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 Purifier wrote:

That seems incredibly one dimensional to me. It would make balancing everything else incredibly hard without making everything carbon copies of each other. My favourite game for looking at good game mechanics and balance is Malifaux, and there we have everything between 3 and 14(?) wounds on things. I honestly don't know what the exact range is, because there are too many unique models to know them all, but it's around those numbers. It makes for really nice padded game mechanics, where nothing generally just instantly blows up because of one semi-lucky flip (no dice, all cards in that game,) and things can be balanced around different things to make them all feel unique.

With 40k going much closer to that, I can only celebrate it.

We have characteristics called "Toughness" and "Armor" which are supposed to represent how hard a model is to damage.

Tyranid Warriors could be T5 or T6, same for Nobz.

The way I see it, Wounds didn't use to represent how hard a model was to kill. A Company Commander is not, in fact, 3 times as survivable as a trooper under his command. They're more of a plot-armor factor, so that heroes can fight on the frontline and not get easily zapped.

No, that's exactly what wounds were, representing something fighting on despite taking damage that would have lain any other organism/soldier/whatever low.

Whether that was by dint of remarkable endurance, insane herorism, drugs, supernatural durability, sheer mass etc varied on the unit, but T or AV represented how hard to damage it was, W/HP represented how much damage it could take.

The new method, esp with the degredation, is a big step up and opens up a huge amount more variety in how units can act on the table and also mirror their fluff.

Squad sergeants with powerfists again.

 Azreal13 wrote:
No, that's exactly what wounds were, representing something fighting on despite taking damage that would have lain any other organism/soldier/whatever low.

Whether that was by dint of remarkable endurance, insane herorism, drugs, supernatural durability, sheer mass etc varied on the unit, but T or AV represented how hard to damage it was, W/HP represented how much damage it could take.

The new method, esp with the degredation, is a big step up and opens up a huge amount more variety in how units can act on the table and also mirror their fluff.

So why does a Company Commander have 3 wounds but a Platoon Commander or Guardsman have 1?

A colonel or captain is no more durable, drugged up, or massive than a lieutenant or a private.

Sure, in the case of the Carnifex, it represents the fact that it can lose non-essential pieces of itself and keep going, like a tank. But really, a Carnifex should have been a 12/12/10 walker. There's nothing specific about the effects on the VDT that makes them only applicable to machines.

I'm looking forward to new people to play with. I think the lower entry to play will bring a lot of people back and entice some fresh ones to start for the first time. I've already convinced 3 people to try it who had in the past decided not even to bother based solely on price.

A colonel or captain is no more durable, heroic, drugged up, or massive than a lieutenant or a private.

They are in 40K, and yes, they are considered more heroic, that's kind of why they're doing that particular job.

 Azreal13 wrote:

A colonel or captain is no more durable, heroic, drugged up, or massive than a lieutenant or a private.

They are in 40K, and yes, they are considered more heroic, that's kind of why they're doing that particular job.

Okay, heroism, yes. Wounds roughly equate to heroism. But they did't and shouldn't necessarily equate to any sort of physical toughness. The ability to lose pieces of oneself and keep going should have been represented by either being a vehicle and having non-critical hits effectively discounted and killed only when something important got hit, or having a high toughness, implying that the shot went through your armor, but you were able to shake off the resulting injury and keep fighting.

Heck, vehicles having a Toughness value is okay. Everything that passed through a non-essential space, or bounced around, but didn't break anything or kill anybody is a shot that didn't wound, but the shot that hit the ammunition magazine, or smashed the engine and brewed it up, is the shot that did it in.

They can equate to a variety of things depending on the unit, which is the precise point I came in on...

The 4th ed book described that "wounds" represented how many hits the model can take before being "out of action", rationalizing that non-modified people like guardsmen have certain members (such as colonels) able to shrug off flesh wounds that would usually send a lesser Private or Conscript into catatonic shock. They're not necessarily killed when the lose their last wound, but that's when they're roughly taken out of combat. Their actual toughness and resilience is represented by the Toughness stat, which is why being whacked with something twice your strength caused ID; it's assumed whatever has a strength proportional to twice your physical durability is going to, at best, knock you unconscious. At worst, it shreds you in half from the sheer impact force. Eternal Warrior (or the proto-rule that became it) instead represents incredibly hardy individuals who can shrug off attacks that is literally taking chunks off of their body, which is why they avoid ID in those cases.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:
But really, a Carnifex should have been a 12/12/10 walker. There's nothing specific about the effects on the VDT that makes them only applicable to machines.

