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Hellebore wrote:
You can go back to the original system and make it even more restrictive, thereby keeping stats smaller.

Ie the table used to allow one extra step S4 wounded t7 on a 6 rather than -.

Drop that extra one off entirely and cap stats at 10 again.

Start at 1 for things, ie grots are s/T1 guard are 2, Orks 3 marine 4 etc.

1-6 is infantry, 7-10 monsters and vehicles (6/7 can be light vehicles and super heavy infantry).


For the issues of units being completely immune to attack, you can make a mass attack bonus where if something can't wound, add up all the attacks from one round.

Roll to wound and count 6s. The first 6 counts as a potential wound. Each 6 after that counts as a strength bonus to determine if it actually wounds.

Ie S3 vs t6. Can't wound. 10 attacks rolls 3 6s. First 6 is a potential wound. Add the 2nd to the strength (to 4) now allows it to wound. If you had rolled 4 6s, you could inflict 2 wounds.
If the target was t7, then you'd need 3 6s to inflict wound and so on.

This only works with multiple attacks.

The wound table would look like this

[Code]
T1 2 3 . 4. 5 . 6. 7. 8. 9. 10
S3 2+ 3+ 4+ 5+ 6+ 6+(2) 6+(3) 6+(4) 6+(5) 6+(6)
[/Code]


The number in brackets being the number of 6s you'd have to roll in a single to wound roll to inflict one successful wound.

If you rolled multiple of these you'd inflict multiple wounds.


EDIT
Nothing can be stronger than 10 or tougher than 10. Wounds aren't capped though.

By starting at 1 for stuff, you also get a wider range of infantryman stats.

Power fists et Al should just be a strength mod rather than a multiplier.

If we go with the previous list:
Grot 1
Human 2
Ork 3
Marine 4
Nid warrior 5
Warboss 6

A power fist adding +2 is gong to be big. A thunder hammer adding 4 is even bigger.

Vehicles
Attack bike 5
Sentinel 6
Rhino 7
Predator 8
Land raider 9
Warlord titan 10

Now you are working within a much more constrained system and don't need to blow out the stats of weapons.

As strength can only go to 10, it means that anti Titan weapons can still only wound them on 4+. Suddenly they are super tough

I agree but only so far as "double" and "Half" are removed from the calculation - it has to be a linear system! otherwise S2 wounds T1 on a 2+ and a 3+.


Your suggestion with the strength bonus would be quicker to apply if you simply state that avy unit with a toughess over the threshold halves incoming wounds.

EG:
S4 vs T4, 4+
S4 vs T5, 5+
S4 vs T6, 6+
S4 vs T7+, 6+*

*halve the number of successful wound rolls, rounding down, before saves are made.

Though this still presents the chance for people to try and kill knights with lasguns, and that is part of what slows the game down.

Simply saying "It's 3 higher than your strength, sorry, you can't hurt it" stops people rolling umpteen dice in the hope of scoring one wound. Let's be honest with ourselves - how often have you thrown attacks at something because there was nothing better to attack, or you really wanted that last wound gone, only for the "hits on a 4+, wounds on a 6+, saves on a 3+, ignores on a 5+" routine to determine that no, your lasguns didn't damage the iron hands landraider? it happens a lot for me with my grots, and whilst I appreciate that they can hurt the enemy now, I do question if a grot blaster should be able to hurt the imperiums finest assault vehicle, armoured fortress of the space marines? pew, oversized revolver to you, mister landraider!

We used to do it too in 7th edition and back, but it was a lot quicker - we said "well, these guys will shoot the landraider as there's nothing else to shoot" and not bother rolling as we couldn't hurt it. It was quick, cinematic, and achieved the same results, let's move on to the next turn.


This could also work with the degrading statline, just have the vehicles toughnes lower as well - once there are holes in it, you probably can do some damage with a heavy bolter. until then, you need a lascannon.

 some bloke wrote:

Simply saying "It's 3 higher than your strength, sorry, you can't hurt it" stops people rolling umpteen dice in the hope of scoring one wound. Let's be honest with ourselves - how often have you thrown attacks at something because there was nothing better to attack, or you really wanted that last wound gone, only for the "hits on a 4+, wounds on a 6+, saves on a 3+, ignores on a 5+" routine to determine that no, your lasguns didn't damage the iron hands landraider?

How about? About 5/6ths of the time. (Or 5/9ths if we factor in a 3+ armor save. Are land raiders a 2+ save?) The thing is, when a large portion of your army is wounding a vehicle on a 6+, that portion of your army is still going to do some damage. I've own games about pure knight lists with my drukhari because of the handful of wounds my splinter weapons did. And in those same games, saying my splinter weapons couldn't hurt the knights would have been the same as saying that the vast majority of my army simply wasn't allowed to hurt any of his army.

