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How come you absolutely cannot fire into assaults? I call shenanigans on that rule. I think the possibility should be there, and it could be balanced out with a negative towards morale, and you risking the possibility of hitting your own side. But to disallow it at all doesn't make sense. Especially considering several of the races wouldn't care, and I'm sure SM have decent marksmanship.

Because there's no fair and simple way to decide who gets hit. It's also like shooting fish in a barrel, since those guys in assault can't leave to find cover by the same ruleset.

Sure there is, you roll x on your shooting roll, you hit your own guys.

And how do you evaluate X?

If I have two mobs of thirty orks swarming a carnifex and I start firing rokkits into the fray, do I still hit the boyz on a 4+? How about against a trygon

Abbadon v ten PA marines, how do you figure that one?

I've seen tons of different proposals trying to make this work, and they've all fallen short. If you want to come up with a system that solves every problem with shooting into assaults, you've got my full support, but I think it's impossible.

Problems:
1) 1 Commander is in combat with 30 Orks. How do you represent that there's a way better chance to hit the Orks than the Commander?

2) 1 Bloodthirster is in combat with 10 grots. How do you represent that there's an equalish chance to hit the Bloodthrister as the grots?

3) If your proposed solution using anything like comparing wound totals, how do you take into account swarms?

4) A horde charges my cheap unit and kicks my , but I survive. Once everyone is piled in, I flame the hell out of the combat, or ordinance it all, killing everything. Is that fair?

5) Does a Phoenix Lord have a better chance of hitting the enemy than an Ork? How much?

6) If the squads end up each as a big wall, and you have to shoot through your unit to get to the enemy unit, do they get a cover save? If you hit your unit, do you get a cover save?

7) Now, how do you do all of this without having to make huge math calculations and only using 1 or 2 D6 rolls?

Grakmar wrote:I've seen tons of different proposals trying to make this work, and they've all fallen short. If you want to come up with a system that solves every problem with shooting into assaults, you've got my full support, but I think it's impossible.

Problems:
1) 1 Commander is in combat with 30 Orks. How do you represent that there's a way better chance to hit the Orks than the Commander?

2) 1 Bloodthirster is in combat with 10 grots. How do you represent that there's an equalish chance to hit the Bloodthrister as the grots?

3) If your proposed solution using anything like comparing wound totals, how do you take into account swarms?

4) A horde charges my cheap unit and kicks my , but I survive. Once everyone is piled in, I flame the hell out of the combat, or ordinance it all, killing everything. Is that fair?

5) Does a Phoenix Lord have a better chance of hitting the enemy than an Ork? How much?

6) If the squads end up each as a big wall, and you have to shoot through your unit to get to the enemy unit, do they get a cover save? If you hit your unit, do you get a cover save?

7) Now, how do you do all of this without having to make huge math calculations and only using 1 or 2 D6 rolls?

1 & 2. If either side outnumbers the enemy by 2:1 or more than that side that is outnumbering may not fire into close combat.

3. there's no reason it should take wound amount into account, only total models.

4. See the first statement, otherwise yes it is fair as this is war and they were bait.

5. Can't answer this specifically but I would probably refer you to statement 1

6. Yes and yes, all firing into close combat should allow a cover save, probably of 5+

7. you know, there was another thread on this and I had a pretty good idea on how to figure out if you shot your guys or your enemy but heck if I can remember it now and I can't find the thread.

Do you want me to post my "fair" way of resolving firing into combat? (for the thrid time)
...you won't like it.

dayve110 wrote:Do you want me to post my "fair" way of resolving firing into combat? (for the thrid time)
...you won't like it.

A fair system can be devised to find out who you hit. A simple and fair one cannot.

Also, a fair one within the rest of the rules cannot, as intentionally assaulting guys to tarpit them in one spot so that you could shoot them with impunity would become a good strategy. The game isn't designed for that.

Found the old thread, titled "shoot your dudes".

