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Good evening, and welcome to another issue of TheWiseDane's series of articles questioning the rules from the most beloved game - 40K!

Last time we discussed, I brought up an old leftover from the days of a game newly ported from Fantasy, namely the Armour Value system contra the Toughness system. Today, we're gonna do the same thing - The AP system! All weapons have a set value that determines what type of armour they always ignore - 6 ignore 6+ Armour, 3+ ignore 6+ to 3+ Armour, and so on. However, is this system really that great for what it tries to emulate? Is there a reason to make the weapons of the game so much "either or", instead of a more reliable system?

In Fantasy, most weapons have no other stats than their own strength (or the bearer's strength) - No other stat is needed, really. That might seem weak to some people here, but that's because the ability to pierce armour is integrated in the Strength stat - For every point of strength above 3 the weapon or player has, the enemy armour is reduced by 1 (I believe). This represents the projectile or weapon having suffecient power and momentum behind it to naturally break through at least a bit armour, if not all of it. Some particulary powerful or advanced weaponry might have better properties for piercing armour, which is presented with an USR that decreases the armour value of the enemy by the number in the bracelets behind the rule, which stacks with the Strength bonus.

Now, in 40K, someone sometime properly thought to themselves that the weapons of the 40,000 Univesre wouldn't be represented fairly if they were just reducing damage on enemy targets, and so they introduced the AP - Armour Piercing - system. As explained, the system simply removes the save depending on the AP value. This means that a Bolter can remove any save a Termagaunt or a Guardsman have, while he won't do anything to a Fire Warrior's face, while a Lascannon will remove any and all armour save.

If I may say so, I feel this system is a problem - It's a very "Either Or" system, were either you completely blow away anyone's saves, or they'll keep all of their save. This is the system that make people say that Tactical Marines (Who have the second best Armour Save in the game) are way too fragile, because any weapon with an AP of 3 or less will just remove that strength. This also means that no one want to use Terminators without any form of protection, as they will be blown away by any AP 2/1 weapons, but Bolters won't even touch them, which is feel is counter-intuative - The idea would be that some weapons should be able to blow through the squad, but won't be powerful enough to fire on a Squad instead of, say, a vehicle, while others are more plentiful and as so might only reduce an enemy save by a bit, but ther'll be enough of them to bring down the enemy by numbers and reduction of save. This will give more reason to hit things that need many shots to kill (Squads, because they have a lot of wound genereally) should be shot at by units that have many shots (Again Squads, within reason (Read: Leman Russ Punisher)), while units who are hardy but haven't got many wounds (Vehicles) should be shot at by weapons that don't do much damage, but are sure to do that damage (Think Railguns and other powerful weapons).

If I see this system implemented, of course it will change up the strengths of some units - If we plain removed the extra AP value of a Bolter and use the Fantasy system, it will still reduce an Ork's save to nought, but will only reduce a Guardsman's armour to 6 +, which will be a downgrade, but instead of your Marine having a 3+, he'll be having a 4+ instead - That will make the Bolter better to use on regular enemies instead of useless on what they are supposed to combat, which are, squads. So, now you might be thinking "This is nice, but what about the S 9 of the Lascannon, Dane? Now your system fails!", and that's true - You cannot make a weapon remove 6 stages of armour when there's only five of them, and so, I had a ponder - Instead of making the system go like in fantasy (One point of strength gives one point of reduction), it'll be a table, where every second point will give a reduction: This means that the enemy armour will be reduced at Strength 4, 6, 8 and 10. This means that a regular weapon with S 10 will only remove four points of Armour, but then again, we can have an USR reducing armour like in Fantasy, representing a weapon with abilities beyond the usual to pierce armour (Power Weaponry come to mind).

So, what do you guys think? Are AP the best thing ever and is it justified, or is it moot and old? Let me know in the comments!

Keep in mind that I want YOUR opinon, not an opinion from another thread. Please don't link to another discussion - Thanks

- TheWiseDane

I see the Wise Dane isn't old enough to remember when 40K worked like Fantasy still does.

