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Welcome to another installment of the Crazy Proposal series, where I suggest rules tweaks that encourage controversy, rules debates, and other fun stuff.

Today's proposal is simple enough.

Every vehicle gains 1 Hull Point. Yes, every vehicle. Warbuggies/Kans/Sentinels/etc have 3 HP base, Rhinos have 4, and Land Raiders have 5. Knights benefit less, only having 7 HP instead of 6.

The rule benefits light vehicles a lot more than the more expensive heavyweights, though medium armor benefits too. 4 HP is also enough to push some otherwise-mediocre units (Dreadnoughts, etc) into the realm of being decent-to-good.

Discuss the implications as you may.

4 hp wave serpents awaaaaaaaaay

Maybe every vehicle except skimmers. The ability to jink currently makes them much more survivable than their non-skimmer counterparts.
However, I don't think an across the board buff is necessary, specific buffs to specifc units (like dreadnoughts) would be better.

I dunno man...lets consider a standard Serpent.

Firing at a Rhino out of cover, with Scatter Laser and Shield, it averages 3 HP inflicted. Vs one in 4 × cover, 2.5 HP. Shifting the curve upwards that 2 Serpents are needed to average a Rhino is worth giving Serpents the extra HP...

Not to mention other HP strippers like Missilesides.

Plus if you're forcing many Skimmers to jink, you're probably doing well anyway... The Serpent loses a *lot* of its threat when snapshooting.

Wow, without excepting the Serpent, it would still be a fairly big nerf to the Serpent. By making its HP-stripping worse. Didn't think that one through at first.

Not sure I like the idea. But it would have some fun effects!

It touches on a worthwhile balance point, the relative weakness of low-RoF weapons like an AP1 Railgun, versus HP scrubbing weapons like a HYMP.

Not sure if it's the right fix but I wouldn't write this one off as crazy.

Secondary Proposals:

Vehicle Explosion removes D3+1 HP from a vehicle instead of 1 for penetrating. If a vehicle loses its last HP to an Explosion it explodes as normal. Ergo, no punking a Land Raider/Battlewagon in one shot but you will hurt it.

The vehicle damage modifiers are +1/+2/+3 for AP 3/2/1 weapons. Missiles and the Russ get some more love.

Tank Hunters lets you reroll vehicle damage results instead of armor penetration. Cleans up Tank Hunter interacting with Armourbane/Ordnance.

Honestly I'm of the opinion that giving vehicle a 3+ armor save across the board would probably work better.

The biggest thing is that "+1HP for errybody" probably has some unintended ripple effects that would be... undesirable, to say the least. What those are, I'm not entirely sure- but I don't think that people are going to take kindly to, say, 4HP Heldrakes/Vendettas/Stormravens.

A blanket 3+ armor save for vehicles, OTOH, cleanly changes it to mean that it requires approximately three times the amount of HP-scrubbing firepower to kill a vehicle in that way. Of course, there's ripple effects with this as well- the vast majority of AA weapons are AP4, so we'd have to fiddle with air vehicles quite a bit as well... but some of the "problem child" aircraft are also AV12/12/10, and so are resistant to most AA anyways since said AA guns are generally S7.

That's not to say that this is a bad idea, by the way. I just lean toward it being not the right solution. Definitely the right problem to target... but not the right solution.

The +1HP idea is subtly brilliant it seems. Still not sold, but it sounds like.it would fix a few things. Making AP1/2 more important relative to HP scrubbing would be a good thing.

Replacing Explodes with +d3 HP loss might be a good idea, with an explosion if its hulled out that way, would be good. D3+1 seems a bit much. Either way, a single Explodes might take out a LR, but isnt automatic. And a fresh Predictor has a chance of surviving. Interesting.

AP 3/2/1 giving +1/2/3 would sound like a great idea too. Those Missile Launchers would have more threat, and the AP1 stuff would be even more feared!

(I love these 'crazy idea' threads you've made! I may not agree with the change suggested, but the threads are quite eye opening.)

Hmm. Yeah, makes sense. Takes the teeth off of high RoF anti-vehicle weapons by just a bit. I personally would not exclude skimmers from the +1 HP. With the exception of serpents, I don't usually find skimmers especially hard to take down. My dark eldar would certainly appreciate a modest durability boost, and land speeders are going down one way or the other. The devilfish isnt really hurting anybody anyway, and the hammerhead seems more likely to explode to death. Plus if it's jinking, it's not shooting (much).

I think the suggested change to Explodes! might be a bit unnecessary. I like the idea, and it's a good way to pull off such a change. However, you run the risk of making melta shots that would normally kill things in a single shot suddenly have the possibility of leaving the very angry tank standing. But then, I have certain biases against vehicles (5th edition!) and like seeing them fall apart.

marines are already equipping melta almost to the point of spam because of other high hp vehicles and walkers. I feel like universal +1 hp makes melta spam a highly boring requirement.

Something else needs changed I think. Not soo sure vehicles are broken just some are highly inefficient due to points imbalance.

Edit; one of the problems, I think, with vehicles is that large blobs aren't as popular in competitive environments. This makes small arms less useful thereby making yourself immune to small arms by taking light vehicles even more irrelevant.

Can i give a further insane idea?

Change the VDC back to the 6th one so that 6s explode

and give everything an armor save.

maybe based on facing or materials or whatever

That way you can tank auto cannon levels but meltas finally have a use.

Perhaps a reverse-AP save?
Ap6/- would be 2+
Ap5 -> 3+
Ap4 -> 4+
Ap3 -> 5+
Ap2 -> 6+
Ap1 -> none

?

Would give a save, that scales with AP?

Not sure I like it, but how does that compare to what you're saying?

Well basically it comes down to normalizing different unit types.

imagine a rhino being a T7 3wound armor 3+ (ceremite plating or whatever) so a Auto cannon needs a 4+ to wound (current system needs a 4+ to glance) with an addition stipulation that anything rolled higher than what is needed goes into an addition "CRITICAL DAMAGE" Table where additional AP does thing.


you can also add a critical damage table to MC to make thing interesting.