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I see both sides to this arguement and I believe the intent of the rule was to make them LD 7. Until a FAQ comes out I'd have to say that RoB Trumps it.

Sourclams- Does my assestment of the order ring true to you? Do you not determine the LD you're gonna use before you figure in modifiers?

thanoson, that IS true, but Sourclams thinks that the LD they take is unmodifiable, because it's not theirs, but someone else's who conveniently gets put into their stats but is unmodifiable...

Still not sure about this...but I still think they get the value, which THEN gets modified.

I believe that it is the natural state of all numbers/stats in this game is to be modifiable. In order to remain unmodifiable, a number/stat has to be expresly stated as being so.

I have no direct rules quote to back this up. It just seem like a logical extension to make.

Sorry Soulclams But the UNIT is taking the test.
Yes they use the commanders Ld value ,but they are still taking the test.
The commander does NOT take the test
Any unit within 12" is effected by Soulless.
The Ld value is unimportant except if it is over 7.
The actual number is unimportant because whatever it is COUNT AS 7.
Those two words tell us that the true state of the unit is not used, we then treat it as the special rules state.

Quoted from Padixon:

The RoB rule allows the unit to not use their LD value as needed by the BGB ..., and instead you make the 2D6 roll and per the RoB rule then check it against the value of the Commander. The Commander's LD value is not affected by the Pariah in this scenario and his LD is the unaffected value of 10.

Soulless reduces the leadership of a unit within 12" to 7 but that is all it does. As stated clearly and explicitly within Rights of Battle, the unit is no longer using its own leadership.

If the Eldar Avatar had the ability to have one attack against a friendly unit instead resolved against itself as if it was the target, and the only attack in question was a melta shot, what do you think would be the resolution?

Sourclams- Does my assestment of the order ring true to you? Do you not determine the LD you're gonna use before you figure in modifiers?

Still not sure about this...but I still think they get the value, which THEN gets modified.

Based on the wording of Rights of Battle it doesn't matter which order you assign the two rules.

If RoB is done first, the unit ignores its own leadership value, takes its commander's leadership for all tests, and then Soulless nukes the leadership they aren't using to 7. The unit still carries any negative modifiers from combat resolution, pinning, etc.

If Soulless is done first, the unit's leadership is nuked to 7, then it ignores its own leadership value and uses the Leadership 10 carried by its commander. The unit still carries any negative modifiers from combat resolution, pinning, etc.

sourclams wrote:


Soulless reduces the leadership of a unit within 12" to 7

There's your mistake Soulless does not reduce the Ld. In makes the Units Ld Count AS 7 . Nowhere in the rule does it say the Ld of the unit is reduced.

You are correct. I paraphrased badly.

The unit is still not using its own leadership. Situation unchanged.

Exactly what I have been saying Sour. It is irrelevant what the unit within 12 Ld is. They are no longer using their own Ld they are using the RoB provided by the leader. There is no arguement that their LD gets modded to 7.. However, as stated, since the unit is not using their own LD the fear has no direct effect on them for purposes of Ld tests.

SO then you are saying that no modifiers are gonna be used then. No psi scream, no losing combat by 5. Because the commander isn't being affected by combat ergo they use his unmodified LD for all test. Does that sound right?

Nurglitch wrote:PirateRobotNinjaofDeath:

The rules say that using a Leadership value is having a Leadership value. I've already pointed that out a few times already. To whit:

The Leadership Tests rule says:
"If a unit includes models with different Leadership values, always use the one with the highest Ld value."

So what is a unit's Leadership value? The Leadership value that it uses for Leadership tests.

The Morale Checks rule says:
"Morale checks (also called Morale tests) are taken by rolling 2D6 and comparing the total to the unit's Leadership value."

What gets used in a Morale check? The unit's Leadership value.

Are you seriously still not listening to us here? We have shown why we think these lines you quote have no relevance, and rather than address our arguments you just keep requoting them over and over again.

"If a unit includes models with a different Leadership value, always use the one with the highest LD value."
So the DA unit would be leadership 9 because of the vet sergeant. The unit can either use that leadership, or use a special codex rule to override having to use that leadership and use the commander's leadership instead.

