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Similar to how Boots on The Ground helped to bring flyers back in line with their intended role, this is a proposed rule to fix some of the problems the game's meta is having with aura-granting characters being hard to deal with. This replaces the current Character rule:

"If a model with the Character keyword is selected as the target of a shooting attack and is not the closest unit to any of the models firing in the unit, the unit must roll 2D6. If they roll higher than the target character's maximum Wounds stat, any weapons that had declared the character as their target instead target the closest non-character enemy unit to the character as they are unable to pick out the Character in the chaos of combat.

This roll can only be taken after declaring the targets of all weapons in the firing unit. Any models for whom the character is the closest enemy model are unaffected by the result of the roll."

The intention of this rule is to provide more of a sliding scale than the current 9 wound limit. A commissar or captain the same size as his comrades just wearing a different uniform might be hard to spot by a trooper on the ground, but a towering primarch would be easy to pick out.

The shots spilling over to the closest model also offers a bit of counterplay to the player controlling the character being targeted as well. It might be tempting for an enemy to dump a devastator squad's worth of heavy bolter fire into your company commander, but if you position him next to a Chimera tank that anti infantry fire would be all but wasted as he ducks behind the safety of the vehicle's hull.

Thoughts? what would you like to see to modify how characters currently work, if you'd like to see anything at all?

So wait-as written, roll 2d6. If it's equal to or lower than the maximum wound stat, you must then target the nearest non-character unit?

Don't you mean the opposite? Where if it's HIGHER THAN, you have to target someone else? Because currently, as written, anything with 12+ wounds is immune to shooting unless the closest target, and my 5 wound Assassins only avoid targeting about one in four times.

 JNAProductions wrote:
So wait-as written, roll 2d6. If it's equal to or lower than the maximum wound stat, you must then target the nearest non-character unit?

Don't you mean the opposite? Where if it's HIGHER THAN, you have to target someone else? Because currently, as written, anything with 12+ wounds is immune to shooting unless the closest target, and my 5 wound Assassins only avoid targeting about one in four times.

Sorry, edited, the intention was to have lower wounds characters more difficult to target than higher wounds characters.

a 5-wound assassin would avoid being targeted 72% of the time.

In general, it seems like most basic, infantry-level characters hang around 5 wounds, minor characters sit at 4 wounds except in very rare circumstances.

My intention was to remove the weird, hard line where if something has exactly 9 wounds, you can't target them at all, but if they have 10, you can always see them. The fact that before it got FAQed, one faction's daemon prince was an amazing character and another factions daemon prince was much worse because it had exactly one MORE wound should have been indication enough that the rule needed some kind of change.

Obviously, sniper weapons would have immunity to this roll.

So something small like a Commissar would still have a role to play in an army, but one way to deal with him would be on a turn where you're intending to try and take down the conscripts that he's with, you declare him the target of all your bolters, heavy bolters, mortars, etc, and maybe one of the units actually hits the commissar and kills him, while the rest of the bombardment lands among the conscripts. Therefore, a large number of anti-infantry units would actually be an effective counter to conscripts, because you would on average be able to take their commissar out and Morale would help you to kill the conscript blob. But it wouldn't be an effective counter to just fire a lascannon at the Commissar, because 9 times out of 10 it'd just hit one of the conscripts and be a waste of time.

This could be a neat alternative to the current system. It doesn't seem "broken," but it does have the potential for some arguably undesirable side-effects. Some quick, disorganized thoughts:

*Is the intention really to get rid of the 9 wounds cutoff just because it seems like a "weird hard line?" Many of the other similar threads have basically boiled down to the OP wanting a way to target comissars and Guilliman.

*If the overall goal really is to be able to shoot Guilliman and commissars, I'd say we'd be better off having a conversation about fixing those specific units. Your proposed rule is fine most of the time, but you will run into those situations where someone gets lucky and kills a farseer turn 1 with a lascannon or wipes out the librarian that was supposed to be safe behind a wall of tactical marines. It's not likely to happen, but it's a feel bad rule that discourages people from taking (non-broken) characters when it does.

* To play daemon's advocate, it's arguably weirder to only sometimes be able to target, for instance, a hive tyrant rather than flatly stating, "This guy is big enough to be shot at."

*The 9 wound cut off seems very intentional. Roboute has exactly 9 wounds so that he can be hidden. Tyrants have more wounds so that they can't be hidden. We can discuss whether or not those units should be hide-able or not, but let's acknowledge that the line was drawn in a very intentional way.

