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If an entire army needs a special rule (read exceptions to the rules) in order to be functional with the basic structure of your game than in what capacity have you "fixed" the game? If anything you have made things worse.

Again, have you actually played a game with this yet?

 Lance845 wrote:
Again, have you actually played a game with this yet?

I would also like to have this answered. You make some bold claims, like...

warpedpig wrote:
Actually the basic concept fixed the game. Now it’s up to you to adapt your army lists to these basic classes I gave you. And iron the bugs out. If you think one person has the time to change 20 armies worth of rules and units and weapons and play test it. You’re absolutely a lunatic

But without playtesting they're pretty damn hard to believe.

I haven't play tested because I just created this a matter of days ago. I know the concept is sound. It will require tweaking to incorporate all the units and factions but this is not something I have the time to go do on my own.

I don't understand why you cant get that I am not claiming that I have the entire solution. I am saying I have the basic concept/structure down for how to simplify this.

I will give an example. Its obvious that you have pointed out something that isn't going to work, the -2 to hit for light infantry in cover against heavy weapons. Because orks would just never hit anything. So just change that to +2 cover save while in cover. This makes it so heavy weapons can in fact still hit, but the light infantry are now protected better by their cover.

Instead of just railing into me and attacking every damn thing, you should present some solutions. This is why I am not even wanting to help you incorporate your lists, or address any inconsistencies. Its just 100% attack the OP every single post.

This is the status of the hobby sadly. I go out of my way to try and present the basis for a more balanced gameplay and instead of some friendly criticism its just been attack attack attack.

If you want to lay out the problems politely then I will try to correct them when I can and fix my rule-file I have


Automatically Appended Next Post:
If you can post a list of the specific problems for your faction I will try to work them out for you.

Just be very specific about where my rules have fallen apart. And I will address it.

The issue here is you see crtique as attack. It wasnt attack when the conversation started. Hell, its not even attack now. You dont know that the system is sound. You dont know how it will work on the table. And you wont know until you put it to the test preferably with the worst case scenarios possible.

This is YOUR project. I am happy to offer critque and point you towards solutions. I am not happy to tell you all the answers. Because i have a penchant to design in a specific direction and i dont want to make your project into my project and end up taking it over. So when i pose questions like what happens with x? What i am saying is this could be a problem how do you see your system handling it. Telling me to figure it out doesnt help anything. If your system cant handle it then maybe you should rewind back to square one with consideration for x.

I did give many explanations and you don't seem to get the gist of how this is supposed to work and how you have to put these units into logical classes.

Gotta say, you presented an untested formula that you think will increase your enjoyment - the way you enjoy the game. Concepts are fine...but this is your baby. There's a 99.9% chance no one will ever play the rules you've put forth here, even less so when you yourself have not playtested them.

So the question becomes: why post them, if not looking for critiques?

My friends and I don't play 40K the way it's presented in the rulebook...but I'm not putting it out as a suggested play method. We've been playing "our" way for a year and a half or so. It's still not perfect...but I can say we've discovered dozens of issues and subsequently resolved them. That onus is on us as the modifier/designers.

What would be more appropriate is for you to play with your own rules, dozens of times....then come into conversations with that information. Those experiences, those successes and failures. Express how these rules change the game, and how the feel of the game changes. Then people are more likely to say "hey, sounds like I could enjoy it - I'll give it a whirl.", or "not for me, thanks.". But no one is going to take untested rules and just wing it, and modify their own armies, etc.

As a hobbyist game designer, the best and worst part of any rules set is putting into action and having people break it - more importantly people who didn't invent it. In fact you should find the people you know will read rules and figure out how best to break, manipulate or abuse them. That's how you'll learn. You have some ideas you think are good - but you threw them out into the "Proposed Rules" section without any playtesting or actual experience using them. That's why people are going to pick them apart, etc. None of it personal attacks. I doubt anyone on here knows you personally, etc.

Its not a lack of understanding. I understand what you WANT these rules to do. I just dont think they will actually do it. And you have no evidence to suggest i am wrong. You just insist we dont "get it" and invite us to do the heavy lifting to make your concept fit with reality.

