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I'd like to start off saying I play CSM so maybe I have a different view point on it. I feel like cover saves are pretty useless for Space Marine armies because of their armor save.
You are just as safe standing in the open as standing behind a wall. You should be able to take both a cover and an armor save. I feel like this would only make sense.
If you fail your cover save then you are able to take your armor save. It's as if someone took a shot at you while you are behind a wall and either the shot does or doesn't go through.
If the shot does go through the wall, it then hits your armor and you'll have to take a save.

It would probably work better if you could only get a max save from cover

Thoughts?

Back in 2nd edition cover gave a negative to hit modifier to the shooting unit (-1, -2 to hit). When 3rd edition came around and they re-wrote the rules to basically what we have now, they specifically made cover work the way it does to encourage heavily armored units to not just hide in cover, but come out in the open and fight. It made the game a little more exciting and less gun-liney. Of course, that said, I am sure any Space Marine player will be more than happy to tell you about the abundance of AP3 or better weapons in the current meta.

I kind of agree with OP's logic about how cover should work, considering how it works in real life, but I think it would make shooty armies ridiculously difficult to unseat from cover.

A shooty army like Tau would go from basically having a general 4+ save (cover or armor), to two 4+ saves back to back, which would basically just make them neigh impossible to kill.

You would have to really do a ton of balancing to make things work so that units that need to traverse land to get into assault don't just get massacred on the way over with no real recourse.

I think that if you want cover to be more universal a negative to hit modifier (as there used to be) would be much better. If you take both armor and cover saves, you end up rolling too many dice.

Lets say you have Blood Angels with a Sanguinary priest in cover. You get 5+ cover, then 3+ armor, then 5+ feel no pain. Which means it takes nearly 7 wounds (non-AP3 or S8) to kill one marine. Which means if we look at marines shooting with bolters, that means 20 Shots (an entire Tactical squad rapid firing) to kill 1 Marine.

If you did cover as -1 to hit, it takes 18 shots, so not quite as bad, and you roll less dice.

The Cover assertion makes me think about my screamer star. 2++ re-rollable invul, 4+ cover for turbo boosting, maybe 5+ FNP from endurance if you have it. IT would take 648 bolter shots to kill one screamer.

Either way it seems like a bit much.

Breng77 wrote:
I think that if you want cover to be more universal a negative to hit modifier (as there used to be) would be much better. If you take both armor and cover saves, you end up rolling too many dice.

Lets say you have Blood Angels with a Sanguinary priest in cover. You get 5+ cover, then 3+ armor, then 5+ feel no pain. Which means it takes nearly 7 wounds (non-AP3 or S8) to kill one marine. Which means if we look at marines shooting with bolters, that means 20 Shots (an entire Tactical squad rapid firing) to kill 1 Marine.

If you did cover as -1 to hit, it takes 18 shots, so not quite as bad, and you roll less dice.

The Cover assertion makes me think about my screamer star. 2++ re-rollable invul, 4+ cover for turbo boosting, maybe 5+ FNP from endurance if you have it. IT would take 648 bolter shots to kill one screamer.

Either way it seems like a bit much.

Well, it sounds like a bad idea when you put it like that xD

Breng77 wrote:
I think that if you want cover to be more universal a negative to hit modifier (as there used to be) would be much better. If you take both armor and cover saves, you end up rolling too many dice.

Lets say you have Blood Angels with a Sanguinary priest in cover. You get 5+ cover, then 3+ armor, then 5+ feel no pain. Which means it takes nearly 7 wounds (non-AP3 or S8) to kill one marine. Which means if we look at marines shooting with bolters, that means 20 Shots (an entire Tactical squad rapid firing) to kill 1 Marine.

If you did cover as -1 to hit, it takes 18 shots, so not quite as bad, and you roll less dice.

The Cover assertion makes me think about my screamer star. 2++ re-rollable invul, 4+ cover for turbo boosting, maybe 5+ FNP from endurance if you have it. IT would take 648 bolter shots to kill one screamer.

Either way it seems like a bit much.

Then I laugh because Doom Just blasted you off the board, because He attack Cataclysm and Spirit leech ignore all your saves.

