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 Ashiraya wrote:
Considering the size of the galaxy, that has to be something better than your average soldier is going to be able to land a hit on.

Sure, but that's what WS is supposed to represent, skill in combat and how hard to hit you are. The real problem is that 40k has too many melee stats and too many dice to roll, and the whole system just doesn't make much sense outside of its WHFB origins.

If Space Marines were buffed to the same degree compared to their lore, you would be absolutely outraged.

But space marines are already buffed to the same degree. They have the same 1/6 chance to survive against destroyer weapons that should auto-kill them just like guardsmen, they have the same 1/6 chance to wound even absurdly durable enemies, etc.

I know that some people hate it when you use real world examples, but in a game that is designed to mimic it I'm going to throw my 2c in.

In real life if you are considerably more skilled in fighting than your opponent , you are going to hit them very easily, and if they are lucky they may land something on you.

Where the skill factor becomes less important to an extent is in group combat, where you are attacking and defending as a unit. The current table sort of makes sense when it comes to group fighting, however I feel it should be easier to get that to hit on 5 advantage, and allow it to go to a 6 where the current 5+ is.

In a fight it is easier to defend then attack, so hitting on 3's makes sense.

Back when BS 5 was rare and AP2 was primarily reserved for CC weapons, yeah the WS table made sense. Now, when an eldar hornet has as many attacks at range as my dreadknight does in CC for 40% of the points, it needs to be overhauled.

 Ashiraya wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
Initiative isn't just raw speed, I10 doesn't mean something moves at the speed of light or even that of a bullet, it's representative of being able to act and take the initiative before one's opponent's, but doesn't mean you're so fast that you always hit.

I10 is as fast as it is possible to be in 40k. Considering the size of the galaxy, that has to be something better than your average soldier is going to be able to land a hit on.

"hit" is also somewhat vaguely defined, it really just means that you've landed a blow that can potentially inflict harm, not that it's a solid harmful blow. I land hits on sparring partners all the time that we just don't count because it may have been with the flat of the blade or wouldn't have struck deep enough to actually do anything. On the to-hit side, It's also very easy to simply land a blow, the trick is doing it and surviving. If you're not attempting to protect yourself, or are doing so very poorly (very common in close combat actually, combatants develop tunnel vision and just strike at an opening without thinking everything through, every swordsman I've ever seen has done this at some point), you can usually inflict a hit. I literally just got out of my Longsword practice 20 mins ago, new guy was able to land a great hit on the instructor...because he didn't try to defend himself at all and attacked an opening instead of attempting to block and thus took a thrust to the face (mask) after getting his shot in on the instructors leg. In a real fight, the new guy would have been dead, the instructor may have been hit, but would likely still be alive and potentially active, though also potentially hurt, that would be an excellent example of a higher WS opponent landing a killing blow against a lower WS opponent who may have landed a hit but may not have wounded or had a wound that would have been saved, but also may have actually inflicted a wound nonetheless. These things all layer and interact.

There's also a great line in one of the fighting manuals, I think Lichtenauer, that basically goes "here they fight with knives, may god have mercy on them", because basically, once it gets to that point, no matter how good you are, you will probably get cut. Close combats really are ugly affairs with all sorts of potential to have weird things happen.

For what 40k is, the WS chart and Init do allright.

Who knows what it might be, a bayonet, a powerfist, or a krak grenade. The Avatar is not completely immune to physical damage, and blocking is sometimes intelligent even for very large and powerful combatants.

But the guardsmen squads I see don't have krak grenades, or powerfists...

You're reading way too into the details here at this point, it was an example of what the game is abstracting. The game CC rules can't take into account the specifics of every single fight, they're abstracting a huge number of things that all likely are going on to some degree in most combats but may not individually apply to every single melee engagement. There's a million different factors in a fight, all of which factor into how it plays out. The Avatar can't see everything everywhere all the time, if he's fighting a dozen guardsmen to the front, he may have to pull blows to ensure the twenty at this back aren't doing something tricksy, or may have to take a moment to survey the greater battlefield to issue a command or notice the Russ squadron drawing a bead on him and plan to react. Close combats really are very awkward affairs, and there's a reason they're avoided in real life if at all possible even by professional warfighters against untrained opponents, and the game rules can't adjust to every single possible instance.