*If the 9 wounds cutoff seems weird, how would you feel about an "Untargetable" keyword instead? It could be applied to models regardless of wounds, but would generally be applied to characters with less than 10 wounds.

Wyldhunt wrote:
This could be a neat alternative to the current system. It doesn't seem "broken," but it does have the potential for some arguably undesirable side-effects. Some quick, disorganized thoughts:

*Is the intention really to get rid of the 9 wounds cutoff just because it seems like a "weird hard line?" Many of the other similar threads have basically boiled down to the OP wanting a way to target comissars and Guilliman.

*If the overall goal really is to be able to shoot Guilliman and commissars, I'd say we'd be better off having a conversation about fixing those specific units. Your proposed rule is fine most of the time, but you will run into those situations where someone gets lucky and kills a farseer turn 1 with a lascannon or wipes out the librarian that was supposed to be safe behind a wall of tactical marines. It's not likely to happen, but it's a feel bad rule that discourages people from taking (non-broken) characters when it does.

* To play daemon's advocate, it's arguably weirder to only sometimes be able to target, for instance, a hive tyrant rather than flatly stating, "This guy is big enough to be shot at."

*The 9 wound cut off seems very intentional. Roboute has exactly 9 wounds so that he can be hidden. Tyrants have more wounds so that they can't be hidden. We can discuss whether or not those units should be hide-able or not, but let's acknowledge that the line was drawn in a very intentional way.

*If the 9 wounds cutoff seems weird, how would you feel about an "Untargetable" keyword instead? It could be applied to models regardless of wounds, but would generally be applied to characters with less than 10 wounds.

I play in a fairly uncompetitive meta - I'll be honest, I've faced a commissar only once, and guilliman never. I know those are common "trouble characters" I just think structurally speaking, the current character rule is flawed and creates weird gameplay.

As an example, take a look at the rules interaction that led to that all-assassin list. You take an army of only characters, position the ones who set opponents ballistic skill to 6, then cast a psychic power on them that grants them -1 to hit and you've got an army that's invulnerable to shooting. When you apply blanket restrictions to certain types of units regardless of the game's statistics systems, you tend to create weird rules interactions, and in my eyes that speaks to a bad mechanic. You could also compare it to Invisibility - it was a spell that made a unit (essentially) invulnerable, regardless of the strength of the weapon or stats of the model targeting it. This created nothing but problems on the crazy end of the competitive spectrum while not really affecting normal gameplay that much, but it was considered a hugely widespread problem because everyone knew about it and most had access to it.

Weird hard lines also tend to create strange rules interactions. See the roughly 300 point cutoff between "normal MC/Vehicle" and "Superheavy/Gargantuan" in the previous edition - anything that fell juuuuust over that line was incredibly difficult to balance because the way the gargantuan/SHV rules worked a 300 point wraightknight would beat a 250 point Gorkanaut 99 times out of 100 because of stomp, strength D, etc.

I would dispute that a random mechanic that both players know and can play around is likely to create many "feels bad moments". The player owning the character knows about the rule, and gets to choose what they surround their character with. If you're worried about your farseer getting hit by a lascannon, you might put them near a squad of Guardians, which would give your opponent's lascannons huge odds of being basically wasted. this is similar to peoples' concerns about lasguns wiping out land raiders in 8th - just because something is possible doesn't mean the very unlikely, feels bad chance is going to occur. Much more frequently, someone who takes that chance will be punished for making a bad tactical decision, which is generally how everything in 40k works.

In my eyes, the biggest flaw is that this can create situations where it doesn't make sense not to try and target a character, if failing the roll just means your shots will land among perfectly good targets. Say you've got a plasma squad and there's a captain screened with tacticals in front of you - it's a no brainer to try and hit the captain because if you fail, youre just shooting tacticals. but I don't know if that's a necessarily bad thing - players probably should be rewarded for shooting plasma at MEQ units.

An "untargetable" keyword is exactly the same as the "character" keyword with a different name. the only gameplay function of "character" is to make someone "untargetable" if you took away the 9-wound cutoff.

'Character' also changes interactions with a few special rules, lets you take Warlord traits, and lets you take relics.

A few changes I'd make:
1- The unit that is preventing the character from being targeted must be in LOS
2- The unit must be within (3?) inches of the character
3- If the character's starting wounds is higher than the current amount of wounds in the unit they can be targeted.
To represent it's easier to pick out a character the fewer people surrounding him
(It would also encourage people to use decent sized units rather than the minimum)

Jbz` wrote:
A few changes I'd make:
1- The unit that is preventing the character from being targeted must be in LOS
2- The unit must be within (3?) inches of the character
3- If the character's starting wounds is higher than the current amount of wounds in the unit they can be targeted.
To represent it's easier to pick out a character the fewer people surrounding him
(It would also encourage people to use decent sized units rather than the minimum)

Totally agree on 1.