Cover saves are just as important for CSM as any other army, because the current game offers a lot of weapons that ignore even 2+ armor. If I moving against a squad of guardsmen sure, I don't care about cover because lasguns are a joke. But the Demolisher with the Str.10 Ap.2 cannon sitting behind them is going to turn even my my FnP marines into a fine red mist, and the only thing that might save them is that 6+ cover save they get from hitting the dirt.

 kinratha wrote:

Breng77 wrote:
I think that if you want cover to be more universal a negative to hit modifier (as there used to be) would be much better. If you take both armor and cover saves, you end up rolling too many dice.

Lets say you have Blood Angels with a Sanguinary priest in cover. You get 5+ cover, then 3+ armor, then 5+ feel no pain. Which means it takes nearly 7 wounds (non-AP3 or S8) to kill one marine. Which means if we look at marines shooting with bolters, that means 20 Shots (an entire Tactical squad rapid firing) to kill 1 Marine.

If you did cover as -1 to hit, it takes 18 shots, so not quite as bad, and you roll less dice.

The Cover assertion makes me think about my screamer star. 2++ re-rollable invul, 4+ cover for turbo boosting, maybe 5+ FNP from endurance if you have it. IT would take 648 bolter shots to kill one screamer.

Either way it seems like a bit much.

Then I laugh because Doom Just blasted you off the board, because He attack Cataclysm and Spirit leech ignore all your saves.

Or not..
Tyranid FAQ states that cover works against Spirit Leech, nor does it ignore invul saves. Cataclysm also does not ignore cover as far as I'm aware, or Invuls....so yeah, not so much.

Just FYI with cover and FNP Spirit Leech on average does .4 wounds to those marines...so kills 1 every other turn.

In this system against screamers it does 0.02 wounds on average..so you kill a screamer every 108 rounds...scarey indeed. That is if they stay within 6" after one round. Oh and even if I roll an 18 on the LD it does .14 wounds (without FNP) so kills one screamer ever 14 rounds...not very scarey.

Doom is scarey to models in the open, especially those with low LD.

My only question is, with inflicting a penalty to hit, how does that work with things that do not roll to hit, such as blasts?

i think AP should affect cover, it seems a fair assumption that if you're trying to fire a lasgun through a wall, you'll have a harder time than with a lascannon.

i mean, as it stands, a lascannon can be stopped by a shrub. this is, honestly, nonsense. it'd make the game much different, and bring more lLOS blocking terrain to the fore, if cover saves could still be negated. EG an aegis provides a 2+ cover, but this still does nothing against AP1 or 2, or flamers. a ruin provies a 4+ cover, but it's negated by heavy firepower like heavy bolters and assault cannons. you still have the save system you have nowadays, but less of the hiding behind a ruined wall to thwart the anti-tank guns of the enemy. this would also make a reasonable bit of sense, as your choice of armour will be confined by the AP of the gun still - this weapon goes straight through the space marines armour, so the wall will still offer no protection.

either that or a save modifier, but then space marines and other 3+ saves will get stupid, unless they make open ground a -1 modifier.

That depends, if you make it -1 BS (instead of -1 to the die roll) then it would scatter further. If you did -1 to the to hit roll then it would have no effect.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 some bloke wrote:
i think AP should affect cover, it seems a fair assumption that if you're trying to fire a lasgun through a wall, you'll have a harder time than with a lascannon.

i mean, as it stands, a lascannon can be stopped by a shrub. this is, honestly, nonsense. it'd make the game much different, and bring more lLOS blocking terrain to the fore, if cover saves could still be negated. EG an aegis provides a 2+ cover, but this still does nothing against AP1 or 2, or flamers. a ruin provies a 4+ cover, but it's negated by heavy firepower like heavy bolters and assault cannons. you still have the save system you have nowadays, but less of the hiding behind a ruined wall to thwart the anti-tank guns of the enemy. this would also make a reasonable bit of sense, as your choice of armour will be confined by the AP of the gun still - this weapon goes straight through the space marines armour, so the wall will still offer no protection.

either that or a save modifier, but then space marines and other 3+ saves will get stupid, unless they make open ground a -1 modifier.

If you are going with that the AP system makes no sense. A Tyranid Rupture cannon, at S10 can pen a land raider, but not Power Armor, but Thousand Sons can pen Power armor, and not scratch a land raider. From that standpoint fantasy's S modifying armor makes far more sense. (maybe just start at a higher strength.)

So basically you guys want to play fantasy?

Cover isn't something blocking the shot because it hit a wall, tree, etc.