Anyway, what I said in there I'll say in here as well -

"How about all misses that missed by 1 on the die. So if you need 3+ to hit, all 2's are hits on your own guys. If you need 5+ then only 4's hit your own guys. This makes it fair for all armies regardless of their BS and the better shooters still have a better chance of hitting the enemy as they should. But I do agree with the 4+ cover for all and perhaps forbid any template weapons from being able to fire into melee. "

I think that is a pretty fair way to discern it and it's not overly complicated and doesn't require much more dice rolling.

Kevin949 wrote:Found the old thread, titled "shoot your dudes".

Anyway, what I said in there I'll say in here as well -

"How about all misses that missed by 1 on the die. So if you need 3+ to hit, all 2's are hits on your own guys. If you need 5+ then only 4's hit your own guys. This makes it fair for all armies regardless of their BS and the better shooters still have a better chance of hitting the enemy as they should. But I do agree with the 4+ cover for all and perhaps forbid any template weapons from being able to fire into melee. "

I think that is a pretty fair way to discern it and it's not overly complicated and doesn't require much more dice rolling.

So, Orks automatically hit their own guys MORE often than they hit the enemy? (5, 6, vs 1, 2, 3)

If that's true, can I declare I'm shooting my own squad and hit the enemy more by mistake?

Kevin949 wrote:
I think that is a pretty fair way to discern it and it's not overly complicated and doesn't require much more dice rolling.

It'll never be fair when I can tie up an entire army with 2 long lines of Fortuned Warlocks while that army is whittled down by guys that they'll never be able to fight.

Even Guardians seem powerful when the guys they're shooting at can't fight back.

Grakmar wrote:

Kevin949 wrote:Found the old thread, titled "shoot your dudes".

Anyway, what I said in there I'll say in here as well -

"How about all misses that missed by 1 on the die. So if you need 3+ to hit, all 2's are hits on your own guys. If you need 5+ then only 4's hit your own guys. This makes it fair for all armies regardless of their BS and the better shooters still have a better chance of hitting the enemy as they should. But I do agree with the 4+ cover for all and perhaps forbid any template weapons from being able to fire into melee. "

I think that is a pretty fair way to discern it and it's not overly complicated and doesn't require much more dice rolling.

So, Orks automatically hit their own guys MORE often than they hit the enemy? (5, 6, vs 1, 2, 3)

If that's true, can I declare I'm shooting my own squad and hit the enemy more by mistake?

No, you didn't read correctly. You only hit your guys if you miss by ONE. No one has a better or worse chance of hitting their own guys. It keeps it even across all armies regardless of BS. For instance, you need a 5+ to hit, you roll 20 dice and get 6 hits and 14 misses, 2 of those misses were rolled as a 4 so those two shots hit your own guys. All the rest still missed as normal.

Instead of shooting into combat, how about allowing models who are in assault to shoot at the squad they are engaged with in the shooting phase. Maybe restrict it to 1 shot no matter how many shots it normally would get. Heavy weapons not able to do this because of being too unwieldy.

DarknessEternal wrote:

Kevin949 wrote:
I think that is a pretty fair way to discern it and it's not overly complicated and doesn't require much more dice rolling.

It'll never be fair when I can tie up an entire army with 2 long lines of Fortuned Warlocks while that army is whittled down by guys that they'll never be able to fight.

Even Guardians seem powerful when the guys they're shooting at can't fight back.

I think I'm missing what you're trying to say here as I don't know a thing about the guys you mentioned.

Shooting into combat is such a huge change to 40k that I think trying to make rules for it is pointless - there are so many balance issues with changing it, and so many abuseable situations that you have to radically change the game. You'd be better off making a complete house-rule game from the ground up, since point costs, army-specific rules, victory conditions, deployment conditions, and so on are all based around the current melee situation.

Kevin949 wrote:I think I'm missing what you're trying to say here as I don't know a thing about the guys you mentioned.

