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As the title states, what do you think the game would be like with no instant death rule?

Some other rules would need tweaks, like force weapons should cause D3 or D6 wounds, eternal warrior would have to become some other kind of bonus (maybe 3+ FNP that works against any type of attack?).

Would it break the game or make some units unbalanced (cough, Nobz and Thunderwolves I'm looking at you)?

I think it would make a lot of the lackluster units like Tyranid Warriors and SM Captains more more appealing.

Thoughts?

Well, it seems interesting, but something like DE huskblades or some other equipment causing ID shall still cause it, IMO.

I often think the tyrannid warrior with 2 wounds and the old immunity were better than the 3 wound crap we now have. Of itself it is not bad but when the metagame is all missile launchers and meltaguns T4 and 3 wounds equals instant dead.

Hi all.
I prefered the multi wounding weapon option to the instant death/eternal warrior shenanigans we have now.

EG powerful weapons do more than one wound to a single target.

No need to calculate strength and toughness relation ships and add 2 extra special rules.

Just roll exra saves saves for the weapons that cause extra wounds....

I liked the version posited in the "leaked 6th ed" bit.

If S=T+4 cause 2 wounds, T+5 causes 3 wounds etc.
The basic level of ID caused 2 wounds, with ID 3 causing 3 wounds and ignoring EW 1+2.
This way my Archon is not getting pasted by multi lasers, but Space Marine captains still eat it when shot by a Lascannon.

As well, it worked that you took the save against the 1 wound, but upon failing it it caused 2 (or whatever).

Under these rules....

Step 1: Get 30 paladins.

Step 2: Win.

Excuse me...

Draigo, libby, 'ravens, 60 Pallies.


Win.

< Taken by the void dragon. >

I'm just saying why stop at 30? Get 6 troops units of 10.

The problem? High wound models such as Swarmlords or Mawlocs would be more powerful than they already are. The most a Swarmlord could take would be one extra wound. Against a Swarmlord? Whoo-hoo. You now have... three more wounds to go!

Instant Death is a means by which characters who are either insanely skilled or incredibly powerful can instantly cause another models demise. That's why it is called Instant Death and why few models outside of MEQ armies have that ability, much less at an initiative higher than 1.

McNinja wrote:The problem? High wound models such as Swarmlords or Mawlocs would be more powerful than they already are. The most a Swarmlord could take would be one extra wound. Against a Swarmlord? Whoo-hoo. You now have... three more wounds to go!

Instant Death is a means by which characters who are either insanely skilled or incredibly powerful can instantly cause another models demise. That's why it is called Instant Death and why few models outside of MEQ armies have that ability, much less at an initiative higher than 1.

Yeah, because Railguns and pks and rokkits and TMC and doomsday arcs and lances and everything in the gaurd codex all don't exist.

Or did you mean that few non-meq codexes have characters immune to instant death? I'd agree with you there.

A tale of what would happen if Instant Death were removed:

The Lord Commissar stared in horror as the proud Leman Russ battle tanks that formed the iron shield around their position were picked off one by one. The Tau's Railguns proved far too powerful for even the thick hulls of the Leman Russ to withstand, and each shot from the Hammerhead skimmers of the xenos blasted clean through the behemoths as if their armour was made of paper.

Cataclysmic explosions as fuel tanks ignited and shells were stuck and detonated formed the thumping baseline of the xeno assault. Even as solid projectiles felled the Imperium's finest battle tanks as if they were ramshackle contraptions, submunition shots obliterated entire squads of guardsmen.

From across the battlefield, one of the Hammerhead tanks swivelled its railgun around, as orders from the Pathfider teams in the field directed the deadly weapon to target one of the Human commanders. Sophisticated targeting systems and sights found the Lord Commissar, his bolt pistol coughing shells into those who dared flee, those who knew that victory for the Tau Empire on this day was inevitable.

Electromagnetic coils hummed as they charged, the railgun firing a solid shot in a great line across the warzone. The last thing the doomed Commissar saw was a projectile blazing towards him at tremendous speed.

"Ouch!" He shouted as the projectile impacted and fell lifelessly to the floor, "That's going to bruise..."

A tale of what would happen if you brought realism into 40K

The traitor legions smirked as the Space Marines descended upon their outpost. As they came within firing distance, he unleashed his secret weapon...

