlessly. I don't necessarily mind when something expensive like a vindicaire or a death jester snipes out that missile launcher. But rangers can come in squads of up to 10.

I do think it's very strange how snipers in 40k are almost exclusively carried enmass as squad weapons. 10 Ratlings, 10 Scout Snipers, 10 Rangers. It doesn't feel right on any level. I can only understand from the practical view that snipers don't pair well with other infantry weapons and players don't like the feeling of squads with mixed-usage weapons. Although that didn't stop Devastators or Tacticals being exactly that.

The Forgeworld Elysian Sniper squad springs to mind - a special squad of 3 snipers and 3 spotters. That's exactly what sniper squads *should* be. RIP Forgeworld, you truly were everything 40k should be yet GW wasn't.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Lathe Biosas wrote:

 Orkeosaurus wrote:

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
At least give it to the overpriced Vindicare Assassin.

If I recall that was his big thing back in 4e.

He could select the specific model to shoot.

But it wasn't overpowered, as you only get x amount of shots per turn and the Vindicare wasn't going to target Vehicles.

Didn't he have a ridiculously strong AT super-penetrator round plenty capable of one-shotting Landraiders? Or did that only come in in 5th?

 kirotheavenger wrote:

I do think it's very strange how snipers in 40k are almost exclusively carried enmass as squad weapons. 10 Ratlings, 10 Scout Snipers, 10 Rangers. It doesn't feel right on any level. I can only understand from the practical view that snipers don't pair well with other infantry weapons and players don't like the feeling of squads with mixed-usage weapons. Although that didn't stop Devastators or Tacticals being exactly that.

The Forgeworld Elysian Sniper squad springs to mind - a special squad of 3 snipers and 3 spotters. That's exactly what sniper squads *should* be. RIP Forgeworld, you truly were everything 40k should be yet GW wasn't.

Honestly GW should split snipers into two groups.

Actual "sniper snipers" with single units or single unit and spotter

Sharpshooters. Squads of units with long range rifles that are better than regular units but not quite the same as actual snipers.


Right now GW lumps the two together and the sniper squads are closer to the kind of thing you'd seen from rifle squads in "Napoleonic" era combat. Which is fairly fitting that GW often does dip back into archaic wartime inspirations.





As for snipers taking out non-character units I think its not just having a case of "feels bad" to be on the receiving end. It's also a functional thing too - that rocket launcher in a bolter squad isn't just a "feels good to use"; its also a core part of making that unit shift from anti-infantry to anti-tank. It's role and identity on the table is to take out tanks. Take out the rocket launcher instantly and suddenly the unit is no longer anti-tank. Now that player has lost a key counter which could leave them in a situation where it snowballs. Two snipers take out a couple of rocket launchers in one turn and suddenly one player has zero counter to the opponents tanks. Now sniper and tank becomes the dominating meta.

That said I've always liked the whole "take out key unit and another in the squad just picks up the weapon" approach to special weapons/banners and so forth. Honestly its something I think makes sense in the setting and in real wartimes. You can also simulate it on the tabletop if you want with a simple. "If this model is killed, instead remove another model in the same squad and place this unit in its location" approach. Which could be an interesting way to work things. Though it can get a little messy when you've got several specialists in a squad (sergeant, banner, weapon) and the order of which replaces which. Or just flat out let the player choose if they want to have a warrior drop their banner for a gun or vis versa

That's how I've always interpreted the justification of "player picks casualties".

Yeah it doesn't work quite so well with integrated weapons, which are probably at least as common as handheld weaponary in the 40k universe.

Snipers are definitely one of those things where it's really hard to balance them in a wargame.
Sniping the officers is kind of their whole shtique and it's what players expect out of their snipers. Set their officer-killing ability too low and players feel putout that their snipers can't snipe.
But then on the flipside you've got a game that focuses very heavily around the officers. They're supposed to be your centerpieces both in terms of how armys operate but also the visual and personality of your army. So actually sniping those officers out always feels lame and often 'unearned' for the player on the receiving end.

I know from having played Alphalegion in Horus Heresy, who basically just instantly snipe every officer, sergeant, and anyone else with ideas above their station with highly lethal instant-death weaponary it doesn't feel very fun!