Cover is the shot not actually connecting with the target for whatever reason. Could not see target. Shot was dodged. Could not aim properly. Etc.

I think you're assuming too much of the capability of a tree to stop 40k weaponry from wrecking things.

Cover as a - to hit would wreck orks.

I play an army that doesn't need cover, lets remove it as a meaningful effect

No, both to you and to all the Space Marines players out there who try to take area terrain out of my games.

Cover is important, it may not be important to you, but its important to the rest of us. When the average Ork armour save is 3+, then we can talk about ditching cover.

A cover save isn't worthless. In a meta where plasma is so popular even marines can love some cover saves. Along with that, one also has to mention that the 4+ save does help armies like Orks, Guardsmen, etc where the standard save is usually ignored whilst making is so marines get a cover save, then an armour save, and then a possible FNP save. Going by that one might want to throw in the invuln save before the armour save to represent how it is supposed to activate. Yet in reality if we go on to question this why not roll armour saves before rolling to wound instead of after to represent the armour failing to save it yet the physical armour might somehow blunt the force to fail wounding anyways.

If GW would sweep through their codices re-calculating everything a great way to calculate would be to make cover decrease the chances of to hit yet then we must remember that people would hug cover and become increasingly more gunliney. It is a hard stance that isn't simply solved.

 ImotekhTheStormlord wrote:
Cover as a - to hit would wreck orks.

I actually don't see this at all. Lets just say for instance that you can never go below BS 1 for these modifiers and that they worked like this

Area terrain/any Current = 5 cover/= -1 BS
Ruins/Hill Crests/any Current 4+ Cover = -2 BS
Lets say going to ground = -1 BS
Stealth = -1 BS
Shrouded = -2 BS

So we look at Orks in this system. They are only ever penalized by a -1 BS because at that point they are already BS1, and they rely on weight of fire, not quality, so much like with current snapshots they just don't really care. I can see it a bit in that they don't have much low ap stuff, but so it adds a bit more protection for say a marine who gets hit half as much but still gets his save, but orks like CC anyway so this allows them to bypass this disadvantage in many ways.

Now lets look at a marine shooting them with a bolter in cover

Currently it takes 4.5 Shots on average to kill that ork in cover
at -1 BS it takes 4

Not really a big difference

at 4+ cover it now takes 6 shots
at -2 BS it also takes 6 shots

Cover in 40k is odd. It makes no distinction between movement and obstruction nor of obstruction by solid matter and obstruction of vision. Take a flamer. If something moves so fast that it is very difficult to hit it with a laser, you still hit it 100% of the time when using pressurized liquid even though at the speeds we are talking about only a laser would actually be able to hit the above hinted afterburner fuelled anti-gravity space-flight-capable jet fighter tank (which can't fly in game).

 Dakkamite wrote:

I play an army that doesn't need cover, lets remove it as a meaningful effect

No, both to you and to all the Space Marines players out there who try to take area terrain out of my games.

Cover is important, it may not be important to you, but its important to the rest of us. When the average Ork armour save is 3+, then we can talk about ditching cover.

...and the average Eldar save is a 4+ cover save, so I agree with the above.

I did a thread a while back about cover saves and markerlights and touched on all this, people tended to disagree with me:
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/530221/5689701.page

 some bloke wrote:
i think AP should affect cover, it seems a fair assumption that if you're trying to fire a lasgun through a wall, you'll have a harder time than with a lascannon.

i mean, as it stands, a lascannon can be stopped by a shrub. this is, honestly, nonsense. it'd make the game much different, and bring more lLOS blocking terrain to the fore, if cover saves could still be negated. EG an aegis provides a 2+ cover, but this still does nothing against AP1 or 2, or flamers. a ruin provies a 4+ cover, but it's negated by heavy firepower like heavy bolters and assault cannons. you still have the save system you have nowadays, but less of the hiding behind a ruined wall to thwart the anti-tank guns of the enemy. this would also make a reasonable bit of sense, as your choice of armour will be confined by the AP of the gun still - this weapon goes straight through the space marines armour, so the wall will still offer no protection.

either that or a save modifier, but then space marines and other 3+ saves will get stupid, unless they make open ground a -1 modifier.

The reasoning with bushes is that it obscures the unit, making it harder to properly target. While having -BS modifiers would get that idea across easier, this seems to be a lot easier to do in an actual game.

if ap 3/2/1 weapons shoot at you then cover could save men so its very useful sometimes