"AIM FOR THEIR HEADS!"

So you're saying Instant Death is too realistic for 40k? By that logic surely all the models should be naked, since wearing armour is too realistic.

ID does make sense.
Guy gets shot in chest with missile, guy gets blown to pieces no matter how tough his will to keep fighting is.

I'm saying that if you use a silly example you're going to get a silly example back. 40K TT dice rolls aren't "I hit you and it wounds so that means my bolter shell is a direct hit and the wound is a deadly one," it's "This is how much damage my units' firing has done to you - your casualty is either a person who's lost his legs, or who's shot himself to end his fear, or whose power armour malfunctioned and left him stranded in a dead suit, or simply got blown to smithereens." A better ending to your example of what No ID would mean would be -

ectromagnetic coils hummed as they charged, the railgun firing a solid shot in a great line across the warzone. The last thing the doomed Commissar saw was a projectile blazing towards him at tremendous speed.

"Ouch!" He shouted as one of his men tackled him out of the way, vaporizing in the deuterium slugs' wake.

This is not to say I'm for removing Instant Death - I like the tiered proposal laid out by the 6e 'leak'. I'm simply saying that most statlines and dicerolls are representative of actions and abilities, not bullets and people.

@NL_Cirrus - Guy gets shot at with missile, missile rips his arm off but is otherwise a dud. This is also representative of a Hit+Wound in 40K - Realistic scenarios do not translate well to the game. If he's a guardsmen nobody? Yes he is a 'casualty' because he is now pretty useless, and will bleed to death. If he's Straken? What's losing another arm to Straken? Or a Space Marine, who can regrow it, and has his bolter or chainsword in his other hand to keep on fighting? The best we can do is abstracts, and absolutes do not go together well with abstracts.

chrisrawr wrote:@NL_Cirrus - Guy gets shot at with missile, missile rips his arm off but is otherwise a dud. This is also representative of a Hit+Wound in 40K - Realistic scenarios do not translate well to the game. If he's a guardsmen nobody? Yes he is a 'casualty' because he is now pretty useless, and will bleed to death. If he's Straken? What's losing another arm to Straken? Or a Space Marine, who can regrow it, and has his bolter or chainsword in his other hand to keep on fighting? The best we can do is abstracts, and absolutes do not go together well with abstracts.

The possibility of a really powerful weapon not killing a character is already represented in the 'to wound' roll. When you look at a game without instant death you're looking at a situation where it isn’t that the missile might not always kill him, it’s that it can’t kill him. Ever. You need three missiles to do that, the first two will only ever rip off limbs. 40K doesn’t translate to realism too closely, but that doesn’t mean we ought to settle for the utterly ludicrous instead. It means it should play and feel like the big bad heroes in an ultra violent space fantasy that it is, and that includes people getting splatted by stupidly powerful guns.

I mean, I don’t know too many people that are happy with the system at present, as it gives too much emphasis to having that magic Str 8, and produces just plain weird results (hit by an autocannon, not a problem Mr Tyranid Warrior, you can take 3 more wounds just like that, but hit by a missile launcher, oh no that’s certain death for sure). The rumoured change seems to fix the problem pretty well.

chrisrawr wrote:stuff

You're missing the fact that he would've failed whatever save he had. Against a Railgun, you cannot expect a T3 human model in a flak jacket to survive a successful wound with a failed save (not that he'd get one). Rolling a '1' to wound represents the attack grazing or causing minor damage, if any, whereas a successful wound indicates that the weapon hit with accuracy enough to mean only what armour there is can save him, and if there's no way armour can save him, then he dies.

A meltagun rolling a 1 to wound could mean that the model managed to avoid major damage, but a successful wound and subsequent failed save means that he got hit by molten slag, hence why it kills most models in the game pretty damn easily. The wound roll doesn't translate the deadliness of the shot, the armour save does that, the wound roll simply decides whether or not the hit the model suffered was fatal enough to necessitate a save.

Your reply post demonstrated nothing, my post was meant to highlight the issue of a human being hit square by a solid railgun shot and simply taking it in his stride. I don't see how my example is silly at all, only that it demonstrates how silly 40k without some form of ID is.

If you're not supporting the removal of instant death, then why are you trying to discredit my posts when I am outright supporting some form of Instant Death being present?

