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Hi all,
one of the many discussions in 40K is about the instant kill immunity of monstrous creatures VS vehicles and walkers:
My concept of walkers in 40k is that of a big slow machine with a fixed arc of fire against an agile machine/creature.
I think that the best solution for balancing them against weapons should be making a damage table for monstruos creatures and let working VP2 and VP1 weapons like for vehicles; like possessed vehicles, MC may be immune to crew shaken/studden, but keeping the rest of the table the same. In this way a MC may be immobilised or may have a destroyed weapon.
The table should be like this:
1-2-3-4 nothing
5 weapon destroyed
6 immobilized
7 dead.

What do you think?

 disdamn wrote:
I don't see any reason why a monstrous creature couldn't be shaken, or stunned as per regular crew. Getting rocked with a massive blast can distract or cause an animal to pause in pain.

Although I don't see monstrous creatures immune to instant kill. My Tyrannid big bugs have been single shot, insta-killed by frost cannons, eldar, and imperial guard tanks

I think the crew shaken/stunned immunity could be a small balance if you consider that for MC you test on this table every time you take a wound after the armour save: if you think of a lascannon shot, to wound a T10 MC you need a 5+, you remove the armour save and you might have at least a garantee crew shaken, but to penetrate a armor 14 LR you need a 6 in order to test on the damage table.
This idea of immunity came from the possessed vehicles rule and if you look at the various type of MC ( with a living driver, driven by a soul or linving creatures) it could be (at least for me) a good level of abstraction.
Also weapons that can instant kill a MC are far less than weapons that can insta kill a vehicle: a single STR6 VP2 weapon can insta kill a dreadnought, but not any T4+ MC.
Of course if look at all the "optional" rules you could have on a vehicles (open topped, reinforced armor, machine spirit...) VS MC rules (invulnerable save, ...) this could be a good beginning for balancing them without writing more rules.

jade_angel wrote:
Also, recall that almost no MCs have T10. T8 is the highest commonly seen, and that only on a few things - most MCs are T6. So that lascannon will wound on a 2+, usually, and ignore armor.

If I'm understanding your concept correctly, you're saying that you should have to roll on the vehicle damage chart, ignoring Crew Shaken and Crew Stunned, anytime an MC takes a wound from a weapon with AP2 or AP1? Would this include counts-as-AP2, such as Rending or Bladestorm?

I'd rather see "Explodes" removed from the vehicle damage chart, honestly. Vehicles mostly act as if they had very high toughness, but bad saves and few wounds, relative to MCs.

I imagine that a MC has to test in MC damage table each time it takes a wound, after the saves, regardless the VP of the weapon, just like a vehicle. The table is like the vehicle one without the shaken/stunned effect.
The T10 example is meant only as an example for the max toughness vs the max armor at the moment.

Many MC are T6 or T8, so big weapons can easily wound them and this balance the shaken/stunned immunity but they normally have equal or more wound than a vehicle

As I said my view of MC and vehicles is tha MC use their agility and vehicles use they armor so

MC have 360" arc of fire
Vehicles have a limited arc of fire depending where his guns are.

MC move in difficult terrain
Vehicles may be immolized in difficult terrain

MC have a toughness value because they can freely rotate during combat
Vehicles have 3 values of armor because they are slow moving and they cannot react fast enough to rotate to the best protected side.

MC are able to use cover saves to completely ignore wounds because they can "move" and hide behind cover
Vehicles may only stay behind a cover and only their armor can save them

For who suggest to not ignore Shaken/stunned results, please note that many MC are fearless and a good solution may be add to the MC damage table
4: go to ground (if not fearless)

This will keep MC and vehicles damage table similar because it replace the stunned rule with the more appropriate for infantry go to ground rule; fearless creatures will be immune to this, a wraithllord doesn't suffer from pain, but a driven riptide may fall on his knees because of a missile.

EDIT: I forgot, MC may never go to ground, so remove result n. 4.. Thanks HANZERtank!


EDIT 2: MC may still be blinded, so result N. 4 may be:
4: Blinded

I like the idea of any weapon gains precision shot rule against MCs but only when you shoot at a unit of MCs and in this way you are able to select which big monster you want to wound.

Experiment 626 wrote:Instead of simply making MC's unplayable awful, a far, far simpler solution is to simply impose a stat penalty on them once they've taken a significant amount of punishment;
'Wounded unto Death' - Once a Monstrous Creature is reduced to less than half its starting number of wounds, it reduces its WS/BS/I/A by half & always counts as if moving through Difficult Terrain.
So for example, a typical MC which is T6/W5 will halve its WS/BS/I/A once it has suffered 3 wounds.
This simply, and neatly simulates the idea of having an arms blown off, half its torso blown apart, grievous & traumatic head wounds, etc..., by limiting its effectiveness in a similar manner to how vehicles can lose multiple weapons and/or maneuverability through immobilisation, etc...