And this is a nice segway to what I'm looking forward to.

The death of 'vehicle rules'. No more disparity between vehicles and monstrous creatures, no more random oneshots (remember when a glancing hit could oneshot a tank?).

The fact that some people are so adamant on retaining these rules confuses me. They were horrible. They were clumsy. And the moment you added things like Tau suits and Eldar constructs to the mix they became confusing - what defined whether something was a vehicle or not? Why were GK exo-suits and spirit animated constructs considered monsters yet daemon possessed constructs weren't?

I like the idea of Carnifexes not deteriorating like other monsters. It encourages Tyranid players to throw them violently forward. And it encompasses the Tyranid design philosophy - they're killing machines. Designed with one purpose. So they do that and do it very well til you put them down. Hell, I remember background materials in the various Codexes describing how gaunt species didn't have digestive tracts so would just starve to death if left on their own in the wild.

But the strange belief that the vehicle rules need to come back? Ew. No thank you.

And the bizarre attempt to rationalise wounds for an AM Colonel compared to a normal guardsman - now you're complaining about the fact that stats are relatively abstract? That wounds aren't aren't just an indicator of damage that can be sustained but perhaps other elements like willpower and determination (i.e. the difference between the veteran AM Colonel and the conscript)? Do you not remember the 4th ed Synapse rule which gave Tyranids EW and described it as the Hive Mind forcing them to keep going despite the damage taken?

 Azreal13 wrote:
They can equate to a variety of things depending on the unit, which is the precise point I came in on...

Okay, granted, they're definitely used to represent how many things that can come off of you and you not caring [Carnifex, case in point]. But I think that they shouldn't, and a Carnifex should have been a vehicle.

Look at it this way. If I shoot an antitank gun at a tank, and the shot goes through the armor, I might hit the engine, the gun breech, the transmission, the final drive, any of the crewmen, or the ammunition rack, but I also might not hit anything inside of it and the tank won't care. If I fire three shots at the tank, there's nothing magical about the 6th shot that makes the tank's track fall off, and nothing magical about the 12th shot that makes the tank suddenly catch on fire. And there's no reason the tank's track must fall off before it catches on fire, and no reason that it must take 3 shots for it to catch on fire. It could blow up on the first shot, or have all 12 rounds pass through it and not care in the least.

You and I are not actually all that different from the tank, when you think about it really. If I shoot at you, there's definitely a chance that I'll hit something non-essential, and while you may need a visit to the hospital to have the bullet removed, just like a tank that took 15 penetrations and kept going will need a trip to a repair depot, you'll still be able to move to cover and shoot me back, But if I hit your arm, you won't be able to lift your gun anymore, and if I hit your leg, you won't be able to move, and if I hit your head you might die right there on the spot, like a tank's ammunition rack exploding.

Now, fundamentally, if we had to track the state of each finger and toe on each of the 200 guardsmen in the battle, the game would go nowhere, so we can abstractly say that, because the amount of places on your body that you be shot and still keep fighting is pretty much 0, you're incapacitated by any wound you take. You got shot in the arm, you're combat ineffective and leave the field. You got shot in the leg, someone hauls you off to the medic, either way you're no longer a participant in this battle and are removed from the field.

Same goes for a tank, really, it's just that, since there's much fewer tanks, and they're much more important, it's not as much of a chore to keep track of the status of their guns and tracks. We can do this for one, two even ten tanks, but by then it might be tedious. A tank could easily also have a single wound, high toughness, and good armorsave, representing the comparative likelyhood of breaching it's formidable armor and then hitting something catastrophic that renders the tank unable to continue to participate in the battle.


Sure, there are soldiers who kept fighting after taking a dozen bullets, just like there are tanks that took twenty penetrating hits and kept rolling and firing. And there are also soldiers who died immediately the first time they were shot, and tanks that brewed up on the first hit. But there were King Tigers that detonated on the first hit they received, and M13/40's that took twenty hits to kill.


