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An opponent recently called me a wimp for hiding my Thunderwolves in a large unit of Tau by striking with lower powered weapons so that the Tau unit survived my charge and I obliterated them during his turn's combat phase(Let's just ignore the rounds of shooting and TAU overwatch my troops suffered to get in there).
He pointed out that 40k is the only game he knows where you can't fire into melee.
I thought this bore merit and charged into another larger unit of his and during his turn offered him the ability to shoot into that melee with two concessions.

1. If he failed any to hit rolls he'd have to resolve them against his own troops because if he can't hit my guys it's probably because one of his got in the way.
2. -1 to his ballistic skill for every model he outnumbers me by in each combat because that's the chances of one of his guys getting in the way, the wolves aren't going to be on the edge of things, they'll be plowing into the thick of it.

He agreed and killed everything. His stuff, my stuff, all of it. I lost my last Thunderwolf and he lost a large unit of shootie that would have died to the Thunderwolf by two turns later anyway.

So.. shooting into melee, thoughts?

I think it's a bad idea to nerf melee more and generally speaking not wanting to shoot your own troops makes sense.

I like your rule though.

This was standard in 2nd ed when genestealers were fighting your units.

I like the idea of shooting into melee allowed only for certain units, like snipers. Where a sniper gets a 6, they can shoot into melee. Else they 'miss' by being unable to get a clean shot.

You can modify the required roll by the BS of the sniper or the type of unit you're firing into (e.g. +1 to the roll if BS > 5, -1 to the roll if BS < 2; +1 to hit if shooting at a GMC, -1 to hit if shooting at a swarm).

If everything in the current rules-set wasn't completely oriented towards shooting I'd agree with a rule like yours, OP, and I think it's quite fair and fits with the dynamic one would expect in that scenario.

As it stands right now I don't think shooting needs any more help. Addressing the shooting-into-melee concept deserves consideration but IMO only after bringing greater balance to melee vis-a-vis shooting.

Fair call, it does allow shootie armies to sacrifice units in order to kill enemy units and stop them rampaging into further melee or stop them making a second challenge if there are two characters in the unit.

IMO it should be allowed, but it should require some kind of leadership test to force your troops to do it and have severe penalties for failing. You as a player might be a ruthless tyrant but your troops aren't going to be so eager to slaughter their comrades just to kill the enemy a little faster. So maybe you force them to do it, but maybe you instantly lose the game as your whole army throws down their weapons and joins the enemy rather than fight for you any longer. There would of course be modifiers depending on the situation: shooting allies you barely like in the first place would be easier, shooting expendable units (such as Tau gun drones or IG penal legions) would avoid the test entirely, etc. And of course in any kind of 3+ player game there would be no penalties at all for shooting into melee if your own units aren't involved, you'd just fire on the whole combat as a single target unit.

 Peregrine wrote:
IMO it should be allowed, but it should require some kind of leadership test to force your troops to do it and have severe penalties for failing. You as a player might be a ruthless tyrant but your troops aren't going to be so eager to slaughter their comrades just to kill the enemy a little faster. So maybe you force them to do it, but maybe you instantly lose the game as your whole army throws down their weapons and joins the enemy rather than fight for you any longer. There would of course be modifiers depending on the situation: shooting allies you barely like in the first place would be easier, shooting expendable units (such as Tau gun drones or IG penal legions) would avoid the test entirely, etc. And of course in any kind of 3+ player game there would be no penalties at all for shooting into melee if your own units aren't involved, you'd just fire on the whole combat as a single target unit.

It'd need a lot of context modifiers.

For example, making your guardsmen shoot into a melee that their beloved hero HQ is in the middle of may be easier to do (and the risk of treason lesser) if said hero has just been charged by 10 Chaos Terminators making daemonic noises.

Really, the races in 40k all hate each other so much so the treason thing would only be a factor in Imperium faction vs other Imperium faction fights, or mirror matches.

Leadership test? The firing unit must roll two d6 and beat the leadership of the unit they're about to fire on?

Beating it rather than getting under it means you have the leadership skills to force your unit to target what you damn well tell them to, if you fail the test you can't shoot anything else in that phase unless you have split-fire and since you targeted something it's the only thing you can charge unless you split-fired onto something else. It would be hard to make further punishments unless you're going to force them to direct all fire at the melee and make a charge at the melee they shot at regardless of split-fire or distance.

I like the idea of a Leadership test prior to shooting, but not that you have to "fail" it. Rather I think it should be at a penalty - say a -3 penalty.

 Stormonu wrote:
I like the idea of a Leadership test prior to shooting, but not that you have to "fail" it. Rather I think it should be at a penalty - say a -3 penalty.

Set penalty might be better than deductions according to numbers...
Was looking through the rules and just realised I probably shouldn't have been fired on at all regardless of allowing him to do so. Looking at the rule I'm reading on Page 8 "A model's initiative cannot be modified below 1 and no other characteristic may be modified below 0" If I'm reading that right it looks like initiative is the only characteristic that can't be lowered to 0.
No ballistic skill, no shooting.