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From the thread:

MikeMcSomething wrote:
My buddy pointed out that the Venom Cannon has it's own pair of eyes, which creates problems when drawing LOS by pure RAW for shooting.

This is actually true of most Tyranid weapons. It could be argued the model making the shooting attack is the gun itself (as it is a living organism), but is also untargetable grubbins by the same rule as banners. Sort of like how Imperial Guard Heavy Weapons Teams are 2 guys sharing a single stat-line. In squads this hardly matters, but a Carnifex could stick his guns around terrain and be immune to reprisal.

 Elemental wrote:

BeAfraid wrote:
OH! While I am on a roll bitching about stupid things.

GEVs in the roll of armored vehicles. There are a LOT of reasons why you do not see, and will never see Air Cushioned Vehicles, or GEVs in the roll of an Armored Fighting Vehicle (land combat, as a tank, personnel carrier, etc.).

And you know those lightsabers in Star Wars? They totally wouldn't work in real life! That just totally ruins my enjoyment of the movies!

There is a HUGE DIFFERENCE between a light saber and a GEV/ACV.

And it is sad that people cannot understand this.

A Lightsaber does not defy the laws of physics. It is not breaking the laws of physics to have some form of coherent light, nor for plasma to be contained in a magnetic field.

That is it Ridiculiusly expensive to do so is another story.

If we are talking about Space Fantasies, then there is nothing wrong with having "improbable technologies" appear for the sake of entertainment.

But for those same technologies to appear in what is supposed to be a hard Sci-Fi game or simulation.... Then it is stretching things just a little bit.

But I would apply the same standards to the entire 40K and GW Universe, which I kind of left behind when I wanted something a little more coherent and not a collection of kludges.

MB

Ninja Cola for Super Dungeon Explore for sure. Not so much any one rule as all of his rules. Just stack all of your best Agility gear on him and he's pretty much impossible to kill, and he murders everything that he gets near. As a player you don't have to make any choices as to what gear to give him, as his attack and defense are all the same stat, so just ply him with gear.

If the Consul doesn't kill him early (and kill him immediately upon resurrection) he just steamrolls the dungeon.

How he made it through playtesting I will never know...

In LOTR SBG you used to be able to field an army of goblins riding wargs. On the first turn of the game you have all of your goblins dismount and they fight on foot alongside the wargs. While other animal mounts (read: horses) become non-combatants when they become riderless, wargs / giant wolves are an actual unit in the game they so they remain a viable unit. This tactic resulted in multiplying the points value of the goblin army with no real drawback. I think they plugged this loophole with a faq / errata.

BeAfraid wrote:

 Elemental wrote:

BeAfraid wrote:
OH! While I am on a roll bitching about stupid things.

GEVs in the roll of armored vehicles. There are a LOT of reasons why you do not see, and will never see Air Cushioned Vehicles, or GEVs in the roll of an Armored Fighting Vehicle (land combat, as a tank, personnel carrier, etc.).

And you know those lightsabers in Star Wars? They totally wouldn't work in real life! That just totally ruins my enjoyment of the movies!

There is a HUGE DIFFERENCE between a light saber and a GEV/ACV.

And it is sad that people cannot understand this.

A Lightsaber does not defy the laws of physics. It is not breaking the laws of physics to have some form of coherent light, nor for plasma to be contained in a magnetic field.

That is it Ridiculiusly expensive to do so is another story.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but lightsabers do break the laws of physics. Somehow they create the blade, and emit light, and yet as long as there is no interference from another blade, cortosis etc etc, the blade recharges the battery pack, with no loss of energy

Does it really matter? This thread is for discussing quirks within game rules. If you two want to have physics debates or real life vs fantasy debates you should make your own thread.

BeAfraid wrote:
It is not breaking the laws of physics to have some form of coherent light, nor for plasma to be contained in a magnetic field.

Lol.

I mean really, what else is there to say about that? You think that hover tanks are just too unrealistic despite their problems being engineering problems that could potentially be overcome, while you're willing to handwave away the blatant problems with lightsabers? FFS, "coherent light" is just meaningless technobabble and you can't have a closed-ended magnetic field from only one source.

But for those same technologies to appear in what is supposed to be a hard Sci-Fi game or simulation.... Then it is stretching things just a little bit.

And most scifi games aren't supposed to be perfectly realistic simulations. Even when they aren't blatant space opera or Tolkien-in-space they still say "what if" and then explore the consequences. And so asking "what if future armies have solved the engineering problems of making hover tanks" is a perfectly reasonable thing to do. What if the hover tank has a laser weapon (no recoil) or good recoil compensation? What if the hover tank has a compact fusion reactor that allows it to carry enough armor that temporarily scraping the ground after a near-miss from an explosion just damages the paint? You can still have rules (and a story) that answer without leaving the simulation/hard-scifi genre as long as the answers are realistic given the premises.