2 and 3 I think standing by themselves would each be something of a fix to the issue of characters in 8th, with my favorite of the two being 2 because it requires less math, but I think it's only a partial fix to the issue. You can still have situations like a giant angel standing amongst guardsmen or a towering warboss standing around Grots and being completely protected, they just have to be a bit closer. And the really problematic builds we've had with characters it wouldn't actually prevent - in current power builds you do want to have as much as possible clustered around Guilliman/Cawl/Yarrick in order to get the sweet re-rolls on as much stuff as you can.

A distance limit in addition to the random roll I proposed might be a bit over restrictive.

I think realistically if there is any kind of balance pass to characters from GW, it's most likely to be your suggestion 2. Suggestion 3 I think comes from a good place but is over-complicated for trying to keep track of during a game - which was kind of my gripe with the old "Look Out Sir" system where you suddenly had to stop and go wound by wound passing them off and taking saves. Micro in a game like 40k has to be kept to a minimum, which is why I went for a by-unit check that would be relatively quick.

Boots on the Ground was a great fix because it affected the skewy lists and gave them counterplay while not really impeding the average list with 1-2 flyers at all. A distance limit on character protections kind of does that, but also doesn't really fix the "gunline blobbed around a reroll character" skew lists. It's possible GW has to just go through and tone down/increase the price on limitless rerolls, but I think from the standpoint of what we're likely to actually see, a blanket fix is more reasonable to expect.

I think a quick and easy rule might be:

If a unit wishes to shoot an enemy character that is not the closest enemy model AND the enemy model is within half the unit's weapon range, roll 2D6. If you roll equal to or less than the starting Wound characteristic of the enemy model, the unit may shoot it as normal. Otherwise, it must pick another eligible, non-character target.

Fluff-wise, if the character is within short range, there's a chance a given unit can pick it out or otherwise distinguish it from the rest of the enemy and attempt to pick it off.

@OP It's a good solution, however I'd probably drop the "target nearest enemy unit instead" if you fail the roll. Although that is a nice penalty for going for a character and failing the roll.

I'm all for having some protection for (infantry sized) characters, but the cutoff should be 8 wounds, not 10. I mean 8 wounds is Dreadnought/Daemon Prince sized targets, which I believe would not be hard to discern on a battlefield among knee high nurglings for example.

Just having played against a 8 character Nurgle list again and getting my behind handed to me again, this issue for me is even more bitter and salty.

 Weazel wrote:
@OP It's a good solution, however I'd probably drop the "target nearest enemy unit instead" if you fail the roll. Although that is a nice penalty for going for a character and failing the roll.

I'm all for having some protection for (infantry sized) characters, but the cutoff should be 8 wounds, not 10. I mean 8 wounds is Dreadnought/Daemon Prince sized targets, which I believe would not be hard to discern on a battlefield among knee high nurglings for example.

Just having played against a 8 character Nurgle list again and getting my behind handed to me again, this issue for me is even more bitter and salty.

Could you offer some examples of 9 wound models that you feel shouldn't be protected by the character rule? The only ones I can think of are...

*Guilliman: Who has a bunch of balance issues that should be addressed in their own right rather than punishing other 9 wound models.
*Bjorn(?): Who... really doesn't seem problematic to my non-Space-Puppy eyes.
*Daemon Princes(?): Or did these guys jump to 10+ wounds in the codex/FAQ? I know they're both the same now. Either way, I haven't heard of princes being a problem this edition.
*The Avatar of Khaine: The only unit on this list I have personal experience with. This is the first edition I've played (started in 5th) that he's actually viable, and it's thanks to my ability to screen him with other units. Without the ability to screen him, his survivability plummets to the point of making him all but impossible to get into melee.

So a few questions:

A.) Are there other models sitting right at 9 wounds that you feel need to be "fixed" by preventing them from being screened?

B.) Do you feel that these 9 wound units are too powerful as they stand?

C.) If you answered "yes" to B., then would you disagree that it would be better to address their respective balance issues individually? Also, I'll note here that I don't personally feel any of the above units suffer from serious balance issues save for Guilliman.

D.) If you answered "No" to B, then we must recognize that you're proposing we nerf units that are not imbalanced as is. Essentially, you're proposing we intentionally make units underpowered. So with that in mind, how do you propose we address the issues this nerf would create? Do we dramatically reduce the points costs of these units, acknowledging that they'll still never make it into combat but now you're paying fewer points for a glorified bullet sponge? Do we give them some new defensive buffs? Do we introduce some new mechanic to offer protection to larger characters?