I started playing in 5th edition. Nothing invalidates chunks of my codex faster than knowing that non-anti-vehicle guns will be unable to hurt a mechanized army.

This could also work with the degrading statline, just have the vehicles toughnes lower as well - once there are holes in it, you probably can do some damage with a heavy bolter. until then, you need a lascannon.

Something along those lines could be interesting. Shooting lasguns through the "windows" your lascannons made is basically how I picture mid-game lasgun damage against vehicles right now. A couple of thoughts:

* I feel like most small arms in the game can do something to most vehicles regardless of how thick their armor is. Lasguns can probably make the guy on a GSC gun flinch as shots ping off of his gun window. A dozen lasgun shots hitting a tank tread might damage the track. A lucky shot on the right wave serpent crystal might freak out the soul inside it thus lowering the efficiency of the tank's computer equivalents. Even looking at an imperial knight, there are a lot of exposed cables and fuel tanks and joints that I feel bolters and shuriken catapults could probably rough up with a little persistence.

* Degrading Toughness is a tricky mechanic to implement without slowing down the attack process. If your chimera starts at Toughness 7 but goes down to Toughness 6 after a few wounds, then suddenly I have to start rolling my strength 6 attacks in batches (or even one by one) because my next shot might cause the rest of my attack pool to wound on 4s instead of 5s.

The issue for me is that small arms wound too easily, 1/6 isnt that difficult especially when they are so prolific.

Poison weapons are a weird one. Their mechanic has never really made sense and they shouldn't really work on vehicles.

My suggestion was a scalable reduction in ability but more extreme and only useful for weight of fire. A single lasgun shooting a T10 unit shouldn't do anything. 10 shooting it will increase the chance (in my previous example you have to roll 6 6s to generate a wound on a T10 unit).

Poison weapons should just have a strength bonus against non vehicular units, reflecting their extra effect on biological systems.

Wyldhunt wrote:

 some bloke wrote:

Simply saying "It's 3 higher than your strength, sorry, you can't hurt it" stops people rolling umpteen dice in the hope of scoring one wound. Let's be honest with ourselves - how often have you thrown attacks at something because there was nothing better to attack, or you really wanted that last wound gone, only for the "hits on a 4+, wounds on a 6+, saves on a 3+, ignores on a 5+" routine to determine that no, your lasguns didn't damage the iron hands landraider?

How about? About 5/6ths of the time. (Or 5/9ths if we factor in a 3+ armor save. Are land raiders a 2+ save?) The thing is, when a large portion of your army is wounding a vehicle on a 6+, that portion of your army is still going to do some damage. I've own games about pure knight lists with my drukhari because of the handful of wounds my splinter weapons did. And in those same games, saying my splinter weapons couldn't hurt the knights would have been the same as saying that the vast majority of my army simply wasn't allowed to hurt any of his army.

I started playing in 5th edition. Nothing invalidates chunks of my codex faster than knowing that non-anti-vehicle guns will be unable to hurt a mechanized army.

This could also work with the degrading statline, just have the vehicles toughnes lower as well - once there are holes in it, you probably can do some damage with a heavy bolter. until then, you need a lascannon.

Something along those lines could be interesting. Shooting lasguns through the "windows" your lascannons made is basically how I picture mid-game lasgun damage against vehicles right now. A couple of thoughts:

* I feel like most small arms in the game can do something to most vehicles regardless of how thick their armor is. Lasguns can probably make the guy on a GSC gun flinch as shots ping off of his gun window. A dozen lasgun shots hitting a tank tread might damage the track. A lucky shot on the right wave serpent crystal might freak out the soul inside it thus lowering the efficiency of the tank's computer equivalents. Even looking at an imperial knight, there are a lot of exposed cables and fuel tanks and joints that I feel bolters and shuriken catapults could probably rough up with a little persistence.

* Degrading Toughness is a tricky mechanic to implement without slowing down the attack process. If your chimera starts at Toughness 7 but goes down to Toughness 6 after a few wounds, then suddenly I have to start rolling my strength 6 attacks in batches (or even one by one) because my next shot might cause the rest of my attack pool to wound on 4s instead of 5s.

Ok, that's some valid points. It sounds like degrading stats are a way to go, though. How about a simple mechanic to avoid slowing the game down (and reinforce the idea that everything is happening at once):

"At the start of your turn, compare this vehicles remaining wounds to the degrading profiles chart. A vehicle uses the profile which matches its wound count until the start of its next turn."

So you know a full health landraider will use its standard profile until the start of his next turn, so roll turn 1 against it with its full toughness.