Same way a guardsmen only hits 50% of the time at BS3. You can get a half-dead Eastern front Russian conscript to hit a man sized target at 50m with essentially 100% accuracy with a rifle in real life, what that BS is taking into account is how likely a given soldier is to land a hit under battlefield conditions. It may represent misses, shots simply not actually taken, shots thrown off by suppressing fire or that pieplate you dropped on them, ability to handle recoil, a random smoke cloud from a burning tank briefly interrupting sight, and a million other potential scenarios. There may be scenarios where really every Guard Lascannon should absolutely hit, others where they wouldn't possibly hit, the game has to abstract this somehow to keep things managable.

See, this is what I am talking about when I say that the game buffs the guardsmen to an extreme degree compared to the lore (in everything but points costs which do not exist in the lore anyway). Things that would be instant death for them (say, Destroyer weapons) are still given a chance to fail because 'it was a miss' or 'it was a flesh wound' or something, even if you do indeed successfully roll to hit and a hit would not so much kill the guardsman as remove him and the plaza he stands on from existence. Meanwhile, things that bayonets would never be able to do anything against (such as the walking lava demigod, the Avatar) are still given a chance to wound it because of that 'one-in-a-million eye socket stab' thing, except it isn't one in a million in-game, it is 17%.

Except it's not, factoring in to-hit, to-wound, and save (that molten iron and whatnot being pretty good armor), a Guardsmen inflicts 0.0185 wounds on average. One for one, the Avatar is inflicting 120 Wounds on Guardsmen for each wound Guardsmen are inflicting on it. That sounds pretty appropriate to me.

 Vaktathi wrote:
There's a multitude of advantages CC has that shooting does not, such as the ability to lock actions, ignore all cover, auto hit rear armor, and yes, sweeping advance. These are very real and ver powerful abilities, so there's some drawbacks. The problem with CC is that delivery options are broken. Bring back the ability to assault out of a stationary closed top transport and you would see a lot more CC. The WS table isnt hugely crippling here, it didnt make much difference when CC was arguably more poweful than shooting in 3E and 4E.

In theory these abilities are powerful and unique to assault, but in practice aren't.

Shooting has plenty of ways to ignore cover through the use of flamers, barrage weapons, outflanking and drop pods, and just any weapon with Ignores Cover (hello Tau...) while for assault apparently weapons stronger than a pointy stick are so rare they're handed out on a per squad basis that in most combat their armor is just as good or better as the cover they were hiding in with only a few exceptions.

Hitting the back armor of the vehicles is good but again it's the same problem where melee weapons that can do the job are rare, so either they're relying on str 4 punches vs AV 10 or good luck not losing the guy with the melta-bomb or powerfist where as any decent anti-tank unit (aka anything that can take more than one meltaguns) has ways to get to the back or side of a vehicle in one turn and kill it then and there (again, like outflanking or drop pods).

While locking down units and sweeping is very good, assault NEEDS them. if you could shoot into, out of, and during assault then there would be absolutely no point in ever doing it unless you had to (which is the case for some armies...) and only dedicated assault unit or hordes can put down the kind of damage to be able to kill a squad outright without sweeping advance (ignoring fearless or ATSKNF which just prevents it outright.)

of course the flip side of that is that while these might be unique to assault, they're not unique to assault armies. Any unit with enough bodies and some luck can pull it off, even against units that ARE good in assault. The last game I had my mob of warbikers charge a squad of five marines manning artillery. "conventional wisdom" would say that would be the end of it right? Sadly, since my nob had been killed before he got in there, I only manage to kill one marine with punching and he had some good luck. That resulted in two dead bikers. Failed leadership, failed Mob Rules, swept. Then he went back to bombing the daylights out of the rest of my army.

The problem with the WS (and assault in general) is there is not much reward to being good at assault and conversely no penalty to being bad at it.

EDIT: Assault was OP in 3rd and 4th because of rolling assault, a mechanic that's noticeably missing since 5th and since then shooting has only gotten stronger

 Elbows wrote:
So the most dangerous thing in 40K isn't dangerous enough for people? Interesting.

Close combat isn't the most dangerous thing in 40k.
i am pretty sure if we make a plot of where models die in a game of 40k that being in close combat would score less then being in the open and shot at.

