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At first I thought this was a troll thread, then I saw who the OP is and decided that it's probably worth my time. It would not be broken to have a random shooting distance. GK used to have it as a special rule, called "the shrouding". Any unit targeting GK shoot with 3d6x3 I think it was, though I could be mistaken (if so then average 33"). Wasn't broken then and wouldn't be now. We do have the invisibility psychic power which pretty much does the same but better.

The argument that random range is not thematic compared to random charge doesn't hold much weight IMO. Units carefully advancing from cover to cover could easily symbolise random shooting range, as could battlefield debrees, dust clouds from blown up buildings, sand storms, gases, cover fire from the opposing unit etc. It is common practice to lay down cover fire for advancing allies with the goal to get the target to keep their heads down rather then to kill anyone. This could easily be represented by a random shooting distance.

The main question though, "would it be fun?" it would most certainly take the bitternes of failed charges and add it to shooting. One of the reasons failed charges feel so bad is because it's your dudes failing. The enemy didn't do anything to stop you, your Space marines Captain of 100campaigns just couldn't bring himself to stroll over a plain area of walking distance to cut up the enemy because reasons. On the other hand the reward for rolling high on the charge dice is non existant. It should be that if you roll high enough you can charge several enemies instead of the one you just targeted, but the disorganized charge rules are such a penality that there's no point in doing so. There's risk but no real reward, other then reaching your intended target.

I'm not a fan of random charges, the game worked fine without them back in 5th, but I almost think that if you have random charges then you should have random shooting distance too. Oh and for all you wondering I play a gunline of guardsmen.

Would random shooting distance be fun though? No, no it would most likely not be.

Isn't all the penaltys for shooting described above covered by cover saves, if you have trained with your gun you know the range , and there's no point in having a random range if your well within your range. You either gonna hit or not the bullet is only going to bounce off if your at the extreme of your range. Range is fairly constant with each gun . Charging head on into the enemy is a gamble.

The best way I can visualise it is loins hunting they are built to charge there prey and it ranges from 17 to 30% success rate depending how many are hunting. The same with charging the randomness is there to represent the increased variables involved in when you try to get within hand to hand combat , all it takes is for one guy to get spooked then it's a race to see if they can bring there guns to bear . Because once they have locked onto a target . A gun will mow down there chargers easy , just like loins prey once one gets spooked they all run .

The 2d6 I think represents quite nicely the chance of catching a unit off guard or not. To hits and cover represent all the varables of shooting enough . If you wanted to represent weapon range then it would be more appropriate to lower there ap values as you exceed there maximum range as bullets don't get to 24 inch and then fall to the floor. The 24 inches is the range where they will reliable hit with x amount of force


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Whilst you can say a space marine can run x distance reliable, it's much harder to say enemy's will only spot units at x distance, that's why the closer you get the less time the unit has to reach to you ,I do think you should be able to move the results rolled, you shouldn't just have to stand there if you don't make the roll. sorry for the long post but it just make sense to me

ian wrote:
Isn't all the penaltys for shooting described above covered by cover saves, if you have trained with your gun you know the range , and there's no point in having a random range if your well within your range.

If you have trained to run with your feet you know how far you can run.

Random charge ranges are just an artificial mechanics in the igougo system with pre-measurement that makes it riskier setting shooters within 12.0000000000001' of the target. There can be no passable real-life based logical explanasion to this. And we shouldn't really fix on weather it's stupid or not. Of course it's stupid. But does it make the current game system good or bad. I think that it's just a necessity. However, there should be minimal charge ranges cause moving 12 all game and than suddenly being able to only move 2" is not great. And they should depend on movement characteristic. Like 1/2 of movement or something like this.

 CrownAxe wrote:

 Dakka Wolf wrote:
I love me my Assault armies but I'm not for dice rolling ranges as much as I am for declaring targets before measuring ranges. Show some talent before rolling dice.
Shooter in having an eye for distances.
Target in a bit of bluff work.
"You sure that's thirty-six inches? Looks a bit short to me."

I'm blind in one eye so i physically can not do this

Maybe shooting isn't your thing, get an assault army.

Sarcasm aside you don't actually need to be able to judge distances to know them when looking at a tabletop, that's a big part of why they just allowed pre-measuring - "Eyeballing distances" was too easy a system to cheat.
Get different views of the table, take reference measurements when setting up terrain or setting up for deployment, take the measurement during the movement phase, know the width of your palms, open hand, elbow to wrist, elbow to fingertip, then just rest them on the table as you lean over to check line of sight and cover.
Way too easy to cheat, so why bother?

Oh this old chestnut. How many years old is this?

I reconcile it thusly: a rifle has an effective range. This range does not change.

Charging an enemy is subject to all kinds of things such as hazards along the ground, bombs exploding, etc...

You see it as being 5" from the enemy and rolling a 4 and thus being "screwed over" by the dice when your guy should always be able to run 5".
I see it as your unit was rushing forward and a bomb went off on the battlefield and slowed them down as they put their head down and missed the charge.

That is taken into account in ranged attacks with to hit modifiers and cover modifiers. (missing your shot)

Or one guy put his foot in a rabbit hole, fell over and three other guys tripped over him, or the boggy ground slowed them down (see: Crecy; the French knights clearly rolled a 2 for their charge range there).

