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To me it doesn't make sence that alot of characters don't haveeternal warrior... it just seems unlikely that a character rising to a certain rank or level of rank wouldn't be avoiding big heavy attacks or for avample w/cybork body for orks or iron halo for space marines wouldn't at least shrug off the fist major hit that isn't avoided or at least absorb alot of it

case in point dante. he's supposed to eb the oldest space marine... he will one day stand aloen between the sacred emperor in front of the golden thron fighting back chaos... unless a powerclaw from a random nob happens to crush him in one go... or a missile doesn't get saved by his iron halo which is apparently an all or nothing save not a progressivle deminishing field

another example would be eldrad... one of the mightiest most important eldar ... seeing the future and weaving a path fo rhis people ... gets hit by a missile and drops dead

it seems at the price we pay for named/independant characters for the numbeer of wonds that they get we should have them as eternal warriors at least to make use of the points spent on the stats.

also another thing thats annoying on non-EW warriors is force weapons... yay grey knights attack, their one wound strips off 4 wounds of a lengendary firugre in 40k because.... matt ward said almsot all grey knights get cool force weapons? so a single grey knight troop with a force weapon.. so a monstrous reature faces a single greyknight with a pointy peice of metal and it can carve up a trygon assumign it touches it with the pointy end right

This is a problem with Instant Death, not with Eternal Warrior or lack thereof.

I've been thinking about this for years. I don't think eternal warrior solves the problem. I think the problem is that the characters are able to be targetted at all. The 40k rules make killing such characters easy, so realistically they'd never have gotten to their level of power. There are a few ways I can think of characters being the heroes they are supposed to be;
-a luck save
-a legend rule that makes them untargettable unless there is nothing else within a certain range
-only fielding them in special games where you'd have to really suck to get them killed

So I think it's just hopeless. The only way to make them realistically survive is to not field them.

I think the easiest way to make IC and MC more survivable is add a Heroic special rule.

-) Instant Death caused by a unit which is not an Independent Character or a Monstrous Creature against a Heroic unit causes two wounds instead of causing Instant Death.
-) Heroic units may take both their Armour Saves and Invulnerable Saves against all attacks from units which are not Heroic, Independent Characters, or Monstrous Creatures.

Well I'm not sure about every HQ. A capatin should most definently be more vulnerable than say Shrike. The other thing is that some charachters that can be played have already died in the 40K fluff. I'm not so sure these guys should be eternal warrior. Now I do agree with the OP that guys like Dante or Vect should be eternal. I'm sorry but a random krak missile to Dante shouldn't zap him and a round from an assault cannon shouldn't drop Vect the most powerful member of the DE race who is only outlived by (maybe) Rakarth. Even then Rakarth doesn't have it just a high toughness.

It is both a problem with ID and EW. ID is to easy to achieve and the wrong models in several cases have EW.

Akroma06 wrote:It is both a problem with ID and EW. ID is to easy to achieve and the wrong models in several cases have EW.

Agreed. I think GW went a bit overboard on making units with Instant Death on them. Seems each Edition of 40k has something that GW just goes nuts on and that the subsequent edition should fix.

I like the ID special rule and the effect it has.

I think that getting hit in the chest by an antitank missile SHOULD kill a space marine, regardless of how awesome he is.

I mean, if Dante wasn't wearing his armor and was just going about his business, and then a BATTLE BARGE crashed on him and EXPLODED, with these rules he'd just shrug it off and go on with his life.

That doesn't make any damn sense.

Unit1126PLL wrote:I like the ID special rule and the effect it has.

I think that getting hit in the chest by an antitank missile SHOULD kill a space marine, regardless of how awesome he is.

I mean, if Dante wasn't wearing his armor and was just going about his business, and then a BATTLE BARGE crashed on him and EXPLODED, with these rules he'd just shrug it off and go on with his life.

That doesn't make any damn sense.

