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Yeah the old blast and template weapons got hit to varying degrees.
Using the Lemon Buss as an example, having d6 'shots' hasnt really made too much sense or great results.

Was just thinking and what everyone thpught of an "on target" /"off target" approach.

As an example. A lemon russ would be heavy 1. 1 die is rolled to determine if the shot is on target or off target compared to units bs.
Over the bs is on target and the target takes d6 auto hits (or 2d3)
Under bs is off target and the target takes d3 auto hits.

Units that fire without needing line of sight would roll an additional d6 when determining on target/off target and take the lowest result. If they have line of sight then they just determine as normal.

Knowing my luck, this sort of thing has already been proposed, but i was just curious on other peoples thoughts on this?

It would make the unit too swingy really, and prone to abuse.

see: index wraithguard d-scythes vs codex wraithguard D-scythes

the unit was incredibly swingy with one roll determining hit #s for all of them, and CP only increased that. I know plenty of players that would burn a CP roll to get D6 auto-hitting basilisk shots.

I don’t know if it was intentional or not, but I will hereafter be referring to my Leman Russ tanks as Lemon Buses.

On blast weapons, I’d rather reduce the “D6es of hits” altogether and replace it with just Heavy 6. Roll all 6 of the dice; you hit with what you hit, instead of “this many chances to hit”.

 Stormonu wrote:
I don’t know if it was intentional or not, but I will hereafter be referring to my Leman Russ tanks as Lemon Buses.

On blast weapons, I’d rather reduce the “D6es of hits” altogether and replace it with just Heavy 6. Roll all 6 of the dice; you hit with what you hit, instead of “this many chances to hit”.

I do like that idea of old blast weapons just having a set amount of shots. The roll to see how many shots, roll to hit, roll to wound and than roll for damage on a lot of those weapons seems to be a bit much, and slows the game down. Now stack rerolls on top of that mess and it makes it worse. The game feels even more random than it used to.

Why not go with the conversion beamer route? A "blast" weapon fires one shot at some S/AP/Damage, then if it kills something with that shot it inflicts d3/d6/2d6 hits on the rest of the unit, which could be at a different profile.

Make the gun faster/easier to fire at single targets, work differently from ordinary multi-shot weapons against hard targets, more efficient at clearing chaff...

Swap the "heavy d6" style on what was blast weapons for more like flamers "heavy d6 automatic hits"?

leopard wrote:
Swap the "heavy d6" style on what was blast weapons for more like flamers "heavy d6 automatic hits"?

The thing with that suggestion is that it does odd things to the effectiveness of certain units. So if you have a small blast weapon that previously would have caught 1, 2, or 0 models most of the time (because of how people spaced models and because missing with blasts was still a thing), that same weapon will now be automatically hitting at least once each time and will average either 2 hits or 3.5 hits depending on if we're talking a d3 or d6. And then you have weapons that normally only hit a couple of times or sometimes miss entirely but are now scoring mutiple reliable hits. Have a strength 8 gun that does d6 damage and rolls d6 shots with BS 4? Currently, that thing will hit about twice. Make those hits automatic? You're roughly doubling how many hits you land.


Personally, I like the idea of simply making more use of the "land more hits based on unit size" mechanic. "This weapon automatically hits X times for every Y models in the enemy unit in addition to however many are landed normally." Or alternatively, "Each hit landed by this weapon counts as 2 hits if the enemy unit contains at least 10 models and 3 hits if the enemy unit contains at least 20 models."

I don't see the point IMO. The big problem with the new "blast" weapons is that it's D6 for shots, then roll to hit, that's too many rolls. I've been playing for a while now where all such weapons always fire the average number of shots each time (no rolling), so Heavy D6 is Heavy 4 for example; the more "shots" that hit, the more accurately placed the blast. It speeds up the game a little, and avoids the swinginess of these weapons.

Rolling for the number of shots is just a bewildering design choice from GW, as it suggests that the yield of all blast weapons is random, and then you roll to see how well placed it was; because you can always roll a 1 for that frag missile, at which point it doesn't much matter how good a shot the model is because at best you can only inflict one wound with a randomly duff missile.

It doesn't imply a random yield so much as it implies that the concussion and fragmentation (or sci-fi plasma equivalent of) only actually strikes a random number of individuals.

 Haravikk wrote:
I don't see the point IMO. The big problem with the new "blast" weapons is that it's D6 for shots, then roll to hit, that's too many rolls. I've been playing for a while now where all such weapons always fire the average number of shots each time (no rolling), so Heavy D6 is Heavy 4 for example; the more "shots" that hit, the more accurately placed the blast. It speeds up the game a little, and avoids the swinginess of these weapons.

Rolling for the number of shots is just a bewildering design choice from GW, as it suggests that the yield of all blast weapons is random, and then you roll to see how well placed it was; because you can always roll a 1 for that frag missile, at which point it doesn't much matter how good a shot the model is because at best you can only inflict one wound with a randomly duff missile.

