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anyone know of a well-written set of rules for adding weather effects to 40k? a bit of googling turned up some results from a few years ago, but nothing recent. also, many of those results didn't strike me as well balanced (i.e., too destructive/extreme). in particular, I'm hoping to find something adapted for 6th ed.

cheers

April 2012 White Dwarf had Death World rules where you would be rolling on tables for "weather" conditions. Pretty much half of them would kill things, but thats a death world for you.

I think the BRB also has some special climate rules as well which has some weather

The main problem would be balance. Weather effects are all but necessarily going to hurt hordes and treated vehicles while doing little to hurt monstrous creatures and skimmers.

40k doesn't need it's imbalances exacerbated.

One White Dwarf had a "chaos world" table where you rolled on it at the beginning of every turn. I found it pretty amusing, but it's not something I'd use in a game where I was worried about winning.

 Ailaros wrote:
The main problem would be balance. Weather effects are all but necessarily going to hurt hordes and treated vehicles while doing little to hurt monstrous creatures and skimmers.

Err, how?

Thunderstorm - strong winds and lightning make the air above the battlefield a dangerous place to be. At the end of each player's movement phase roll a D6 for each of their flyers and FMCs on the table. If the result is a 1 the unit takes a single haywire hit (flyer) or an automatic wound with no saves or FNP of any kind allowed (FMC) and is rotated to face in a random direction using the scatter die. On a 2+ this rule has no effect.

Reality intrusion - disbelief is no longer suspended and the square-cube law exists on this battlefield. Every time a MC moves (including run and assault moves) it must roll a D6. If the result is less than or equal to the distance the MC moved it is immediately removed as a casualty as it collapses under its own weight. Jump/jetpack/flying MCs are immune to this rule, but must move as standard infantry as their jet packs strain to support their weight.

Gravity disruption - this planet's gravity is subject to slight disruptions. The effects are too small to be noticed by infantry or conventional vehicles, but cause dangerous interference with the anti-gravity systems used by skimmers. Skimmers treat the entire table as dangerous terrain, except that the dangerous terrain test is failed on a D6 result of a 1-2, or a 1-3 if the skimmer would normally have to take a dangerous terrain test for a given move. Abilities that re-roll or ignore dangerous terrain tests may not be used to ignore this effect. A skimmer may choose to fly slowly and cautiously to avoid this penalty, in which case it loses the skimmer type and counts as a normal vehicle.

And that's just a start. It's trivially easy to think of weather effects that buff or nerf any class of unit you want.

Electra magnetic storm: -1 to all reserves.
Snow/Sand storm: treat all terrain as difficult and instate night fighting rules. (as it is too hard to see)
Lighting storm: same as imhoteks for everyone.
Clear skys: nothing

meteor showers: split table into 6 parts nominate number than roll d6: units in that sector take d6 s4ap0 auto hits. cover may be taken.

i just made these up for funz

Peregrine what is reality intrusion? confused about that one.

 Desubot wrote:
Peregrine what is reality intrusion? confused about that one.

The square-cube law says that if you increase the size of an object (scaling the whole thing proportionally) by a factor of X you increase the weight of it by X cubed, while only increasing the cross-sectional area of its parts by X squared. This means that, for example, the weight a limb has to support increases much faster than the strength of that limb (which is proportional to its cross-sectional area), so the stress on it gets worse and worse. Eventually you reach a point where any further increase in size will go beyond the structural strength of the limb and it will break. This puts a strict upper limit on the size that certain body layouts can work at: giant radioactive ants may be a terrifying enemy in a movie, but in reality they'd collapse under their own body weight.

So, what this means for 40k is that if we have a weather event where the laws of reality apply to 40k every Tyranid MC will collapse and die as its own weight snaps its legs (along with other issues like the Tyranids no longer being able to absorb and use genetic material from things they eat or violate the laws of thermodynamics to spawn endlessly by eating planets, but that's outside the scope of a single battle). So if you want to nerf MCs for whatever reason Ailaros has in mind all you need to do is refuse to suspend disbelief for a bit.

Never thought of this... Epic!