It's also tricky cause snipers are expected to be super high lethality that when the hit things should die - more so than a lot of other unit types. So its not even an easy thing to balance in because you can't just lower lethality

People don't envision snipers as "chips away" type units unless its against something huge like a Hive Tyrant.

Would it break the game if GW just allowed a few more Vindicaire type snipers to be around? Like if Illic Nightspear and/or the Death Jester were roughly as good at sniping as the Vindicaire and other factions had their equivalents, would that be such a bad thing?

I'm not sure I mind the idea of having to be wary of where the enemy snipers are and making sure not to offer them too juicy a target.

Then again, it seems like the guys who *should* be vindicaire equivalents for some other factions are already squads instead (firesight marksmen, deathmarks, etc.) It's a weird disrespect for conservation of ninjutsu.

 Wyldhunt wrote:
Would it break the game if GW just allowed a few more Vindicaire type snipers to be around? Like if Illic Nightspear and/or the Death Jester were roughly as good at sniping as the Vindicaire and other factions had their equivalents, would that be such a bad thing?

I'm not sure I mind the idea of having to be wary of where the enemy snipers are and making sure not to offer them too juicy a target.

Then again, it seems like the guys who *should* be vindicaire equivalents for some other factions are already squads instead (firesight marksmen, deathmarks, etc.) It's a weird disrespect for conservation of ninjutsu.

Firesight Marksmen should not be Vindicare level. They're still just Fire Warriors-well trained and equipped, sure, but they're not ridiculously enhanced and whatnot like an Imperial Assassin is.

Deathmarks suffer from what all Necrons do-going off lore and even earlier editions, they should be individually much more powerful (and therefore, more expensive in points). But they've been nerfed over time by GW.

 kirotheavenger wrote:

Didn't he have a ridiculously strong AT super-penetrator round plenty capable of one-shotting Landraiders? Or did that only come in in 5th?

IIRC turbo penetrator was 4D6 AP but with no strength, so while it would on average glance a Land Raider, it was extremely unreliable, and odds of it actually killing the LR in one hit were very small.

 JNAProductions wrote:

 Wyldhunt wrote:
Would it break the game if GW just allowed a few more Vindicaire type snipers to be around? Like if Illic Nightspear and/or the Death Jester were roughly as good at sniping as the Vindicaire and other factions had their equivalents, would that be such a bad thing?

I'm not sure I mind the idea of having to be wary of where the enemy snipers are and making sure not to offer them too juicy a target.

Then again, it seems like the guys who *should* be vindicaire equivalents for some other factions are already squads instead (firesight marksmen, deathmarks, etc.) It's a weird disrespect for conservation of ninjutsu.

Firesight Marksmen should not be Vindicare level. They're still just Fire Warriors-well trained and equipped, sure, but they're not ridiculously enhanced and whatnot like an Imperial Assassin is.

Deathmarks suffer from what all Necrons do-going off lore and even earlier editions, they should be individually much more powerful (and therefore, more expensive in points). But they've been nerfed over time by GW.

I'm probably still under the influence of a short story I read forever ago where a firesight marksman got a convoy of vehicles to pause and then took out the target who mattered with drones afterwards. He's kind of an odd duck given that he's kind of a "squad"'s worth of drones being controlled by a single dude, but also those drones aren't proper models at the moment.

 JNAProductions wrote:

 Wyldhunt wrote:
Would it break the game if GW just allowed a few more Vindicaire type snipers to be around? Like if Illic Nightspear and/or the Death Jester were roughly as good at sniping as the Vindicaire and other factions had their equivalents, would that be such a bad thing?

I'm not sure I mind the idea of having to be wary of where the enemy snipers are and making sure not to offer them too juicy a target.

Then again, it seems like the guys who *should* be vindicaire equivalents for some other factions are already squads instead (firesight marksmen, deathmarks, etc.) It's a weird disrespect for conservation of ninjutsu.

Firesight Marksmen should not be Vindicare level. They're still just Fire Warriors-well trained and equipped, sure, but they're not ridiculously enhanced and whatnot like an Imperial Assassin is.

Deathmarks suffer from what all Necrons do-going off lore and even earlier editions, they should be individually much more powerful (and therefore, more expensive in points). But they've been nerfed over time by GW.