Running is also random in this game so it should also follow that charging which is running should also be random , or should we have fixed run moves , theres only aprox 15% chance of rolling 4 or less just get to within 5inch or 6inch soon because of the extra inch and 85% you will make the charge

ahh the old days of guess weapons... distance guess 48 wou estimate the distance then declare, measure and scatter from that point.

 Talamare wrote:
Ain't nobody got time for that

I couldn't have said better.

Random *effective* ranges perhaps.

Roll lowest BSd6 and total.
If Total is equal or higher than the distance to the target, standard to hit,
If Total is double or higher than the distance to target, +1 to hit,
If total is lower, -1 to hit.
If total is half or less than distance to target -2 to hit.
Markerlights and other BS mods would allow for rerolls, more dice, pick dice etc.

Assault is decisive and involves a reallocation of on-table resources; shooting is often decisive if invested in heavily enough, but has fewer player actions to resolve.

Make short range rapid fire weapons slightly less accurate at long ranges, make long range weapons more interesting, and introduce an element of luck for assault heavy armies to benefit from.

It's never going to happen, but that's how i'd solve it.

I think the better question would be should the shooting unit get to move 2d6 when it shoots as well. I see the random charge being a necessity of having the higher reward of extra movement which is very important for scoring objectives and winning missions.

We had random shooting ranges back in 5th edition. Didn't get to premeashre them either.

Sure, as long as you replace the now-redundant primaris power of Phantasmacy that does this already.

I can confirm that nothing makes gunline players rage more than not being able to shoot you when they're within both range and line-of-sight.

 Robin5t wrote:
Sure, as long as you replace the now-redundant primaris power of Phantasmacy that does this already.

I can confirm that nothing makes gunline players rage more than not being able to shoot you when they're within both range and line-of-sight.

Making gunline players rage wouldn't actually be a bad thing, considering the current balance of gunline vs assault armies.

I do not think a random shooting range is a good idea. In fact, I think it is an extraordinarily bad idea just like random charge distance. The person who ever thought those were good ideas deserves to roll nothing but 1s for the rest of his life
We need other ways to bring shooting and assaulting back in balance.

Random was never a good thing. Period.
It removes player control, planning and tactical acumen and ultimately boils the game down to the dice gods whims.
So no

 Traditio wrote:
I think that the OP makes a good point:

If you're in favor of random assaults, then why not random shooting?

I'm in favor of making both non-random. Tie assault movements to the movement characteristic. Just make the assault move a regular move.

You have a movement characteristic of 6? That's how far you can assault.

Charge range being determined by movement ability truly sounds like a good answer, thus we get that characteristic in 8th. I advocate such method, and also support forbidding premeasuring. To my mind no premeasuring adds some tactical depth since you have to estimate things yourself and use your brain to try and ma'e sure your at range.

But no random shooting whatsoever. It is utterly idio... debatable idea as it adds even more dice randomization and basically makes the whole game be a matter of mere luck. Honestly, this is basically a salty rant from poeple who play close combat armies and get mad at those who like random dharges. I totally understand that getting crushed because of bad charging rolls gets on the nervs but please do avoid such proposals...

No, it would be terrible and stupid.

This idea is bad and you should feel bad.

No, it wouldn't be fun. Shooting has enough of a random element to it, random ranges on top of that would make shooting almost completely pointless, seeing as how you normally get one or two turns at most to really utilize it anyway. I wouldn't mind target priority coming back, though.

And charging shouldn't be random. It should either be fixed or at least have a minimum charge distance. 1d6" extra range when you declare a charge, so you still have that random chance to get a longer charge than normal (to represent that burst of adrenaline), but if you're within your regular move distance you still succeed, so no one feels like gak for being 3-4" away and failing what should have been a sure thing. Yeah I get it, a bomb could have gone off or guy tripped on a rock or whatever, but if that's the case then every movement should be random and not just charging/running. And that wouldn't be fun, either.

I like that shooting and assaulting are mechanically different.

Shooting should be more harassment; forcing going to ground/pinning and causing fall backs.

Assault should be risk big / win big; seizing ground / objectives, with the possibility of entire squads being ground down.

Perhaps it is morale that needs a nerf, not shooting?

I like how premeasuring for shooting / assault reduce the "you're half an inch out" arguments. Random assaults also seems to reduce these arguments as you can agree on the distance before you commit to assault.

While random shooting ranges could work, I don't know if it would add as much to the shooting phase as it does to assault, where the risk analysis and redundancy planning is already more important.

Perhaps on the really powerful shooting attacks and 'jump shoot jump' attacks we could implement random ranges? This would go some way to offset their CC-like 'win big' (but with little risk) capabilities? In a way, JSJ already has a random element though.

oldzoggy wrote:There seems to be a lot of support for assault ranges to be post target randomized allowing seemingly sure charges to fail giving lucky players that seemingly impossible charge.
Would it also be a good thing if shooting units where allowed similar post target flails and lucky shots to shooting by randomizing the shooting distance of all weapons ?

How the hell is this thread still going? Lol

 Marmatag wrote:
They should rename the "New Topic" button to "I'm Upset"

I would so push that button.

1) Roll to hit for shooting attacks (random, but linked to BS)
2) Charge range (random, but higher movement and fleet affect this)

What a daft topic.