I am opposing the attribution of absolutes to a game based on abstracts based on d6 values. You made a post implying that rolling a 4+ then a 2+ is equal to a man being hit in the chest with a weapon - which is of course going to kill him - and then implied that rolling a 4+ then a 2+ and then the weapon not killing him would be absurd. I proposed a counterexample wherein the dice rolls are representations of "oh gak, something happened!" In this example, it's implied that multiwound models have more than just extra mass, or bodyparts to spare, from which to pull their wounds from. Things like cunning, luck, intuition, servants, and other implied special qualities of whatever model or character has all of these wounds that people feel should be completely removed each and every time something big happens. Please stop misconstruing what I am saying, you are reading far too much into my words, and pulling things like "He thinks that a human can survive a direct hit from a railgun shot." out of it. I believe my words were closer to "vaporizing in the deuterium slugs' wake." There are countless examples just as simple to explain how a multiwound model could survive having powerful weapons being shot at him - again, since I seem to have to defend every sentence I make lest they be wrest from context, this doesn't mean they always should survive, I'm just not in favour of easily avoidable and unnecessary absolutes in a game of 16.6r% increments, where the narrative and flavourful aspect is easily as important as the mechanical one.

And if dealing with abstracts, narration, and tiered scenarios bothers you, then we don't have to play with the same rules, or agree on whether those rules are balanced or not.

chrisrawr wrote:I am opposing the attribution of absolutes to a game based on abstracts based on d6 values. You made a post implying that rolling a 4+ then a 2+ is equal to a man being hit in the chest with a weapon - which is of course going to kill him - and then implied that rolling a 4+ then a 2+ and then the weapon not killing him would be absurd. I proposed a counterexample wherein the dice rolls are representations of "oh gak, something happened!" In this example, it's implied that multiwound models have more than just extra mass, or bodyparts to spare, from which to pull their wounds from. Things like cunning, luck, intuition, servants, and other implied special qualities of whatever model or character has all of these wounds that people feel should be completely removed each and every time something big happens. Please stop misconstruing what I am saying, you are reading far too much into my words, and pulling things like "He thinks that a human can survive a direct hit from a railgun shot." out of it. I believe my words were closer to "vaporizing in the deuterium slugs' wake." There are countless examples just as simple to explain how a multiwound model could survive having powerful weapons being shot at him - again, since I seem to have to defend every sentence I make lest they be wrest from context, this doesn't mean they always should survive, I'm just not in favour of easily avoidable and unnecessary absolutes in a game of 16.6r% increments, where the narrative and flavourful aspect is easily as important as the mechanical one.

And if dealing with abstracts, narration, and tiered scenarios bothers you, then we don't have to play with the same rules, or agree on whether those rules are balanced or not.

Avatar 720 wrote:

chrisrawr wrote:stuff

You're missing the fact that he would've failed whatever save he had. Against a Railgun, you cannot expect a T3 human model in a flak jacket to survive a successful wound with a failed save (not that he'd get one). Rolling a '1' to wound represents the attack grazing or causing minor damage, if any, whereas a successful wound indicates that the weapon hit with accuracy enough to mean only what armour there is can save him, and if there's no way armour can save him, then he dies.

A meltagun rolling a 1 to wound could mean that the model managed to avoid major damage, but a successful wound and subsequent failed save means that he got hit by molten slag, hence why it kills most models in the game pretty damn easily. The wound roll doesn't translate the deadliness of the shot, the armour save does that, the wound roll simply decides whether or not the hit the model suffered was fatal enough to necessitate a save.

I'm just re-posting because the second sentence of your reply instantly told me that you didn't read 2/3 of my post; i've seperated the 2/3 you didn't read and quoted it above for your convenience.

I'll just quote myself from another thread in this forum; I was talking about Eternal Warrior, but since removing ID is essentially the same as giving every multi-wound model EW, my point is still relevant.