'Firesight Marksmen' Sniper Drone teams are advanced drones carrying advanced technology precision rifles guided by a an advanced tech sighting system. It wasn't that long ago they used hypervelocity rail rifles (now lore-nerfed to just plasma pulse sniper rifles).
Whereas the Vindicare is still a dude with a rifle firing comparatively primitive ammunition.

I think the output of any given sniper-team should be *roughly* comparable. The Vindicare can definitely lay claim as one of, if not the best, single sniping model in the game. But he's also just one dude. His output should be roughly equivalent, or even inferior, to small teams such as the Sniper Drone team.

Deathmarks similarly should have been perhaps a small team of 3 rather than a full squad of 10.

I think the two categories of snipers are a good suggestion. Differentiate between snipers and sharpshooters. Snipers would be able to kill off any model they want, from characters to special/heavy weapons and sergeants.
Depending on unit, one could be snipers, others sharpshooters. And wargear ability “spotter” could give a sharpshooter the ability to be a sniper for a shooting phase. Spotter could also give [IGNORE COVER] to the designated attack.
Some examples:
• Kasrkin/Aquilons/Kommandos/Krieg/Vespids/Exaction/Corsairs sniper would remain with its precision attacks. Similar units with only one sniper should keep it. Some probably need a buff, like the Corsair sniper. The D2 snipers would be more design to take out that heavy weapon, while D3 and D4, for support characters.
• Character snipers would be the ones design to kill actual leaders. Obviously, Vindicare is the king at this, but there are a couple more.
• Some precision attacks should totally be reworked or erased. Reiver squad have all precision attacks which seems odd, and there probably are more examples. I think I’d keep it only for their melee attacks. Find other way to buff and compensate.
• All sniper units would be more tricky
o Ratlings: I’d give precision to the fixer aka “sergeant”. Then, they’ll have a spotter (only in 10-ratling squad?), that can designate another ratling to have precision attacks.
o Aeldari Rangers. They’ll have a spotter, so only one precision attack. Wouldn’t be bad they get AP 2 snipers.
o Eliminators: honestly, I think they’re fine as it is. Maybe a small price increase if they prove too useful with picking key targets and not only charactes. Sergeant could still give spotter to someone else for that [IGNORE COVER].
o Deathmarks. not sure about this one. Maybe a "spotter" with better optics would do just fine. Or remove precision for the whole unit and make them excellent sharpshooters (AP3?) but more expensive


Some snipers probably should start doing D3+1 instead of D2? Or strength increased to 5. Otherwise, precision would be heavily nerfed when losing volumen of fire to snipe characters.

I haven't read the whole thread, so forgive me if I repeat something that's already been said:

 cuda1179 wrote:
Sniper rifles used to be able to do this in past editions of the game and it hardly made snipers OP.

I agree, I don't think it was OP. Being able to only target characters is often not worth it, as they have multiple wounds and an invul save.

 cuda1179 wrote:
Yeah, I can see a 10-man Ratling unit castrating a Tactical squad by saying "Three hits on the Sergeant, three on the melta, one on the lascannon" might be a bit harsh. If it was "all directed hits must be on the same model" it wouldn't be too bad.

Isn't harshness the point, though? The entire purpose of snipers is to deal disproportionate damage with minimal firepower. They don't play fair in the shooting phase, but it's no different to how deep strikers and flyers don't play fair in the movement phase, units with Fights First don't play fair in melee, etc. These situational advantages should theoretically balance out at the scale of a game or faction. If ratlings neuter a more expensive tactical squad that foolishly wandered into their sights, it's merely scissors winning against paper. Playing rock would mean keeping your tactical squads out of sight of the ratlings until your jumppack assault marines or indirect bombardment have dealt with the threat.

I don't think your proposed fix is necessary. It's already a gamble to assign Precision hits to targets and hope you're being neither too greedy nor too conservative.

 JNAProductions wrote:
It would also have an issue of Haves and Have-Nots.

Guard? Decent amount of Precison.
Marines? Same.
Chaos? With one glaring exception, none.
Emperor's Children? Almost everything.

Again, as above, this is the kind of rock-paper-scissors that defines a faction's character and playstyle.

The Precision rule is a neat advantage, but it's not even the main advantage of any faction that has lots of it. Conveniently, it's also near useless against several of the factions that lack access to it, such as those with a melee focus, lots of monsters and vehicles, and/or homogeneous gear. Those 20 hormagaunts bearing down on you are all identical, and once they reach melee, your ratlings are goners.

