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Title kind of says it all. D6 damage is great when we roll a 3+, but let's be honest, 1's and 2's feel kind of abysmal. I think for weapons under 25 points, like melta guns or fusion pistols, that variance feels justified. But guns that are single shots and cost 25+ points, the possibility of 1' and 2's for damage just feels wrong, in terms of appropriate points costs and even fluff. I think for guns like lascannons, multi meltas, bright lances, dark lances, railguns, etc, the damage should be D3+3, giving you a guaranteed range of 4-6. The implications would obviously be large, but I think after the initial shock people would come to like it.

I prefer D6 with a minimun of 3 like the Adeptus Mechanicus one for really big guns.

Maybe only for certain weapons. The Multi-Melta is total garbage partly because of this too.

 Galas wrote:
I prefer D6 with a minimun of 3 like the Adeptus Mechanicus one for really big guns.

This would be OK too, not quite as strong as my suggestion, but I think all the single shot 25+ points guns should at least have the minimum 3 rule.

The correct implementation would be D4+2 but that won't happen because pointy dice are bad for children.

I like d6 damage with a minumum of 2 or 3, there have been far too many times where my heavy weapons do 4 damage on a 3d6 roll. It is so hard to plan around what your army is capable of with shooting when it can fall entirely flat with a few bad rolls. But, I guess that js part of the game nowadays.

 NH Gunsmith wrote:
I like d6 damage with a minumum of 2 or 3, there have been far too many times where my heavy weapons do 4 damage on a 3d6 roll. It is so hard to plan around what your army is capable of with shooting when it can fall entirely flat with a few bad rolls. But, I guess that js part of the game nowadays.

I think thats ok with something like melta guns. But with a 54 point twin multi melta? To come away with like 2 damage? No bueno.

 Galas wrote:
I prefer D6 with a minimun of 3 like the Adeptus Mechanicus one for really big guns.

Yeah, minimum 3 has some good points. For one the damage spike is less likely, but it also keeps shots from being duds. So overall damage is more consistent.

 peteralmo wrote:

I think thats ok with something like melta guns. But with a 54 point twin multi melta? To come away with like 2 damage? No bueno.

Meltaz are overcosted in general.

If anything the game needs less dice rolling over all. So replacing d6 with d3+3 (which is more) does not really achieve much.
Instead give each gun a fix damage value. And while you are at it remove random number of shots as well.

More dice, but 2d3 gives a more consistent average without pushing it too far up.

Lascannons are going to need a price hike either way.

A.T. wrote:
More dice, but 2d3 gives a more consistent average without pushing it too far up.

Lascannons are going to need a price hike either way.

No I think lascannons would be fine as is under this new rule suggestion. 25 points is a lot, that's a veteran marine with some gearing out as well. For 25 points I think you should get minimum 3 damage, of course because it is one shot only.

I'll say in general, no.

I'd rather push some weapon costs down a little bit than push the damage threshold up. What you're doing is removing the chance that a walker, speeder, large bike, basic dreadnought remains on the table for more than 1/4 of a turn.

The purpose of the varying roll is to basically cover the old existence of the vehicle damage table. I'm sure everyone remembers editions where you fired your lascannon at a tank and blew its Storm Bolter off...and that was it. That's what your '1' damage is. Where a '6' damage is a smack dead-on in the hull or engine deck.

If you'll notice a lot of stuff like light walkers and heavy bikes are at 6 wounds. A dreadnought purposefully has seven so that it can survive more than one lascannon strike (and they still die exceedingly quickly). If you bump the damage on all weapons like you want, everything will die much faster and suddenly 60% of the vehicles in the game won't be worth taking.

You're suggesting a HUGE change to the way the game works or feels. Thus, I have to disagree with the idea. Should some weapons be more potent? Sure. A couple. Multi-Meltas suck ass (and should be Heavy D3 or Heavy 2 I believe). The Leman Russ Vanquisher could use Damage D3+3 because as it stands now it's complete gak.

But changing Krak missiles, lascannons, etc. to 4+ damage (D3+3 = Minimum 4) is too strong in my opinion.

 Elbows wrote:
I'll say in general, no.

I'd rather push some weapon costs down a little bit than push the damage threshold up. What you're doing is removing the chance that a walker, speeder, large bike, basic dreadnought remains on the table for more than 1/4 of a turn.

The purpose of the varying roll is to basically cover the old existence of the vehicle damage table. I'm sure everyone remembers editions where you fired your lascannon at a tank and blew its Storm Bolter off...and that was it. That's what your '1' damage is. Where a '6' damage is a smack dead-on in the hull or engine deck.

If you'll notice a lot of stuff like light walkers and heavy bikes are at 6 wounds. A dreadnought purposefully has seven so that it can survive more than one lascannon strike (and they still die exceedingly quickly). If you bump the damage on all weapons like you want, everything will die much faster and suddenly 60% of the vehicles in the game won't be worth taking.

You're suggesting a HUGE change to the way the game works or feels. Thus, I have to disagree with the idea. Should some weapons be more potent? Sure. A couple. Multi-Meltas suck ass (and should be Heavy D3 or Heavy 2 I believe). The Leman Russ Vanquisher could use Damage D3+3 because as it stands now it's complete gak.

But changing Krak missiles, lascannons, etc. to 4+ damage (D3+3 = Minimum 4) is too strong in my opinion.

I do sympathize with weaker vehicles, and I agree my initial proposal was maybe too strong, but I stand by some change being needed for one shot weapons that cost 25+ points and do D6 damage. They either need to be cheaper, have more shots, or do a minimum damage greater than 1. Two plasma guns are 26 points, a lascannon is 25 points, the lascannon's 1 shot can miss, or hit and do 1 or 2 damage - or you could have up to four plasma shots in rapid fire range, if you have a way to re roll 1's you can overcharge those four shots for practically the same stat line, but with an almost guaranteed range of 4-8 damage, all for the same points.

Sure, and if you wanted to drop the points to, say, 20 - then that's cool. However, you're missing a couple of things which justify the Lascannon's cost.

1) Range. Double that of a Plasma gun. That, in itself is a huge deal.

2) Strength 9. This is monumentally important to the large jump between targets being Toughness 7 or 8. A Toughness 8 target (Russes, Land Raiders) is really hard to hurt, so rolling a 3+ instead of a 4+ is big.

I just haven't seen the issue with variable damage as much as some people seem to. I don't want less variable damage if I'm honest. Sure it suck when a roll a '1', but that's precisely why wargames use dice.

I like 2D3, thats 2-6 damage, which sounds fair for 25 pts and 48" range.

 p5freak wrote:
I like 2D3, thats 2-6 damage, which sounds fair for 25 pts and 48" range.

i would be fine with even this.

 BaconCatBug wrote:
The correct implementation would be D4+2 but that won't happen because pointy dice are bad for children.

Not really. 1-6 minimum 3 makes the 3 damage result three times as likely as 4,5 and 6. for a D4+2 all 4 results have the same chance, so on average it's higher damage.

Drop rolling altogether.

If you construct a scenario where the expected damage is 4, just make the damage 4.

Melta could do 3 outside of melta range, a flat 6 when you are in melta range.

Lascannons could do a flat 4, rather than 2D3.

The only random damage roll i would get behind is d3, and only if it's 1 dice. The jump from dealing 1 to 2 to 3 damage is very significant due to the number of 2 and 3 wound models out there.