Wyldhunt wrote:

 Weazel wrote:
@OP It's a good solution, however I'd probably drop the "target nearest enemy unit instead" if you fail the roll. Although that is a nice penalty for going for a character and failing the roll.

I'm all for having some protection for (infantry sized) characters, but the cutoff should be 8 wounds, not 10. I mean 8 wounds is Dreadnought/Daemon Prince sized targets, which I believe would not be hard to discern on a battlefield among knee high nurglings for example.

Just having played against a 8 character Nurgle list again and getting my behind handed to me again, this issue for me is even more bitter and salty.

Could you offer some examples of 9 wound models that you feel shouldn't be protected by the character rule? The only ones I can think of are...

*Guilliman: Who has a bunch of balance issues that should be addressed in their own right rather than punishing other 9 wound models.
*Bjorn(?): Who... really doesn't seem problematic to my non-Space-Puppy eyes.
*Daemon Princes(?): Or did these guys jump to 10+ wounds in the codex/FAQ? I know they're both the same now. Either way, I haven't heard of princes being a problem this edition.
*The Avatar of Khaine: The only unit on this list I have personal experience with. This is the first edition I've played (started in 5th) that he's actually viable, and it's thanks to my ability to screen him with other units. Without the ability to screen him, his survivability plummets to the point of making him all but impossible to get into melee.

So a few questions:

A.) Are there other models sitting right at 9 wounds that you feel need to be "fixed" by preventing them from being screened?

B.) Do you feel that these 9 wound units are too powerful as they stand?

C.) If you answered "yes" to B., then would you disagree that it would be better to address their respective balance issues individually? Also, I'll note here that I don't personally feel any of the above units suffer from serious balance issues save for Guilliman.

D.) If you answered "No" to B, then we must recognize that you're proposing we nerf units that are not imbalanced as is. Essentially, you're proposing we intentionally make units underpowered. So with that in mind, how do you propose we address the issues this nerf would create? Do we dramatically reduce the points costs of these units, acknowledging that they'll still never make it into combat but now you're paying fewer points for a glorified bullet sponge? Do we give them some new defensive buffs? Do we introduce some new mechanic to offer protection to larger characters?

I don't know which characters have 9 wounds, which is why I mentioned the cutoff to be 8 wounds. Nurgle Daemon Princes protected by bubblewrap are a serious issue in our group especially. They can advance with impunity, casting smite while doing so and can reach enemy lines unscathed and just utterly destroy everything in melee. To me that's a huge issue. I want to be able to diminish their numbers/power before they touch my lines.

Now I understand the "fluff" reasoning why characters (again, infantry-sized) cannot be discerned from the rank and file in the heat of the battle. However this illusion for me breaks when an advanced(?) targeting system cannot pick out a huge lumbering Daemon Prince among Nurglings.

 Stormonu wrote:


If a unit wishes to shoot an enemy character that is not the closest enemy model AND the enemy model is within half the unit's weapon range, roll 2D6. If you roll equal to or less than the starting Wound characteristic of the enemy model, the unit may shoot it as normal. Otherwise, it must pick another eligible, non-character target.

I like it, but I feel like if you go for the character and miss, there should be some drawback. Why not if you loose the roll you can choose any elligible unit instead, but with a -1 malus to hit ?

I'm not really a fan of this rule as I feel like it could really lead to slowing down the game. If someone ends up rolling 2D6 for every firing unit just to see if they can hit said character.

Further it makes game outcome more random. "Did your lascannon team just so happen to roll well to be able to shoot my commissar, well now you probably win the game."

It also really favors MSU armies that can make a ton of attempts at the roll. Honestly there is very little issue with the current character rules and the only fix really needed is something like.

"Characters with less than 10 wounds can only be targeted in the shooting if there is another non-character unit within 6" that is closer to the firing model."

That gets rid of most of the wonky interactions while still keeping characters protected as intended. If there are characters that are too powerful those characters should be addressed on their own merits rather than nerfing all non-broken character models.

Breng77 wrote:
I'm not really a fan of this rule as I feel like it could really lead to slowing down the game. If someone ends up rolling 2D6 for every firing unit just to see if they can hit said character.

Further it makes game outcome more random. "Did your lascannon team just so happen to roll well to be able to shoot my commissar, well now you probably win the game."

It also really favors MSU armies that can make a ton of attempts at the roll. Honestly there is very little issue with the current character rules and the only fix really needed is something like.

