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Came up with a small adjustment to the sniper rifle that might make more people take it:
+5 points to the sniper rifle.
After rolling to hit, the shooting player may choose to allocate wounds on a 3+. If failed, the defending player allocates the sniper wound as normal.

Hopefully not OP'ed but gives the sniper rifle the feeling of what it was meant to do, reach out and touch someone. The 3+ to allocate wounds represents him choosing vulnerable targets, if it fails then it means the sniper didnt manage to find the target amoungst the squad and hit some other trooper. I was thinking of making it 4+ but 3+ felt just right.

Actually, that sounds good. It makes the snipers seem more like a snipers. Which means shooting, as you said, vulnerable targets, and not just shooting into a group.

My friends and i play a house rule where a Sniper squad can either fire at a unit and the defender allocates wounds (as normal).

Or the entire sniper squad can target a single model (even if it is within a unit), in which case ALL the sniper sqauds shots (and therefore wounds) are allocated to that model alone.

DakkaDakka wrote:

Actually, this exact system is rumored for 6th edition, so it seems fair to me

Che-Vito wrote:

Praxiss wrote:My friends and i play a house rule where a Sniper squad can either fire at a unit and the defender allocates wounds (as normal).

Or the entire sniper squad can target a single model (even if it is within a unit), in which case ALL the sniper sqauds shots (and therefore wounds) are allocated to that model alone.

Ratling squad fires at a simple, honest IG Sergeant in the enemy's army.
6.6~ hits
3.3~ wounds (with 1 Rend, and on average greater than 1 failed armor save)

Poor Sarge didn't see it coming...

Exactly, butit also opens up the chance for more strategic or tactical play. Having trouble shifting those Nugle marked marines off an objective? Have Snipers target the banner bearer and they lose the T5 boost! IG orders getting you down? Target the vox-casters or officers!

Essentially it makes a lowly Sniper squad much more viable and desirable.

Love this idea. Currently Snipers are SO underpowered, a boost in usefulness would be a much welcome development in their regards.

Wait is it praxiss's idea thats good or my idea? Im a litttle confused.

That wouldn't make as much sense if snipers still come in squads of guys all with sniper rifles; that adjustment would, however, be interesting if sniper squads were altered to function like the 3e Guard Codex where a sniper rifle was a heavy weapon option for a normal Guardsmen squad.

king-newmic wrote:Wait is it praxiss's idea thats good or my idea? Im a litttle confused.

I really meant the entire idea in general of having better snipers.

Did something similar here.

Basically, Snipers can attempt to "Assassinate" or "Snipe" when declaring a target unit... they take an Initiative test before firing, and if they pass then the attacker can allocate wounds. If they fail, then their round of shooting automatically misses.

I have a small problem with Intiative; what if a model had poor/great BS but also had great/poor intiative respectively?
(BS2 Int 4 model takes shot with lasgun at farseer squad, not much happens. Switchs to sniper rifle and bam, hes hitting at BS 4 now)
I might change it so that they roll to hit as normal then if they want to shoot a major target they can roll for intiative to see if they get a chance to allocate the wound or not. Then models dont have to rely on intiative to shoot the gun, only choose the targets.

This also makes sense fluff wise as a shooter who passed intiative choose the right target to hit. A shooter who failed mearly took a potshot at the target squad in question and MIGHT have chosen the right model to hit by sheer luck (defender is silly enough to put a wound on whatever model the shooter was trying to hit)