BeRzErKeR wrote:Perhaps this is because I view the die-rolling of 40k to be a very abstract representation. A 'hit' doesn't necessarily mean that the bolt shell or whatever has actually, physically struck the target; it means that the shooter is firing at about the right place, and the target is in danger. A 'wound', similarly, doesn't mean a solid hit that killed the target. A Terminator might take a 'wound' and be out of action because the heat of a lascannon beam swept over him and fused all the joints in his armor together, even though he's actually fine. Hits and Wounds only mean there's a chance someone will be hurt or inconvenienced, and there's a chance that it will be bad enough (or persistent enough) that they are, at least temporarily, unable to fight any longer. [

Basically; Warhammer 40k, on the tabletop, is FAR too abstract to say that a Wound or a Hit always means the same thing. What about wounds taken from an exploded transport? Maybe a Dark Eldar Wych who's Raider got blown up is trapped under the wreckage; he can't fight anymore, so that's a Wound. Or maybe he was cut in half by flying debris; that's ALSO a Wound. Or maybe he was smashed in the face by the pressure wave and he's wandering away in a random direction with a concussion, unable to see through eyes full of blood and unable to hear through exploded eardrums. That's ALSO a Wound. The point being that 'suffered a Wound' does not mean 'took a solid hit, will die unless a save is passed'. It means 'something bad happened, will be unable to fight for the rest of the battle unless a save is passed'.

All that said, I'm against removing Instant Death. It's a good rule with a good reason behind it; some weapons are just so scary and/or so indiscriminate that even the side-effects of being nearby are usually catastrophic. Whatever fluff justification you feel like coming up with, it's a good idea with solid support, though it could be implemented better. Eternal Warrior is a decent way of representing those people or creatures who are so experienced/lucky/sensitive to danger/quick-footed that even such terrifyingly powerful weapons will need a couple tries to take them out of action, but it should not be given to everyone and their dog.

Removing ID? Nahh. This would leave lots of things broken. And I like when once invulnerable units get oblierated with proper firepower. It's sometimes only thing that could kill model, and evry thing in wh40k should have way in which it could be eliminated. ID is good thing.

I believe the way it would work would be something sort of like this..

Instant Death: This special rule shows weapons which are so powerful they could blow apart or drain the life straight from the target, there are several types of instant death.

Instant Death by Strength: This shows the sheer power of the weapon, and its ability to completely destroy its opponent. If a model is hit by a weapon which has a strength value 2x higher than its toughness value, it takes d3 wounds, if the strength value is more than twice the models toughness, it instead takes d6 wounds.

Instant Death by Special Rule: Be it deadly toxins, Psychic channeling, or other similar effects, there are weapons just as deadly as a gigantic projectile or weapon, these deal d6 wounds unless otherwise noted, if the weapon inflicts this through poison, the type Monstrous Creature takes only d3 wounds.

With this there would also be changes to special rules like Eternal Warrior, this represents the resilience that a powerful being will have to these weapons.

Eternal Warrior: Weapons that would normally afflict d6 wounds on a model with eternal warrior on deal d3, and those that deal d3 only deal a single wound.

I feel that these rules would be balanced because there are chances to survive, for example a space marine Sergent hitting a space marine captain would only inflict d3 wounds, the captain may survive this, as the powerfist has a chance to just damage his armour or a limb (etc) or it may just turn him to a pulp as it does now, likewise, a nob is even less likely to take such a hit, but it is still possible. However, if said nobs or captains were attacked by a large S10 Monstrous Creature, they would almost surely be ground to a pulp with its sheer might. I think these options would open up more chances for true heroics, and more accurately represent these beasts and characters.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
As Berzerker stated above, a wound does not equal a kill, but a casualty from the battle, or incapacitation, and what I tried to present above was showing that the characters with more wounds are much more likely to recover and continue the fight, taking a similar wound to inferior soldiers, but keep going on.

Doom of Malan'tai springs to mind.

BeRzErKeR wrote:
Basically; Warhammer 40k, on the tabletop, is FAR too abstract to say that a Wound or a Hit always means the same thing. What about wounds taken from an exploded transport? Maybe a Dark Eldar Wych who's Raider got blown up is trapped under the wreckage; he can't fight anymore, so that's a Wound. Or maybe he was cut in half by flying debris; that's ALSO a Wound. Or maybe he was smashed in the face by the pressure wave and he's wandering away in a random direction with a concussion, unable to see through eyes full of blood and unable to hear through exploded eardrums. That's ALSO a Wound. The point being that 'suffered a Wound' does not mean 'took a solid hit, will die unless a save is passed'. It means 'something bad happened, will be unable to fight for the rest of the battle unless a save is passed'.

Yep, my marines never die to lasguns, they just rage quit.