"Characters with less than 10 wounds can only be targeted in the shooting if there is another non-character unit within 6" that is closer to the firing model."

That gets rid of most of the wonky interactions while still keeping characters protected as intended. If there are characters that are too powerful those characters should be addressed on their own merits rather than nerfing all non-broken character models.

Well put. Have an exalt.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Weazel wrote:


I don't know which characters have 9 wounds, which is why I mentioned the cutoff to be 8 wounds. Nurgle Daemon Princes protected by bubblewrap are a serious issue in our group especially. They can advance with impunity, casting smite while doing so and can reach enemy lines unscathed and just utterly destroy everything in melee. To me that's a huge issue. I want to be able to diminish their numbers/power before they touch my lines.

Now I understand the "fluff" reasoning why characters (again, infantry-sized) cannot be discerned from the rank and file in the heat of the battle. However this illusion for me breaks when an advanced(?) targeting system cannot pick out a huge lumbering Daemon Prince among Nurglings.

Disclaimer: I don't own the new Chaos books, so there are pretty significant holes in my knowledge regard princes.

Ah, so you're proposing that models with 8 wounds or more be targetable rather than 10 wounds or more? I misunderstood. Doesn't this mean there are even more units that are now getting nerfed by your suggesting though?

I totally get the fluff weirdness of not being able to shoot a towering giant of an enemy because some nurglings are around, but I still feel we shouldn't nerf a bunch of units into the ground just because the targeting abstraction is wonky.

Regarding princes specifically...

* If he's hiding behind other units, he's probably not advancing very quickly. How long does it take him to get into melee with those princes? If he isn't charging until turn 3, then he's already spend a third of the game getting basically no return on a large investment.

*Smite is great, but it's not that scary coming off of a couple of princes. Each succesful smite does 3.5 wounds on average to the closest unit. Which. Y'know. Is probably that cheap unit of bubble wrap people are taking these days. And 3.5 wounds isn't that big a deal to most targets unless they're both expensive and shy on wounds. So harlequins and maybe terminators care, but guardsmen, tactical marines, and most vehicles aren't too bothered.

*Great tip for dealing with princes in melee: make sure they charge a disposable unit, then unload on them with as much dakka as it takes (which usually isn't all that much) until they drop.

* How long do you suppose those princes would last without screening? If they have few enough wounds to be able to hide behind other units, then a couple of mildly lucky lascannons can wipe them out from across the board on turn 1. Which isn't necessarily a problem.... provided you overhaul that unit significantly to no longer be a never-include. At which point we need to be discussing lowering the cost of princes, upping their wounds significantly, or giving them some other durability boost or delivery system. And then we'd need to have that same discussion for every other character with 8 or 9 wounds in the game because your solution nerfs them into the dust as well. D:

Smite does slightly over 2 wounds on average. D3, not d6.

Wyldhunt wrote:

 Weazel wrote:


I don't know which characters have 9 wounds, which is why I mentioned the cutoff to be 8 wounds. Nurgle Daemon Princes protected by bubblewrap are a serious issue in our group especially. They can advance with impunity, casting smite while doing so and can reach enemy lines unscathed and just utterly destroy everything in melee. To me that's a huge issue. I want to be able to diminish their numbers/power before they touch my lines.

Now I understand the "fluff" reasoning why characters (again, infantry-sized) cannot be discerned from the rank and file in the heat of the battle. However this illusion for me breaks when an advanced(?) targeting system cannot pick out a huge lumbering Daemon Prince among Nurglings.

Disclaimer: I don't own the new Chaos books, so there are pretty significant holes in my knowledge regard princes.

Ah, so you're proposing that models with 8 wounds or more be targetable rather than 10 wounds or more? I misunderstood. Doesn't this mean there are even more units that are now getting nerfed by your suggesting though?

I totally get the fluff weirdness of not being able to shoot a towering giant of an enemy because some nurglings are around, but I still feel we shouldn't nerf a bunch of units into the ground just because the targeting abstraction is wonky.

Regarding princes specifically...

* If he's hiding behind other units, he's probably not advancing very quickly. How long does it take him to get into melee with those princes? If he isn't charging until turn 3, then he's already spend a third of the game getting basically no return on a large investment.

*Smite is great, but it's not that scary coming off of a couple of princes. Each succesful smite does 3.5 wounds on average to the closest unit. Which. Y'know. Is probably that cheap unit of bubble wrap people are taking these days. And 3.5 wounds isn't that big a deal to most targets unless they're both expensive and shy on wounds. So harlequins and maybe terminators care, but guardsmen, tactical marines, and most vehicles aren't too bothered.