"Morale checks are taken by rolling 2d6 and comparing the total to the unit's leadership value."

Yes, this is the default scenario. However, the codex specific rule Rites of Battle gives an alternative to this, by allowing them to compare the total to the COMMANDER'S leadership value instead.


With RoB, the moral checks line now looks like this

"Morale checks are taken by rolling 2d6 and [either] comparing the total to the unit's leadership value [or comparing it to the commander's leadership value]"

This means that the unit can either use its own modified leadership of 7, or use it's commander's unmodified leadership of 10 (unless of course he too is in range of the pariah).

thanoson wrote:SO then you are saying that no modifiers are gonna be used then. No psi scream, no losing combat by 5. Because the commander isn't being affected by combat ergo they use his unmodified LD for all test. Does that sound right?

No, what we're saying is that you use the commander's leadership IN PLACE of the unit's own leadership. Losing combat by 5 means that the unit takes a moral test at -5. It may either use it's own leadership of 9, which would be modified to 4, or it would use the commander's leadership of 10 modified to 5.

This is because the wording is different. One says "takes a moral test at -5" while the pariah says "the unit counts as leadership 7." The former applies to all morale tests, while the latter simply changes the stat line on the unit (which RoB allows it to not use anyways).

We would not be arguing this if soulless was worded "the unit uses a leadership value of 7 for all tests" or "the unit takes tests at -x leadership" or "the unit counts as leadership 7, which it uses for the purposes of all tests." Likewise, if RoB said "a unit may replace its leadership with the commander's leadership" or "all units count as having the commander's leadership," or something else along those lines, we could see that RoB too would be modifying the unit's stat line, and soulless would take precedence. However, this is not the case and RoB instead offers an alternative to using the unit's own leadership. This allows it to bypass soulless entirely, so long as the commander is out of range.

Eight Ball wrote:thanoson, that IS true, but Sourclams thinks that the LD they take is unmodifiable, because it's not theirs, but someone else's who conveniently gets put into their stats but is unmodifiable...

Still not sure about this...but I still think they get the value, which THEN gets modified.

You mistake our argument. We're not saying that it's unmodifiable, we're saying that it's not theirs thus they never gain ownership of it (putting it into their stat line) which means that soulless never has a chance to modify it. They simply compare their 2d6 against the commander's leadership rather than their own, and he is outside the area of affect of soulless.

8 ball, just out of curiosity, are you and Nurglitch mates in real life? I notice you're Canadian and the low post count indicates that you're new to the boards.

You know Sourclams, I never thought of that...but no, I don't know him in real life....UNLESS, Nurglitch (if you're around), do you live somewhere near Winnipeg, Manitoba?

/offtopic

Eight Ball wrote:You know Sourclams, I never thought of that...but no, I don't know him in real life....UNLESS, Nurglitch (if you're around), do you live somewhere near Winnipeg, Manitoba?

/offtopic

eeeew winterpeg lol

//offtopic

rofl...yeah, luckily I live about an hour away from there, where, albeit still very cold, it is a bit...nicer...

where you from PRND?

(wow lots of offtopic here)

PirateRobotNinjaofDeath wrote:

thanoson wrote:SO then you are saying that no modifiers are gonna be used then. No psi scream, no losing combat by 5. Because the commander isn't being affected by combat ergo they use his unmodified LD for all test. Does that sound right?

No, what we're saying is that you use the commander's leadership IN PLACE of the unit's own leadership. Losing combat by 5 means that the unit takes a moral test at -5. It may either use it's own leadership of 9, which would be modified to 4, or it would use the commander's leadership of 10 modified to 5.

This is because the wording is different. One says "takes a moral test at -5" while the pariah says "the unit counts as leadership 7." The former applies to all morale tests, while the latter simply changes the stat line on the unit (which RoB allows it to not use anyways).

Under Morale Modifiers (pg 43), it says "This is represented by applying Leadership modifiers to morale checks, which can reduce the unit's Leadership value by -1, -2..."