Eh, the Angry Marines crashed a battle barge into a greater daemon and he survived, but that's alright because it was just a distraction to allow them to crash the litany of litany's litany into it. It all depends on how you look at it, fluffwise.

My 1st army suffers nothing from this as all daemons have EW as standard

My nids however, they had it stripped from them and its made warriors a vewy poor choice now as rocketsfangs and the the like tear through them quickly, as does a battlecannon. (the 2nd does that to most things though)


However, it does seem weird as to what characters have this.
The swarmlord and doom of malan'tai are 2 more examples of stupidly strong models/characters that lack EW.
Thats 5 wounds that can be stripped by a FW.
To make it worse, doom can be a S10 beast with 10 wounds, then get killed by a missile lol.

Rumour has it that Instant Death is being changed in 6th Edition slightly. If the rumours are true, Instant Death from weapons that have a Strength that is double the unit's Toughness or less only do two wounds (so would still kill most units) instead of outright killing everything, while anything over double Toughness is three wounds.

Fact. Nothing pisses me off like Dante, a man older than some DREADNOUGHTS gets crap kicked by a trigger happy guardsman that was lucky enough to pull lascannon duty

chrisrawr wrote:This is a problem with Instant Death, not with Eternal Warrior or lack thereof.

no, still its about eternal warrior because of the force weapon thing. a greyknight cheapest troop a grey knight strike squad member coming in at a whopping 20 points per model gets a force sword and can possible wipe a 2-300 point tyranid model... and the codex if full of force weapons. i feel liek monstrous creature should include eternal warrior in it as well as they usually cost alof of points.

Unit1126PLL wrote:I like the ID special rule and the effect it has.

I think that getting hit in the chest by an antitank missile SHOULD kill a space marine, regardless of how awesome he is.

I mean, if Dante wasn't wearing his armor and was just going about his business, and then a BATTLE BARGE crashed on him and EXPLODED, with these rules he'd just shrug it off and go on with his life.

That doesn't make any damn sense.

well you'd think dante would have the situational awareness to not get into those sorts of situations. heck if something lives for a thousand year they've got to be pretty good at avoiding accidents(though as this is 40k we are talking about in battles only not off the battlefield... where I assume a crashing barge would have to count for more than one wound anyway like D20 wounds) . same with eldrad, the ultimate psycher who looks into the strands of the future can't see a powerfist coming that strips off all his wounds.

G00fySmiley wrote:no, still its about eternal warrior because of the force weapon thing. a greyknight cheapest troop a grey knight strike squad member coming in at a whopping 20 points per model gets a force sword and can possible wipe a 2-300 point tyranid model... and the codex if full of force weapons. i feel liek monstrous creature should include eternal warrior in it as well as they usually cost alof of points.

Well hopefully the rumours about 6th Edition are true, this will make Tyranid Monstrous Creature only ever receive 2 wounds from Instant Death attacks (since most are Toughness 6 or higher) instead of being killed outright.

yea, that definitely helps as long as they change force weapons from "instant death" to an additional wound... though i still think monstrous creatures should be mostly immune to them... they were kind of rare before but frickin grey knights everything has a force weapon and its handicapped nids alot

G00fySmiley wrote:

chrisrawr wrote:This is a problem with Instant Death, not with Eternal Warrior or lack thereof.

no, still its about eternal warrior because of the force weapon thing. a greyknight cheapest troop a grey knight strike squad member coming in at a whopping 20 points per model gets a force sword and can possible wipe a 2-300 point tyranid model... and the codex if full of force weapons. i feel liek monstrous creature should include eternal warrior in it as well as they usually cost alof of points.

Force weapons have nothing to do with Eternal Warrior. All Eternal Warrior does is negate Instant Death entirely - it's a broader rule that affects a lot of things that aren't force weapons.

This is not about Grey Knights, either, as personal as that matter is to you. Although they have potentially the largest number of ways to cause Instant Death via their Force Weapons, and although they are balanced to a different scale than the rest of the 40K armies, this problem goes beyond them.


