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It frustrates me a little that knights and the like can't be immobilised or have weapons destroyed etc. Surely their still just metal that could be damaged or melted.

To fix this I propose that super heavies should still role on the normal damage table when penetrated but -2 from the result. So an 8, which is normally explodes, becomes a 6, immobilised. 1 or 2 which is normally shaken becomes 0 or less which would mean it just looses a hull point.

The main loss from this is that you could no longer score 1 +D3 wounds by getting an explodes result as 7+ couldn't be rolled any more.

This change would make knights less of the relentless killing machine they currently are but still very tough. You could maybe give them repair gear or instead of shooting or charging do a reboot so if they do become immobilised or have a weapon destroyed they could bring the appropriate systems back online and act as normal again.

What do you think?

Well, actually, Fire Dragons still could get that 7 (they get +1 on the damage chart and their guns are AP1), but otherwise, yes.

It'd be a pretty fine line, though: Having a 300+ point model rendered useless by a lucky shot from a guardsman with a plasma gun, while fluffy and realistic, wouldn't be much fun. (Well, OK, it'd be one to tell stories about for the Guard player!) Repair gear might be handy, but it'd have to be better than "give up all actions besides moving to maybe repair on a 6+". Doubly so, because the Imperium has access to bike-mounted Techmarines, and making them into must-take units is not terribly good for internal balance.

Hit them with Melta weapons, Haywire, or high Strength attacks, and they become a lot less scary. I've found that people who were intimidated by my Knights, going into a game, usually find them to be a lot easier to kill than they initially thought.

Dude most super heavies are fine knights included I play 4 knights. Space marines, tau ,crons should have no problems killing me and dark eldar and harlicuins your list could be your biggest problem. Sorry but when I'm tabled on turn 3 I don't get why I see these posts.

I'm not saying Knights are tough or un-killable or anything like that, I'm merely saying why can't they be immobilised or weapon destroyed and making a suggestion of how that could be implemented.

This change might even make them last longer as you wouldn't be able to take off potentially 4 wounds with one shot.

Also with my system a guardsman's plasma gun would only be able to take out a weapon system (AP2 adds 1, so normally that would be 7, -2 =5) instead of potentially knocking off 4 hull points.

With the repair gear i wasn't suggesting you needed to roll a 6, i merely thought, take a turn out, everything comes back online.

I've killed my fair share of knights in my time, I just don't see why a shot shouldn't be able to catch a leg and immobilise it or glance a power core and take a weapon system off line.

Please consider what I'm suggesting before assuming my post is just Knight hate.

So you want to make them into a little tougher dreadnought it wouldn't work imobalized or anything on the damage table with 4 units its game on turn 2 I'm not thinking your a knight hater it just won't be fair

Why not bring back the old super heavy damage table?

My knight has basically done more damage just by exploding than actually fighting.

It gets wrecked by auto cannon analogs from multiple angle pretty quickly.

But do i think there should be a better table? maybe.

Vehicles in general are terrible and the fact that Super Heavies ignore almost all of the damage table is strong evidence that the combination of hull points and the damage table (plus general lack of saves) is just a flawed system. The only vehicles that work decently are transports which are so cheap it doesn't matter if they die, skimmers who can at least jink (makes for good transports but lackluster weapons platforms), flyers due to hard to hit and jinking, and maybe AV14 due to it being immune to a lot of the spammable weapons that destroy most vehicles.

I think its a bit asinine that a 50pt vehicle tracks damage results, but a 1000pt superheavy does not. If anything, a unit that takes up such a huge amount of your army should have the most bookwork attached.

I don't think Super-Heavy Vehicles need any further penalties compared to Gargantuan Creatures though... If Super-Heavy Vehicles had resistance to Melta/Haywire like GC's have to Poison/Sniper, then we can talk.

I'll be okay with this idea when monstrous creatures and gargantuan creatures also have a damage table. Til then, no thanks.

 niv-mizzet wrote:
I'll be okay with this idea when monstrous creatures and gargantuan creatures also have a damage table. Til then, no thanks.

This.

Super Heavies should be the last of people's worries in an edition where a monster with his big toe behind a tree, or an Elf on a hover bike, is harder to kill than a giant, ancient, heavily armoured robot.

Freaking Scatter Lasers glance the side armor of knights!

Given that 4/7 results on the table (Shaken & Stunned) mean most knights can't fire their weapons at all (Can't snap shot blasts/templates), and those that can fire won't do anything anyway (Hitting on 6's due to snap fire), I think no-one would ever run an Imperial Knight under your proposed rules at their current points cost given they would have less survivability than a pair of Ironclads.

You make a valid point, I was only considering the effects of weapon destroyed and immobilised when I thought of this.

I just don't see why they should be immune to those effects though.

Maybe as well as the -2 to the role make them immune to crew shaken, then they would be stunned on a 6, weapons destroyed on a 7 and immobilised on an 8.

However it may be getting a little complicated now.