Experiment 626 wrote:Instead of simply making MC's unplayable awful, a far, far simpler solution is to simply impose a stat penalty on them once they've taken a significant amount of punishment;
'Wounded unto Death' - Once a Monstrous Creature is reduced to less than half its starting number of wounds, it reduces its WS/BS/I/A by half & always counts as if moving through Difficult Terrain.
So for example, a typical MC which is T6/W5 will halve its WS/BS/I/A once it has suffered 3 wounds.
This simply, and neatly simulates the idea of having an arms blown off, half its torso blown apart, grievous & traumatic head wounds, etc..., by limiting its effectiveness in a similar manner to how vehicles can lose multiple weapons and/or maneuverability through immobilisation, etc...

MechaEmperor7000 wrote:In that case maybe make it so that you need to add the MC's wounds to it's listed strength to find it's actual strength.
So in this case a Carnifex would have a listed strength of 5, but it would start with strength 9 because it has 4 wounds.

This method will work in AOS because it started in this way, but in 40K will cause more discussion about how many wound a Riptide that is bigger than a Carnifex needs to reduce his strength.

My method use actual rules and a table that works in the same way as vehicles, I think it is more streamlined. Other than instakilling a MC with a VP2 or VP1 single shot, you are able to reduce firepower and immobilize them just like tanks and walkers with any weapon you are shooting at.
EDIT: I don't know if I was clear before: like vehicles, VP2 means +1 on the damage table and VP1 means +2.

so:
4: WS1, BS1
5: Weapon destroyed
6: immobilized
7: dead

Lanrak wrote:Why not simply use a resolution method that covers all types of unit?
Having a separate resolution method for vehicles, is poor game design .
Simple opposed values to give a wide range of proportional results can cover all units in the same way, in a familiar 3 stage damage resolution.
But that requires a complete re-write to get rid of the poor choices made in 40k game rules over the last 18 years or so...

I agreed with this but it means they need to rewrite a big part of the rules.
This dinstinction came from 1st/2nd edition where only Tyranid used to have living monsters; the Eldar Wraithlord had dreadnought profile.

Martel732 wrote:"It would be nice to see something like multi-wounds or a table. But many MCS would need rebalancing. "
Fine with me. If something is not good, it should be cheap.

I'm fine with this, but I think the majority of line soldiers in squads has to keep only 1 wound in order to prevent from wound allocation abuse.
Inserting a wounds parameter in weapons stats requeris to completely remove the actual instakill system.

Arson Fire wrote:Heh, almost makes me wish for a return to 2nd edition.
Models had lots more wounds in general, but weapons had a damage stat to say how many they inflicted.
A lascannon was pretty strong, inflicting 2D6 wounds. But a carnifex started with about 10.

I want to explain this problem with another point of view:
The real main difference between 2nd and 3rd editions is that in 2nd you shoot in model VS model system and in 3rd you shoot in a squad VS squad system

In the 2nd ed. one you had to hit modifiers, armor modifiers and n. of wounds; you always chose a model to shot to a target model, and only because of the sustained fire rule, some time you may select more target models
In 3rd this is reflected in the number of hits from the weapons: the stats for the majority of the weapons in the BRB came from the 2nd ed stats removing the wound parameter. This method, with the instakill rule works for model with a max T of 5, but gives a high immunity to high T, multi W models.
I think that if we don't want to introduce a general rule about instakilling MC (like my table), the only way is to completely remove the instakill rule, replace it with a wound value on every weapon that works only only on not vehicles models and increase the number of hull points on every vehicle model
The wound value will affect the wounds on a model after the save roll, but not affecting a vehicle (that mantains the explodes results on the damage table) with more hull points, may balance the two categories of models.

For example in a Dreadnought VS Wraithlord situation, if you maintain the scatter laser to W 1, but you increase the Dreadnought hull points to 6, the Dread has always the same probabilty to explode, but you need to strip twice hull points to kill him.
The opposite, with a lascannon with a W value of 3, you mantain the same efficiency on a Dread, but is 3 times more dangerous on a Wraithlord; in case of succesful cover save in don't care if the WL doesn't suffer any wound, because the less number of W than the HP makes any multi wound weapon more dangerous for him than for a vehicle; and of course doesn't affect single wound troops.

So,
multi hits, high VP value single wound weapons are for vehicle model
single hits, low VP value, multi wounds weapons are for high toughness multi wounds models
All of them are for single wound models