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Why is it that you don't get a bonus to your armor save when you're in cover? Yes, cover does help for low AP weapons, but Space Marines don't take their armor off when they get into a building, so does anybody else think that cover saves should be redone?

Hi Jab4962.
I agree the way weapon dammage is handeled in 40kis the most akward, counter intuitive and complicated method I am aware of.
It is possible to have ONE simple system that covers all units .
And if you make supression and cover part of the basic system ,(which most other game developers do) , you get far more game play with fewer rules!

In short YES I agree.

TTFN
Lanrak.

I don't know about all that....But I DO think that a cover save should be taken along with the armour save. And make it susceptible to AP as well. A Lascannon that destroys a LR isn't gonna be stopped by long grass. Its gonna go straight through both cover and armour.

I agree, its always been my biggest pet peeve that apparently all armor must be removed when hiding in cover.

It's not that it gets stopped by the long grass, it's that the gunner doesn't know which grass blade the person is hiding behind.

Lanrak wrote:Hi Jab4962.
I agree the way weapon dammage is handeled in 40kis the most akward, counter intuitive and complicated method I am aware of.
It is possible to have ONE simple system that covers all units .
And if you make supression and cover part of the basic system ,(which most other game developers do) , you get far more game play with fewer rules!

In short YES I agree.

TTFN
Lanrak.

What? 40k's system is very simple and not counter-intuitive at all. A fething monkey could figure it out.

No. Cover saves are just fine. I'd like to emphasize, NO, especially in 5th edition, when cover saves are everywhere.

I think cover should be harder to obtain, but much better when you do. I think it should work like a FNP, with AP2 and AP1 weapons reducing it to a 5+, and all forms of close combat ignoring it completely. This wouldn't change the metagame much, as cover would be harder to find, making it better for shooty armies, but would be more important to deny, making it better for assaulty armies.

Do it like Fantasy.

The Defenestrator wrote:Do it like Fantasy.

That wouldn't work for 40k.

It should be reductions in ballistic skill. That makes more sense. But if you're in fortified cover, then I could see getting a +1 to your save or something like that.

And then I remember that there are no armor save modifiers...sigh.

Sanquine Sympathy wrote:That wouldn't work for 40k.

sure it would. -1 to BS if target is in cover, or hull down, you can vary it depending on cover quality but that's just a question of balance. It's patently ridiculous that there's no reason for a space marine to take cover from small arms fire.

When you take a cover save and pass it, it means you didn't get hit. The cover did.

to the op, the reason is simple. If you got a bonus to armor saves from cover then every single meq in the game would have a 2+ save making them nigh indestructible. And what would termies get something better? 2nd, 5th edition is highly geared to close range firing/close combat enough already. Cover is a significant hurdle to for every shooty army in the game. Increasing its effectiveness even further would be another nail in the coffin of shooting armies. Cover is so easy to obtain in 5th its crazy. I just inter splice 2 units and they both get a 4+ cover save thats pretty great.

To Sphe. Where as I ideally agree with you on your statement, for the standpoint of streamlined rules I don't think your suggestion will ever get implemented as it adds in an extra step that is unnecessary.

Sphe wrote:When you take a cover save and pass it, it means you didn't get hit. The cover did.

And when you fail it?

I can see it now:

"Alright men! Since we're behind cover, you can take off all of your armor!"

@Dumplingman-
The other problem is that shooting just plain stinks as it is, cover just makes it worse. If there were armor save modifiers and BS modifiers, then there wouldn't be as much of a problem. I.e. 10 guardsmen fire into a squad of Orks behind cover and lasguns give a -1 modifier. Sure, the IG all hit on 5+ now, but the Orks don't get a save.
Yeah, I'll take that.

If lasguns actually had a -1 save modifier, they'd be feared instead of mocked.

GW arbitrarily decided they wanted 40k and fantasy to be two completely different systems. Armor save modifiers made 40k too similar to fantasy. Heavy ccw like choppas and chainaxes that made armor better than a 4+ into 4+ have been removed for the same reason. GW wanted the two systems to have NOTHING to do with one another in how they're played.

Granted, getting a cover save and an armor save would be more realistic - cover first, and anything that didn't hit that would go against armor, and anything that got through that would hit invulnerable save forcefields and such. But this is also similar to fantasy. Not the cover part, but the multiple saves. In fantasy you can get an armor save, followed by a ward save, followed by a chance to regenerate any wounds you took if the model is geared correctly.

In 40k, you take the best save you have available to you, period. It's just how the system works. In warmachine, you don't get any saves at all - if something hits you, it hits you and you're hurt or dead. More armor makes you harder to kill, but if someone beats your armor by 1, that's all they need and you're dead [unless you're multi-wound].

@vladsimplater

Not disagreeing with you at all just saying that realistically cover works a bit different, but in the game they can't make a mechanic that works like that. And I copmletely agree on how powerful cover saves are.

