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This came out of a discussion of the weakness of the Tau Hammerhead's railgun under the current rules in the Tau rumors thread.

The current vehicle damage table and Hull Points system overemphasizes medium-strength and high rate-of-fire weapons such as Eldar Scatter Lasers and Tau Missile Pods. These are often mathematically more likely to kill vehicles than a single shot from a Lascannon or Railgun due t the power of glancing a vehicle to death. My proposed revisions to the vehicle damage rules would tone down the power of weapons like the Scatter Laser or Missile Pod as anti-vehicle weapons and giving high-strength single-shot weapons more ability to kill vehicles. I also wanted to make the simplest possible change to the rules while retaining the current Hull Point system.

Resolving Damage Against Vehicles:

Glancing Hits: Vehicles have a 4+ save against Glancing Hits (this is not taken in addition to other saves). If the save is successful, the vehicle suffers no effects. If the save fails, the vehicle loses a Hull Point.

Penetrating Hits: If a vehicle suffers a Penetrating Hit, it loses one Hull Point for each Penetrating Hit inflicted. The opposing player then rolls on the Vehicle Damage Table.

Vehicle Damage Table:
1=Crew Shaken
2-3=Crew Stunned
4=Weapon Destroyed
5=Immobilized
6=Explodes!

High AP Weapons: Penetrating Hits resolved at AP2 have a +1 modifier to all rolls on the Vehicle Damage Table. Penetrating Hits resolved at AP1 have a +2 modifier to all rolls on the Vehicle Damage Table. Vehicles do not get their 4+ save against Glancing Hits resolved at AP3, AP2 or AP1.

Invincible Behemoth: Super-Heavy Vehicles are not affected by the Vehicle Damage Table, unless an Explodes! result is rolled. In this case, the Super-Heavy vehicle is not removed from the table and replaced with a crater, but instead loses an additional D3 Hull Points.

Any comments or feedback would be greatly appreciated. I'm more than open to revising that I have here in order to achieve my stated aims.

EDIT: After more thought and feedback from ObjectivelyBiased, I have revised the thread title. rules for Glancing Hits, the Vehicle Damage Table, High AP Weapons, and Invincible Behemoth.

Sadly making it so glances do no damage to hullpoints makes things like Imperial Knights too overpowered.

However, making it so that a glancing hit was not guaranteed to make them lose a hullpoint may be better. Perhaps hullpoints arent lost on crew shaken results would be great.

As one of the most sensible posters I’ve seen on this site, I’m actually excited to see what kind of discussion you can spawn with this one NewBlood. That said, I’m not sure that vehicles not losing hull points on a glace is the answer. This could very easily lead back into the parking lot 5th edition problem where vehicles littered the table because of the sheer difficulty of removing them. Admittedly, 7th is a different game and a lot more powerful options exist than before. On the other hand, vehicles are a lot cheaper than they used to be in general and the armies most likely to get screwed by these changes are already the ones that have problems: tyranids, orks, grey knights. Good ranged AT isn’t widely available in these armies and what is there is pretty dang expensive. In the case of the former two, even good melee AT is fairly uncommon.

Instead, let me propose an alternative. Vehicles now get an armor save of 4+. This can only be taken on glancing hits. All non-skimmer type vehicles now gain access to the “Extra Armor” upgrade for 10-15 points that changes the armor save to a “Hardened Armor Save.” This armor save must be exceeded rather than matched by a weapons AP value to negate the save. This will allow the armor save of non-skimmers to be taken against pretty much all of the spammable high ROF weapons while skimmers can choose to jink if they want that same safety since they get the ability for free.

Now, for the second part. To actually encourage the low ROF high strength weapons once again we change the pen table chart a bit. Crew shaken just goes away because stunned already gets a similar result and the fact that it is auto happening on a pen is a huge part of the reason that even heavier offensive vehicles aren’t often taken at the moment.

Penetrating Damage Table:
1-2=Nothing
3=Crew Stunned
4=Weapon Destroyed
4=Immobilized
6=Explodes!

And finally, AP values less than 3 now actually decrease the table result accordingly. (AP4=-1, AP5=-2, etc.) This all would also have the nicely beneficial side effect of massively narrowing the gap between monstrous creatures and vehicles/walkers. Anyways, that’s my two cents on the issue.