We wont.

Lance youre such a badass bro. Im in awe.

Are you going to address their points, or just snark?

Not to defend warpedpig's behavior thus far, but I do think it's fair to discuss his proposal on a high-concept level rather than getting bogged down in the specifics of a handful of weapons/units that would almost certainly need to be changed at some point.

Obviously the rules as presented are neither extensive nor consistent enough to be playable, but we can still discuss the general idea of having to-hit/save modifiers based on unit types. Which, to be fair, some of you have tried to do.

So looking at what warpedpig has presented on that high concept level... I feel like the concept is...

* Neat in the abstract. My main take away is that you basically want to have stricter definitions between what units are able to effectively engage one another with infantry generally taking on infantry and big stuff generally taking on big stuff.

* These rules kind of get in their own way. You've built several assumptions into the core rules of the game. By assuming something like, "heavy weapons are bad against infantry and thus take a -2 penalty to hit light infantry," you make it so that an a weapon intended to be both heavy and good at hurting light infantry (like a wyvern's main gun or a heavy bolter) requires additional special rules to do its intended job. If you have to create two special rules for a common weapon just to undo one of the new rules you've introduced, then you might be adding to the volume of rules without necessarily improving the gameplay.

* The main goal of your rules seems to be to make certain units/weapons good against certain types of units. 40k actually manages to do this (for the most part) without such explicit classifications of units. As a result, it doesn't generally need to create exceptions to its own rules to make a weapon behave as intended. So for instance, a bunch of heavy bolters are more efficient at killing a bunch of infantry than the same number (or points worth of) lascannons because their number of shots combined with "good enough" strength and AP let them kill through a mob of ork boyz faster than the higher strength/better AP lascannons.

So if I were to adapt your system to my own armies, I'd be tempted to make something like a plasma cannon pretty good at killing what you'd call "heavy infantry." However, it's innately penalized for attempting to do so under your rules because of the penalties to its to-hit rolls. So I could give it a "blast" rule that says it ignores heavy weapon to-hit penalties when firing at light and heavy infantry, but then I'd be creating extra rules to remove a problem that isn't present in the 40k rules in the first place.

40k rules are far from perfect, and sometimes the math gets skewed causing weapons to be better or worse against certain targets than they were probably intended, but things are usually good or bad against various targets based on the fluff properties of the weapon. Big guns with high strength are good against vehicles because they have high strength and good armor penetration and high damage values. Big guns with low strength but lots of shots are usually better against infantry than against tanks.

You've stated your goals in the opening post. I'll quote and address them.

The issues addressed. Cover saves, making every type of unit useful instead of half the codex being pointless...

You've changed how cover works, and I'd argue that you have, in fact, made cover as well as certain units more survivable (and thus useful) as a result. However, others have already pointed out how your rules as presented seem to make many units in the game less useful. So on this point, it's more of a horizontal move. As presented, your rules just change which half of the codex gets ignored.

having weapons interact in logical ways with different targets

Others have already pointed out several weird rules interactions that would require several exceptions to the base rules you've presented to rectify. Therefor, I feel like you might not have accomplished this stated goal.

rewarding strategic thinking and maneuver, and making the battlefield come alive.

Your changes to cover probably make maneuvering a little more important, so I might give you that one. "Making the battlefield come alive," is a good line for the commercial, but not really a measurable objective. I suspect that you mean something specific when you say "strategic thinking." Taking a list that generates sufficient CP to use efficient strats, powers, and auras along with efficient units is list building strategy. Building a list that takes into account the modern meta is strategic thinking. Building a list that can overwhelm the enemy with firepower or stack durability sufficient to assert board control is strategy. Now you might not enjoy that form of strategy, and that's fair, but I'm not clear on what other sort of "strategic thinking" you have in mind. Your rules as stated don't seem to generally change the overall way the game would play other than making some units extra bad at killing certain other units.

