Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

So this is the first table top game i've ever been involved in. I have to say i really love my nids, regardless of the age of the codex. While this is my first table top game, i've always been a gamer. In pretty much every game i've played there is always a off class/race/army/deck. Maybe one thing drains mana instead of health, or a card deck that causes you to loose all of your cards instead of killing monsters. Now i'm aware 40k has some pretty major rule problems and imbalances but I have to say i'm amazed there is no army or character that kills you through other means than wounds. When I was reading on page 3 of the 40k rule book it says any model that has its strength, toughness or wounds reduced to 0 is removed from play.

So has anyone else thought about them bringing in an idea like this? I'm aware this would cause huge imbalances and GW already seems to have issues getting the game balanced . I do remember there was an ork hq that was banned who had the ability to turn your character into an animal or some such. Does warhammer fantasy have any models that do this type of thing? Anyway, i'm just curious to see if there is any history of models that do this type of thing and get your opinion.

First time ive ever heard of Old Zogwort getting banned because he can squig people. Thats literally the only reason hes even justifiable to take, joke or legit.

I think that page youre talking about was just referring to the insanely unusual situation where a weak model gets weakened enough to be 0. Such as a T2 model getting slapped by 2 different -1T modifiers. Personally ive never seen it get close to this, or heard of it, but i assume its possible since that rule exists.

Most things that reduce toughness or strength have a caveat that it can't lower it below 1. So the probability of killing a model that way is very slim.

Fantasy has more of that sort of thing. I know there used to be a Nurgle spell that stayed in play and each turn it reduced your toughness by 1, if you reached zero the entire unit it was cast on would die! Especially nasty if combined with another debuff. Not sure if that spell survived the last update though.

In general, there are many more debuffs in Fantasy. And more buffs, as in straight buffs to your statline.

Some lores of magic are purely based around buffs or debuffs. Ogre Gutmagic is all about buffs. One spell gives +1T, another +1 strength, and another gives you Regeneration. Shadow has a spell that reduces Toughness, Strength, and/or Initiative.


If you like debuffing your opponent or buffing your own dudes with extra stuff, Fantasy is probably more your style. 40k has much less of that kind of synergy.

The biggest reason I think is that having your models removed in this way simply isn't *fun* as a player. With most attacks, you usually have at least one roll to make to try and save your model, be it a normal save, cover save, FNP, or whatever else.
However, the abilities that reduce Strength and Toughness usually affect entire units and only need to hit to work, meaning the most you'll ever get is a cover save or an unlikely DtW. More often than not you don't get a say in it at all. If these could reduce to 0, there'd no fun in watching your opponent make a couple of rolls and then having them tell you "right, that unit's dead, it can go now".

This could be fixed if you had a weapon with no AP, but you'd need some way of keeping track of which models were hit. Or, it would be much easier to stomach if the weapons affected single models only but with a big modifier, say -4, so you could reliably "kill" a unit member or reduce a MC to low Toughness. Either way, the viability seems to hinge around it being a rare option for specific single models rather than something you'd see on every unit as an army-wide theme.

Frankly, it's hard enough keeping your units shielded against demise through the usual, wound-based channel, without adding commonplace Strength and Toughness avenues as well.

As you've said, it'd be a game balance issue. Any form of "Toughness or Strength to 0" power would probably be exploited to no end, as it's likely that no-one else would have much of a defence against it, which would throw the already delicate balance severely out of whack.