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In the recent FAQ Tau Shield drones are now essentially useless for redirecting Fire.
Which is their intended purpose.

What if Tau Shield Drones completely lost their Invulnerable Save...
and gained a "FNP" type save like Stimulant Injector or Disgustingly Resilient

Since the FAQ also confirmed that those work on Mortal Wounds.

The beauty of bespoke rules is that you can make just about any save apply against anything.

"The Shield Drone's invulnerable save may be applied to Mortal Wounds allocated to it from Savior Protocols."

Bam. Shield Drones now have a meaningful purpose (they're twice as good at being ablative wounds) without causing issues elsewhere (giving a 4+/4++ 8 point model a 5+++ or 4+++ might be a bit much)

FnP would do the same (with less effectiveness as an ablative wound, since it probably wouldn't be a 4+++ roll), but would also be useful when the enemy fires small arms fire at the Drone unit itself...

As a Tau player, I think I'd prefer the FnP route, which suggests a more limited solution is probably best (bias is a helluva drug).

To be honest id just let them take their 4++ save vs all damage but have no armour or traditional invun save. Theyre currently totally outclassed by other drones and even if they got a 5+ fnp or somesuch they'd still be pretty poor choices compared to gun drones or marker drones

Another route would maybe be making them provide a 5+ invun or +1 invulnerable save to units within 3+ of one or more shield drones. Price might have to increase but it would give them a good fluffy purpose

Bobug wrote:
To be honest id just let them take their 4++ save vs all damage but have no armour or traditional invun save. Theyre currently totally outclassed by other drones and even if they got a 5+ fnp or somesuch they'd still be pretty poor choices compared to gun drones or marker drones

When in Proposed Rules land, err on the side of caution/underpowered. Such conservative approaches will do you well in getting your proposed rule accepted on the table.

Another route would maybe be making them provide a 5+ invun or +1 invulnerable save to units within 3+ of one or more shield drones. Price might have to increase but it would give them a good fluffy purpose

Guardian Drones. You're thinking of Guardian Drones.

But then, Guardian Drones are limited in their boosting effect to Strikers and Breachers... pretty much entirely for balance reasons.

If the mechanic is going to stay as it is, I wouldn't mind seeing Shield Drone become Guardian Drones' Big Brother... but man, that's starting to sound like a Kustom Force Field-like aura, and that's reeeeeally going to need a point cost increase for it to be remotely balanced.

The thing people may complain about if we do a 4+++, which I agree is perfect with the errata'd savior protocols, is that if they are targeted directly they get a 4+ armor and then also fnp. At the least the fnp would be against every single point of damage so it's less likely to survive melta solo opposed to protocol. This could be undone by removing the armor save but that'd be odd.

There may be some slight confusion with the drone taking damage differently depending on if it was targeted or protocoling but the new rules are straightforward imo.

I agree that a 4+++ would be a little nuts for a shield drone. If the FnP granted a 5+++ would be just as acceptable. They would have to lose the 4++ as mentioned. And yes I agree the current rules for shield drones makes them pointless to take.

I know I will receive flack for mentioning this but I would put their price on the same level with marker drones at 10pts each if a change did happen. The reason being if Shield drones in front of an independent character, they still need to be targeted first, which would give them 2 save roles rather than 1.

I honestly don't see an issue with Shield Drones having a protective role both for ablative wound purposes (i.e. through Savior Protocol and a 5+++) and for weathering fire directly at Tactical Drone units (through their proposed 4+/4++/5+++ statline).

Dropping the 4++ just makes Shield Drones that are targeted directly slightly more vulnerable to weapons that really aren't designed for anti-infantry purposes anyway, which means the 4++ is an extremely niche benefit. If we're going with only a 5+++ (and as I've mentioned, going more protective than that for all purposes is probably too much), then Shield Drones are only about 50% better as ablative wounds for battlesuits/infantry and (against AP0 weaponry) for fellow Gun Drones, which means Gun Drones are generally worth having in greater quantities, but Shield Drones have their place.

I see no reason to make Shield Drones marginally worse than what would already be the default (probably 2 or 3 Gun Drones per Shield Drone, so the firepower you're protecting with ablative Shield Drones is worth the cost of bringing them) by taking away their mostly-meaningless 4++ as well.

If you're changing it to 4+++, then dropping the Shield Generator entirely would be more than fine, of course.

 Unusual Suspect wrote:

Bobug wrote:
To be honest id just let them take their 4++ save vs all damage but have no armour or traditional invun save. Theyre currently totally outclassed by other drones and even if they got a 5+ fnp or somesuch they'd still be pretty poor choices compared to gun drones or marker drones

When in Proposed Rules land, err on the side of caution/underpowered. Such conservative approaches will do you well in getting your proposed rule accepted on the table.

Another route would maybe be making them provide a 5+ invun or +1 invulnerable save to units within 3+ of one or more shield drones. Price might have to increase but it would give them a good fluffy purpose

Guardian Drones. You're thinking of Guardian Drones.

But then, Guardian Drones are limited in their boosting effect to Strikers and Breachers... pretty much entirely for balance reasons.

If the mechanic is going to stay as it is, I wouldn't mind seeing Shield Drone become Guardian Drones' Big Brother... but man, that's starting to sound like a Kustom Force Field-like aura, and that's reeeeeally going to need a point cost increase for it to be remotely balanced.

I was indeed thinking of guardian drones. Except guardian drones are also pretty bad. But yeah i think expanding on the idea of guardian drones might work, as then a shield+guardian drobe combo would actually be quite good. Costs would as you say have to be looked at of course. Really i think allowing a 4++ vs mortal wounds is the way to go with them though.