The idea is to take seer council or some other hard-to-kill unit that can get decent numbers (4+ rerolled invulnerable save is difficult to take down). Stretch them out in a long line at maximum coherency distance, so 10 guys covers around 30" of the board. Charge the other guy and tie him in HtH. Have you guardians come in and shoot up the people stuck in HtH while they fight the hard-to-kill models and can't hurt the guardians. The theory is that the guys will be stuck fighting seer council while guardians shoot them without retaliation.

There would be some problems in practice. Mechanized armies seem to break it, since you can't get locked into combat with transports and transports can tank shock or fly over you to get to the weak guys in back. Seer councils are hard to kill when they're fighting roughly equal numbers, and don't suffer from power weapons, but seer council is fighting an entire opposing army has a lot of attacks to make a 75% save against, casualties affect the whole unit, and if they lose they take morale checks (or extra wounds if fearless).

Kevin949 wrote:

DarknessEternal wrote:

Kevin949 wrote:
I think that is a pretty fair way to discern it and it's not overly complicated and doesn't require much more dice rolling.

It'll never be fair when I can tie up an entire army with 2 long lines of Fortuned Warlocks while that army is whittled down by guys that they'll never be able to fight.

Even Guardians seem powerful when the guys they're shooting at can't fight back.

I think I'm missing what you're trying to say here as I don't know a thing about the guys you mentioned.

He's saying his strategy is to take a bunch of shooting units and surround them with a unit that is VERY difficult to kill (Eldar Warlocks with Fortune cast on them). Then, let your opponent assault the Warlocks and blast away everything in the CC, which your Warlocks will probobly survive.


Edit: *sigh* There needs to be some sort of warning system in place for when someone beats your comment.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Kevin949 wrote:

Grakmar wrote:

Kevin949 wrote:Found the old thread, titled "shoot your dudes".

Anyway, what I said in there I'll say in here as well -

"How about all misses that missed by 1 on the die. So if you need 3+ to hit, all 2's are hits on your own guys. If you need 5+ then only 4's hit your own guys. This makes it fair for all armies regardless of their BS and the better shooters still have a better chance of hitting the enemy as they should. But I do agree with the 4+ cover for all and perhaps forbid any template weapons from being able to fire into melee. "

I think that is a pretty fair way to discern it and it's not overly complicated and doesn't require much more dice rolling.

So, Orks automatically hit their own guys MORE often than they hit the enemy? (5, 6, vs 1, 2, 3)

If that's true, can I declare I'm shooting my own squad and hit the enemy more by mistake?

No, you didn't read correctly. You only hit your guys if you miss by ONE. No one has a better or worse chance of hitting their own guys. It keeps it even across all armies regardless of BS. For instance, you need a 5+ to hit, you roll 20 dice and get 6 hits and 14 misses, 2 of those misses were rolled as a 4 so those two shots hit your own guys. All the rest still missed as normal.

Oh. Why not simplify things by just saying that on a roll to hit of a 1, you hit your own squad?

And, how do you handle re-rolls? Or, models with a BS better than 5?

Grakmar wrote:Oh. Why not simplify things by just saying that on a roll to hit of a 1, you hit your own squad?

And, how do you handle re-rolls? Or, models with a BS better than 5?

Could do that too, but I don't know about you but my dice like to roll more 1's than other numbers. Haha! As far as rerolls, why would they change at all? Even though you would have hit your own guys it is still considered a "miss" by every interpretation of the word since you missed your intended target.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

BearersOfSalvation wrote:Shooting into combat is such a huge change to 40k that I think trying to make rules for it is pointless - there are so many balance issues with changing it, and so many abuseable situations that you have to radically change the game. You'd be better off making a complete house-rule game from the ground up, since point costs, army-specific rules, victory conditions, deployment conditions, and so on are all based around the current melee situation.

Kevin949 wrote:I think I'm missing what you're trying to say here as I don't know a thing about the guys you mentioned.