Hitpoints are very gamey, if you will. There's no reason it should always take about 20 stabs from my greatsword to slay a 10th level fighter, but only 2 to slay his first level counterpart. There's also no reason a 10th level fighter should be able to be stabbed 20 times with a greatsword but 40 times with a dagger. And there's no reason why after 19 hits, he's up and running about, or maybe precisely half as fast and as strong as he was before he took any hits, but at 20 he drops unconscious. They're supposed to abstract resiliency, but they're not very good at it. They're a holdover from the days when HP represented how many men were combat effective in that infantry token, and every HP you lost was a fairly arbitrary amount of unit cohesion lost, whether through soldiers becoming wounded or killed or morale breaking or the unit being forced to scatter and losing contact with other elements of it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 DarkStarSabre wrote:

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:
But really, a Carnifex should have been a 12/12/10 walker. There's nothing specific about the effects on the VDT that makes them only applicable to machines.

And this is a nice segway to what I'm looking forward to.

The death of 'vehicle rules'. No more disparity between vehicles and monstrous creatures, no more random oneshots (remember when a glancing hit could oneshot a tank?).

The fact that some people are so adamant on retaining these rules confuses me. They were horrible. They were clumsy. And the moment you added things like Tau suits and Eldar constructs to the mix they became confusing - what defined whether something was a vehicle or not? Why were GK exo-suits and spirit animated constructs considered monsters yet daemon possessed constructs weren't?

I like the idea of Carnifexes not deteriorating like other monsters. It encourages Tyranid players to throw them violently forward. And it encompasses the Tyranid design philosophy - they're killing machines. Designed with one purpose. So they do that and do it very well til you put them down. Hell, I remember background materials in the various Codexes describing how gaunt species didn't have digestive tracts so would just starve to death if left on their own in the wild.

But the strange belief that the vehicle rules need to come back? Ew. No thank you.

And the bizarre attempt to rationalise wounds for an AM Colonel compared to a normal guardsman - now you're complaining about the fact that stats are relatively abstract? That wounds aren't aren't just an indicator of damage that can be sustained but perhaps other elements like willpower and determination (i.e. the difference between the veteran AM Colonel and the conscript)? Do you not remember the 4th ed Synapse rule which gave Tyranids EW and described it as the Hive Mind forcing them to keep going despite the damage taken?

No, I'm complaining that the way they're abstracted doesn't make sense.

And I liked the Vehicle rules. I thought they were better than the infantry rules. They were fairly detailed, and it felt like tanks were actually tanks. I would have liked to have detailed tables for each vehicle struck from each facing like the game Tobruk, representing where each tank's engine, transmission, crew, munitions rack, armoring, and other components were and how likely they were to get damaged from any given direction by any given weapon, but it gets unwieldy in that game which only has maybe a dozen different weapons a tank could be hit by and only a dozen different tanks, so it definitely wouldn't work in 40k.


I feel that if we're going to stick at the "50 men and 2 tanks" scale of play, we should be very detailed and stop with this "Hitpoints" nonesense that have mutant beyond their original meaning as we've moved to smaller and smaller scale of battle but retained the rules for battle with whole divisions engaging.

If you don't see why having a ruleset were a tank can survive 20 hits or explode to the first hit based purely in luck is horrible for balance (even if is more realistic)...

To me it is pretty obvious.

Wounds/HP work because they give you a estimate of the ammount of damage a unit can sustain, so you can price it accordingly.

Hitpoints is gamey, yes. But you are here trying to reinvent the whell.

 Galas wrote:
If you don't see why having a ruleset were a tank can survive 20 hits or explode to the first hit based purely in luck is horrible for balance (even if is more realistic)...

To me it is pretty obvious.

Wounds/HP work because they give you a estimate of the ammount of damage a unit can sustain, so you can price it accordingly.

Hitpoints is gamey, yes. But you are here trying to reinvent the whell.

It's not particularly bad for balance. A tank's resiliency is in it's armor ratings, once a shot gets through it's probably lost some important function. That's just how tanks work. They can't take damage forever, or even damage for a short time.

Hitpoints are a mechanic that originates from larger scale wargames, and have been mutated beyond utility as the scale of battle shrinks and the level of detail increases until they're no longer a realistic expression of anything in particular.