Maybe if you double +1 the Initiaitve and Weapon Skill, you hit on 2s and they hit on 6s?

It's not a huge buff for melee, but if you are more then twice as fast or have twice as much reaction time, and you far outclass your opponent, you should be able to hit a little bit better than just outclassing them.

 Konrax wrote:
I know that some people hate it when you use real world examples, but in a game that is designed to mimic it I'm going to throw my 2c in.

In real life if you are considerably more skilled in fighting than your opponent , you are going to hit them very easily, and if they are lucky they may land something on you.

Where the skill factor becomes less important to an extent is in group combat, where you are attacking and defending as a unit. The current table sort of makes sense when it comes to group fighting, however I feel it should be easier to get that to hit on 5 advantage, and allow it to go to a 6 where the current 5+ is.

In a fight it is easier to defend then attack, so hitting on 3's makes sense.

If you are considerably more skilled is a relative term, represented by being double your opponent's skill. Being 2 higher is simply "better." 3 higher is "noticably better." WS8 vs WS2 is professional ninja vs morbidly obese neckbeard.

Except it's not, factoring in to-hit, to-wound, and save (that molten iron and whatnot being pretty good armor), a Guardsmen inflicts 0.0185 wounds on average. One for one, the Avatar is inflicting 120 Wounds on Guardsmen for each wound Guardsmen are inflicting on it. That sounds pretty appropriate to me.

I don't get why we are so scared of making things simply impossible to harm from X strength or AP or whatever. When hitting a twenty-foot tall angry lava statue daemon with your bayonet you should inflict 0 wounds, not 0,0185, and while you are most likely going to do nothing in the status quo it also gives us the funny situations like having your Avatar die to Gretchin overwatch (I have seen this happen) that add nothing but an extra RNG chance 'roll eight dice every time you charge with your 200pt model. If you roll eight sixes, your model dies instantly.'

Not only is it unfluffy, it is also horrible game design.

 Peregrine wrote:


But space marines are already buffed to the same degree. They have the same 1/6 chance to survive against destroyer weapons that should auto-kill them just like guardsmen, they have the same 1/6 chance to wound even absurdly durable enemies, etc.

Except Space Marines, in their PA, are one of those things who the Guardsmen would have an absurdly tiny chance to actually injure (certainly not 5+/3+) and vice versa would be very likely to be injured by, and while Guardsmen have a bigger chance to injure and a smaller chance to be injured by Marines than in the lore, the Marines do not get any similar bonus back.

 Vaktathi wrote:
There's also a great line in one of the fighting manuals, I think Lichtenauer, that basically goes "here they fight with knives, may god have mercy on them", because basically, once it gets to that point, no matter how good you are, you will probably get cut. Close combats really are ugly affairs with all sorts of potential to have weird things happen.

Are we talking about the same space fantasy setting here?

I expect an unarmed howling banshee fighting a bunch of unarmed Guardsmen as well an Ogryn or two to look something like this.

 Ashiraya wrote:
I don't get why we are so scared of making things simply impossible to harm from X strength or AP or whatever. When hitting a twenty-foot tall angry lava statue daemon with your bayonet you should inflict 0 wounds, not 0,0185, and while you are most likely going to do nothing in the status quo it also gives us the funny situations like having your Avatar die to Gretchin overwatch (I have seen this happen) that add nothing but an extra RNG chance 'roll eight dice every time you charge with your 200pt model. If you roll eight sixes, your model dies instantly.'

Not only is it unfluffy, it is also horrible game design.

The problem is defining where it's supposed to round to zero. The to-wound roll does a pretty reasonable 2+/3+/4+/5+/6+/6+/impossible, so you can't really say that the to-wound roll needs to change. The save roll only goes from nothing to 2+, so you can't really say that any particular save value should be "impossible to hurt". You only get these ridiculously low chances to wound when you add everything together and several "difficult, but possible" rolls turn into "not going to happen". And you can't realistically expect people to do the math on every single attack before rolling the dice, and ignore the attack if the chance to wound is less than 0.01 or whatever.

Except Space Marines, in their PA, are one of those things who the Guardsmen would have an absurdly tiny chance to actually injure (certainly not 5+/3+) and vice versa would be very likely to be injured by, and while Guardsmen have a bigger chance to injure and a smaller chance to be injured by Marines than in the lore, the Marines do not get any similar bonus back.