A player should feel like he is in command of an army, and every order he gives is vital to achieving victory – NOT that your omgwtfbbq CP, stratagem, psychic power, HQ aura, cheese is so over powered you can’t lose. 40K is supposed to be a strategy war game, but it has turned into a cheesefest. Its miserable and I hate it. So heres the changes.

Alright, but I don't see how your rules really accomplish this. If every 40k player on these forums were to take your proposed changes (along with the tons of army-specific rules that would need to be created), then eventually competitive players would figure out which units are most killy/tanky under your rules rather than the GW rules. Your rules might encourage people to squat in cover a bit more, but nothing you've posted seems like it really addresses those items you claim to dislike. You haven't stated that auras, strats, or psychic powers would be reigned in, for instance, and the rules you've posted don't innately touch on those things. If they did still exist in a finalized version of your rules, they'd either be an optimal option that would see play (just like now), or they'd be undesirable enough to pass on in favor of whatever the more efficient killy/tanky thing was.

Without seeing a ton of specific exceptions that would basically render the core rules moot, it seems like you're basically just forcing every unit in the game to hyper specialize. So theoretically, people would want to bring a balance of rock, paper, and scissors, but once I kill your rocks, you can't interact with my scissors meaningfully. And that's assuming I bring a well-rounded list. If I just load up on rocks with a mix of anti-paper, scissor, and rock firepower, then I can focus on killing whichever units in your army are good against rocks first and then be basically invulnerable to the rest of your army.

TLDR; your rules don't seem to accomplish your stated goals. The high concepts you've listed are maybe reasonable, but they're more like abstract design goals than actual rules. I can say, "Hey guys, I'm proposing a rule that says all games are balanced and everyone always has a good time while playing," but that in and of itself doesn't enforce game balance or improve game play. You're doing the underwear gnome thing.

Step 1. Give all units a class
Step 2. Make all units/weapons specialized to be good and bad against certain classes.
Step 3. ???
Step 4. Profit.

And then when people squint and ask followup questions about 3, you get defensive and tell them to figure it out themselves.

Also, 40k has enough units/options that I feel like it gets in the way of what you're trying to do. The rules you've presented might work better in an entirely different game with fewer unit options. Like, in a game where the only units available fit neatly into the classes you've presented and pretty much all "heavy" weapons are bad against light infantry, for instance.

So you want one person to figure out all the details for every codex? Many of the questions were dumb. I said in my original post that you would need to adapt your stuff to the new format if you wanted to use it. And that many things would be reclassified.

I then get a bunch of straw men questions asking me why this or that won’t work ( obviously because you haven’t bothered to work it into the new format duh )

I never claimed to give a totally complete system. So having everyone bash me for not doing so is just stupid.

As far as strategems and CP and all that cheese. I didn’t list it because I don’t think they really have a place in a simplified game. You could still use them if you want

Formations and all that also only exist to gain CP. truly a dumb reason to create an army list. Just to get CP. not because a balanced combined arms force is good because you need a mixture of units to properly fight on different types of terrain against different units.

The truth is people don’t want to do any work when it comes to filling in the details. The basic idea is very solid. But no one wants to bother making any thoughtful changes to existing units and weapons to bring them in line with the new system.

You wouldn’t be happy unless I made perfectly balance new rules for every single unit and weapon. Every single strat. Every single problem addressed.

I don’t have the time.

They are not strawmen questions designed to bash you. They are critical thinking questions of cause and effect to get you to think on the actual impact of the rules you are proposing.

When designing a thing the farther in you are when you identify a problem the more time consuming and expensive it is to correct it. These early stages are when its best to run these ideas through a bunch of "what if"s and "how would x"s so that you can identify issues now before you spend hours playing and testing just to have to redo the very foundations of your changes. You insist your idea is solid. But you refuse to even acknowledge the possibility that facets of them might be flawed or create new problems. If you are the perfect game designer with the most bullet proof idea of all time why are you here telling us the idea for free?

OP, I don't think you've grasped the purpose of this forum. Critique is part of how this forum works, otherwise it's just a dumping ground for any random idea people can come up with. It's through critique that systems get refined. If you're going to get super defensive whenever any problems are pointed out I don't think you're going to get anywhere on this forum.

