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It should cap at -2. Sorry Orks. General rules can be superseded in your codex.

The idea is that, when you fire a Bolter from a Marine, you're firing off one shot (or one quick burst) at 24", and two at 12" or less. Same with Guard and their Lasguns, Tyranids and their Devourers, etc. etc.

But Orks firing an Assault 2 weapon, for instance, are probably unloading an entire clip of a dozen or more shots. It's just that most of them are so badly aimed that they never have a chance of hitting, and the few that are well-aimed enough still don't have the best odds (1/3 chance). But, at the same time, it's such a storm of bullets that it doesn't matter if your EXACT location is known, since they're just shooting in your general direction anyway.

Make sense?

Unless you give that rule to stuff like Punisher cannons and other weapons that fires a ton of shots, as well as the old blast weapons (who cares if you're hard to hit, the entire area around is exploding), then no.

 Arachnofiend wrote:

 JimOnMars wrote:
No. Just cap it at 6+ always hits.

That basically only helps ork players, which I assume is why you suggested it.

That doesn't "Help" Ork players, who would still need a 6 just like everybody else.

Otherwise, allowing orks to shoot makes the game more fun. Would you play PUBG if you weren't allowed a gun? That's the Orks, without this fix.

Bring back abilities like searchlights on rhinos, dreads and such.

I don't know how a searchlights are supposed to help shooting a warp spider but if people can pump CP into gaining minus to hit, why can't I pump CP to remove them?

1CP- remove a -1 to hit modifier from target unit, you may use this stratagem multiple times but must select the same unit.

I can't help but notice that recent codexes have also gotten really creative with their traits too

 JimOnMars wrote:

 Arachnofiend wrote:

 JimOnMars wrote:
No. Just cap it at 6+ always hits.

That basically only helps ork players, which I assume is why you suggested it.

That doesn't "Help" Ork players, who would still need a 6 just like everybody else.

Otherwise, allowing orks to shoot makes the game more fun. Would you play PUBG if you weren't allowed a gun? That's the Orks, without this fix.

I suppose someone could make the argument that armies with cheap shooting are sort of kind of at an advantage in scenarios where you only hit on 6's, but...

A.) Most elite armies will never be in that scenario.
B.) most BS4+ armies are only in that scenario when their opponent has invested psychic powers and/or stratagems into protecting a unit (and then it's usually only one unit at a time)
C.) In scenarios where people hit on 6s, it's still not that big a deal if one army is slightly better at it than others. Sloppy math says that for every 60 shots you manage to put out with s4 Ap - while hitting on 6's, you get 10 hits, 5 wounds versus a marine squad, slightly less than 2 kills. Given how pricey 60 shots are on any platorm (even conscripts), I don't consider that a problematically efficient amount of dakka.

So yeah. Let everyone hit on 6+. I'm all for it. It saves orks from being unable to hit, and armies with better BS will still hit more reliably than orks outside of hedge cases where their opponent is investing some sort of resource into -2 and -3 to hit modifiers.

That said, I still don't think it would be all that unreasonable to cap to-hit penalties at -1ish. My thinking being that once you reach a certain level of "hard to hit," you sort of plateau regardless of other modifiers. Like, technically the super sonic air plane with active cloaking is technically harder to hit when its paint job is also camouflaged, but after a point, the camouflage only makes so much of a difference.

If we generally agree that being completely unable to shoot at a target is lame, then perhaps we can agree that a marine with his aim thrown off is still a better shot than a guardsman with his aim thrown off. I think 6's to hit and max of -1 to to-hit rolls are both reasonable suggestions.

The problem with maxing out at -1 means you should always move and fire heavy always advance units with only assualt weapons as you will be at your max -1 so any -1 from your target is wasted.
The real issue is army wide -1 to hit as a trait was a terrible idea. Limiting a units modifier at -2 makes sence, but if you move and fire a heavy thats -3 being able to get to -3/4 to hit from only unit buffs is too much but -1 max is an over correction.

The reason orks are singled out is that orks are always decribed as just spraying shots in the direction of the enemy but that aiming for most orks is an anachronism. Hence why it makes a little sence to gice them some sort of way around needing 7 or 8 to hit. Though I would say if they roll a 6 they may roll those a d3 and add that to the 6.

 Xenomancers wrote:
Let's get real here - no army should have a -1 to hit at 12" as a free army trait. It's exceptionally busted.

I agree, -1 to hit armywide is the main offender.
Without it, you still have -2 to hit or better occasionally, but it usually comes from psychic power or stratagems, and therefore cannot be applied to many units in matched play. If a player spends CP + a psychic power to make a single unit very resistant to enemy shooting for a turn, then I don't see a big problem there.

-1 to hit traits also create awful internal balance for the codex that have it, that another reason to get rid of it.

It's pretty obvious that there should be a cap of 6+ to hit for all factions.

The fact that negative to hit modifiers can currently stack any unit in the game so that it's impossible to hit is entirely against the design philosophy of 8th edition where they didn't want units "unable to do anything". This is why Grots can potentially wound knights.

I'm hopeful it'll be changed in the big FAQ. Reece from Frontline has said that GW are aware of the issue that Orks can't fire at many targets and the assumption is that if they believe it's an issue they will try to fix it.

The fairest fix is that everyone hits on a 6+, regardless of modifiers. This is literally equal across all factions. It is also the easiest thing to balance.

Exactly, they took the fact that in previous editions things couldn't wound some other things, so they made sure that a 6 can always wound. Why they didn't for hits is beyond me.