OK, back 'on topic' everyone - thanks!

I can't believe I talked about weird Warmachine rules without mentioning Press Gangers. They have an ability, where if they destroy a living enemy warrior model engaged by two or more of them, they can add a model to a nearby Sea Dog unit. Which is fine by itself, but the models they can press-gang include dogs, giant wolves, tentacled magic-eating abominations, 2ft tall mutant trolls, hideously mutated gargoyle-like creatures, and intelligent evil trees.

 statu wrote:

BeAfraid wrote:

 Elemental wrote:

BeAfraid wrote:
OH! While I am on a roll bitching about stupid things.

GEVs in the roll of armored vehicles. There are a LOT of reasons why you do not see, and will never see Air Cushioned Vehicles, or GEVs in the roll of an Armored Fighting Vehicle (land combat, as a tank, personnel carrier, etc.).

And you know those lightsabers in Star Wars? They totally wouldn't work in real life! That just totally ruins my enjoyment of the movies!

There is a HUGE DIFFERENCE between a light saber and a GEV/ACV.

And it is sad that people cannot understand this.

A Lightsaber does not defy the laws of physics. It is not breaking the laws of physics to have some form of coherent light, nor for plasma to be contained in a magnetic field.

That is it Ridiculiusly expensive to do so is another story.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but lightsabers do break the laws of physics. Somehow they create the blade, and emit light, and yet as long as there is no interference from another blade, cortosis etc etc, the blade recharges the battery pack, with no loss of energy

There are any number of possible, real-world solutions for a light-saber.

The stupidest is the magnetically contained plasma. But this suffers from problems similar to an MRI (see if you can find a video of what happens when a metal object gets near an MRI).

HOWEVER... Magnetics are not the only means of creating a contained blade that "glows."

There are an untold number of meta-materials that could be created, which self-assemble into such a blade, and produce a reaction when they encounter another blade. In the same way that meta-materials can be created which "bend light" to produce a nearly perfect invisibility for an object, so to could they be made to channel plasma (electricity) to produce a contained bolt of lightning.

Then there are the more extravagant means of creating the Lightsaber, such as the manipulation of the Higgs Field to attach a superfluous amount of Higgs Bosons to photons causing them to concentrate in a localized pattern (a "blade"), which would tend to mess up pretty severely anything it touched (although probably vastly more severely than we would see in the movies).

The problem there is the energy required to create a localized manipulation of the Higgs field is on the order of around 20TW. Or, not something you could contain in the Lightsaber handle without an equivalently massive manipulation of space-time to have the energy source elsewhere, yet connected to the Lightsaber.

And even though that last example is ridiculous, it is within the laws of physics.

But the earlier examples could produce a Lightsaber that actually worked (it would need a pretty big power source, but nothing that is not within the realm of possibilities for that size - although definitely not with our current technology).

However, nothing on earth will prevent the laws of pressure equalization from collapsing the Air Cusion, or Ground-Effect on an ACV/GEV when it gets hit with a weapon, or attempts to fire a typical MBT gun mounted in such a way that it COULD be safely fired (air cushion notwithstanding).

Many of the problems with ACVs CAN be "fixed."

But the fixes are kind of like the last example for the Lightsaber.

They require ridiculous contraptions and amounts of energy to operate, only to create something that is dangerous to use for the intended purpose.

For instance, you could put reactive armor on an ACV that detonated exactly opposite to the side in which it was hit, to keep it from skittering around the battlefield.

But now you have to increase its armor, because it is now being hit with not one, but TWO projectiles of incredible power, compressing the vehicle in the process (oh, and AGAIN deflating the skirts).

The issue is not so much that fixes to any of the problems cannot be conceived. It's that none of the fixes lead to a usable ACV/GEV as a Main Battle Tank, or OTHER form of ACV/GEV.

This is why ALL ACV/GEVs that we have seen EVER used by the military are used only in the Littoral (landing craft, and coastal or swamp patrol, like in the Everglades, or river deltas of Vietnam) and Naval roles (such as the Russian's GEVs and ACVs).

But making a Lightsaber that works in the role of a Lightsaber is possible with the right advances in technology. Yet no advance in technology will make a GEV/ACV possible in the role of an AFV.

MB


Automatically Appended Next Post:
P.S.