The modifiers affect the unit's Leadership value, not the roll itself.

I think thanoson is right. According to your argument you're trapped into accepting that any unit using the commander's Leadership is immune to morale modifiers, which is a bold claim to be sure.

I don't think that can be so, because the Book of St. Lucius explicitly says replaced with the holders unmodified Leadership. This is different from Rites of Battle or the IG's Comms, which don't say unmodified. So, they probably can't be unmodified as it doesn't say so specifically when it does elsewhere.

Modifications seem different from the Pariah rule or the Culexus Souless rule. Perhaps they are not technically a modifier to LD. It's a replacement of the existing value with another value rather than (say) '-3 to LD unless it brings it lower to 7, in that case count as 7.' It changes LD without being an LD modifier, before any modifers applied by checks. Notice that the Pariah/Souless rules don't mention any checks directly while the Rites of Battle rule does. So as it's constantly on, the Pariah ability happens before any checks, which ironically means that Rites of Battle does work against it because it only works sometimes instead of always. Rites of Battle is a more specific rule.

I lean towards the intepretation that a DA unit without fearless within a Pariah's range of effect that loses a combat by 2 may take, through Rites of Battle, a morale check of 10, modified by -2 for losing the battle (LD 8). It's not required to take the check at LD 7 -2 because all rules seem like they do work fine. The Pariah changes it to LD 7, and during a check, the Rites of Battle allow another unit's LD (one which is assumed outside the range of Pariah at that time). If there were a DA unit with an LD of 2, they could still use the Rites of Battle to make it a 10 for the purposes of certain checks.

deadlygopher wrote:

PirateRobotNinjaofDeath wrote:

thanoson wrote:SO then you are saying that no modifiers are gonna be used then. No psi scream, no losing combat by 5. Because the commander isn't being affected by combat ergo they use his unmodified LD for all test. Does that sound right?

No, what we're saying is that you use the commander's leadership IN PLACE of the unit's own leadership. Losing combat by 5 means that the unit takes a moral test at -5. It may either use it's own leadership of 9, which would be modified to 4, or it would use the commander's leadership of 10 modified to 5.

This is because the wording is different. One says "takes a moral test at -5" while the pariah says "the unit counts as leadership 7." The former applies to all morale tests, while the latter simply changes the stat line on the unit (which RoB allows it to not use anyways).

Under Morale Modifiers (pg 43), it says "This is represented by applying Leadership modifiers to morale checks, which can reduce the unit's Leadership value by -1, -2..."

The modifiers affect the unit's Leadership value, not the roll itself.

I think thanoson is right. According to your argument you're trapped into accepting that any unit using the commander's Leadership is immune to morale modifiers, which is a bold claim to be sure.

You quoted his post, but I see you didn't quite get what he was saying.

He is saying that modifiers would work with RoB because modifiers affect the roll.

And in the parts that was not quoted he went on to say that soulless literally says "unit's leadership counts as 7" This *is* a stat line change. Not a modifier to a leadership check, like say a lost combat would be.

RoB simply allows a unit to literally *use* (as worded in the rule itself) the Commander's Leadership (his stat line) for the test (morale/pinning).

Again, I see this on as pretty RAW tight.

1) you have the soulless ability that modifies a stat line "unit's leadership counts as 7"

2) you have RoB ability that gives the affected unit to not use its own leadership and use one from the commanders instead.

3) modifiers are still added during a lost combat because a modifier (as you all agree) does not change a stat line (basically it does not make a stat line "count as" anything). But affects the roll itself.

4) Soulless is not worded that way at all. In fact it is worded as making a units leadership count as 7. As quoted above.

PirateRobotNinjaofDeath wrote:

thanoson wrote:SO then you are saying that no modifiers are gonna be used then. No psi scream, no losing combat by 5. Because the
This is because the wording is different. One says "takes a moral test at -5" while the pariah says "the unit counts as leadership 7." The former applies to all morale tests, while the latter simply changes the stat line on the unit (which RoB allows it to not use anyways).