I have come to think that a 6 always hits is better than any cap on modifiers.

provide units with an option to discard half their dice, by weapon type, to negate a -1 to hit (not provide a +1), and to do this again if needed so discard 75% of your dice to negate a -2 to hit etc

thus anyone can hit anything, but likely not very well - so you do it when you can.

Orks: 30 of them, assault 2 weapons, so 60 dice hitting on a 5 - 20 hits, you get a -1 so they drop to 10 hits.

they can drop to 30 dice to go back to a 5 to hit. for 10 hits...

but if you get them to a 7 (-2) they now cannot hit, here they could attack with 15 dice, hitting on a 6, for probably 2 hits.

Just remove the -1 to hit traits for certain armies...they're most of the time an autopick, it's absolutely brainless and just kills off lots of options.

mungkorn88 wrote:
Just remove the -1 to hit traits for certain armies...they're most of the time an autopick, it's absolutely brainless and just kills off lots of options.

without re-writing the entire codex.. how can you just "remove a trait" from an entire army??

 Sal4m4nd3r wrote:

mungkorn88 wrote:
Just remove the -1 to hit traits for certain armies...they're most of the time an autopick, it's absolutely brainless and just kills off lots of options.

without re-writing the entire codex.. how can you just "remove a trait" from an entire army??

Yeah, hard No on removing the -1 Traits. The reason they are auto-pick is because you can stack modifiers and make it impossible for units to hit in some situations.
You allow natural 6s to always hit and we fix the problem without having to gut otherwise fluffy traits for some factions.

-

 Galef wrote:

 Sal4m4nd3r wrote:

mungkorn88 wrote:
Just remove the -1 to hit traits for certain armies...they're most of the time an autopick, it's absolutely brainless and just kills off lots of options.

without re-writing the entire codex.. how can you just "remove a trait" from an entire army??

Yeah, hard No on removing the -1 Traits. The reason they are auto-pick is because you can stack modifiers and make it impossible for units to hit in some situations.
You allow natural 6s to always hit and we fix the problem without having to gut otherwise fluffy traits for some factions.

-

IMO. -1 to hit army trait is the main problem here.

It makes it so things with a natural -1 to hit (not that offensive - kind of cool actually) are automatically -2 to hit (almost immune to shooting damage). I see that as being a major problem. There are other ways to get a -2 or -3 to hit sure - but it will only affect a single target. Your opponent can just shoot something else instead.

Possible fixes I can think of:
-Natural 6 still hits
-Faction traits that grant -1 do not stack with other -1 modifiers (except Heavy b/c it makes no sense that moving would actually make you as affecting as other weapons)
-Factions Traits for -1 to hit only apply to Infantry and Bikes (vehicles are too big)

If you dropped the -1 to hit Traits altogether, what would you recommend be the replacement for Alaitoc, Alpha Legion and Raven Guard?

-

 Galef wrote:
Possible fixes I can think of:
-Natural 6 still hits
-Faction traits that grant -1 do not stack with other -1 modifiers (except Heavy b/c it makes no sense that moving would actually make you as affecting as other weapons)
-Factions Traits for -1 to hit only apply to Infantry and Bikes (vehicles are too big)

If you dropped the -1 to hit Traits altogether, what would you recommend be the replacement for Alaitoc, Alpha Legion and Raven Guard?

-

You know what? I kind like the army trait not stacking with natural -1. I like it better than my original idea - which is.

-1 army traits become "units with this trait always count as being in cover - if they are in cover on the battlefield - the cover save bonus can not be ignored"
It's much more fluffy for both RG and Alaitoc anyways.

So just +1 to saves outside of the Fight phase then, rather than making a special cover rule that cannot be ignored. Or +1 to saves from shots more than 12" away.

This is the problem with using such a limited system with such a wlde range of combatants.There is no room for the finer level of graduation between results some players expect.

However, to actually fix all the issues while maintaining straightforward intuitive rules, it would need a complete rewrite...

A suggestion to do this in a simple way.

A unit can never take advantage of more than one -1 to hit modifier.

So, if you’re clever or could manage -2 by having a unit with a special -1 to hit ability AND gimp the enemy unit that shoots at them, but that’s it.

Make the modifier the square root of the determined modifier:

+/-1 becomes +/-1
+/-4 becomes +/-2

etc

so getting a +/- 1 remains reasonably easy, but to get to +/- 2 takes some serious effort

Also makes it easier to add such modifiers to the game

 ArbitorIan wrote:
A suggestion to do this in a simple way.

A unit can never take advantage of more than one -1 to hit modifier.

So, if you’re clever or could manage -2 by having a unit with a special -1 to hit ability AND gimp the enemy unit that shoots at them, but that’s it.

All ghostkeels would like to thank you for making their drones totally flippin irrelevant except to give away kill points. You have totally broken an ability they are already over paying for.

Ice_can wrote:

 ArbitorIan wrote:
A suggestion to do this in a simple way.

A unit can never take advantage of more than one -1 to hit modifier.

So, if you’re clever or could manage -2 by having a unit with a special -1 to hit ability AND gimp the enemy unit that shoots at them, but that’s it.

All ghostkeels would like to thank you for making their drones totally flippin irrelevant except to give away kill points. You have totally broken an ability they are already over paying for.

If it’s only that one unit, and it already needs fixing, surely FAQing and changing what that combo does to start with is the better option?

As it stands it can be fixed very easily by them adding the charictor keyword in the codex faq. Post your change its difficult to see how to make it work, as the drones benifit all steath units within a distance of themselfs so its has a lot of knock on changes required.