 ObjectivelyBiased wrote:
As one of the most sensible posters I’ve seen on this site, I’m actually excited to see what kind of discussion you can spawn with this one NewBlood. That said, I’m not sure that vehicles not losing hull points on a glace is the answer. This could very easily lead back into the parking lot 5th edition problem where vehicles littered the table because of the sheer difficulty of removing them. Admittedly, 7th is a different game and a lot more powerful options exist than before. On the other hand, vehicles are a lot cheaper than they used to be in general and the armies most likely to get screwed by these changes are already the ones that have problems: tyranids, orks, grey knights. Good ranged AT isn’t widely available in these armies and what is there is pretty dang expensive. In the case of the former two, even good melee AT is fairly uncommon.

Instead, let me propose an alternative. Vehicles now get an armor save of 4+. This can only be taken on glancing hits. All non-skimmer type vehicles now gain access to the “Extra Armor” upgrade for 10-15 points that changes the armor save to a “Hardened Armor Save.” This armor save must be exceeded rather than matched by a weapons AP value to negate the save. This will allow the armor save of non-skimmers to be taken against pretty much all of the spammable high ROF weapons while skimmers can choose to jink if they want that same safety since they get the ability for free.

Now, for the second part. To actually encourage the low ROF high strength weapons once again we change the pen table chart a bit. Crew shaken just goes away because stunned already gets a similar result and the fact that it is auto happening on a pen is a huge part of the reason that even heavier offensive vehicles aren’t often taken at the moment.

Penetrating Damage Table:
1-2=Nothing
3=Crew Stunned
4=Weapon Destroyed
4=Immobilized
6=Explodes!

And finally, AP values less than 3 now actually decrease the table result accordingly. (AP4=-1, AP5=-2, etc.) This all would also have the nicely beneficial side effect of massively narrowing the gap between monstrous creatures and vehicles/walkers. Anyways, that’s my two cents on the issue.

Thanks for the compliment.

Balancing vehicles is tricky, because as you pointed out things tend toward the extremes of either being stupidly easy to kill (4th edition, 6th edition, 7th to a lesser extent) or being so durable as to dominate the game (5th edition). The rise of superheavy vehicles has only made this harder to balance.

I like a lot of what you suggested, but I don't agree with all of it. In hindsight, having two separate tables just makes things overly complicated, and you can't make the damage tables too devastating or vehicles are again too flimsy.

I like the 4+ save idea, but making in a straight armour save makes it too easy to negate. Instead, I would have it be a 4+ save against glancing hits (not cumulative with other saves) that can only be negated by AP2 or AP1 . Superheavies are immune to glancing hits except those caused by AP2 or AP1.

The problem with eliminating Crew Shaken is that it invalidates several pieces of wargear in many armies. I can see it as part of the penalty for being glanced.

Negative modifiers on the table are a bad idea. It's part of why Tyranids have historically struggled with ineffective ranged anti-tank.

Thanks for the feedback; it's definitely helped to inform my thinking.

 TheNewBlood wrote:

Thanks for the compliment.

Balancing vehicles is tricky, because as you pointed out things tend toward the extremes of either being stupidly easy to kill (4th edition, 6th edition, 7th to a lesser extent) or being so durable as to dominate the game (5th edition). The rise of superheavy vehicles has only made this harder to balance.

I like a lot of what you suggested, but I don't agree with all of it. In hindsight, having two separate tables just makes things overly complicated, and you can't make the damage tables too devastating or vehicles are again too flimsy.

I like the 4+ save idea, but making in a straight armour save makes it too easy to negate. Instead, I would have it be a 4+ save against glancing hits (not cumulative with other saves) that can only be negated by AP2 or AP1 . Superheavies are immune to glancing hits except those caused by AP2 or AP1.

The problem with eliminating Crew Shaken is that it invalidates several pieces of wargear in many armies. I can see it as part of the penalty for being glanced.

Negative modifiers on the table are a bad idea. It's part of why Tyranids have historically struggled with ineffective ranged anti-tank.

Thanks for the feedback; it's definitely helped to inform my thinking.

You're right that negative multipliers for the lower AP values on penetrating hits is probably a bad idea. They are already penalized in this system by not ignoring the armor save on glances. On the other hand, a scatter laser and autocannon/HYMP shot has no business exploding a vehicle in any situation ever. How about a flat -1 to anything below AP3? I mostly got rid of the shaken result because it had the nasty effect of invalidating the shooting of heavy vehicles after only 1 penetrating hit. This is a big part of the reason that offensive vehicles are so crappy right now in 7th unless they are Super Heavies. It's removal shouldn't effect many pieces of wargear since i already changed the biggest one "Extra Armor" to have another effect. That being said, if we are trying to minimize rule changes, then I suppose that keeping shaken for the 1 and 2 results on the pen table would accomplish this.