The issue is that on a D6 system the steps between scores is too high to allow for any nuance (for instance, a -3 Save Modifier would be roughly equivalent to an aP4 weapon now, but whereas AP4 allows MEQs to roll their save, and with a fair chance of succeeding, the same -3 weapon means MEQ are rolling for 6s)

While not perfect, the AP system does allow armour to at least play a role in circumstances that the save modifier did not, in fact, back in the days of 2nd, the only armour save really worthwhile were Terminator saves, as they were rolled on 2D6. Pretty much everything else was redundant or of only minor advantage a lot of the time. (Eveni Bolters had a -1 save, Shuriken Catapults -2!)

Yeah, in systems with the armor reduction mechanic, armor feels pretty worthless to me. I prefer the AP system, if it's a choice between the two.

Armour mods work, but the wfb model fails as it still uses a three roll system, as well as the pointless and excessive 'twin damage stat" system of str and ap.

Look at a modern implementation of it. Infinity.

Roll to hit. Apply mods for distance and cover.

You hit.

Then you roll to save against the power of whatever shot you, with armour, and cover being a positive modifier against the strength of the hit.

The effect of armour mods is already cleverly applied with this system. Your armour is naturally less effective against more and more powerful shots. Kinda makes sense. Guy out in the open? Fragged. Guy hugging cover and extra benefit of his armour? Better chance.

Depends on whether or not armour modifiers are handed out like candy. If every weapon had it's AP converted based on what it is now, then yes it would ruin the armour save system. If GW put some work into it (i'd start by totally removing the AP from almost every basic gun in the game) then it would be a superior system imo.

The AP system wouldn't have been so bad if modifiers weren't handed out like candy. Same would go for the AM system.

The modifiers just shouldn't apply unless the AP is equal or lesser than the save. So for example, AP4 against a MEQ would still grant the marine a 3+ armor save, whereas an AP3 weapon would lower the Marine's save to a 4+ and an AP2 weapon would lower it to a 5+.

An AP1 weapon would lower a Terminator's save to a 5+, etc.

This would go a long way toward making the premium MEQ and TEQ pay for their saves worth it again in the face of the power-creep in dakka the game has had for the past few editions, but other factions would still be able to drop them via volume-of-shots.

The only time I think a 3+vs or 2+sv model should get no save of any kind is if they're hit by a weapon that either explicitly ignores armor saves as a special rule, or has a strength value that is double the model's toughness.

I've never quite refined it enough to be practical, but I think some sort of invulnerability for heavier armour to small arms would be the way to go.

There are so many units/weapons that put out high volumes of high AP fire (Serpent shields, Devourers, Guard Blobs, Ork mobs etc) which make any armour essentially statistically irrelevant, making 2+ armour immune to AP5 or higher, 3+ immune to AP6 or higher and 4+ immune to AP- could help. It would need working on, but I think it has potential to reflect fluff on the tabletop without being broken.

I think the AP system is not without its flaws, but it is ultimately a perfectly adequate system. The flaw lies not with the mechanics, but rather the implementation with it - ie, the prevalence of low-AP weapons. It is simply too easy to field a high amount of the calibre of weapon you desire, making 4+ saves almost useless and 3+ highly devalued. Even terminators resort to stormshields to stay alive.

Other than that, there is a certain granularity to the D6 system as mentioned that means that, for example, Terminators are not nearly as sturdy against small arms weaponry as they should be. 1/6 is a pretty high casualty rate against massed lasgun fire! It'd be nice if GW made use of a re-rollable armor save system to introduce higher resolution in saves. A 3+ re-rollable armor save would only have 1/9 chance of failure against small arms fire, for example. AP3 could remove the re-roll, and AP2 and 1 would ignore the save as usual.

The benefit of an AP system is that it allows you to differentiate different types of weapons. Take for example a "vorpal blade" (for this argiment lets say its a small knife), which is customarily stated to be able to cut through any armor. Now compare this to a hypersonic velocity railgun, which theoretically speaking should be able to penetrate juat about anything as well.

Now then, both could be attributed an AP value of 1, the difference however is that while the railgun round would instantly vaporize whatever unfortunate meatbag it touched, being stabbed by a small 3-4" dagger is considerably more survivable, and thus the railgun is attributed (in 40k terms) S10 vs the blades S3.