.

The big problem with snipers is that it breaks wound allocation, and having a more complex wound allocation system for just snipers is not worth the trouble.

Why would melee make Precision moot?
If you can snipe the Nob with a Klaw or the Sarge with a Fist, that's right about the same as killing the Heavy Weapons guy.

-Guardsman- wrote:

 cuda1179 wrote:
Sniper rifles used to be able to do this in past editions of the game and it hardly made snipers OP.

I agree, I don't think it was OP. Being able to only target characters is often not worth it, as they have multiple wounds and an invul save.

/quote]
It wasn't OP in the past. However, it was only on to-hit(?) rolls of 6 in the past (barring certain exceptions like the vindicaire iirc.)

So a squad of 10 eldar rangers were only averaging 1-2 shots that went on models of their choice, and then there was still a chance that they'd make their saves. Whereas just letting any attack with precision go on the models you want means that 10 rangers are putting about 8 hits on average onto whichever models they want.

So there are definitely ways to make sniping out specific models work, but it probably needs to be a more complicated change than just letting snipers put all their shots wherever they want.

Isn't harshness the point, though? The entire purpose of snipers is to deal disproportionate damage with minimal firepower.

There's probably a balance that could be struck. Having the exarch that does half your squad's damage insta-gibbed because they had to wander out into the open to do something can potentially be feels bad. Also, some sniper units (death marks and rangers if not some of the others mentioned in this thread) are currently considered to be "good" units partly because they're cheap action monkeys with deployment tricks. Sniping out models of your choice is a potentially powerful ability which means you'd have to charge more points for units that have that ability, which means those cheap action monkeys might no longer be cheap.

And then, even if you're okay with the idea of making snipers more deadly and elite (I sympathize), you run into the issue that, because a decent number of armies in the game are big on homogenous units, those expensive snipers you're paying for might not have any targets for their model-sniping trick. So if you're playing against necrons or tyranids, your eldar rangers have gone from being a useful cheap action monkey/speed bump to being an overcosted rifle squad with no meltagun guys to snipe out.

Which is why I think this maybe works better as a stratagem? It puts some of the cost of the potentially powerful ability into an optional strat that you can pay to use in matchups where it's useful and ignore in matchups where it isn't. Also, making it a strat means it's once-per-shooting-phase. So losing the special guns out of *one* of your squads that you left exposed to snipers is fluffy and costs you something, but you're not going to have every exarch in your army sniped out as soon as they emerge from a wave serpent.

I don't think your proposed fix is necessary. It's already a gamble to assign Precision hits to targets and hope you're being neither too greedy nor too conservative.

Tyran wrote:The big problem with snipers is that it breaks wound allocation, and having a more complex wound allocation system for just snipers is not worth the trouble.

Does it really break the game that badly? My understanding was that our current wound allocation system was basically to prevent people from spreading out wounds all over the place while still giving players control over the order in which their models died. It would be kind of odd for an opponent to opt to intentionally wound a bunch of models rather than finishing models off to reduce the opponent's offense. But even if they did, I'm not sure it's a huge problem to just have a few different wound counters in a given squad.

Am I missing something?

It's also a thematic and feature thing. If all a sniper does is have a long range attack, then now your sniper is indistinguishable from artillery and at that point tanks or artillery might offer similar long range, with more damage potential and become far more efficient a choice per points spent on them


So the sniper has to bring something unique to the table, both so that it feels like a sniper in the game; and so that it can stand out from other long ranged options the player has.

The issue is that you are forced to allocate to wounded models.

That means a sniper doesn't even need to kill its target, just wounding it means any following attack is for all purposes a "sniper" until the selected target dies.

It may not be an issue for guardsmen or even tactical marines, but it may be an issue for expensive multi-wound units like Terminators.

You could fix it by giving squads a "leader" and "trooper" designation per model. Each infantry unit now has 2 health systems.

All attacks must remove health from the troops before the leaders with the same system as there is now of only ever having one in the squad who can be wounded and removing health from them first etc...

Snipers either can or must remove health from the leader pool first and that the runs the same as troops.

With both carrying over to the other once they are removed. Ergo you wound the leaders to dead, those wounds carry over to the troops and vis versa.




It's a bit more to track, but functionally its just two health bars bar squad. Two different coloured microdice and that's all you'd need.