*Great tip for dealing with princes in melee: make sure they charge a disposable unit, then unload on them with as much dakka as it takes (which usually isn't all that much) until they drop.

* How long do you suppose those princes would last without screening? If they have few enough wounds to be able to hide behind other units, then a couple of mildly lucky lascannons can wipe them out from across the board on turn 1. Which isn't necessarily a problem.... provided you overhaul that unit significantly to no longer be a never-include. At which point we need to be discussing lowering the cost of princes, upping their wounds significantly, or giving them some other durability boost or delivery system. And then we'd need to have that same discussion for every other character with 8 or 9 wounds in the game because your solution nerfs them into the dust as well. D:

I'm not arguing your points, and like I said I have a slight personal bias against certain characters and a certain list that is giving me a hard time.

There is now a threshold of 10 wounds that you have to balance around. If it were 8 wounds you would balance around that. If there's a certain threshold there is always going to be balancing around it since some models are over the threshold and some are under. FWIW for example Daemon Princes didn't have any targeting protection in 7th and I think they fared at least decently. Now they are suddenly untouchable if they're not the closest model. Also not every army has cheap expendable models to use as bubble wrap against Smites. And we're now talking about 8 Smiters, not "a couple".

And again, I'm all for protecting characters, but the rules need some fine tuning IMO.

 Weazel wrote:

I'm not arguing your points, and like I said I have a slight personal bias against certain characters and a certain list that is giving me a hard time.

There is now a threshold of 10 wounds that you have to balance around. If it were 8 wounds you would balance around that. If there's a certain threshold there is always going to be balancing around it since some models are over the threshold and some are under. FWIW for example Daemon Princes didn't have any targeting protection in 7th and I think they fared at least decently. Now they are suddenly untouchable if they're not the closest model. Also not every army has cheap expendable models to use as bubble wrap against Smites. And we're now talking about 8 Smiters, not "a couple".

And again, I'm all for protecting characters, but the rules need some fine tuning IMO.

Comparing to 7th edition is a bad idea in this case, for a multitude of reasons - The primary one being that Daemon Princes got much, much easier to kill this edition. (Or they would be, if they weren't characters.) No 'Hard to hit', T6 isn't as good as T5 used to be, and 4 Wounds back then was much better than 8 wounds is now, unless you got popped with Instant Death. I saw a Daemon Prince in 7th edition, I thought to myself, "Dang, that's gonna be hard to take down unless I dedicate some strong firepower into it."
I see a Daemon Prince I can shoot at in this edition, I think, "Hmm, I wonder if I have five or six Plasma Guns to spare, and maybe a few Boltguns I can throw at it.
(For the record: Three five-man squads of Tactical Marines (armed with Plasma/Combi-Plasma) will kill a Daemon Prince in one turn, if they get within Rapid Fire range. If they've got a captain for re-rolls on 1s nearby, it's easy. If you have Guilliman standing by, they actually have almost enough firepower to kill TWO Daemon Princes - Easily enough, if you include Guilliman's own gun.)


Making Daemon Princes targetable makes them far, far too fragile.

Waaaghpower wrote:

 Weazel wrote:

I'm not arguing your points, and like I said I have a slight personal bias against certain characters and a certain list that is giving me a hard time.

There is now a threshold of 10 wounds that you have to balance around. If it were 8 wounds you would balance around that. If there's a certain threshold there is always going to be balancing around it since some models are over the threshold and some are under. FWIW for example Daemon Princes didn't have any targeting protection in 7th and I think they fared at least decently. Now they are suddenly untouchable if they're not the closest model. Also not every army has cheap expendable models to use as bubble wrap against Smites. And we're now talking about 8 Smiters, not "a couple".

And again, I'm all for protecting characters, but the rules need some fine tuning IMO.

Comparing to 7th edition is a bad idea in this case, for a multitude of reasons - The primary one being that Daemon Princes got much, much easier to kill this edition. (Or they would be, if they weren't characters.) No 'Hard to hit', T6 isn't as good as T5 used to be, and 4 Wounds back then was much better than 8 wounds is now, unless you got popped with Instant Death. I saw a Daemon Prince in 7th edition, I thought to myself, "Dang, that's gonna be hard to take down unless I dedicate some strong firepower into it."
I see a Daemon Prince I can shoot at in this edition, I think, "Hmm, I wonder if I have five or six Plasma Guns to spare, and maybe a few Boltguns I can throw at it.
(For the record: Three five-man squads of Tactical Marines (armed with Plasma/Combi-Plasma) will kill a Daemon Prince in one turn, if they get within Rapid Fire range. If they've got a captain for re-rolls on 1s nearby, it's easy. If you have Guilliman standing by, they actually have almost enough firepower to kill TWO Daemon Princes - Easily enough, if you include Guilliman's own gun.)