You potentially have the basis of a good idea here. Splitting units and weapons into types may well be a good way to better differentiate those game elements than we currently have.The problem is in your execution, which is what we're all trying to say. You've made a few assumptions that don't seem to stand upt o scrutiny. For example, your idea that heavy weapons are bad against light infantry doesn't make much sense when we have plenty of heavy weapons designed specifically to kill light infantry. That doesn't mean your core idea is bad but it does suggest it needs tweaking. Your counter-proposal that units in cover gain +2 cover save against heavy weapons doesn't solve the problem because it actually lessens the difference betweek anti-infantry and anti-armour heavy weapons since the better AP of anti-tank weapons is a good counter to the increased cover save.

When people ask how you would apply your rules to an example list, they're not looking to catch you out. They're looking for greater clarity about how your rules would look in a real-world environment. They're actually trying to help. I think you'll find if you approach this process with a willingness to discuss, debate and amend your core ideas in light of criticism you'd be much more likely to get other people to help you out with some of the finer details. Simply telling people to go and figure out how to apply your own system to their armies isn't going to be a successful strategy.

I will say this:

Apologies for being so harsh. Looking at what I wrote, my words were too mean.

I, by and large, stand by what I said, but I should've been more tactful with it.

Apology accepted?
____________________________________________________________________________________________

For some specific issues that need addressing:

-Changing stats-
Daemons especially can change stats. A Daemon Prince is S7 (Anti-Material) but improves to S8 (Anti-Tank) when near a Herald, or for Khorne Princes, on the charge. Bloodletters go from S4 (Anti-Personnel) to S6 (Anti-Material) if they charge with a Herald nearby. Plague Drones go from T5 (Heavy Infantry) to T6 (Light Armor) if the Tally goes high enough with Epidemius.

-Lack of Clarity On Weapon Types-
You have, for example, Light Infantry having -1 To-Hit from Medium weapons, and -2 from Heavy. But you don't have classifications of Medium and Heavy, you have various Anti-X classes.

You are making an issue where there is none, I will display by making an analogous post.

In an effort to make Age of Sigmar more strategic and fun I have made some basic change that will mean more balanced army lists, more common sense with units and their performance on the table.

I will try to address the issue of all units being equally good pt/pt at killing all units, while I think it'd make more sense that different units should be better or worse at killing things, but the current system of always wounding on a specific roll regardless of attacker and defender and wounds of high-damage weapons carrying over doesn't make much sense.

To address these issues I imagine a system of Strenght and Toughness and I want to remove the rule that allows multi-damage weapons to damage more than one model, I hope that by doing this, monsters will be more adept at killing monsters and infantry more adept at killing infantry, rather than either being potentially equally good unless they have special rules that allow them to be good against one or the other specifically.

I imagine the Strength and Toughness stats being around 3 for models that are 3-10 pts and around 4 for models that are 11-25 pts, 5 for 26-50 pts, 6 for 51-80 pts, 7 for 81-190 pts, 8 for 191+ pts models. I imagine this won't make sense for every army, but I imagine you can come up with changes yourself if you feel like for example, your Orruks should have higher Strength and Toughness for the pts paid than other factions.

The problem with your issue that multi-damage weapons being unable to overkill fixes the issue of lascannons being better at killing Land Raiders than Land Speeders, let's say I shoot 4 lascannons at a Land Raider, I will do somewhere between 0 and 36, the chance of me doing more than 18 is very low and the chance of me doing absolutely nothing is very low. Let's say I shoot 4 lascannons at a Land Speeder, I am reasonably likely to overkill that Land Speeder because lascannons do a very random amount of damage, but I am still not guaranteed to kill it. Damage 1 weapons are already relatively weak against multi-wound models compared to their multi-damage counterparts. On top of this we have Strenght and Toughness which further improves some weapons against certain targets, a lasgun currently does 200% more damage against a T3 target than it does a T6+ target. Now maybe you don't find this to be discriminating enough, but I think you could make the difference between units much more noticable simply by changing toughness values and/or implementing the rule someone else suggested where 3S =< T = no chance to wound and remove the option for a weapon to ever wound on a 2+ just because it has double strength.