Again, it is a "Broken Rule" if the game purports to be a Hard Sci-Fi game, such as Dirtside, Stargrunt, Space Marines (the original one), or even Steve Jackson Games "OGRE/GEV" (For which I started having this argument with him back in the 1990s when I first noticed that there were no ACV/GEV Armored Fighting Vehicles, and began to look into WHY).

A "broken rule" can be about more than just an aberration in the points cost of a unit or token in the game.

MB

Last chance. Stick to the topic. Hint, lightsabers aren't the freaking topic

On the holidays, my wife's family loves to get out an amazingly terrible game called 'Rat Race'.
Its basically Monopoly cross Game of Life.

At one stage that everyone* must go through to complete the game, there is a 'Go To Jail And Lose All Your Progress' square, 7 squares ahead. What's the most common roll on 2D6? Oh yes. Assuming you pass if the first time round, you get roughly 4 more rolls before you go past it again. And again. And again. If you manage to 'level up' to get out of the loop, you progress to another loop where the instant death square is 5 spaces away and you go past it every 3 turns on average. If you land on it, you move down the level again...

The game is like monopoly in that each player starts off with 9 'properties' - 3 lv1, 3 lv2, 3 lv3. To win the game, a player must have 3 Lv3 properties purchased from different players; no two from the same player, none from yourself. This means that you can't play the game with less than 4 players, and it is quite easy to get in to a situation where one player cannot buy a lv3 property from ANYONE because all the ones they need to purchase are held by other players. So you can effectively block other players from ever having a chance to win.

The best way to win the game is to (randomly) land on a 'Stock Market' square. If you roll 10+ 4 times in a row, or double 6 twice in a row, you get enough money to bypass the other win requirements. Out of all the painful games of this that I've played, no-one has won by using the 'intended' path. Maybe its a metaphor - far easier to win big on the stock market/lottery than to try to work your way out of the rat race.


Also I like the rule in old 40k where if you have no models left, you lose. Therefore if both players have no models left (eg, the last two remaining models simultaneously powerfist each other to death) you both lose.

My least favourite broken rule in 40k is 'Armies of the Imperium', also known as 'X + Allied Drop Pods'.

Trasvi wrote:
On the holidays, my wife's family loves to get out an amazingly terrible game called 'Rat Race'.
Its basically Monopoly cross Game of Life.

At one stage that everyone* must go through to complete the game, there is a 'Go To Jail And Lose All Your Progress' square, 7 squares ahead. What's the most common roll on 2D6? Oh yes. Assuming you pass if the first time round, you get roughly 4 more rolls before you go past it again. And again. And again. If you manage to 'level up' to get out of the loop, you progress to another loop where the instant death square is 5 spaces away and you go past it every 3 turns on average. If you land on it, you move down the level again...

The game is like monopoly in that each player starts off with 9 'properties' - 3 lv1, 3 lv2, 3 lv3. To win the game, a player must have 3 Lv3 properties purchased from different players; no two from the same player, none from yourself. This means that you can't play the game with less than 4 players, and it is quite easy to get in to a situation where one player cannot buy a lv3 property from ANYONE because all the ones they need to purchase are held by other players. So you can effectively block other players from ever having a chance to win.

The best way to win the game is to (randomly) land on a 'Stock Market' square. If you roll 10+ 4 times in a row, or double 6 twice in a row, you get enough money to bypass the other win requirements. Out of all the painful games of this that I've played, no-one has won by using the 'intended' path. Maybe its a metaphor - far easier to win big on the stock market/lottery than to try to work your way out of the rat race.

I have thought of making a similar game, but the whole point would be that you can not win. In the end, all players will die. The game would be about the experience of playing the game rather than winning or losing.

From the old Vampire: The Masquerade card game (forget the actual name of it), there was a card called Monocle of Clarity. Once per turn, you could ask another player a yes/no question that they had to answer truthfully. The intent, of course, was to ask questions like "do you have X card in your hand" or "will you attack me next turn" and so on. The question that ended up getting the card banned from the face of the earth, though, was "what will be your answer to the next question I ask with the Monocle of Clarity?" If they said "yes," your next question would be "will you concede the game to me?" If they said "no," then you would ask "are you going to attack me next turn" or "are you going to defend against my attack this turn?" Essentially, the card guaranteed you a win.

 Tannhauser42 wrote:
From the old Vampire: The Masquerade card game (forget the actual name of it), there was a card called Monocle of Clarity. Once per turn, you could ask another player a yes/no question that they had to answer truthfully. The intent, of course, was to ask questions like "do you have X card in your hand" or "will you attack me next turn" and so on. The question that ended up getting the card banned from the face of the earth, though, was "what will be your answer to the next question I ask with the Monocle of Clarity?" If they said "yes," your next question would be "will you concede the game to me?" If they said "no," then you would ask "are you going to attack me next turn" or "are you going to defend against my attack this turn?" Essentially, the card guaranteed you a win.