But you can say the same thing about a space marine relative to a giant demon or Tyranid monster or similar opponent. The marine benefits considerably from the D6 system in those cases. It's a system-wide problem that over-buffs most, if not all, armies in some situations, not a unique problem with guardsmen.

While I'd love something simpler in CC than the current WS system I actually prefer the smaller advantage that the system gives. CC supiriority at the moment comes from higher initiative, the amount of attacks you can roll for, weapons available & the amount of abuse a unit can stand up to.
I agree melee needs a boost but I'd rather see more assault vehicles available to melee heavy armies. The ability to charge out of a Rhino would make them infinitely more tempting regardless of their frailty.
I'd like to see Genestealers & Hermagaunts get the "beast' rules.

Its not just the way close combat is resolved that is WHFB centric.

In WHFB shooting is conducted against large blocks of troops in close formations.
Each regiment in WHFB is meant to represent 100s of troops standing shoulder to shoulder in close formation.
The majority of units are these massive target for shooters to hit.
(A simple -1 to hit skirmishers/characters, and + 1 to hit large targets, covers the few exceptions.)

However in 40k each model represents a single combatant.
And with the massive variance in weapons and equipment, and target size and shape and agility.

The dependence on just the skill of the shooter, is what causes the imbalance between shooting and assault in the 40k game play.
I am currently play testing using the same method to resolve all combat resolution on one universal table.
Simply compare the active players model skill to the opposing players model skill.(Like the to wound chart does.)

We are still in the alpha testing stage but using just one resolution method that gives proportional results is much faster cleaner and more detailed than GWs 40k rules.

BS is compared to Evade stat.
WS is compared to Dodge stat.(Initiative replacement, as we are using simultaneous resolution game turn mechanic.)
Armour value compares to Armour penetration value.
Damage (strength) is compared to Resilience (Toughness,)

This covers all units in the same way .
And guess what there is no disparity between shooting and assault, or between MC and walking vehicles.
BECAUSE THERE ARE NO DIFFERENCES IN THE RESOLUTION METHODS!
And as the resolution methods give proportional results not all or nothing like the current rules.So you dont need so many special rules to add differences to units...

 Ashiraya wrote:

Except it's not, factoring in to-hit, to-wound, and save (that molten iron and whatnot being pretty good armor), a Guardsmen inflicts 0.0185 wounds on average. One for one, the Avatar is inflicting 120 Wounds on Guardsmen for each wound Guardsmen are inflicting on it. That sounds pretty appropriate to me.

I don't get why we are so scared of making things simply impossible to harm from X strength or AP or whatever.

Because just pushing an Avatar into an assault and auto-winning with no chance for the opposite side to do anything isn't an interactive game.

The closest the game gets is with walkers in CC, where certain strength values cannot hurt them, but then they also generally don't have saves of any kind against heavier weapons and are *far* easier to kill overall when faced with something like a hidden Powerfist or the like. If you want to play your Avatar as an AV12 walker instead of a T6 W4 3+/4++ MC, I'd be ok with you doing so

When hitting a twenty-foot tall angry lava statue daemon with your bayonet you should inflict 0 wounds, not 0,0185

That low chance is there to represent hitting something small and vital, a very small chance but theoretically possible. Likewise, troops may not just be using bayonets, but may be engaging with grenades or heavy chopping spades or other equipment that may have a higher chance of harming the Avatar. Hell, if armed with a water hose they could do all sorts of nasty things to something made of molten iron

Ultimately the CC rules are there as an abstraction to cover a wide array of scenarios without having to go into detail of changing fighting stances, odds, physical body construction, methods of engagement, etc with nine bajillion special rules for every conceivable CC engagement.

For this situation, they work well enough. The Guardsmen are only very rarely going to hurt, and almost never kill, the Avatar, while the Avatar is almost always going to butcher the guardsmen in vast numbers at no meaningful risk (just not totally nonexistent) to itself.

and while you are most likely going to do nothing in the status quo it also gives us the funny situations like having your Avatar die to Gretchin overwatch (I have seen this happen) that add nothing but an extra RNG chance 'roll eight dice every time you charge with your 200pt model. If you roll eight sixes, your model dies instantly.'

Not only is it unfluffy, it is also horrible game design.

