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If you compare and SAS team and an untrained local militia, even with the same weapons, the SAS will be much more lethal. It’s about more than accuracy, there are plenty of additional qualities like discipline and timing that account for better lethality and, more to the point, survival. This isn’t about the d6, a bolter that hits 11/12 of the shots instead of 5/6 of the shots doesn’t help really against a t5 or 2+ save model. How would you fix this?

This happens in 40k. A squad of stock chosen can get in a shootout with a loyal tactical squad. If there’s something to keep them from charging, they each do exactly the same damage except that the chosen cost more points. If the chosen are shooting any other type of troops they also fail to impress, without special equipment. It’s possible they could be a very fancy legion elite in an HH game and hit on 2+, but this does very little to tip the scale.

It makes sense for a more experienced and better motivated unit to be better in a gun battle. Ballistic skill is fine for hitting a target while standing still on a firing range. For example, coming out of cover and being ready to fire when the enemy also comes out of cover, or even better coming out of cover and having a shot lined up exactly where the enemy is going to be. There’s also a difference between firing reactively and being a squad marksman with effectively the same weapon but picking targets differently.

GW can take a simple infantry unit and really juice up its stats to make a very elite model without changing its equipment. Without any special equipment like power weapons, it can be a passable close combat unit, with enough attacks and ws. However, it’s going to be an absolutely terrible shooting unit, point for point; for example custodes being armed with basic tactical squad bolters, or lasguns. This seems like it’s solved in the core rules, not by tweaking the units themselves. What can be different?

I’d like to be able to have any character be able to pick up a basic troop rifle and really do damage, within reason, without special rules. I’d like to take a troop unit and do the normal of elite buffs to Ld, A, maybe BS, but not strength, T, or W, and have it be really good at gunfights. This should be standard, for an HQ unit or a custodian to be a real badass even with just a normal weapon. What are your ideas?



I have a few ideas I’ve either seen online or in groups or tried out. One is having crit values - beating your hit roll by two or three points, so a 6 for someone with bs4+, a 5+ for someone with be 3+, would get you a precision shot or +1 S. I think this is terrible and too fiddly, and dependent on bs, which doesn’t have enough depth when it’s already the main shooting stat. It’s been posted in one or two places and I’ve talked it over.

One is getting a bonus from a model having more attacks than its target, -1 ap is a good one. I like this a lot because you don’t have to separate results like the first idea, and it bolts right on to existing elite units that already have +1 attack. -1 ap is better than +1 to hit or wound because it applies when the opponent chooses models to save in mixed units like those with veteran characters, and because it’s more noticeable or powerful in some cases.

It’d also be nice to have shooting defense for elite units. So often they get some buffs and extra gear, but did just they same as a troops model that’s 10 points cheaper. If your model has more attacks than the model shooting it, there’s no reason it shouldn’t benefit from a -1 to hit, or since those are terrifying and since either model could be a character, you could resolve the bonus in the save phase. If your model’s in cover and has more attacks, it could get a 5++ cover save after it fails armor. That way it works even with armored units like terminators in cover.


There’s also the effect of having good fire control from a leader, and also of being able to be less affected by incoming fire. There could be a leadership ability for well aimed shots. There aren’t normal leadership tests in eighth edition other than from casualties, but assuming that can be gotten around, having good leadership should result in being able to do extra damage to tanks or precision shots against other special weapons troops. I think that’s great since quality troops like veterans can do more damage, and precision shots tie back to the cover saves from attacks, since a 1 attack model could get off a precision shot with good leadership, but watch it be saved if it’s target is a two-attack sergeant or veteran or a four attack HQ.

Like I said these are ideas I’ve already seen and they’re not what I’m asking about. I’m bothered that elite units and HQ chars don’t do much by themselves, so I’m asking here how to work it out.

pelicaniforce wrote:

I’d like to be able to have any character be able to pick up a basic troop rifle and really do damage, within reason, without special rules. I’d like to take a troop unit and do the normal of elite buffs to Ld, A, maybe BS, but not strength, T, or W, and have it be really good at gunfights. This should be standard, for an HQ unit or a custodian to be a real badass even with just a normal weapon.