That's djinn level evil.

My only favorite broken rule was actually a broken codex.
In 3rd ed. 40k I would get tabled (i.e., every one of my models died) and tabled often when playing vanilla marines.
I had bought into the all-comers list concept while facing players who tailored to kill MEQs.

One day out of frustration I paid the extra dough for the Blood Angels supplement.
The next game I used the exact same army, model-for-model, that I always played except now they were Blood Angels.
And I creamed my regular opponent. He was amazed how well I played.
I returned to playing them as vanilla marines and getting tabled regularly.
Must have been a born Blood Angels player. Yeah, that's it

No kidding.

I wish that I did not miss all of the 1990s because of my evil wife (DAMN am I happy she is dead some days).

MB

In the Palladium Fantasy RPG, you can buy superior kobold- or dwarf-made weapons, which cost a multiplier of whatever the weapon's cost originally was. The weapons table includes several improvised weapons, such as a meat cleaver, pickaxe, shovel, etc. Being tools rather than weapons, they have a cheaper base cost.

So while you could buy a regular sword (2d6 damage) for 35gp as a starting character, it'd make much more sense to buy a legendary master-crafted Frying Pan (1d6+4 damage) for a mere 16gp.

Whilst it is not really broken the Cyclops Demolition vehicles 'Detonate at any point during the turn' has been known to make Space marines under the effects of Invisibility scream in rage and frustration. Or even better, the times I have charged it into a unit, used my 2" pile in to get as close to the centre as possible and detonated it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Actually, another one: Deepstrike. The fact that you can deepstrike at point blank range is really, really, broken.

Its bad enough that my IG suck at everything but tanks and shooting, now SM's can just toss a few droppods/LotD/Assault Marines/etc with Meltas down and completely nullify my advantage.

 Elemental wrote:
In the Palladium Fantasy RPG, you can buy superior kobold- or dwarf-made weapons, which cost a multiplier of whatever the weapon's cost originally was. The weapons table includes several improvised weapons, such as a meat cleaver, pickaxe, shovel, etc. Being tools rather than weapons, they have a cheaper base cost.

So while you could buy a regular sword (2d6 damage) for 35gp as a starting character, it'd make much more sense to buy a legendary master-crafted Frying Pan (1d6+4 damage) for a mere 16gp.

Next RPG I DM, I'm sneaking that rule in.

 master of ordinance wrote:

Actually, another one: Deepstrike. The fact that you can deepstrike at point blank range is really, really, broken.

Its bad enough that my IG suck at everything but tanks and shooting, now SM's can just toss a few droppods/LotD/Assault Marines/etc with Meltas down and completely nullify my advantage.

That's what your troops are for, I play a drop pod based SW army, and guard are one of the harder armies for me to play against because they can throw enough men around their tanks/anything remotely important to kill,that I can't get near to them

 statu wrote:

 master of ordinance wrote:

Actually, another one: Deepstrike. The fact that you can deepstrike at point blank range is really, really, broken.

Its bad enough that my IG suck at everything but tanks and shooting, now SM's can just toss a few droppods/LotD/Assault Marines/etc with Meltas down and completely nullify my advantage.

That's what your troops are for, I play a drop pod based SW army, and guard are one of the harder armies for me to play against because they can throw enough men around their tanks/anything remotely important to kill,that I can't get near to them

I just wish they got saves against even your basic guns...

Sorry, my views on SM have always been dim, especially after they where tainted by a friend whom whilst an epic mate has a thing about IG tanks, claiming them to be over powered and trying to coerce me into taking an all Infantry force because he does not bring tanks himself so why should I. This is the same one whom brings homebrews to the table that utterly rape anything that goes against them.

It hasnt been helped that the new SM codex basically gives them a lot of the stuff once unique to the guard, or that SM forces have basically stolen the Evisicrator from the IG forces

Strength Damage Save Modifier Blast Area
None None None 2" Radius


Space Marines, Eldar Aspect Warriors, Dreadnoughts, Terminators, Enclosed Vehicles - No effect

Other troops including Space Marine Scouts, Eldar Guardians, Imperial Guard, Squats and Orks. D6 Roll to Kill: 3+

Roll a D6 to establish the contact range in inches.
Any normally vulnerable model within the contact range of a victim is killed on the D6 roll of a 4, 5 or 6

Every time a model is killed lie it down and roll for the contact range again, and work out if models within this range are killed. It is possible that a single model may have to test several times because it lies within the contact range of more than one victim.