That actually sounds incredibly fluffy from an Ork perspective...bring down the big scary thing through some absurd and ridiculous method

But either way, the chances of this happening are, well, very small. While it's theoretically possible for eight Grots to slay an Avatar in Overwatch, the likelyhood of that happening is, well, one in hundreds of thousands. It represents the fact that, in theory, sure it's possible, but incredibly unlikely, and allows *both* players to engage instead of it just being one player that moves their model into base contact, declaring victory, and the other player removing their models without doing anything. It's something most players will never see, and of those that do, will almost certainly be a once-in-a-lifetime event that they remember for its exceptional nature.

 Vaktathi wrote:
There's also a great line in one of the fighting manuals, I think Lichtenauer, that basically goes "here they fight with knives, may god have mercy on them", because basically, once it gets to that point, no matter how good you are, you will probably get cut. Close combats really are ugly affairs with all sorts of potential to have weird things happen.

Are we talking about the same space fantasy setting here?

I expect an unarmed howling banshee fighting a bunch of unarmed Guardsmen as well an Ogryn or two to look something like this.

Spoiler:

So...they'd all stand around helpfully engaging only one at a time...turning their backs to the player character and sitting around doing nothing, no attempts at grappling, putting up basically no resistance to being disarmed, watching a man's arm support a full grown woman grapple onto their sword and swing around without even breaking his posture (much less the almost certain reality of collapsing both fighters to the ground), while hardly throwing any blows at all, while the PC throws magnificently choreographed (but martially poor and energetically wasteful) blows for effect?

 Peregrine wrote:


The problem is defining where it's supposed to round to zero. The to-wound roll does a pretty reasonable 2+/3+/4+/5+/6+/6+/impossible, so you can't really say that the to-wound roll needs to change. The save roll only goes from nothing to 2+, so you can't really say that any particular save value should be "impossible to hurt". You only get these ridiculously low chances to wound when you add everything together and several "difficult, but possible" rolls turn into "not going to happen". And you can't realistically expect people to do the math on every single attack before rolling the dice, and ignore the attack if the chance to wound is less than 0.01 or whatever.

Yet another problem built into the base game itself, I suppose. WTB D10.

But you can say the same thing about a space marine relative to a giant demon or Tyranid monster or similar opponent. The marine benefits considerably from the D6 system in those cases. It's a system-wide problem that over-buffs most, if not all, armies in some situations, not a unique problem with guardsmen.

So Guardsmen get everything SM do, plus bonuses against SM themselves? That is my point. Plus, things like Eldar, which are fairly balanced with SM compared to the lore but, again, IG get vastly buffed against. Or Necrons, who arguably even get some bonuses against SM (albeit not to the degree of Guardsmen). And the list goes on.


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 Vaktathi wrote:


The closest the game gets is with walkers in CC, where certain strength values cannot hurt them, but then they also generally don't have saves of any kind against heavier weapons and are *far* easier to kill overall when faced with something like a hidden Powerfist or the like. If you want to play your Avatar as an AV12 walker instead of a T6 W4 3+/4++ MC, I'd be ok with you doing so

Sure! Do you see that AV12 3++ Space Wolf dreadnought over there?

But either way, the chances of this happening are, well, very small. While it's theoretically possible for eight Grots to slay an Avatar in Overwatch, the likelyhood of that happening is, well, one in hundreds of thousands. It represents the fact that, in theory, sure it's possible, but incredibly unlikely, and allows *both* players to engage instead of it just being one player that moves their model into base contact, declaring victory, and the other player removing their models without doing anything. It's something most players will never see, and of those that do, will almost certainly be a once-in-a-lifetime event that they remember for its exceptional nature.

So what is the point of it being there? What is the point of rolling for something that has a hundreds-of-thousands-in-one chance to succeed, except to waste time and space?

So...they'd all stand around helpfully engaging only one at a time...turning their backs to the player character and sitting around doing nothing, no attempts at grappling, putting up basically no resistance to being disarmed, watching a man's arm support a full grown woman grapple onto their sword and swing around without even breaking his posture (much less the almost certain reality of collapsing both fighters to the ground), while hardly throwing any blows at all, while the PC throws magnificently choreographed (but martially poor and energetically wasteful) blows for effect?