Making Daemon Princes targetable makes them far, far too fragile.

Okay I'll bite. How is a Dreadnought much more durable than a Daemon prince? T7 is not that much better than T6 (if not talking solely S6), and Nurgle DPs get 5++/5+++ which is statistically close to 3++ (or at least better than 4++, haven't done the exact math). Now the truth is that a Dread is not at all more durable, yet people take them in lists (outside of competitive scene at least) and consider them viable. And they can be targeted freely.

A couple reasons, though it's worth noting that Dreadnoughts are hardly sweeping tournaments right now to begin with.

Firstly, Dreadnoughts are about 25% cheaper than DPs with wings, and about 10pts cheaper than a Daemon Prince on foot.
Secondly, T7 IS a big deal, as it's the cutoff for a lot of light anti-tank/heavy infantry weapons. It's not a big a jump as from T7 to T8, but it's noteable.
Thirdly, I don't need my Dreadnought to be anywhere near Rapid Fire range to be effective. If I'm using a Rifleman build, I can stay 48" away from you and do full damage.


In summary: They're cheaper and don't need to get into the thick of combat in order to be effective, and thus have entirely different needs than a DP. (This is without getting into such things as Chapter Tactics, which can further bump durability (-1 To Hit, anyone?) or increase your damage even more.)

Waaaghpower wrote:
A couple reasons, though it's worth noting that Dreadnoughts are hardly sweeping tournaments right now to begin with.

Firstly, Dreadnoughts are about 25% cheaper than DPs with wings, and about 10pts cheaper than a Daemon Prince on foot.
Secondly, T7 IS a big deal, as it's the cutoff for a lot of light anti-tank/heavy infantry weapons. It's not a big a jump as from T7 to T8, but it's noteable.
Thirdly, I don't need my Dreadnought to be anywhere near Rapid Fire range to be effective. If I'm using a Rifleman build, I can stay 48" away from you and do full damage.


In summary: They're cheaper and don't need to get into the thick of combat in order to be effective, and thus have entirely different needs than a DP. (This is without getting into such things as Chapter Tactics, which can further bump durability (-1 To Hit, anyone?) or increase your damage even more.)

Their battlefield role is different yeah, but my question remains: why can you freely target a Dreadnought, an ancient and revered Space Marine hero, a character in its own right, but not a similarly sized Daemon Prince? Oh yes, because of keywords and GW's extensively battletested and balanced edition.

But I'll stop here because I realize I'm probably starting to sound like a broken record at this point. I think I've presented my personal view on the character rules well enough.

 Weazel wrote:

Waaaghpower wrote:
A couple reasons, though it's worth noting that Dreadnoughts are hardly sweeping tournaments right now to begin with.

Firstly, Dreadnoughts are about 25% cheaper than DPs with wings, and about 10pts cheaper than a Daemon Prince on foot.
Secondly, T7 IS a big deal, as it's the cutoff for a lot of light anti-tank/heavy infantry weapons. It's not a big a jump as from T7 to T8, but it's noteable.
Thirdly, I don't need my Dreadnought to be anywhere near Rapid Fire range to be effective. If I'm using a Rifleman build, I can stay 48" away from you and do full damage.


In summary: They're cheaper and don't need to get into the thick of combat in order to be effective, and thus have entirely different needs than a DP. (This is without getting into such things as Chapter Tactics, which can further bump durability (-1 To Hit, anyone?) or increase your damage even more.)

Their battlefield role is different yeah, but my question remains: why can you freely target a Dreadnought, an ancient and revered Space Marine hero, a character in its own right, but not a similarly sized Daemon Prince? Oh yes, because of keywords and GW's extensively battletested and balanced edition.

But I'll stop here because I realize I'm probably starting to sound like a broken record at this point. I think I've presented my personal view on the character rules well enough.

There are Dreads who are characters that cannot be targeted (pretty sure all HQ dreads have the character rule). If all dreads had character protection they would be broken because they can take long ranged weapons which a DP cannot. The DP also tends to be more expensive.

I get the wonky seeming rules, but given that there is no size statistic in the game there is no specific wound cutoff that makes it so that you cannot target larger character models, that still allows other models to be usable. I will say that given my experience with Close combat dreads, if you make a DP targetable it instantly becomes unplayable. What might have been a good DP fix would be to have wings give them +2 wounds which would make them slower if they wanted to be able to hide, and unable to jump over their bubble wrap to assault.