The problem, in its simplest iteration and scope: Multiwound models without Eternal Warrior get killed by 1 unsaved Instant Death wound. Agreed?

Your solution, making one ability completely useless: Give a crapload of models Eternal Warrior. This means that subtle army shifts will move towards lots of named characters and MC's for the durability they offer. It also makes a lot of special items REALLY useless for people who AREN'T Grey Knights, and who DO have to pay appropriate points for them.

The solution that most designers and playtesters agree upon is a change to both Instant Death and Eternal Warrior, putting them in Tiers that better simulate and describe the sort of weapons and powers being used to kill and survive. ID1, 2, and 3 for Double Strength, Triple Strength, and Supermegainstantdeathnowayyou'regettingoutofthis, and EW 1, 2, and 3, each level negating parts of instant death effects.

If you have suggestions that improve upon the above, then you've got improvements the design and development community would like to hear about.

i don't' know about the ID 1 2 and 3 or EW 1 2 and 3... but I've only seen it in one version of supposed 6gth that I've read. it looked good but there are still 3 full 6trh edition rulebooks out there contradicting each other and i don't' know which is real so I'm commenting on 5th edition, the version we have a full real rule book for.

and its nto really personal to me, i feel bad for tyranids btu i don't own a tyranid army or even any models besides a trygon that I converted to a looted wagon with boomgun (big gun out its chest and a mek on top pulling nobs drove into its head)

also note some named toosn only have 2 wounds the smalelr guys so its really just letting them live a bti longer. and named characters add meaning to the game imo.

and this is pretty much it "The problem, in its simplest iteration and scope: Multiwound models without Eternal Warrior get killed by 1 unsaved Instant Death wound. Agreed? " but add force weapons to the mix to. in some armies I'd agree they should cause and extra wound but draining all wounds is a bit overboard .. i don't know how much he costs points wise but looking at this trygon box he's got 6 wounds and again a 20 point greyknight shouldn't be ab;e to single poke that big ole guy down pass hammerhand psychic test then wound on a 5 pass psychic test... bye bye trygon

G00fySmiley wrote:yea, that definitely helps as long as they change force weapons from "instant death" to an additional wound... though i still think monstrous creatures should be mostly immune to them... they were kind of rare before but frickin grey knights everything has a force weapon and its handicapped nids alot

Tyranids have a lot of problems right now and, in my opinion, are one of the armies that needs fixing the most right now. Some would say Eldar, but at least people are still trying to play Eldar competitively, hardly anyone plays Tyranids competitively right now.

Dark Eldar and Grey Knights just make a mockery of Tyranids at the moment and even against other armies Tyranids aren't really intimidating.

After I'm finished doing my fandex for Space Marines and Iron Hands I may just take a stab at Tyranids.

I liek the tyranids fluff and the models they are a possible future army btu way down the list after more orks eldar and marines.

i'd defiantly read a fandex for them though on how to fix em. they really are in a rough spot though . they seem liek a cool idea though predators eating up the galaxy as they go an innumerable force of huge creatures caring not for alliances or anything they just want to eat you...

emperium of man = pink food
orks = green food
dark eldar = leathery food
eldar = aged food
tau = fishy food
chaos = spikey food
necrons = metalic food

as an ork player I appreciate the simplicity as my boyz are just looking for a good fight

I'm doing orks after Tau, and then SoB... I did want to get to Tyranids, but ML will probably do a much better job of it than I would've.

Again, Force Weapons are just another way to grant ID. It's not a problem in the force weapon itself, but the availability of it in the GK army. Changing Instant Death will change the value of Force Weapons, which will help to balance their current cost on GK 'rines.

Idk if this is relevant to the conversation, but the GK weapons don't instant death daemons, they remove them from the game.

I'm going to get trollpoints for this, but I think DE and GK having their abilities to instantly kill large things is for game balance. If not, then at least it provides some variety to the armies out there and forces people to change tactics.