This kind of falls apart in regards to vehicles, as the check to penetrate a vehicles armor should be determined by AP with the damage roll determined by S, but thats a different story altogether.

The other thing fantasy doesn't have are vehicles, using an entirely different toughness mechanic. High strength not altering your armour save is needed in a fan with AV, otherwise every antitank weapon is anti terminator as well

System where the armour modifier is directly tied to the Strength score is redundant, as in that case the Strength helps to overcome two resilience stats, Toughness and the Armour Save. At that point it would be much more elegant just to combine Toughness and Armour Save into a single Resilience Score, and have Strength to roll against that.

However, if we want to keep Strength, Toughness, AP and Armour as separate stats that do different things, AP must be separate from the Strength, as it is now. This of course doesn't mean AP couldn't be a modifier. As others have already noted, in the Second Edition modifiers tended to make Armour pretty useless, as the modifiers were quite high. But this doesn't need to be the case; I'd do it like this:

AP - , 6 or 5 --> Nothing
AP 4 -----------> -1 modifier
AP 3 or 2 -----> -2 modifier
AP 1 -----------> -3 modifier




Automatically Appended Next Post:

nosferatu1001 wrote:
The other thing fantasy doesn't have are vehicles, using an entirely different toughness mechanic. High strength not altering your armour save is needed in a fan with AV, otherwise every antitank weapon is anti terminator as well

Well, I really don't think 40K should have such separate rules either, and anti-tank weapons being effective against terminators makes perfect sense.

personally i always thought ap values should be as such:

10 -1 save (6+ min)
9 -2 save (6+ min)
8 -3 save (6+ min)
7 -4 save (6+ min)
6 ignores 6+ saves
5 ignores 5+ saves
4 ignores 4+ saves
3 ignores 3+ saves
2 ignores 2+ saves
1 ignores 2+ and cover saves

but that becomes a non-linear chart

40k is a universe where the armour technology is on par or outstrips the firepower of most weaponry. Look at Power Armour as the common example. In the fluff, a Krak Missile will rip through it, but a Heavy Flamer will only scuff the paint. Or Terminator Armour, where anything less than plasma or dedicated armour penetrating weaponry does nothing. 40k fluff is very cut and dry with this sort of stuff and the rules follow.

If something can't penetrate the first layer of the armour why should it be able to penetrate the others? That's all I'm saying.

 Deadshot wrote:
40k is a universe where the armour technology is on par or outstrips the firepower of most weaponry. Look at Power Armour as the common example. In the fluff, a Krak Missile will rip through it, but a Heavy Flamer will only scuff the paint. Or Terminator Armour, where anything less than plasma or dedicated armour penetrating weaponry does nothing. 40k fluff is very cut and dry with this sort of stuff and the rules follow.

If something can't penetrate the first layer of the armour why should it be able to penetrate the others? That's all I'm saying.

Except that's absolutely not true, not even in the fluff. Power armor or even terminator armor aren't a single monolithic slab of uniform thickness, they do have stronger and weaker sections. A joint or an eye lens might be impervious to an autogun slug, but vulnerable to a heavy bolter round, and this is reflected in the fact that even marines are wounded or killed by lucky small arms fire, and with greater regularity as the lethality of the weapon increases. Like wise, every marine that's hit by a plasma gun isn't instantly bored through, even in the fluff, as their armor can turn a lethal hit into a survivable wound. Fluff and common sense line up on this one, and it isn't in favor of the AP system.

The only reason to keep the clunky hit/wound/save system at all is to make up for the lack of granularity in using a D6. Making the third step in that system all-or-nothing completely almost defeats the purpose entirely.

And that's not even getting into the negative effect the AP system has on any attempts to fairly price weapons and armor saves: -1 save is -1 save against anyone, but AP4 could be great or could be useless. Same goes for armor. This is further compounded by the separation of vehicles into a totally different damage mechanic: by completely decoupling strength and AP, you end up with S10 AP- weapons that can penetrate the heaviest tank armor in the game with comparative ease, but struggle to scratch an ork in mega armor.