This causes only a couple of minor "issues" that I can see:

1: Vehicles with the ability to overwatch at full BS will not have degraded by then - but this isn't too big of an issue, I think
2: Small arms won't be able to hurt vehicles on turn 1.

Neither are game breaking, and I would be inclined to playtest before trying to fix either!

Bringing a mix of anti-infantry and anti-tank has always been a part of 40k. It's only recently lasguns got the oomph to hurt vehicles at all. There are potential fixes which could be rolled out with any blanket change to try and prevent units becoming entirely invalid:

1: Degrading profiles start early - no more having to halve the vehicles health to start hurting it. Vehicles might have a high toughness until they lose 3 or 4 wound,s when chinks start appearing in their armour.
2: Adjust some lesser-used equipment to give units a chance - krak grenades could be made strong enough to try against transport vehicles.
3: Add some more specialist equipment options to squad leaders, like meltabombs (or your armies equivalent). Add new grenades for armies without this sort of thing, in a fluffy way (not an "eldar-meltabomb").
4: Use this to give Gauss the kick it once had, allowing them to degrade toughness on a 6, if the weapon cannot wound, vs vehicles.

Any major fixes would be identified when it was tested.

I've attached the new chart, can't work out how to embed photos (I used to know...)

Assuming we keep weapon strengths the same, and then just stretch the toughness up for vehicles and monsters:

S6 should just have a chance
S7 should threaten transports
S8 should threaten most vehicles
S9 should terrify transports, and threaten heavies
S10+ should destroy stuff.

So, transports should start at T8 or 9, and things should be steadily tougher as seems fit. Russes should be T11, landraiders T12.

Things like lascannons & equivalents could potentially increase from their iconic S9 to S10 or so.

vehicle wounds will have to drop some to make this work, as they currently are meant to buffer against the massed small-arms.

Imo there's no reason it needs to go past 10.

They just need to drop stats down so that 1is actually used, and drop off that extra 6+ in the end of the table.

The separation will easily show anti tank and anti infantry

Hellebore wrote:
Imo there's no reason it needs to go past 10.

They just need to drop stats down so that 1is actually used, and drop off that extra 6+ in the end of the table.

The separation will easily show anti tank and anti infantry

That is valid, but you really have to remove the "double" thing if you use S&T1, or they are useless against anything but T&S1.

It used to be that a S10 gun would hurt basically anything on a 2+, heavy vehicles on a 3 or 4 (AV13/14). Demolishers being ordnance had their own, more powerful damage table, and they literally did demolish vehicles. They were scary.

Now S10 needs to face T5 or less to wound on a 2+. To wound T8 on a 2+ now warrants S16!

Yes, I wouldn't use doubles for anything.

In 2nd ed it didn't mean anything.

With multi wound back again, you don't need doubles for anything. Personally I prefer comparison stats as the relative difference makes for interesting tactical decisions, but doubles don't need to be used there either.

Fixed to hit rolls are no better than the old fixed AP stats and all or nothing saves.

The only consideration here is whether there needs to be a slight chance for anything to wound anything or not. I Iike symmetry so having auto fail should also have auto succeed. It doesn't have to be there of course.


My previous suggestion for small chances of wounding high tough units was following the line that if you do need to have it as a possibility, then maybe it should be a product of volume rather than determined on an individual shot basis.

So you wouldn't roll a S3 pistol shot against a t8 unit, but if you had 5 then the weight of fire might produce a result.


So you can either decide that some things can't be wounded and deal with the issues of immunity that previous editions of the game had, you can decide that everything tops out at 6 like now, or you can provide one of a few ways to represent it.


My opinion is that if you do you with an everything can wound everything approach, that it's much better to only need to apply it to group shots and not single or low count shots.

In my previous example, a heavy bolter at S5 with 3 shots could wound t6 on 5+ with all 3 shots, 7 on 6+ with all 3 shots and inflict a single successful wound roll on t8 if it rolled 2 6s, and t9 if it rolled triple 6s.

You still potentially run into the issue of massed lasguns scoring wounds more often than other massed weapons, but not as many as now.


Another option is to take the current system and just extend it out by an extra roll.

Ie it hits 6+, then anything past that, you need to take all your 6s and roll them again. Any 6s you get now count as wounds.

Statistically, this is as close to adding another pip to the roll as you can get (each reduction is 16% per pip, so requiring a second roll that also needs another 6 reduces it by slightly less).

This one applies to all hits individually, but is advantaged by mass fire.

If you wanted to make it as close to a linear 16% reduction as possible, you'd just increase the number of subsequent 6s needed.

Ie s5 wounds t7 on 6+, t8 on 6+ roll again 6+, t9 6+/6+/6+, T10 6+/6+/6+/6+.

Thats as close to dropping 16% from 4+ to 5+ as you can do on a d6.