The idea is to take seer council or some other hard-to-kill unit that can get decent numbers (4+ rerolled invulnerable save is difficult to take down). Stretch them out in a long line at maximum coherency distance, so 10 guys covers around 30" of the board. Charge the other guy and tie him in HtH. Have you guardians come in and shoot up the people stuck in HtH while they fight the hard-to-kill models and can't hurt the guardians. The theory is that the guys will be stuck fighting seer council while guardians shoot them without retaliation.

There would be some problems in practice. Mechanized armies seem to break it, since you can't get locked into combat with transports and transports can tank shock or fly over you to get to the weak guys in back. Seer councils are hard to kill when they're fighting roughly equal numbers, and don't suffer from power weapons, but seer council is fighting an entire opposing army has a lot of attacks to make a 75% save against, casualties affect the whole unit, and if they lose they take morale checks (or extra wounds if fearless).

Well, part of that is handled by the outnumbering statement I made earlier. Also, that line tactic isn't really handled any differently with the inclusion of shooting into CC, since everyone would know it could be done they would be a little more hesitant to assault an obvious attempt at defeating an assault. Besides, nothing is stopping someone from shooting at the guardians they would just get a cover save if applicable. Or to break through the line just tank shock the warlocks to get them to move. There are plenty of options to circumvent that situation that don't involve walking into that trap.

Kevin949 wrote: There are plenty of options to circumvent that situation that don't involve walking into that trap.

Why wait for people to walk into it? Assault with your trap unit.

DarknessEternal wrote:

Kevin949 wrote: There are plenty of options to circumvent that situation that don't involve walking into that trap.

Why wait for people to walk into it? Assault with your trap unit.

Either way, it's just one situation that won't always be prevalent. And nothing is stopping other units from firing at the guardians or firing into the CC at the enemy. Sure, you could bring the trap to them but who knows what will happen in the time it takes to get those units across the board and into melee range.

Anyway, the discussion is about the viability of a rule for allowing firing into assaults, not about situations that may arise from allowing such a rule to exist.

Grakmar wrote:
So, Orks automatically hit their own guys MORE often than they hit the enemy? (5, 6, vs 1, 2, 3)

If that's true, can I declare I'm shooting my own squad and hit the enemy more by mistake?

I have to say, given orks obvious lack of aim (and urge to whack each other as much as any one else) that a rule that ends up discouraging them from firing into melee is OK with me.

As to the OP my simple proposal for firing into melee has always been thus:

Hits hit target unit, misses hit own guys
Both sides get a 4+ cover save
Blast and template weapons calculate total models hit and apply that many hits to each unit.

Primary objection has generally been that"everything hits" which ignores the cover saves accounting for misses fine.

Yes it benefits some armies more then other...changes to the base rules are like that.

Jack

The viability of a rule is exactly about what situations it allows to exist. If a rule makes a broken situation, its a bad rule.

In the example, people can't shoot at the guardians because they're stuck in melee with the warlocks. The ability to set up that kind of situation is part of what you have to look at when you look at a new rule.

I miss the old rule in Epic Space Marine that no one may shoot into close assaults, except Orks, they don;t care who they shoot, as long as they shoot!

Two words that would solve all firing into assault problems:


Space Skaven.

Don't Skaven in Fantasy have a way of doing this? Could ideas from there be used here?

BearersOfSalvation wrote:The viability of a rule is exactly about what situations it allows to exist. If a rule makes a broken situation, its a bad rule.

In the example, people can't shoot at the guardians because they're stuck in melee with the warlocks. The ability to set up that kind of situation is part of what you have to look at when you look at a new rule.

That's not really a great statement as there are plenty rules that do exist that make broken situations. All this would do is open up a new door for expansion of tactics. Heck, to simplify things just say that any weapon that uses a template can't be fired into CC. And remember, I did say that if you outnumber your enemy 2:1 (or whatever ratio would be fair, this is just easiest) then you can't fire into CC. That would, I believe, help keep it "somewhat" balanced as you couldn't just mob the enemy with a 30 man squad AND fire at them while locked.