Hey, they attack at least three at a time at several points! 1:02, for example, and they double attack many times more. Considering Guardsmen do not have serious training for fighting Eldar in melee (see the uplifting primer, they are expecting to fight a slow, clumsy opponent with poor quality equipment) I suspect they would get in the way of each other if they tried more.

Guardsmen can't hurt T7 and above, can't glance AV10 and up, so no, they don't ''do everything the marines can and then some'' especially not with the grenade FAQ thing that messed it all up

Perhaps if you'd stop viewing everything as 1000% better than humans it would help...

 Ashiraya wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:


The closest the game gets is with walkers in CC, where certain strength values cannot hurt them, but then they also generally don't have saves of any kind against heavier weapons and are *far* easier to kill overall when faced with something like a hidden Powerfist or the like. If you want to play your Avatar as an AV12 walker instead of a T6 W4 3+/4++ MC, I'd be ok with you doing so

Sure! Do you see that AV12 3++ Space Wolf dreadnought over there?

Ok, but you won't be upset when a lascannon to the side explodes him in one shot though, or he gets immobilized by an autocannon, or a drop pod storm bolter to the rear strips two HP's with no save?

So what is the point of it being there? What is the point of rolling for something that has a hundreds-of-thousands-in-one chance to succeed, except to waste time and space?

Because it keeps the game interactive, allows for those rare things to *sometimes* happen (which can be a memorable gaming moment that helps keep people engaged as well as reflect extremely rare but theoretically possible fluff events to play out), and makes the game something other than "X made it into base contact, just remove Y models now". It also allows for very weak things to potentially finish off a very big thing already hurt by other big things and the like.

So...they'd all stand around helpfully engaging only one at a time...turning their backs to the player character and sitting around doing nothing, no attempts at grappling, putting up basically no resistance to being disarmed, watching a man's arm support a full grown woman grapple onto their sword and swing around without even breaking his posture (much less the almost certain reality of collapsing both fighters to the ground), while hardly throwing any blows at all, while the PC throws magnificently choreographed (but martially poor and energetically wasteful) blows for effect?

Hey, they attack at least three at a time at several points! 1:02, for example, and they double attack many times more.

Out of a 6+ minute fight...not really all that inspiring. A fight like that probably wouldn't last longer than 20 seconds, either the single PC would break contact and disengage, or they'd be overwhelmed and defeated in very short order. A single combatant isn't going to emerge victorious from a fight like that. I can't think of a single martial artist today in any discipline or community that wouldn't be overwhelmed and quickly defeated by six or seven opponents in an open melee match with lethal intentions, even if the opponents relatively untrained and uncoordinated, as long as they're all actively trying to engage and not just coming in one at a time. Eyes can't be everywhere, swords or fists can't be thrown and multiple opponents simultaneously from multiple angles, avenues of movement will be blocked and restricted, simple body placement will prevent certain types of blows, etc.

Considering Guardsmen do not have serious training for fighting Eldar in melee (see the uplifting primer, they are expecting to fight a slow, clumsy opponent with poor quality equipment)

The uplifting primer is also supposed to be an intentionally comically tongue-in-cheek thing. Great reading, but lets acknowledge it for what it is

Either way, you don't need specialized anti-eldar training for something like that. The Eldar may be faster than a human, may be a bit more athletic, but is otherwise built like a human, biomechanically moves like a human, weighs about as much as a human, has largely the same techniques available as a human does (again, biomechanically nearly identical, styles may differ but an Eldar isn't going to strike a swordblow that's dramatically more powerful or throw a kick from an angle a human isn't capable), doesn't have any natural weapons a human wouldn't (e.g. they don't have great fangs, huge claws, a spiked tail, etc), isn't meaningfully stronger than a human, has the same striking range and fills the same space as a human. There's not really much different going on aside from the Eldar being physically faster.

Of course, all the backseat fluffing to justify a rule isn't as important as if the rule itself is still bad. Getting a chance to win against the odd and interactivity are very important to any game, but there is little of that for assaulting units. Your chances of winning of fight only drop as the game goes on, they just have to sit there and take it when shooting phase rolls around, and the only agency they really get is "Hide in cover (which means you're not effecting the table at all) or charge as fast as possible (which you might lose anyway because being skilled in assault means little)

It was a system designed for a much more melee-focused game. Anyone remember a time when you can charge out of reserves, jump from combat to combat through consolidation, no Overwatch, Power weapons were AP2 standard, and a lot less things in the game had fearless so you could overrun them?