Hi folks.
The problem is that GW PLC didnt want have a simulation type rule set for 40k. Just mutate the WH rules to be different enough to say 'its no longer WH in space with lots of guns'.

There are much simpler methods to get intuiative results.Where cover makes a target harder to see.And hard cover adds to the armour value of the target behind the cover.

These systems also incorperate supression and moral and command and control issues.With far fewer rules than 40k has.

IF you want to impose true line of sight when the horisontal and vertical game scales are so out of proportion , fair enough. But at least extend this logic to casualty removal!

40k is a very abstract rule set. Aquisition and accuracy modifiers are lumped into defencive values ad hoc.

TTFN
Lanrak.

Exactly.

If you want rules with more realism, it would be easier to try out something like Stargrunt than start to rewrite 40K.

It might be something to have attacks against models in cover re-roll successful hits.

Roll a save, re roll hits, pass a camel through the eye of a needle or, I don't know, perhaps have a to hit penalty, you know a dice modifier -1 to hit or something. /rant

Actually, speaking to the topic of the thread: Don't Techmarines and Masters of the Forge have an ability to improve the cover save provided by a ruined building?

HI all.
The problem with Nurglich'es idea of re rolling the sucessful hit if in cover is it makes High BS and AV far too good.

Cover should make the target harder to see.
Therefore , in absence of 'aquisition /awarness mechanic' , altering the to hit roll would be the closest method.

If simple modifiers for distance and cover (as used in WH ) were used, it would be more efficient.But 40k isnt WH, (even though it still uses most of the same game mechanics .)

I do find it odd that 40k dev teams dropped modifiers as they are 'too clumbersome-difficult and slow the game down'.
Then litter the rules with exceptions (special rules )that include modifiers !That are so poorly implemented and explained they have a more detrimental effect on the game .

I realy do not see why GW keep 40k as a 'WH clone' rule set ?
It made sense when 40k was 'syphoning' players fom WH.(Upto the mid 1990s.)
But as the games are so differrent in game play now, why keep the inapropriate WH mechanics in 40k?

TTFN
Lanrak.

Omitting To-Hit modifiers in 40k with the stupid reasoning that it's "too complicated" (Oh noes, it's +/-1, when do you learn that...mh...ah, I know, in fething preschool!) takes a lot of possibilities out of the game.

BS boils down to having "crappy" BS of 3, or "good" BS of 4. Everyone (ok, not orks) is arguing that their units should have a BS of 4 because they are überawesome warriors so they should have a BS which reflects that.

Introducing modifiers, some armies could easily have BS of 4 or 5 base, just because you get modifiers for it anyway. Shortrange firefights in the open would be more realistically deadly for example (imagine our bolters hitting on 2+ all of the sudden).

Combine that with the all or nothing approach for armor and you have a system that more stupid than "intuitive" or "fast".

Sorry for the rantificaion of the thread.

Greets
Schepp himself

I would like it if it was like this

player 1
Roll to hit... if it hits:
Roll to wound... if it wounds:
player 2
Roll for cover (If any)... If this fails:
Roll for armor (If applicable)... if failed, dead.

So I guess i am saying I like it better if you get both an armor save and cover save... it seems more realistic.

Cover saves are fine.
But now they are everywhere and a unit is hard to take down with 4+ cover saves.
In the future, I opt for 5+ cover saves, more casualties, greater chance to take down units via shooting.

they could make the save on a D12 and add the values of the two saves together. It would be similar to taking both, but a little more precise.

Hi again.
The problem is not so much the 'size' of the dice used to determine the saves cover or other wise.But the method used.

Lots of other game systems use the 'humble D6' in far more efficient and inventive ways.(Chain Reaction III for example.)

I can use a D100 and get 100 possible outcomes.

OR I can compare 15 armour values against 10 damage ratings and get 150 different out comes.

Or use 2D6 in a sequence of 3 rolls to get 46656 possible outcomes.

Or use 3 D6 in a sequence of 2 rolls to get 46656 possible outcomes.

Or try to get all the possible outcomes of all interactions between all the units in a vast universe like 40k to fall between 5 possible results.

Can you see what the REAL prolem is?Using a single D6 in a deterministic way is VERY limiting!

TTFN
Lanrak

Vladsimpaler wrote:

Sphe wrote:When you take a cover save and pass it, it means you didn't get hit. The cover did.

And when you fail it?

I can see it now:

"Alright men! Since we're behind cover, you can take off all of your armor!"

Where do people get such ridiculous ideas from? If you failed your cover save, you would've failed your armor save too, so no, it's not like everyone takes off their armor when they get in tall grass.

Hi Bookwrack.
So if the cover is just obscuring the target, like long grass.
NOT hard cover like a bunker.

Then because the projectile passes straight through the long grass it atomaticaly penetrates body armour?

Lumping aquisition-targeting with targets physical protection, is just a poor idea.

But then the 40k rule set is full of ideas that are 'less than great.'

TTFN
Lanrak.

the rules also state that you take your best save.

This means that if you had to take a cover save then your armor wouldn't have helped anyways.