I'm not re-inventing the wheel. Other wargames at this scale make it work. Even wargames at a larger scale do just fine without hitpoints. I greatly enjoy playing Panzer Leader/Panzer Blitz.

“Hit points introduce uncertainty and variance […] In Dungeons & Dragons, even when the prospects of a hit are near certain, the damage dice provide another potential survival mechanism via endurance, another way of forestalling death and increasing the drama of combat.”

From one of D&D creators. That seems appropiate for 40k to me. 40K isn't a simulation wargame. It shouldn't be. What you are talking about is appropiate for other kind of game.

 Galas wrote:

Spoiler:

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

 Galas wrote:
If you don't see why having a ruleset were a tank can survive 20 hits or explode to the first hit based purely in luck is horrible for balance (even if is more realistic)...

To me it is pretty obvious.

Wounds/HP work because they give you a estimate of the ammount of damage a unit can sustain, so you can price it accordingly.

Hitpoints is gamey, yes. But you are here trying to reinvent the whell.

It's not particularly bad for balance. A tank's resiliency is in it's armor ratings, once a shot gets through it's probably lost some important function. That's just how tanks work. They can't take damage forever, or even damage for a short time.

Hitpoints are a mechanic that originates from larger scale wargames, and have been mutated beyond utility as the scale of battle shrinks and the level of detail increases until they're no longer a realistic expression of anything in particular.


I'm not re-inventing the wheel. Other wargames at this scale make it work. Even wargames at a larger scale do just fine without hitpoints. I greatly enjoy playing Panzer Leader/Panzer Blitz.

“Hit points introduce uncertainty and variance […] In Dungeons & Dragons, even when the prospects of a hit are near certain, the damage dice provide another potential survival mechanism via endurance, another way of forestalling death and increasing the drama of combat.”

From one of D&D creators. That seems appropiate for 40k to me. 40K isn't a simulation wargame. It shouldn't be. What you are talking about is appropiate for other kind of game.

First of all, combat in D&D is terrible, and it's because of hitpoints. D&D has it's origins in simulation wargames, and tries to port the rules for a game at a much higher scale to the individual person, and it doesn't work. 40k, in turn, traces its origins to roleplay games, and moves to a scale that's not quite at the level of tokens representing companies but also at a level higher than each player controlling a single model. The original system is so badly mutated it's not functional anymore.

And second, what is 40k, if not a Simulation Wargame? A Video Game? A Roleplay Game? Chess?

Theres two extremes when you desing a game. Simulation and Arcade. 40k is much more near to "Arcade" than to simulation.

Hitpoints sistems are perfectly functional. You can not like them, and thats fine.

Starting fresh with a new army, Tau in my case. Oh, and not being afraid to play Tau because the are broken anymore. Always liked their aesthetic (mechs <3 ) but never really wanted to play them since everyone hated them so much.

Also looking forward to all the new players this edition is bringing in. Atleast in my group a lot more people are getting interested in starting due to the streamlined rules, and I look forward to seeing more players and playing more games

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

 BunkhouseBuster wrote:
Oh! And the Wound/Save/Damage system now in place. Mechanically speaking, it is EXACTLY what I would have designed for 40K. The removal of Instant Death/Explodes/Removed From Play tones down the power level of the biggest and scariest models, while the Damage mechanic makes up for it.

Huh. That's what I am least looking forwards to.

I mean just from the addition of the Damage mechanic and AP value now modifying Saves instead of the all-or-nothing system in place in prior Editions. Those are the changes I would have made, and I had nothing against the old To Hit and To Wound system, but this new version will suit us just fine these days, and streamlines the game a bit more.

 DarkStarSabre wrote:

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:
But really, a Carnifex should have been a 12/12/10 walker. There's nothing specific about the effects on the VDT that makes them only applicable to machines.

And this is a nice segway to what I'm looking forward to.

The death of 'vehicle rules'. No more disparity between vehicles and monstrous creatures, no more random oneshots (remember when a glancing hit could oneshot a tank?).

The fact that some people are so adamant on retaining these rules confuses me. They were horrible. They were clumsy. And the moment you added things like Tau suits and Eldar constructs to the mix they became confusing - what defined whether something was a vehicle or not? Why were GK exo-suits and spirit animated constructs considered monsters yet daemon possessed constructs weren't?