 Vaktathi wrote:
Ok, but you won't be upset when a lascannon to the side explodes him in one shot though, or he gets immobilized by an autocannon, or a drop pod storm bolter to the rear strips two HP's with no save?

You jest, but a MC damage table is one of my biggest hopes for 8th that are still within the realm of reasonable expectations.

A lot of people seem to want that kind of thing since AOS came out with their wounds system for monsters.

MechaEmperor7000 wrote:It was a system designed for a much more melee-focused game. Anyone remember a time when you can charge out of reserves, jump from combat to combat through consolidation, no Overwatch, Power weapons were AP2 standard, and a lot less things in the game had fearless so you could overrun them?

Some of these things I don't miss, particularly consolidating into new combats. That said, yeah, some things do need to come back. Being able to assault out of close-topped but stationary transports would make gigantic difference in the playability of a huge number of units without breaking anything.

Another thing that hurts though is the gap in resiliency between various CC units. Things like Wyches used to actually be pretty solid, and BP/CCW CSM's were once great CC troops. Now the bar for that is invisible multi-wound deathstar units with gargantuan numbers of attacks that all have special rules (rending, power, etc) or Wraiths that can take more S10 firepower than a Warhound Titan can.

Ashiraya wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
Ok, but you won't be upset when a lascannon to the side explodes him in one shot though, or he gets immobilized by an autocannon, or a drop pod storm bolter to the rear strips two HP's with no save?

You jest, but a MC damage table is one of my biggest hopes for 8th that are still within the realm of reasonable expectations.

Well, a lot may change in another edition. I wouldn't mind seeing something like that, but I'd really more just like to see vehicles get theirs fixed

 Ashiraya wrote:
So Guardsmen get everything SM do, plus bonuses against SM themselves? That is my point. Plus, things like Eldar, which are fairly balanced with SM compared to the lore but, again, IG get vastly buffed against. Or Necrons, who arguably even get some bonuses against SM (albeit not to the degree of Guardsmen). And the list goes on.

But IG can't do anything that marines can. A guardsman can't even roll to wound against a T7 model, a marine gets to wound on a 6. A guardsman can't even roll against a vehicle, a marine has a non-trivial chance of punching a flat-out Eldar tank to death. And Eldar aren't supposed to be all that strong compared to marines. They're fast, yes, but not strong or tough. And yet they have the same "always have a chance" benefit as the guardsmen because of the D6 system. This isn't an "IG are over-buffed" problem, it's a fundamental problem with the D6 system that applies to every army.

And honestly, would you even want fluff-accurate space marines, according to the high-end fluff? Where a 2000 point game involves a 5-man tactical squad (and forget about every getting to use anything else from C:SM below 50,000 points) and only one player in each city is allowed to use space marines at all?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Ashiraya wrote:
So what is the point of it being there? What is the point of rolling for something that has a hundreds-of-thousands-in-one chance to succeed, except to waste time and space?

The main point, as I mentioned, is that there's no elegant way to make it not happen. Each individual roll involved is reasonable as a "unlikely but possible" kind of thing, you don't get to the ridiculously bad odds until you combine several such rolls. So any system for declaring a roll "too unlikely" and ignoring it would involve calculating the odds of success for that specific situation, and that's just not something that is going to happen.

 Vaktathi wrote:
Some of these things I don't miss, particularly consolidating into new combats. That said, yeah, some things do need to come back. Being able to assault out of close-topped but stationary transports would make gigantic difference in the playability of a huge number of units without breaking anything.

Another thing that hurts though is the gap in resiliency between various CC units. Things like Wyches used to actually be pretty solid, and BP/CCW CSM's were once great CC troops. Now the bar for that is invisible multi-wound deathstar units with gargantuan numbers of attacks that all have special rules (rending, power, etc) or Wraiths that can take more S10 firepower than a Warhound Titan can.

I meant that the inequity came from a bygone time and is simply an artifact left over that GW never got around to changing. Nowadays it really should be "Equal WS = 4+ to hit, 1 difference = higher WS gets +1 and lower WS get -1, 2 difference = higher WS gets +2 etc....