It looks like this is your core goal. If I understand your intent to be...

*The unit should have a "normal weapon" (assuming that means a lasgun, bolter, pulse rifle, shuriken catapult, shoota, splinter rifle, or whatever)
*The unit should not have any special rules to facilitate making it more lethal.
*The unit should be relatively daunting compared to its peers with just the standard weapons.

... then I'm not sure 40k is really a system or even a setting built to do what you're looking for. Even if a hypothetical model was putting every single bullet exactly where he wanted it while aiming for "weak points" or whatever, there's still an upper limit to just how much something that behaves more or less like a rifle is going to do. If a bolter has, at most, 2 shots, then without a different statline for the bolter or a special rule, your maximum damage output is always going to be the same as that of a regular dude with a bolter.

You could maybe add a rule that says units that cost at least X points per model equipped with a 0 point weapon do <insert cool thing here> on to-wound rolls of 6 or something, but that's kind of ham-fisted and basically just boils down to being a special rule.

But that's probably not very helpful. If you want an "elite" version of a mundane unit (like chosen compared to regular csm or sternguard compared to regular tactical marines or true born compared to kabalite warriors) to feel worthwhile when equipped with "standard" weaponry, here are a few thoughts:

*Play small games. Like, Combat Patrol or even Kill Team (with homebrew rules for your unit) small. Little things like an extra attack, wound, point of BS or Sv are much more noticeable at a smaller scale.

*Consider giving the more elite unit a different weapon profile than the standard one or a special rule. Consider Dire Avenger Shuriken Catapults compared to regular Shuriken Catauplts. I think there's some fluff about how the weapons are subtly different, but it basically boils down to avengers being better with the weapon than guardians. If you want a gun in the hands of a chosen to be more powerful than in the hands of a regular CSM, just say that "Chosen Boltguns" always have a +1 on to-wound rolls or are rapid fire 2 representing their relative accuracy even while the gun is kicking. If you want the gun to be more lethal in a given unit's hands, then just make the gun more lethal. Fluff-wise, it's the same weapon. Mechanics-wise, it works differently due to the hands wielding it.

*It sounds like you specifically want an elite unit with a given weapon to be better at shooting, but that's a pretty big limitation to put on yourself. If you want to make the elite unit feel more skilled/experienced than the new recruits, why not give them capabilities the new guys lack? Maybe the unit can deepstrike representing the calm and experience that allows them to continue cautiously getting into position even once bullets are flying so that they can put their shots where they're most needed. Maybe the unit gets extra defensive benefits while in cover, making it just as lethal as the normal unit but significantly harder to displace thus giving it a niche. Maybe the unit is more mobile in some way, either moving faster or being allowed to disembark after a transport moves. The latter makes the unit way more useful and flexible without altering its lethality.


But yeah. If your goal is to make a unit and/or its gun more lethal without cranking up or down the lethality of the entire game system, that's probably not a system change; it's probably a weapon profile change or a special rule.

I see I had to put some examples into the OP. That should work a bit better.

calm and experience that allows them to continue cautiously getting into position even once bullets are flying so that they can put their shots where they're most needed. Maybe the unit gets extra defensive benefits while in cover, making it just as lethal as the normal unit but significantly harder to displace thus giving it a niche. Maybe the unit is more mobile in some way, either moving faster or being allowed to disembark after a transport moves.

Yeah this is all important stuff. I’m definitely influenced by the 1999 chaos codex where vets could automatically infiltrate, not as a selectable vet skill. It was attributed to “local knowledge,” but I think it’s plausible simply by being better soldiers. I’m also influenced by flames of war, where the difference between conscripts, regular troops, and veterans is how hard to hit they are. That’s like you said a different game system, however that specific concept should transfer easily, especially since it’s a less detailed system, not a detailed Inq or Infinity style skirmish.

I’d also like it if leadership determines how well you move when you’re being shot at.

If you want a gun in the hands of a chosen to be more powerful than in the hands of a regular CSM, just say that "Chosen Boltguns" always have a +1 on to-wound rolls or are rapid fire 2 representing their relative accuracy even while the gun is kicking. If you want the gun to be more lethal in a given unit's hands, then just make the gun more lethal. Fluff-wise, it's the same weapon. Mechanics-wise, it works differently due to the hands wielding it.