I wouldn't say that the rules for vehicles themselves were horrible, but rather horribly implemented. With some refinement and finagling, it could have worked.

But I do agree, moving the rules for monsters and vehicles together is much simpler and works better for the scale and scope of a game that 40K is trying to be. The damage chart is probably my favorite part of the new rules

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:
Look at it this way. If I shoot an antitank gun at a tank, and the shot goes through the armor, I might hit the engine, the gun breech, the transmission, the final drive, any of the crewmen, or the ammunition rack, but I also might not hit anything inside of it and the tank won't care. If I fire three shots at the tank, there's nothing magical about the 6th shot that makes the tank's track fall off, and nothing magical about the 12th shot that makes the tank suddenly catch on fire. And there's no reason the tank's track must fall off before it catches on fire, and no reason that it must take 3 shots for it to catch on fire. It could blow up on the first shot, or have all 12 rounds pass through it and not care in the least.

That's why the big powerful guns have random damage, to represent the chance at hitting something vital. Each shot isn't an individual and exact representation of that shot, but a rough estimation of what it can do at a time, regardless of the weapon, user, or target. If a model misses with its shot, it isn't neccesarily because it missed the target, but it could represent the model stumbling on reloading their weapon, moving out of the way for their unit to get a shot off, or they got distracted by a butterfly fluttering around.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:
You and I are not actually all that different from the tank, when you think about it really. If I shoot at you, there's definitely a chance that I'll hit something non-essential, and while you may need a visit to the hospital to have the bullet removed, just like a tank that took 15 penetrations and kept going will need a trip to a repair depot, you'll still be able to move to cover and shoot me back, But if I hit your arm, you won't be able to lift your gun anymore, and if I hit your leg, you won't be able to move, and if I hit your head you might die right there on the spot, like a tank's ammunition rack exploding.

We aren't that different? Good thing 40K uses the same mechanic to determine what damages us and how much we can take in a battle!

Wounds and Hit Points, while gamey (and this is a game, after all), are decent ways to represent damage without going into the minutiae of tracking individual systems. Is it perfect? Nope. Is it a good way to track damage and lower the effectiveness of the vehicle for the purposes of 40K? Seems like it to me.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:
And second, what is 40k, if not a Simulation Wargame? A Video Game? A Roleplay Game? Chess?

When designing a game, you can choose whether to make it an simulation or an abstraction. For the sake of game time, one is better for smaller scales, one is better for larger scales. Enjoying a much more detailed and representative game system over an abstracted one is perfectly fine, and vice versa. One is not inherently "better" than the other, unless you equate in other factors like time (which is the only way to make this decision in this case). Whether a video game or tabletop game, this is a decision to be made. Chess is definitely an abstraction, while Battletech is closer to a simulation with its damage tracking system. RPGs are good examples if implementing elements of both where beneficial (skill checks, combat, traveling/time management). 40K is moving towards the abstraction end of the spectrum.

I get your argument, I really do. It's just like a situation that can arise in D&D or other RPGs: an assassin sneaks into the inn to kill the mid-level heroes in their sleep, and puts the knife to the Fighter's neck. The Fighter wakes up (made her perception roll), with the knife to her neck. A knife will only ever do 1d4 damage, right? Well, the fighter has 25 HP, so she is safe, right? That's why in RPGs there are Critical Hits and Skill checks. In this case, I would posit my game theory concept of a Narrative Critical Hit. Sure, the Fighter will normally take 1d4 of damage, but unless they have stoneskin or some other magical buff, a slit throat will probably kill them (or at least cause massive amounts of damage! Healer, help!).

To me, the scale of 40K is only going to be slowed down by such tracking of detail. Sure, if there are only a couple tanks on the field, then it's manageable, but what about these army lists I am seeing on the threads talking about 5 or 6 tanks and a couple walkers in each list? IMHO, the 8th Edition system is probably the best middle ground for the time being.

Maybe we can get a Tank 40K special expansion that expands vehicle and monster combat in ways like SW:A and Kill Team do for Infantry, like a Planetstrike for massive tank battles like we saw in early Apocalypse games back in the day. I'd pick that one up!

I'm looking forward to using Celestine in my IG army. For a bit of fun, I made a sort of fallen angel model to use:




Really though, I'm just looking forward to playing again.