"Fluff" depends on where you look. If you go by Games Workshop's own writings, such as the rather detailed description of Astartes PA specifics in Codex: Angels of Death, even power armour is never completely impervious to anything, even including autoguns.
I think the idea that small arms fire is just shrugged off tends to come mostly from the novels - and that's fine, if you like this sort of combat narrative ... just don't expect GW's rules to reflect anything but their own ideas.

GW once published a more detailed ruleset called "Inquisitor" based on a d100 system, where power armour had a protective value of 10, meaning it'd shrug off anything up to 10 points of damage. Anything above this value would cause an injury.
In this system, autopistols were capable of doing 2d6 damage, and autoguns or revolvers would do 2d6+2 points. You do the math.

Or in other words, a lot of the small weapons you encounter in the tabletop seem to be more powerful than their reputation in the fandom suggests.

Well aware of Inquisitor, and FFG's system(s) too. The point is made equally well looking at those systems - even against less powerful weapons, armor has weak points that can be penetrated, and armor loses effectiveness gradually as the power level of the weapon increases - not all at once when you cross a magic threshold. This fits both the fluff and considering how things would "really" work.

Getting things back on track, I think one of the first things I'd do for 40k is unify how damage is worked out for infantry and vehicles. If you want to keep things at the current level of granularity, you give vehicles a toughness and armor save, and you re-jigger all weapons to use a save modifier that roughly correlates to their strength (where basically all small arms have no modifier, medium/heavy weapons have a -1, heavy anti-armor weapons a -2, and only the heaviest weapons have a -3).

On the other hand, if you want to streamline the game, you accept some loss of detail and move everything to the AV system that vehicles currently use (so, for example, a guardsman might have "durability" of 7, while a marine's durability is 10). This would work better using a D10 to give finer graduations in durability, but I've looked into this before and even with a D6 I think it would work alright. With some tweaking of weapon strength and appropriate changes to special rules like poison and armorbane, it seems like you get acceptable results in most cases.

First, thanks for your generous replies

I'll be elaborating my idea (as i've had some brainwaves since yesterday) so, to start off, if we were to use a system like this, some things would need to change - First is of course how much armour would be devalued with no AP system, but I really don't think that's what will happen. Usually, you'd pepper your enemy with fire you know would damage him and preferably take away his cover and armour save, (Battle Cannon shot to Tactical Marines, Heavy Flamer to covercamping Fire Warriors), where saves are next to useless anyway, this system here actually gives at least SOME of the models the ability to survive a given attack. It also means that regular weaponry is more lethal in most cases, which I feel is fair, as units that are roughly equal should be the best units to fight each other, instead of other types of units (Seriously, who thought that giving the Battle Cannon to a machine so good at fighting tanks was better than a high AP/S weapon without Blast to hit tanks with? Geez.). Of course some people won't like that their elitist fetishes won't be tickled when their Terminator Armour is reduced by most usual attacks, but there's ways to fight that - For example, if there's an Armour Reduction USR than can reduce Armour saves even more than what their strength do, a model could have a similar USR doing the opposite - Armour Hardness or something. So a Terminator might have, say, a 1+ Armour save, so when shot at by a Bolter, you'll still have an 2+ Armour Save, while an Multilaser shot will reduce the save to a 3+. That might be complicated, but te me it's rather simple, I don't know.

On the thing with Vehicles, I made an article about converting AV to T to reduce the amount of systems going in the game (you can read it here if you care: http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/614029.page). The point with it was to give all vehicles a T value based on their AV save at the moment (AV 10 becoming T 6, AV 14 maybe becoming T 10) and giving them Saves (Usually kinda weak, around the 5+ to 3+ to emulate general resillience instead of plates and plates of armour). This should make vehicles tougher and less penalized for being showponies (Look, my weapon just made you EXPLODE"), and with a system for Armour like the above system, we can FINALLY emulate masses upon masses of weak fire bringing down tanks in a pince, whereas now, if you bring a Land Raider against an enemy with nothing but Fleshborers and Devourers, he's unbelievably screwed. So it's manageable, but not impossible.