You can't have Super Heavies ignoring glancing hits unless AP2 or 1 entirely. It's the exact problem you just mentioned of penalizing certain armies unduly. Trying to kill superheavies is already pretty hard work. AV13 or 14 and built in invulnerable saves already mean that glancing them to death isn't common as it is. No need to make things harder there since Super Heavies/Gargantuans are already a problem in 7th.

So, for the armor save, let me explain my reasoning a bit. I made it a 4+ because 50% chance to ignore a glance is plenty. Remember that this will scale directly with AV values because of the increased chance that any hit even getting through will be a glance. I also didn't want skimmers getting as good a save compared to land vehicles because they already have multiple advantages just from being skimmers. Maybe the "Extra Armor" upgrade should just be built in to non-skimmers. Finally, you can't have AP3 weapons still getting the auto glances. Reaper missile launchers, Hunter-killer missiles, Krak missiles, Rokkit Launchas, and Seeker missiles... these are all weapons that are specialized for vehicle hunting. Remove their ability to reliably do that and a lot of them may-as-well not exist. These aren't even the only ones with this profile, just the ones off the top of my head. Strength 8 AP3 is a common anti-vehicle weapon profile for armies. Since it's unlikely to get a one-shot, then it needs to be able to reliably glance if nothing else.

 ObjectivelyBiased wrote:


You're right that negative multipliers for the lower AP values on penetrating hits is probably a bad idea. They are already penalized in this system by not ignoring the armor save on glances. On the other hand, a scatter laser and autocannon/HYMP shot has no business exploding a vehicle in any situation ever. How about a flat -1 to anything below AP3? I mostly got rid of the shaken result because it had the nasty effect of invalidating the shooting of heavy vehicles after only 1 penetrating hit. This is a big part of the reason that offensive vehicles are so crappy right now in 7th unless they are Super Heavies. It's removal shouldn't effect many pieces of wargear since i already changed the biggest one "Extra Armor" to have another effect. That being said, if we are trying to minimize rule changes, then I suppose that keeping shaken for the 1 and 2 results on the pen table would accomplish this.

You can't have Super Heavies ignoring glancing hits unless AP2 or 1 entirely. It's the exact problem you just mentioned of penalizing certain armies unduly. Trying to kill superheavies is already pretty hard work. AV13 or 14 and built in invulnerable saves already mean that glancing them to death isn't common as it is. No need to make things harder there since Super Heavies/Gargantuans are already a problem in 7th.

So, for the armor save, let me explain my reasoning a bit. I made it a 4+ because 50% chance to ignore a glance is plenty. Remember that this will scale directly with AV values because of the increased chance that any hit even getting through will be a glance. I also didn't want skimmers getting as good a save compared to land vehicles because they already have multiple advantages just from being skimmers. Maybe the "Extra Armor" upgrade should just be built in to non-skimmers. Finally, you can't have AP3 weapons still getting the auto glances. Reaper missile launchers, Hunter-killer missiles, Krak missiles, Rokkit Launchas, and Seeker missiles... these are all weapons that are specialized for vehicle hunting. Remove their ability to reliably do that and a lot of them may-as-well not exist. These aren't even the only ones with this profile, just the ones off the top of my head. Strength 8 AP3 is a common anti-vehicle weapon profile for armies. Since it's unlikely to get a one-shot, then it needs to be able to reliably glance if nothing else.

The problem with completely nerfing medium-strength high rate-of-fire weapons is that they serve to counter the proliferation of light armour in the game, in the form of Rhino-chassis vehicles. I think that they should be able to kill light vehicles instantly with the right roll.

You're right about superheavies; I keep forgetting that not every army has an efficient means of dealing with them at range. I can support letting them be glanced, keeping the 4+ save like nay other vehicle, but I don't think that immunity to the vehicle damage chart is bad.

By giving every vehicle a 4+ save, you narrow the gap between jinking skimmers and regular vehicles. Because the save is not cumulative, skimmers would have to choose to Jink before being targeted or try to rely on the 4+ vehicle save. As far as Crew Shaken goes, on second thought I'll remove it as a penalty for glancing hits as it's just another means of overly penalizing vehicles. I'll just make it the first result on the Vehicle Damage Table.

You make a good point about AP3 weapons, and how much armies rely on them for anti-tank. I'll add AP3 to the High AP Weapons list so as to let them negate the 4+ save against glances.