Magic The Gathering.

Three Oblivion Ring cards can create an infinite loop whilst nothing else is on the battlefield bar the permanent the first one was exiling. It's a long winded one, strap yourselves in.

Oblivion Ring is played on X permanent.
Second Oblivion Ring enchants first Oblivion Ring, exiling it.
Third Oblivion Ring comes into play, and providing X permanent was destroyed before this happens, or in response to Oblivion Ring being played, Oblivion Ring 2 is the only legal target. This exiles Oblivion Ring 2, freeing Oblivion Ring one to come back into play, whos only legal target is Oblivion Ring 3. This frees Oblivion Ring 2, whos only legal target is Oblivion Ring 1, and so on.

It actually breaks the game completely by creating an unbreakable cycle unless one player can destroy a Ring in response. This interaction also crashes Magic Online completely.

 WaaaaghLord wrote:
Magic The Gathering.

Three Oblivion Ring cards can create an infinite loop whilst nothing else is on the battlefield bar the permanent the first one was exiling. It's a long winded one, strap yourselves in.

Oblivion Ring is played on X permanent.
Second Oblivion Ring enchants first Oblivion Ring, exiling it.
Third Oblivion Ring comes into play, and providing X permanent was destroyed before this happens, or in response to Oblivion Ring being played, Oblivion Ring 2 is the only legal target. This exiles Oblivion Ring 2, freeing Oblivion Ring one to come back into play, whos only legal target is Oblivion Ring 3. This frees Oblivion Ring 2, whos only legal target is Oblivion Ring 1, and so on.

It actually breaks the game completely by creating an unbreakable cycle unless one player can destroy a Ring in response. This interaction also crashes Magic Online completely.

I have a girlfriend who recently got into MTG. I shall have to remember this for a game.

This is pretty messed up.

But hardly something that is unique to card games.

Some of the very first multiplayer online games had problems like this.

MB

No love for the virus grenade then?

Unbound. No way in hell should GW have introduced that.

Also, the AP system in 40K. Armour reduction would be better than the all or nothing system we have atmo

Steve Jackson games used to publish what they called "Murphy's Rules" which pointed out some rules like the ones being discussed.

Favorite Example: In Advanced Dungeons and Dragons a Fighter specializing in Darts can do more damage per round than one specializing in the broadsword.
I played in a game where the two most powerful characters were a human fighter with spec in darts and a Halfling with spec in sling. (Same range, damage, and speed as an elf with a bow, but way cheaper.) Drove the DM nuts.

The 7th Edition Skaven armybook. Broken as heck.

Not from a power standpoint so much as a 'this book violates so many basic rules of the game the FAQ is absolutely VITAL to being able to play this army without causing the game to BSOD.

 master of ordinance wrote:
Unbound. No way in hell should GW have introduced that.

On that note I'd have to say my favorite are the new "Pay to Win" web-exclusive rules they seem to be pushing. It literally does feel like GW is emulating all the worst things about the video game industry; first by incorporating something akin to DLC with formations or supplements that come out immediately after the codex (some of which are almost necessary if you want to keep fielding your army like you did before or if you want to have a chance of actually winning games, because the codex was made to be awful on its own[Tyranids, Blood Angels]), then greatly speeding up the update cycle to the point where books are replaced in as little as a year (Call of Duty immediately comes to mind, EA has everyone trained to buy a new copy of the same damn game every single year), and now by offering people the chance to pay for an in-game advantage over everyone else, except worse because it's also extremely limited, so only a special few will be able to buy that advantage in the first place. Really can't stand the "Pay to WIn" aspects in most games, and in my opinion it's bad for any game, but at least everyone can buy gold ammo so long as they have the money. In this case only 200 people in the world will have that formation and everyone else is screwed whether or not they have $400 to piss away on toys.

It's like someone at GW looked at all the things people were bitching about in regards to modern gaming, and then said "That's a great idea, why didn't we think of that?!"

Of course it's obvious GW didn't think this all the way through anyway, or they just didn't care enough, because it's stupidly easy for someone to scan the exclusive rules and distribute them online for free. But still, that's not exactly legal, and I hate the fact that certain players can buy game-breaking privileges that others can't in the first place. Doesn't really matter how big or small the advantage is, either, being able to do it at all just feels wrong.

 master of ordinance wrote:
Unbound. No way in hell should GW have introduced that.

Also, the AP system in 40K. Armour reduction would be better than the all or nothing system we have atmo

That would be cool, armor reduct, that is.
So would, for example, AP6 be a -1, AP5 a -2, etc.?
If so would an AP2 weapon negate saves entirely except for Invulnerables?