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Does anyone think it would be cool to have a backfire rule on some guns?


It could be kind of like 'Get's Hot' but instead of instanly taking a wound if you roll a 1, roll the dice again and on a 4+ or something the gun backfires, the model takes a wound, and you can't use the weapon again (sinse it probably got wreacked after backfiring) or something like that. The gun only wouldn't work if you rolled the 4+ after rolling the 1. If you roll a 1, 2, 3 it would be like the gun jamming or something so the model wouldn't be able to shoot next turn (representing the model having to unjam his gun).

Any Comments?

I think guns don't jam often enough to warrent that kind of rule. Now if that was a d20 it might make sense but its only a d6 so there's not enough numbers to accurately depict jamming. You sound like me when im bored, think up random rules that sound great but can never get to quite work.

Well, why not make it "On a Roll of 1 to hit, the gun may have jammed. Roll 2d6. If a Double 1 is rolled, the gun Jams, backfires or some other suitably horrific event"

Of course, the problem is its a finicky rule that has no real need to be there. And again yeah its more suited to a d20 game

That is just a slightly different way of doing 'Get's Hot!'

It is quicker and easier for gameplay to give the 'Get's Hot! rule to a new type of gun that you want to make hazardous.

Complicated, fluff-less, annoying, pointless. I can't think of a single weapon this could be applied to, and although weapons do jam in real life, rolling a bunch of misses probably represents jamming better than this rule does. As for back firing, any weapon that isn't as devastating as a Plasma weapon (which I wouldn't wield if I were anyone unless it was the only weapon I had and a Terminator was bearing down on me), but has a one in twelve chance of killing the user, I don't think anyone would want to field it.

On a side note, I think Imperial Plasma weapons should lose "Get's Hot." It's just annoying and really brings the weapon down as an option (at least for units with 5+ armor saves or worse), below its point value at least.

There is that system in Dark Heresey (percentile system) but i find it makes more sense as its a roll playing game, in 40k, i just believe it would be a slow down to the game....

They had something like that in 2nd edition, related to the rapid fire dice. It slowed the game way down, but was occasionally kinda funny.

Yes, sustained fire weapons could Jam in 2nd edition. It sucked and made sustained fire weapons quite lame.

Back then weapons did not have a "Heavy X" stat. They had "Sustained Fire X Dice" stat where X= the number of sustained fire dice you would roll. The sustained fire dice were 6 sided and had a "jam" on one face, a "1" on two faces, a "2" on two faces and a "3" on one face.

So with the assault cannon before rolling to hit you would roll 3 sustained fire dice. For every "jam" you rolled you had to spend one shooting phase clearing the jam instead of shooting. If you rolled 3 jams the cannon blew up and killed the firer instantly. Usually you would get 2 to 4 shots and a jam. Of course, back then they had a 48" range, S8 and -3 armor modifier (AP3 equivalent, roughly.)

And games only lasted 4 turns so if your Heavy Bolter jammed you effectively lose it for 1/4th of the game. It was way better to just take a missile launcher or lascannon.

Weapon Jamming is a dumb rule. It's effectively represented by a model's BS in 3rd, 4th, 5th edition. When a model fails a roll to hit it represents any number of things happening such as the round being a dud, the gun jams, a bird gak on his goggles as he was about to fire, etc.