 ObjectivelyBiased wrote:


And finally, AP values less than 3 now actually decrease the table result accordingly. (AP4=-1, AP5=-2, etc.) This all would also have the nicely beneficial side effect of massively narrowing the gap between monstrous creatures and vehicles/walkers. Anyways, that’s my two cents on the issue.

I like this. So it'd be like this:

AP6 or worse: -3 on the table
AP5: -2 on the table
AP4: -1 on the table
AP3: Unmodified
AP2: +1 on the table
AP1: +2 on the table.

This would mean that Autocannon-equivalents would still be effective, but could not outright destroy a vehicle. Also, I think Ordnance should get some kind of bonus on this table.

 Lukash_ wrote:

 ObjectivelyBiased wrote:


And finally, AP values less than 3 now actually decrease the table result accordingly. (AP4=-1, AP5=-2, etc.) This all would also have the nicely beneficial side effect of massively narrowing the gap between monstrous creatures and vehicles/walkers. Anyways, that’s my two cents on the issue.

I like this. So it'd be like this:

AP6 or worse: -3 on the table
AP5: -2 on the table
AP4: -1 on the table
AP3: Unmodified
AP2: +1 on the table
AP1: +2 on the table.

This would mean that Autocannon-equivalents would still be effective, but could not outright destroy a vehicle. Also, I think Ordnance should get some kind of bonus on this table.

Here's the problem with that: some armies,notable Tyranids and Orks, do not have significant access to AP3 or better ranged weapons. Furthermore, weapons like autocannons are needed to combat the proliferation of light armour in the game.

Under the system I have proposed, some of the gap between Monstrous Creatures and Vehicles has been narrowed. Monstrous Creatures are somewhat more durable, but move slower and are affected more by terrain. Vehicles are somewhat less durable, but move faster and can ignore terrain.

Ordnance weapons would still roll 2D6 and take the highest, so they'd be more likely to pen instead of glance. Furthermore, Battle Cannons can now be a lot more effective against vehicles due to thier ignoring the vehicle save.

 TheNewBlood wrote:
This came out of a discussion of the weakness of the Tau Hammerhead's railgun under the current rules in the Tau rumors thread.

The current vehicle damage table and Hull Points system overemphasizes medium-strength and high rate-of-fire weapons such as Eldar Scatter Lasers and Tau Missile Pods. These are often mathematically more likely to kill vehicles than a single shot from a Lascannon or Railgun due t the power of glancing a vehicle to death. My proposed revisions to the vehicle damage rules would tone down the power of weapons like the Scatter Laser or Missile Pod as anti-vehicle weapons and giving high-strength single-shot weapons more ability to kill vehicles. I also wanted to make the simplest possible change to the rules while retaining the current Hull Point system.

Resolving Damage Against Vehicles:

Glancing Hits: Vehicles have a 4+ save against Glancing Hits (this is not taken in addition to other saves). If the save is successful, the vehicle suffers no effects. If the save fails, the vehicle loses a Hull Point.

Penetrating Hits: If a vehicle suffers a Penetrating Hit, it loses one Hull Point for each Penetrating Hit inflicted. The opposing player then rolls on the Vehicle Damage Table.

Vehicle Damage Table:
1=Crew Shaken
2-3=Crew Stunned
4=Weapon Destroyed
5=Immobilized
6=Explodes!

High AP Weapons: Penetrating Hits resolved at AP2 have a +1 modifier to all rolls on the Vehicle Damage Table. Penetrating Hits resolved at AP1 have a +2 modifier to all rolls on the Vehicle Damage Table. Vehicles do not get their 4+ save against Glancing Hits resolved at AP3, AP2 or AP1.

Invincible Behemoth: Super-Heavy Vehicles are not affected by the Vehicle Damage Table, unless an Explodes! result is rolled. In this case, the Super-Heavy vehicle is not removed from the table and replaced with a crater, but instead loses an additional D3 Hull Points.

Any comments or feedback would be greatly appreciated. I'm more than open to revising that I have here in order to achieve my stated aims.

EDIT: After more thought and feedback from ObjectivelyBiased, I have revised the thread title. rules for Glancing Hits, the Vehicle Damage Table, High AP Weapons, and Invincible Behemoth.

I'd say that this looks pretty solid. The only thing I would modify is making 1-2=shaken and 3=stunned instead of the other way around since stunned is better all around.

 ObjectivelyBiased wrote:


I'd say that this looks pretty solid. The only thing I would modify is making 1-2=shaken and 3=stunned instead of the other way around since stunned is better all around.

The reason Crew Stunned is the result for 2-3 is because this way AP2 or AP1 weapons cause it on a roll of one.