Akroma06 wrote:an assault cannon shouldn't drop Vect

I just assume Vect has died many times over the years, he just had contingency alliances in place to cover that. Even in the DoW game he explodes when you beat the DE army. Not that it means anything...

chrisrawr wrote:
...Angry Marines...fluffwise.

I'm so proud of you.

Marik Law wrote:Rumour has it that Instant Death is being changed in 6th Edition slightly. If the rumours are true, Instant Death from weapons that have a Strength that is double the unit's Toughness or less only do two wounds (so would still kill most units) instead of outright killing everything, while anything over double Toughness is three wounds.

That reminds me. The ID rules were only a simplified way of representing high damage weapons when they got rid of multiple damage. In 2nd edition things (mainly big things) had more wounds and higher T, but heavy weapons did from d6 to 2d12 damage. If they actually added more wounds to these supposedly legendary characters they would not only be able to hold out like the fluff says against hordes of gibronis, they'd also survive the big hits. To do this they'd have to do multiple damage again, just hopefully smaller dice numbers.

G00fySmiley wrote:yea, that definitely helps as long as they change force weapons from "instant death" to an additional wound... though i still think monstrous creatures should be mostly immune to them...

I really don't think that force weapons are overpowered. You have to hit, then wound, then you have to use them as a psychic power, which are limited to the number of times you can use powers in a turn. Plus EW is immune. So most monstrous things do have some resistance to this chance to be killed.

-
I certainly don't believe all IC's should be immune to ID. Now keep in mind that there is little difference between alot of space marine characters and the power level of a normal captain. It's very hard to decide where the draw the line for an army like that. The most realistic way to represent certain heroes not dying stupidly is to not get them killed. In any game where I see a special character I just assume it to be some hero who is close in ability, this works in most cases. If the hero ends up dying then it must not have really been him after all.

chrisrawr wrote:

Unit1126PLL wrote:I like the ID special rule and the effect it has.

I think that getting hit in the chest by an antitank missile SHOULD kill a space marine, regardless of how awesome he is.

I mean, if Dante wasn't wearing his armor and was just going about his business, and then a BATTLE BARGE crashed on him and EXPLODED, with these rules he'd just shrug it off and go on with his life.

That doesn't make any damn sense.

Eh, the Angry Marines crashed a battle barge into a greater daemon and he survived, but that's alright because it was just a distraction to allow them to crash the litany of litany's litany into it. It all depends on how you look at it, fluffwise.

But, the greater daemon has an Inv save and EW anyway

I would say that is the equivalent of a destroyer hit. Destroyers are titan killing weapons, S so high that they auto penetrate and auto wound. Even they don't instantly kill things with EW, so maybe that's a good indication of who should not have it. Those that do have it must be supernatural in some way.

Alternatively, Apocalypse rules have no basis in reality and we shouldn't be talking about them as if they interact well at all with normal rules.

Still has no real help for mid sized creatures like warriors, but the only way to fix that would be to go back to the previous rules for synapse, which worked bloody well.

no, still its about eternal warrior because of the force weapon thing. a greyknight cheapest troop a grey knight strike squad member coming in at a whopping 20 points per model gets a force sword and can possible wipe a 2-300 point tyranid model... and the codex if full of force weapons. i feel liek monstrous creature should include eternal warrior in it as well as they usually cost alof of points.

An ork boy is the same points cost as a hormagaunt, but to bring them level on strength you need to upgrade hormies with glands so they can actually wound something.

You cant compare through different books though as each book is "ment" to have its own balance for an army.

No matter what you do, an army will suffer due to the diversity in the book compared to the 40k editions as they go on.
There will allways be armies up and downgraded with new rule sets, its something thats allways happened.


Would be nice though if GW had something like a 3 yearly update for rules and each book to keep them in check.
However, tis alot of work and i dont expect much from them as it is

@Jackal
An ork boy is a poor comparison to a Hormagant, as the Orks codex was meant to be competitive and the Tyranids codex is meant to be a mocking slap in the face. Ork boys are, pound for point, some of the best units in the game - comparing them to trash like 5ehorms is unfair in all respects.