Anywho, I realize something like this would probably never actually be introduced into 40k anyway so it's all just here-say and talk. But, maybe next time I play (whenever that will be) I'll see if my opponent would be willing to try it out and see how it goes.

I'll bite, and propose an idea. Shooting is resolved like normal, except that any missed attacks must be rolled for. On a 4+, nothing happens. On a 3-, your own models are hit. Template and blast weapons work as normal, and must be placed so as to cause the most casualties possible, regardless of side. Friendly Fire wounds count towards combat res.

Me and my gaming group have considered this rule for free for all games and this is what we use:

step one - roll to hit
step two - pick up all your hit and roll them again, on a 1-3 you hit your own squad (or enemy number one if you are doing a free-for-all), on a 4-6 you hit your enemy (number 2)
step three - roll to wound accordingly

This may not make the most sense fluff wise, but it is the most balanced system we could come up with for actual gameplay.

Kevin949 wrote:"How about all misses that missed by 1 on the die. So if you need 3+ to hit, all 2's are hits on your own guys. If you need 5+ then only 4's hit your own guys. This makes it fair for all armies regardless of their BS and the better shooters still have a better chance of hitting the enemy as they should. But I do agree with the 4+ cover for all and perhaps forbid any template weapons from being able to fire into melee. "

I think that is a pretty fair way to discern it and it's not overly complicated and doesn't require much more dice rolling.

That's mathmatically the same as saying all rolls of a one hit your own dudes, and has the same problem of failing to account for relative level numbers.

A simple, crude way of doing this would be to say if the enemy outnumber your guys then all rolls of a 1 score a hit one your guys. If your guys outnumber the enemy then all rolls of a 1 or 2 hit one of your guys.

But I think in general the rule would cause more problems than it would be worth.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Xyon wrote:Instead of shooting into combat, how about allowing models who are in assault to shoot at the squad they are engaged with in the shooting phase. Maybe restrict it to 1 shot no matter how many shots it normally would get. Heavy weapons not able to do this because of being too unwieldy.

Squads in close combat are considered to have their chance for shooting represented as part of their close combat roll.

sebster wrote:

Kevin949 wrote:"How about all misses that missed by 1 on the die. So if you need 3+ to hit, all 2's are hits on your own guys. If you need 5+ then only 4's hit your own guys. This makes it fair for all armies regardless of their BS and the better shooters still have a better chance of hitting the enemy as they should. But I do agree with the 4+ cover for all and perhaps forbid any template weapons from being able to fire into melee. "

I think that is a pretty fair way to discern it and it's not overly complicated and doesn't require much more dice rolling.

That's mathmatically the same as saying all rolls of a one hit your own dudes, and has the same problem of failing to account for relative level numbers.

A simple, crude way of doing this would be to say if the enemy outnumber your guys then all rolls of a 1 score a hit one your guys. If your guys outnumber the enemy then all rolls of a 1 or 2 hit one of your guys.

But I think in general the rule would cause more problems than it would be worth.

There are many ways to counteract that (by the way, you didn't the read the whole thread before responding to that, I believe, since someone else said the same thing about rolling 1's and I agreed with them), and how about restricting shots into CC to one shot per guy regardless of weapon profile? I did also put in a caveat about outnumbering and just outlined a general ratio, it's just a mathematically simple one.

But, as has been said, this is something that will probably never ever make it legitimately into 40k anyway. :(

cl4nj4def4lcon wrote:
step two - pick up all your hit and roll them again, on a 1-3 you hit your own squad (or enemy number one if you are doing a free-for-all), on a 4-6 you hit your enemy (number 2)

Well, if you're playing a free for all game with 3+ players, you definitely need the ability to shoot into CC, but the rules don't really cover those types of games, so you need all sorts of house rules to cover gray areas. (Example: Does a CC between Players 1 and 2 have a round of combat during player 3's assault phase?)

And, I've found it does stay fairly balanced, as armies quickly team up and take out any large blast weapons before assaults start.