I just want to point out that Moral test are taken at a, in this case, -5 to the leadership of the unit in question. In essence the test itself isnt modified. the leadership used is.
I have no other point besides making sure te correct wotding is used.

I disagree Steelmage99,

look at the rule in question a bit closer

"This is represented by applying Leadership modifiers to morale checks, which can reduce the unit's Leadership value by -1, -2..." pg. 43 BGB

Notice the first half of the sentence

"This is represented by applying Leadership modifiers to morale checks,..."

It says the LD modifier is applied to the morale **check**. Note I emphasized the **check**

What is a check? A check is a roll as pointed out again on pg. 43 "Morale checks (also called Morale tests) are taken by rolling 2D6...."

So the LD modifier *is* applied to the roll.

Note: A LD value is *not* a LD characteristic. As noted on Pg. 6 of the BGB.

IMHO a value is a characteristic that has been modified (and often times the modification is '0') that is used against the roll as pointed out on pg. 43 for taking morale checks and checking them against the LD value and *not* the characteristic.

The question is whether Soulless affects the value or the characteristic. The words used by Soulless doesn't say, but says "counts as leadership 7". This IMHO again, means a literal change to the characteristic because it has a defined role and range of 12" and not a modifier of any type (like a -x) nor does it imply it is used versus any rolls (like saying for morale tests/pinning etc..) which would imply this is a LD value change.

Sense none of those 'normal' wordings are used to imply it is a value change and instead show a characteristic change. The RoB rule clearly alows the unit to not use its own LD characteristic and use his (Master) instead.

This may (and probably true) be an edition wording issue. But, we are in 5th Ed. And so, we *must* use the wording as represented in the 5th ed book against/with the wording represented in a particular codex.

To caveat, Many many codices have rules/special rules/wargear that are completely shut down because of this exact issue.

Examples are, but are not limited too:

Thornback biomorph
Against the odds
True grit
etc...

Padixon, as much as it galls me to admit, there is no meaningful distinction in how the rules treat characteristics and characteristic values. In the description of bikes, the rules describe increasing the "tougness characteristic" rather than the "toughness value".

Also, neither the Rights of Battle or the Pariahs are specific whether they would be using "Leadership value" or "Leadership characteristic" according to your uses of the term.

I also have no idea what relevence Thornback has to this discussion since that special rule is useless because it refers to 4th edition combat mechanics. Is there a point to introducing a rules construction like yours if, as you claim, it causes more problems than it solves?

Solkan, Yes, there is a distinction. From pg. 6 (I believe) the part about model 'characteristics' and then later you read about the value of the characteristic.

And I only mentioned the other special rules to show that 4th edition mechanics *have* changed as you stated. Please read morale checks form the 4th ed codex, and you will see that it is not a cut and paste to 5th ed. I am sorry if this may have confused you.

4th ed stated modifiers affect the morale roll more specifically than 5th ed does.

Plus you can clearly see the difference from how the rules are written on a value vs. a Characteristic.

Models have characteristics, but you roll against it's value. A value is a characteristic + or -.

Hence they way this rule is written: "This is represented by applying Leadership modifiers to morale checks, which can reduce the unit's Leadership value by -1, -2..." pg. 43 BGB.

I know these are terms *not* used at all by the masses. And in fact may be a new term for you in regards to reading 40k rules.

Edit: For example: If I would ask you what was the LD Characteristic (no one says it like this but follow me here please) of a model. You would reply x.
If I would ask you what is the LD value after a combat loss you would reply x - y.

Notice, A characteristic is what is written on paper in your codex. The value is changeable. I hope I making sense with this. If not I will try better. Very good points all though Solkan, and thank you for bringing up the confusion in my post.

Edit again to keep from referring to an above post: This is what I mean. A value in the BGB is only listed as a modifier of x +/- y. The Soulless wording simply says "counts as LD 7" This *can* and is IMO a flat statement of the models *new* LD. Also to note the value is *only* used when comparing to a roll. The Soulless rule makes no reference to that.

Soulless's Rule vs. RoB is a bit of ambiguous in regards to how it is treated. I.E. As a straight Stat change, or as a value to be used in all tests.