Nah. You're forgetting about abstraction, friend. In the same way that rolling to-wound before rolling saves doesn't imply that your guardsman had his head blown off but then retroactively put back on by his helmet, rolling for number of shots and then to hit rolls doesn't imply wildly varying blast radiuses. The random number of shots is just a replacement for the old scatter die and blast templates.

But I agree that there isn't much point to the random number of shots. At least not where 1dX shots are concerned. You get a bit of a bell curve where 2dX shot weapons are concerned, though I wouldn't be opposed to averaging that out either.

How about this:
Battle Cannon: S8, AP-2, D3 Damage, Heavy1, D6 Blast

It gets one shot, if it scores a hit, roll a D6 to see how many models in the target unit are hit.

This means a unit can't receive more hits than it has models. Currently I think formerly blast weapons are more powerful VS single models than they should be.

Fun fact: In an explosion, you can often be hit by multiple fragments.

Wyldhunt wrote:

 Haravikk wrote:
I don't see the point IMO. The big problem with the new "blast" weapons is that it's D6 for shots, then roll to hit, that's too many rolls. I've been playing for a while now where all such weapons always fire the average number of shots each time (no rolling), so Heavy D6 is Heavy 4 for example; the more "shots" that hit, the more accurately placed the blast. It speeds up the game a little, and avoids the swinginess of these weapons.

Rolling for the number of shots is just a bewildering design choice from GW, as it suggests that the yield of all blast weapons is random, and then you roll to see how well placed it was; because you can always roll a 1 for that frag missile, at which point it doesn't much matter how good a shot the model is because at best you can only inflict one wound with a randomly duff missile.

Nah. You're forgetting about abstraction, friend.

It's already abstract; the rolls to hit determine how well aimed the weapon was, that is what a roll to hit is for, this means the number of shots does (or should) represent the effective size of the blast. Randomising the number of "shots" makes no logical sense, and it adds nothing to the game except time and greater unpredictability, neither of which are beneficial.

Random shots only make sense on flame type weapons, since they don't roll to hit, so the number of "shots" represents how effectively the weapon was used in that case, but that's it.

Like I say, I've been playing with average shot blasts for a while now, and it's just so much better, as it's faster to play and less swingy. So basically Heavy D3 becomes Heavy 2, Heavy D6 -> Heavy 4, Heavy 2D6 -> Heavy 7 and so-on.

 Infantryman wrote:
Fun fact: In an explosion, you can often be hit by multiple fragments.

Fun fact: in an explosion, you don't get hit by all the fragments just because you have no friends around you, the way it currently works, an HE shell from a battle cannon is much better against tanks than an armor piercing shell from a Vanquisher Cannon, as it can score multiple hits.
Granted, part of the problem is that the Vanquisher is underpowered as heck, but it still shouldn't be like this.

Wyldhunt wrote:
Have a strength 8 gun that does d6 damage and rolls d6 shots with BS 4? Currently, that thing will hit about twice. Make those hits automatic? You're roughly doubling how many hits you land.

But now that it isn't necessary to pile up D6s worth of shots to get a decent number of hits you can strip out all the rules like LRBTs shooting twice, rules that exist for the sole purpose of making up for the weakness of the random shot mechanic.

Just go with fixed 3/4/5 shots and maybe throw in an extra MW on 5/6 on the hit or wound roll

Panzergraf wrote:

 Infantryman wrote:
Fun fact: In an explosion, you can often be hit by multiple fragments.

Fun fact: in an explosion, you don't get hit by all the fragments just because you have no friends around you, the way it currently works, an HE shell from a battle cannon is much better against tanks than an armor piercing shell from a Vanquisher Cannon, as it can score multiple hits.
Granted, part of the problem is that the Vanquisher is underpowered as heck, but it still shouldn't be like this.

This is a valid point.

An artifact of the "vehicles are just monster" rule.

the obvious way to do it would be to make blast weapons their own weapon catagory so instead of "Heavy D6" you have "Blast D6" with blast weapons only being able to hit a given model once. this would make blast weapons now only effective against mobs,

Are there any random number of shot-weapons that are not former blast/flamer template weapons? If not, then a new category isn't really needed, just add a rule that says weapons with HeavyD6 etc. can not score more hits than there are models in the target unit, or at least not more hits than the number of dice they roll to determine the number of shots. So for example, a weapon with Heavy2D6 can score a maximum of 2 hits per model, HeavyD6 can only score one hit, and Heavy3D3 can score 3 hits per model. You still get to roll to see how many shots you get though, so at least you get multiple chances to score those hits.

Btw, flame weapons have the same problem. Currently, the Hellhound is one of the best anti air units in the game...

Edit:
In fact, the old 3rd edition Codex Cityfight had similar rules for blast weapons; roll to hit using BS, then roll eithe ra D3 (small blast) or D6 (large/ordnance blast) to see how many models were hit. No model in a unit could be hit more than once.