"Hey watch where you're point those! HEY, I sa-OW! That was right in my eye, time out! Not cool man I coulda gone blind. You coulda blinded me! That's it I'm going home, you play too rough."

The problem with instant death IMO is that it has had an unclean affect on how the rules work within 40k, specifically the nature of other rules to work around, circumvent and exploit the instant death rule.

At the moment we have EW which is designed to circumvent ID. We also have “remove from play” which was designed to circumvent EW. We also have invulnerable saves which are designed to protect multi wound models against ID (which in turn led to the prevalence of 2++/3++ inv saves to protect against a Str8 heavy environment). We also seen an increase in multi wound units in codices which has accentuated the entire situation. We also have GK, which is an army equiped entirely with Force Weapons.

I would say the main reason to overhaul instant death/eternal warrior would be due to the fact it has lead to extremely bad game design (instant death mechanics and rules designed to circumvent/work around other rules are bad game design).

Although that being said, there’s no quick fix IMO given that any true fix would require overhauling the codices. The rules in the 6E leak could work assuming there’s proper errata to correctly assign ID(2) and EW(2)(3) to units. At the moment, the 6E leak errata assume everything has an ID/EW profile of 1 except for force weapons, which are ID2 (making GK stronger lol). It would also result in everyone spamming librarians.

Here’s my “quick n dirty” errata for making the leaked ID/EW rules work:

• (S=T+4) and (S=T+5) attacks inflict ID(1)
• (S=T+6) attacks inflict ID(2).
• Special characters (note: special and not unnamed/generic units/characters) with the EW rule count as EW3).
• Lesser daemons count as EW(1).
• Heralds, greater daemons and special characters count as EW(2).
• Saga of the Bear only provides EW(1).
• Radical Inquisitor Daemon Weapons only provides EW(1).
• Force weapons wielded by unnamed/generic units/characters count as ID(1).
• Force weapons wielded by special characters count as ID(2).
• Unique CC weaponry wielded by HQs, that inflict the Instant Death rule (such as the Blessgiver, Skulltaker’s sword etc) count as ID(2).
• Unique, non combat, wargear wield by Special characters that inflict the Instant Death rule (such as the last laugh, Iniquitor Valeria, BC Stern) inflict ID(1)
• Destroyer weapons inflict the ID(3) rule (feth knows why the leaked rules listed it as ID1).

The problem with instant death is swarms. If you remove instant death then scarab swarms from the necrons will be OP.

Lord Magnus wrote:I believe the way it would work would be something sort of like this..

Instant Death: This special rule shows weapons which are so powerful they could blow apart or drain the life straight from the target, there are several types of instant death.

Instant Death by Strength: This shows the sheer power of the weapon, and its ability to completely destroy its opponent. If a model is hit by a weapon which has a strength value 2x higher than its toughness value, it takes d3 wounds, if the strength value is more than twice the models toughness, it instead takes d6 wounds.

Instant Death by Special Rule: Be it deadly toxins, Psychic channeling, or other similar effects, there are weapons just as deadly as a gigantic projectile or weapon, these deal d6 wounds unless otherwise noted, if the weapon inflicts this through poison, the type Monstrous Creature takes only d3 wounds.

With this there would also be changes to special rules like Eternal Warrior, this represents the resilience that a powerful being will have to these weapons.

Eternal Warrior: Weapons that would normally afflict d6 wounds on a model with eternal warrior on deal d3, and those that deal d3 only deal a single wound.

I like this idea. The only issue is that these additional wounds will have to be exclusive to the model that was wounded only, otherwise every unit in 40k just got a much crappier version of the "Swarms" USR.

I think the best way to balance instant death would be more variance in the strength of weapons or reduce the number of str 8 heavy weapons so they a bit rarer in armies, therefore use them on specific targets becomes more tactical. Tanks could simply cost a bit more as less things could get a glance, also I believe a glance should only do something on a 3+.

I would like to see strength 7 missile for units and heavy units may have 1 str 8 missile. Some more str 6 weapons around, and maybe a few more special rules for the use of weapons as apposed to the simple effectiveness only being in strength.

How about a troop melta that is str 6 but ignores Armour? and gets 2d6 armour pen, still good but a tank mounted melta could get that str8 to blast them nobs, or something like a devastator squad.

^melta already ignores armor buddy