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I'm not proposing bringing templates back, but a rule to help weapons that previously used them to be a bit better at thinning out large hordes. This would be a special rule for each gun and not all weapons that previously used blast templates would get it, and it would only affect weapons that can do multiple damage. Weapons with this rule would essentially cause a weaker version of mortal wounds. Here is the rule I propose:

Blast: After resolving damage from this weapon, for each point of damage inflicted on a model in excess of it's wounds characteristic, the unit suffers an additional wound with 0 AP.

Basically if a 1 W per model unit is hit with a battle cannon, for each 2 or 3 rolled for damage the unit takes another 1 or 2 wound respectively. The unit can take armor saves on these wounds regardless of the original weapons AP. The idea is to make big multi-damage ordnance weapons more effective against infantry. I removed AP from the extra wounds to prevent it from being overly effective against marines, but still doing decent against poor armor save units. I'd like to think of the rule as the original guys getting hit were caught in the immediate blast and this rule would represent shrapnel inflicting harm on the rest of the unit. It would not affect 1 damage weapons like frag missiles (which would incapable of utilizing it). I'm not necessarily a huge fan of changing a weapons stats based on how many models I'm shooting at, and think this is a better compromise. What are your guys thoughts?

This seems needlessly complicated compared to what we have now.

D3= d3 + d3 ap0 non vehicle
D6= d6 + d6 ap0 non vehicle
2d6= 2d6 + 2d6 ap0 non vehicle

I like what you are doing here, and would play according to these rules.
Still, blast templates were better.
The only trouble with templates seems to have been that people couldn't play well together.
Templates in the hands of reasonable people work well, and capture the sense of the weapon effect in ways that adjustments to dice rolls cannot.

 jeff white wrote:
I like what you are doing here, and would play according to these rules.
Still, blast templates were better.
The only trouble with templates seems to have been that people couldn't play well together.
Templates in the hands of reasonable people work well, and capture the sense of the weapon effect in ways that adjustments to dice rolls cannot.

^ This - but I think you're leaving out part of the story, which is that avoiding template weapons causes players to take forever in deploying and moving models, in some cases greatly extending game time.

I think they made this change to streamline play time as much as arguments.

And yes, blast templates were better imho.

 znelson wrote:

 jeff white wrote:
I like what you are doing here, and would play according to these rules.
Still, blast templates were better.
The only trouble with templates seems to have been that people couldn't play well together.
Templates in the hands of reasonable people work well, and capture the sense of the weapon effect in ways that adjustments to dice rolls cannot.

^ This - but I think you're leaving out part of the story, which is that avoiding template weapons causes players to take forever in deploying and moving models, in some cases greatly extending game time.

I think they made this change to streamline play time as much as arguments.

And yes, blast templates were better imho.

I've seen people do the same thing w.r.t. optimizing daisychain coverage, denying DS denial, or creating Tronwalls to force enemy aircraft to crash.

I still think 'Scaled shots based on unit size' is the way to go for weapons that are dedicated anti-infantry. Like, 1 shot per X models, with a cap on shots based on the weapon type. (So a Frag Missile is 1 shot per five enemies, up to six. Grenade might be 1 per five, up to 3.

Weapons that function as offhand anti-tank (like Battle Cannons) can keep their randomized shots.

I would just go for damage cause by "blast" weapons carries over. No need for additional saves (you already took the save.). If you want to go the route of more saves I think you just give the weapons 1 damage and more shots.

I came into Proposed just now with an Idea on helping former blasts.

Give them the same auto-hits rule as templates, but with a roll of 1 on any d6/d3(d3 as in a roll of "1" on the d6, the "2" still causes 1 hit) as an all-shots-miss.

Reasoning behind this: most low-bs models have a large number of old blast and large blast weapon because their BS was garbage, the new d(x) shots with the same low bs and -1 on-the-move heavy rules mean that all of these weapons rarely hit more than 1 shot, if at all atm. Damage spill-over is not going to help a battlewagon with a killkannon in any way since it isn't going to hit in the first place.

Have you used the search function?
If not why?
If you did why a new thread?

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/30/737226.page#9579524

Waaaghpower wrote:
I still think 'Scaled shots based on unit size' is the way to go for weapons that are dedicated anti-infantry. Like, 1 shot per X models, with a cap on shots based on the weapon type. (So a Frag Missile is 1 shot per five enemies, up to six. Grenade might be 1 per five, up to 3.

Weapons that function as offhand anti-tank (like Battle Cannons) can keep their randomized shots.

Something along these lines is what I'd probably prefer, although I'd be inclined to up the number of hits a bit. Maybe 1d6 (or whatever the weapon currently has for number of shots) + 1 per 5 enemy models. So a frag can still be reasonably lethal against a squad of 5 guys, but you'll be even more effective against a crowd of 30 boyz. Needing a 10 man target to land 2 hits is a pretty major nerf for frag, eldar grenades, etc.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Kommissar Kel wrote:
I came into Proposed just now with an Idea on helping former blasts.

Give them the same auto-hits rule as templates, but with a roll of 1 on any d6/d3(d3 as in a roll of "1" on the d6, the "2" still causes 1 hit) as an all-shots-miss.

Reasoning behind this: most low-bs models have a large number of old blast and large blast weapon because their BS was garbage, the new d(x) shots with the same low bs and -1 on-the-move heavy rules mean that all of these weapons rarely hit more than 1 shot, if at all atm. Damage spill-over is not going to help a battlewagon with a killkannon in any way since it isn't going to hit in the first place.

I definitely see where you're coming from. For a while, blasts were basically the poor shot's alternative to good aim. That said, it would feel a bit odd to me for a frag grenade to autohit a unit like a Culexus or a venom. Being worse at aiming shouldn't make you more likely to hit against hard to hit targets. XD

What if you had to make a single to-hit roll, but then did d3 or d6 or whatever auto-hits if you succeed? So a piece of ork artillery still has trouble putting his projectile where it needs to go, but the nature of explosions nets you more "hits" when you don't miss the target entirely.

I had a thought, which does bring back blast templates. Basically it works as follows:

D3 = small template
D6 = large template
8" D3 = flamer template

Center the template over a model in the target unit. Count how many models in the target unit are fully or partially covered by the template. Roll to hit the target unit number of times equal to the model count covered by the template.

Against vehicles, ignore the template, and roll the D3 or D6 as per the normal rule.