You CAN compare cross-codex, however; The first thing you do is take in general playstyle. Eldar have a speed and specialist advantage, as well as powerful weapons and good vehicles. Their points are high because every unit you add is (supposed to be) another powerful addition. Compared to Orks, which get cheap, dirty, unskilled brawlers and low-cost brutish vehicles, at the cost of much of their shooting and ability to specialize (meta and wound allocation problems aside) are both fairly balanced against each other. Tau has its own problems, but is also sort of balanced in this mix, as are sisters of battle, black templars, Tyrajokes, and DA. DE, Necrons, Space Marines, BA, and SW are balanced in their own little section of competitiveness. And then up above everyone else, there's the Grey Knights codex, which has WONDERFUL internal balance, despite being far more powerful than most everything else, and Imperial Guard, which is so imbalanced both internally and externally that I don't even know how it made it into the playtesting phase.

You CAN draw comparisons between units and wargear within a codex's rung, but trying to price something in eldar off its 'equivalent' in DE is going to make your head hurt.

Marik Law wrote:Rumour has it that Instant Death is being changed in 6th Edition slightly. If the rumours are true, Instant Death from weapons that have a Strength that is double the unit's Toughness or less only do two wounds (so would still kill most units) instead of outright killing everything, while anything over double Toughness is three wounds.

That would make sense, an anti tank missile should be able to kill an ork nob, but not a hero like Captain Sicarius etc..

It could be a better way of doing the damage, but it would unbalance the armies which have multiwound tough creatures. I can't see why an ork nob would die from krak but a captain would not. The base stats of a nob are far superior to a marine, the character only has the extra wounds because he's heroic. Now incorporating power armor realistically there may be a chance, but our ap system is an all or nothing thing.

If anything with EW is easily killable in game then I can't logically understand that. EW is outrageous, and now i'm of the mindset that anything in the game having it makes no sense. I would say a definite no with anything in the game gaining EW, it would be much better represented by extra wounds and/or special abilities.

erikwfg wrote:It could be a better way of doing the damage, but it would unbalance the armies which have multiwound tough creatures. I can't see why an ork nob would die from krak but a captain would not. The base stats of a nob are far superior to a marine, the character only has the extra wounds because he's heroic. Now incorporating power armor realistically there may be a chance, but our ap system is an all or nothing thing.

If anything with EW is easily killable in game then I can't logically understand that. EW is outrageous, and now i'm of the mindset that anything in the game having it makes no sense. I would say a definite no with anything in the game gaining EW, it would be much better represented by extra wounds and/or special abilities.

The reason for a Captain>Nob, is that nobz run into battle with almost no protection, and that a SM's power armour would be able to reduce the damage, as well as being a shield.

The ap rules are pretty stupid, but I think in the case of a shaped charge warhead they are working accurately. At best the marine and ork are equal, 1 because of bulk and the other maybe because of special marine physiology.

Wrakkar wrote:

erikwfg wrote:It could be a better way of doing the damage, but it would unbalance the armies which have multiwound tough creatures. I can't see why an ork nob would die from krak but a captain would not. The base stats of a nob are far superior to a marine, the character only has the extra wounds because he's heroic. Now incorporating power armor realistically there may be a chance, but our ap system is an all or nothing thing.

If anything with EW is easily killable in game then I can't logically understand that. EW is outrageous, and now i'm of the mindset that anything in the game having it makes no sense. I would say a definite no with anything in the game gaining EW, it would be much better represented by extra wounds and/or special abilities.

The reason for a Captain>Nob, is that nobz run into battle with almost no protection, and that a SM's power armour would be able to reduce the damage, as well as being a shield.

But in all fairness, that's what AP is for, and the missile makes even power armour useless as it is so strong, if the bullet can punch through the armour then the Ork and the SM are the same when it comes to how tough they are, the Captain can only withstand more fire at a less strength, but even something as strong as a missile would kill him outright.