S/T 1 = 1
S/T 2 = 2
S/T 3 = 3
S/T 4 = 4
S/T 5 = 6
S/T 6 = 8
S/T 7 = 12
S/T 8 = 16

This way lascannons will be even more crucial for taking out heavy armour and will be even worse at taking out infantry. It also won't create the bazillion issues others have pointed out, although as any other change it will create some amount of problems. I also think you are sorely mistaken if you think any rules change will balance the game more*, it cannot. There are good light infantry and bad light infantry, good tanks and bad tanks, good stratagems and weak stratagems. Luckily they all share a cost and modifying that cost is easy as pie, just agree with your opponent that they can use Terminators at half price, I'm sure your opponents will field a lot more Terminators against you, maybe they'll let you do the same for some of your units that you really want to field as well but cannot without breaking your list budget and cutting too deep into your chances of winning.

*Edit: i didn't mean balance the game, I meant make every unit viable.

 JNAProductions wrote:
I will say this:

Apologies for being so harsh. Looking at what I wrote, my words were too mean.

I, by and large, stand by what I said, but I should've been more tactful with it.

Apology accepted?
____________________________________________________________________________________________

For some specific issues that need addressing:

-Changing stats-
Daemons especially can change stats. A Daemon Prince is S7 (Anti-Material) but improves to S8 (Anti-Tank) when near a Herald, or for Khorne Princes, on the charge. Bloodletters go from S4 (Anti-Personnel) to S6 (Anti-Material) if they charge with a Herald nearby. Plague Drones go from T5 (Heavy Infantry) to T6 (Light Armor) if the Tally goes high enough with Epidemius.

-Lack of Clarity On Weapon Types-
You have, for example, Light Infantry having -1 To-Hit from Medium weapons, and -2 from Heavy. But you don't have classifications of Medium and Heavy, you have various Anti-X classes.

Yeah we are cool. You have brought up good points

I think special abilities would have to change saves. If they started changing toughness it can mess up everything else. But improving a save or giving an extra 5 or 6 up save wouldn’t break the other wounding and targeting mechanics

Another point-Terminators with Storm Shields have a 2++ against small arms.

The includes stuff like AP-3 power swords.

Also, your proposals for changing Terminators makes them far too strong for their points cost.

For 34 points, you currently get:

M................5"
WS.............3+
BS..............3+
S.................4
T.................4
W................2
A................2 (3 On Sarge)
Ld...............8 (9 On Sarge)
Sv...............2+

Equipped with a 24" Range RF2 S4 AP0 D1 Storm Bolter, and a Sx2 AP-3 Dd3 Powerfist that inflicts a -1 to-hit penalty.

They are, generally, considered subpar.

Your rules give them, for apparently the same points:

M................8"
WS.............2+
BS..............2+
S.................5
T.................5
W................3
A................2
Ld...............8
Sv...............2+ (On a d8)

And their Storm Bolters are AP-1 D2d3 (AP-2 for 2 points) and the Fists are AP-4 D3+d3 no hit penalty.

While I certainly agree Terminators need a buff, +3" Movement, +1 BS, effective +2 WS, +1 Strength, +1 Toughness, +1 Wound, +3 damage on their weapons and saving on a d8 instead of a d6 is... Well, it's pretty insane for a buff.

Against the dedicated Terminator Killer (Overcharged Plasma) it goes from needing just shy of 3 BS 3+ shots to kill them to needing exactly 9 on average.
And against a Knight, they go from needing just shy of 58 Powerfist Attacks to kill a Questoris to needing exactly 9.

I don't think a 6-man Terminator squad (costing 199 points, and ignoring the Sarge who has a Power Sword) should be capable of killing a 350+ Point Imperial Knight on the charge.