On a side note, I support 1D3 and 1D6 wounds, like some weapons have in Fantasy. Never tried it but it sounds better than "INSTADEATH FROM MELTAGUN LOL".

Last night I was thinking about Cover Saves, and while I don't have a problem with the current system as is, this reduction of Armour would be even more instrumental for survival, which I don't want much - Cover is great and I want it to be important, but as is it's just way too instrumental, and to say it like it is, completely fething confusing to manage - What save do you get when, and from which angle and ARRRGH. Anyway, what I thought was that you could make Cover into a very simple system.

Cover is always -1 BS.

No really, if you do that, It could actually validate some of the units who have a high BS, while units with a bad BS (Usually Orks) will have a hard time trying to dig out a unit in cover. Alongside that, combine with the Vehicle rules from above, Vehicles shouldn't have Cover Saves unless they are Skimmers or similar fast machines (Who then get the -1 BS like Cover, that does not stack, instead of Jink), so their T have to talk for them. Go to Ground could change to -1 BS to -2 BS instead, to a minimum of BS 1, which favours Orks on the offensive and the likes of Tacticals on the defensive. This of course represents cover and Armour both working to defend a sod, but it's more of a game-thing, and I think it might actually be better for the defending party - Let me give an example: If a Squad of Tacticals are shot at by a full Mob of Boyz with Shootas, roughly 20 will hit, 10 will wound and 3-4 will kill - The cover does nothing here, as the armour is better in general than the cover save, so instead of piling those two things, you are forced to pick one advantage. Lets then use the Armour Reduction system: 20 shots from the Boyz and 10 will wound, and as the Shootas are S 4, they will reduce the Armour Save of the marines to a 4+. Now the Marines will have 5 people that need to be inspected by the Apothecary... That is actually a good result, as it makes the regular weapons more powerful against the unit's equal. Now, let's pile both the new Cover and Armour Reduction save on: 20 hits now becomes roughly 10 hits, 5 wounds and 2-3 casulties - An improvement above the normal system! Again, this is not the only test to run if we need to know how this system is preferable, but to me this has more charm and though to it, while still being a bit more complicated. In an example like the above but switched around, the casulties on the Ork side would roughly be (assuming within 12 inches and an 4+ Cover Save) 3, 3 and 5, respectively, showing that the Marines will actually kill MORE gits than before! This needs to be tested further, but it's an idea at least.

On Shrouded and Stealth, Shrouded is a nobrainer to me: Free Cover everywhere. Stealth is more complicated... Cannot be shot at unless the unit is caught without any cover or the unit has shot, giving themselves away, whereafter they work like regular units, or a plain "-1 BS when in cover"... Decicions, decicions.

Also yes, I'm young as hell. started the game in the first few months of 6th Ed of 40K, but I consider myself a fast learner and good at comprehending, and I have a natuarl curiosity for olden stuff, so it adds up

The challenge is that 40K has a very limited granularity (intentionally) and is modeling a game universe which has much more granularity.

In the 40K universe, you have weapons which totally ignore armor, others which punch through a lot of it, and stuff which can get through armor through a lucky shot or a weak spot. Then you have stuff which is stopped by armor, but might still kill you from heat or kinetic energy.

A robust system, such as GURPS, can model this through systems such as Afflictions, Maledictions, Armor Divisors, etc., as well as a broad array of damage types. In the 40K TT, you've got wounding rolls and armor saves.

I feel like the AP system does a better job than armor modifiers in that it keeps different classes of armor as more distinct, instead of simply reflecting them in degrees of protection. The difference between carapace armor and power armor is more substantial than the difference in heavy armor and heavy armor with a shield, even though both are reflected in their games as a 1 point improvement in armor saves. Maintaining the AP system keeps carapace armor (and power, and terminator armor) as clearly distinct from each other.

That isn't to say that I don't think that there is too much weaponry in the game that bypasses Power Armor, but I think the idea is sound for this scale of wargame. More complexity would be more realistic and accurate, but so would a non-binary wounding system for most models, as well as locational wounding. It's a tradeoff in complexity for speed of play.