I feel that anything that could join units in 7th can be protected with current rules, no issues. However anything that could not join units before and is now benefiting from a very binary form of protection (you either can attack or you can't) which is furthermore defined by a very artificial-feeling threshold. I can agree that DPs need some sort of protection to be viable, but I just don't agree the current ruling is the right way.

Again I must admit that the issue is exacerbated by getting my behind kicked by a very specific list involving multiple Daemon Princes. I could beat them in melee probably without too much issue if they didn't have that godawful Smite spam flying all over the place and killing my elite beatsticks before they get to do enough damage. Actually if they nerfed Smite the character issues might just go away for me...

Give them a modifier to be hit, a cover save, an invuln, anything, but let me have some way of shooting at them before they punch my teeth in...

All those options are bad options as a general rule.

Modifiers to hit are a bigger deal to some armies to others. Say you said they got -2 to hit. Well marines are still hitting on 4s and 5s (depending on BS of unit). Orks on the other hand lose the ability to shoot at all, ever...much worse than the current character rules where at least I can kill bubble wrap then shoot.

Cover saves only benefit characters with a good armor save, and not a 2+ save (unless AP is used), So an ork character only has say a 5+ save with a cover save....

Invul saves have their won issues, unless they are only to shooting, and if they are good enough to make a difference (DPs already have a 5++) and if they get say a 2++, then it just slows the game down for much the same result as not being able to shoot them at all.

You currently have ways of shooting them (snipers, killing bubble wrap, positioning), it just isn't easy.

As for smite spam, it is possible to play around it with your own bubble wrap, smite is really easy to avoid hitting your elite units with proper placement. That isn't to say it is not good, just that it can be dealt with.

To me this sounds like an issue of one player running a highly competitive list, against some less competitive lists (not sure, just my gut feeling) than it does sound like a huge problem with the rule.

Oh one thing that should be changed, definitely. Any character can be freely targeted if there is no non-character unit closer to the shooting unit. So if you have 3 characters that are near you gunline and no non-character units, they should be free game. No protecting characters with other characters.

 Weazel wrote:
Oh one thing that should be changed, definitely. Any character can be freely targeted if there is no non-character unit closer to the shooting unit. So if you have 3 characters that are near you gunline and no non-character units, they should be free game. No protecting characters with other characters.

Like I said my fix would be no targeting characters if there is a non-character unit that is within 6" of that character and closer to the firing unit.

This stops characters protecting characters (assassin spam list among others). It also stops the "I have a unit in combat with one of your units in your lines, now you cannot shoot any of my characters as they are back in my deployment zone etc.

My biggest issue with this mess is the fact that characters with 10+ wounds not only suffer from being free targets but also from reduced stats when taking damage. I would pay 20 points for my hive tyrant to have one LESS wound. Which is insane.

This double punishment makes those big characters almost entirely unplayable.

That is true, It basically seems like you want to have 9 wounds or 18+ wounds. The middle ground there is undesirable. 10 wounds is basically the worst wound level in the

It is one of the major reasons I wish height or size were a stat in the game. (the other deals with terrain abstraction)

If characters had a size stat the rule could be
"a character cannot be the target of a shooting attack if another model with their size -1 or larger is closer to the firing unit."

This would basically solve many of the issues from an immersion standpoint, and allow you to screen large characters if you want, you would just need other large characters. For instance Ripper swarms could be size 1, Gaunts Size 2, Tyrant Guard could be size 4, Tyrants 5, Trygons could be size 6 etc.

So a Hive Tyrant could not be screened from shooting by rippers, Termagants etc, but could be by his Tyrant Guard, or a trygon.


You would have standard human sized models like conscripts or cultists be size 2, Marines generally be size 3, Primaris/Terminators be size 4-5, Guiliman/Daemon Princes be size 5.

You could make things like bikes, wings etc increase size of units.

This would solve some issues with units like conscripts screening characters like RG, or Pox Walkers screening daemon princes. You could screen them with larger models, vehicles etc, but not with cheap throw away models.

IT might even make it possible to screen Magnus with say a Knight Titan.

Obviously having done this would require a lot of rebalancing of points and wounds, but would have made things a lot more reasonable, and prevent having wounds being the deciding factor in how easy it is to target a character.

Cough cough https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/734305.page cough.

I don't remember this being an issue when characters were hiding in units (7th and back). If anything characters are more vulnerable now.