All of these values need to be changed. I probably shouldn’t have even listed new profiles. I mainly did it just as an example of how new weapon class vs unit classes would interact and not for actual balanced unit profiles that are game ready because they aren’t right now. I’m working 12 hour days right now but when I have more time I’d be happy to modify all these to something that’s more appropriate.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Something else I want to re work with deep strike. I think you should have units like path finders or rangers or scouts that carry a beacon or teleported homer so then a deep striking unit can drop in nearby. This would mean that if they attempt to deploy it and fail then the deep strike can be prevented. Also equipment and units could maybe attempt to counter it somehow.

Deep strike is rather powerful and screening shouldn’t be the only way to mitigate the damage.

Automatically Appended Next Post:
Something else I want to re work with deep strike. I think you should have units like path finders or rangers or scouts that carry a beacon or teleported homer so then a deep striking unit can drop in nearby. This would mean that if they attempt to deploy it and fail then the deep strike can be prevented. Also equipment and units could maybe attempt to counter it somehow.

Deep strike is rather powerful and screening shouldn’t be the only way to mitigate the damage.

If you want to see how that would look in practice look at necrons now. How many nightscythes and monoliths do you see on the table deploying troops?

That is placing a unit in deepstrike that requires another unit to deploy. The deployment unit gets targeted because you get to kill units 2 for 1

 Lance845 wrote:
If you want to see how that would look in practice look at necrons now. How many nightscythes and monoliths do you see on the table deploying troops?

That is placing a unit in deepstrike that requires another unit to deploy. The deployment unit gets targeted because you get to kill units 2 for 1

Not if you don't make them specific units and instead an upgrade.
Whilest the dreaded 4th ed CSM codex had many faults icons serving as beacon for DS wasn't one of them.

If that unit over there purchased the upgrade that allows for deepstrikers to come in then I will shoot that unit over there so the deepstrikers cannot come in.

The necron ones are vehicles. One of which is tough as hell, and they don't survive.

The proposed rule right now is to give it to scouts, pathfinders, and other units with weak survivability. Purchase the upgrade, you purchase a target on their back.

Deepstrike beacons worked back when there was scatter. The general gist being that the homer was a way to get a precision drop, but if you lose it, you don't lose the ability to arrive at all.

A possible scatter-dice-free option would be to bring back the old deepstrike method, where deepstrikers have to be touching base with each other (as this has zero negative connotations, now that there are no templates). Place 1 model from the unit on the board. Then the player roll off - the winner may move the model a number of inches in any direction. Then deploy the unit around the model. if a model cannot be placed it is destroyed. If a model is placed within 9" of an enemy unit, that unit can choose to either move away to 9" or shoot at them. If you place the model within 12" of a teleport homer, you don't roll off.

(these rules can be tweaked and adjusted however you wish, my aim is to have 2 tiers of deepstrike - guided and unguided!)


As for the heavy weapons issue, which seems to be the catching point, let's generalise here so you're not looking at every weapon in the game separately. Let's look at heavy anti-infantry weapons.

I would suggest, with your class-based immersion system, you instead focus on what is shooting the weapon, rather than what the weapon is shooting at.

For Example - Light infantry cannot move & fire heavy weapons. At all. Heavy infantry can move & fire heavy weapons at -2 to hit (subsequently bolstered by any other hit modifiers, EG easier to hit a vehicle). Heavier stuff is at -1 to hit for moving & shooting.


It's unnecessary, I think, to put the modifier based on the target - if you lie down with a mounted LMG, you can hit infantry pretty easily. if you try to run forwards and do the same, nope. you'd probably break something from the recoil. You have the argument as well with a lascannon that if you're firing it at a guardsman, it's already being wasted. great job, now you've killed a single guardsman! 5 more turns like that and your lascannon will almost have made it's points back!

As such, it may be kinda realistic to state that a lascannon or a missile are less likely to hit infantry than a tank, but then everything is - anti-infantry weapons make up for it with volume of shots, in general. it's unnecessary rules to penalise heavy weapons for shooting infantry.

It will probably be a good idea for you to write up a new summary, with the rules tweaks and such that you've taken on board, so that we can see where your idea is now. And I agree that it's a bit early for specific weapon rewrites, we should assume they stay unchanged (with the obvious additions of anti-infantry, anti-vehicle etc)