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 Scott-S6 wrote:

 Frozen Ocean wrote:
Were BS modifiers a thing in the earlier days of the game? I've been in since very late 4th and I can't think of any BS modifiers other than the kind that state BS1, like Snap Shots.

Yes they were.

Battletech has a similar to-hit system to your proposal and it's very counter intuitive when you're learning the rules that negative to-hit modifiers are good. Especially since other things have positive modifiers that are good.

This is also why armour saves appear to be backwards - so that when your weapon gives the enemy a negative save modifier that's bad for them.

That's because modifiers in older editions of 40k and Warhammer were intended to be applied to the dice score, not the target number. i.e, you have a BS of 4, so the score required to hit is 3+. The target is within short range of your bolter, so you get +1 to hit, but he's behind a hedge in hard cover, so he's at -1 to hit. Most of us would say "OK, then now you need a 4+ to hit", and roll the dice, but the intended mechanism was for you to roll the dice - get a 3, say. Apply the modifiers - 3 + 1 - 2 is 2, which is less than 3 (your target number, from the BS chart), so you've missed.

Same goes for armour. Power armour gives you a 3+ save (from 2nd edition, anyway). A boltgun has a -1 save mod, so the target makes a save, and rolls a 4. 4 - 1 = 3, so he's saved.

It's mentally much easier to modify the target number, then simply pick out the dice by inspection, but to encode that properly into the rules, the sign of all the modifiers should be reversed. One of the few games I can think of that actually does this is Dropzone Commander. There, every weapon has an Accuracy value - the number you need to roll on your dice to hit the target. things like the target being in cover or a skimmer make it harder to hit, so they have +1 or +2 Accuracy modifiers, so my tank goes from having an accuracy of 2+ to an Accuracy of 3+ or higher. Battletech is the same, I think.

 Brennonjw wrote:
it's weird, but it isn't broken, it's not hard to learn, so why bother changing it? or would you consider this more rhetorical of a topic?

It's a topic about game design, which has relevance to GW because a lot of people expect/hope that 40K is going to be AoSified.

If that goes ahead, it will be an opportunity for GW to smooth out these minor inconsistencies in the way the rules work.

It may only be a small thing, as some people reckon, but it is a thing that doesn't need to be there. There is no reason to make people think left and right when playing a game, if the rules work equally well by making them think only left. Simpler, more intuitive, easier to learn...

However, given that AoS introduced a similar two-ways split of mechanic, probably the same would happen in Ao40K.

Which has 2 rolls (11 & 12) for automatic success while the other system has 2 rolls which always fail.
So for a 40k like test, it needs to be 13+

But this could possible work.

The LotR courage stat is already modified from WFB: it's Ld - 4. So for example, humans are at 3 (modified from 7).

But you're correct, it could be made to work with an unmodified LD stat very easily.