You seem to understand that I think this, but 40k isn’t really a system for this. It’s picayune, it’s bloaty. When in second edition, marines had a special rapid fire rule with which they braced themselves with their feet and shot extra bolter shots, that was inappropriate. There’s nothing about the physical model demanding a distinct rule, and there is nothing to say a marine from a different faction or any kind of non-marine couldn’t do have a special shooting stance. OTOH there is good reason to believe that guardians and dire avengers have actually different weapons.

I'm not sure 40k is really a system or even a setting built to do what you're looking for. Even if a hypothetical model was putting every single bullet exactly where he wanted it while aiming for "weak points" or whatever, there's still an upper limit to just how much something that behaves more or less like a rifle is going to do. If a bolter has, at most, 2 shots, then without a different statline for the bolter or a special rule,

It should be simple. It would be very easy to map the number of shots onto the number of attacks a model has. That itself is specifically ludicrous, a model with a rocket tube and four attacks should never be able to shoot four rockets in a turn. However the basic principle is there. What if shooting had worked just like 3rd - 7th melee, and gone in initiative order, with a winner and loser at the end taking break tests or sweeping? Also, this is a game with heroic scale miniatures and heroic narratives. Lysander breaking out of an Iron Warriors prison should definitely steal a bolt pistol and clean up with it. He’d shoot the iron warriors from a perfectly set up stance while they’re reloading or looking somewhere else, and he’d get them while they’re perfectly framed coming around a corner, not just winging them when their heads are down. This is GW, this is warhammer, even if it’s a gussied up version of “hitting weak spots,” it’s roughly what happens throughout most of 40k’s background.

We also have conservation of ninjutsu. Chaos marines are either craven power armored thugs or diabolical villains. There have to be m chai cal differences between stiffs to be cut down by the heroes and wily veterans who get the drop on their victims and massacre whole companies. This has to come from somewhere other than bs and close combat abilities.

Speaking of wiles, those are a characteristic that need representing. There’s the example of a grizzled ship’s captain who has crashed or been boarded. He isn’t a supreme personal combatant, he’s a ship captain. However he can give his assailants a run for their money.

He has grit. When evaluating graduates from West Point, which has been studied specifically but also any credential of course, the predictive characteristic isn’t academic scores or other talents, it’s grit or mental resilience, which it turns out in school children is linked closely to class and can’t be effectively nurtured. At any rate, an Ork Nob isn’t a good shot but he’s cunning enough to mow down some oomies at a particularly dramatic moment, and a guard sergeant isn’t a a separate unit, so he doesn’t qualify for “chosen bolter” or DA catapult treatment, but he has the daring to be more formidable with his las pistol than the rest of the squad is, that’s why he was promoted.

When I think elite troops, I would think they have a big advantage in discipline. So they could perform more advanced manouvers.

Examples would be proffesional line infantry that could fire by rank or fire by platoons while advancing (musket era)

And elites would be more reliable to perform tasks. For example they would advance while ordered, while conscripts might hesitate.

If 40k had a unit activation system, elite units could perhaps activate more often, while grunts maybe fail their activations sometimes.
These are just some suggestions

It looks like there's an oversimplification of 40k happening.

It's not just dudes vs dudes. 40k encompasses Knight Titans, and Grots / Conscripts. And you need to abstract that to a D6 roll. 3 point models and 450 point models.

There are 5 points of toughness difference between a human, and a giant stompy robot of doom.

There are 3 points of difference between a raw recruit's accuracy and the most accurate veterans in the ENTIRE galaxy.

A human can punch a metal giant and damage it with 1/6 attacks.

40k, as a system, is unable to abstract the degrees of "realism" it wishes to portray. Mostly because the primary baseline (Marines) only leave one point of improvement (3+ to 2+) for designers to work with, in order to show something is better than "average" when average is a Marine.

40k works on a terribly un-granular stat system and a pile of abstractions. What the OP wants is more detailed roleplay. Seems best solved by playing a roleplay game, not a streamlined wargame.

Just to point out a potential occurrence in-game, but UM and Black Legion both have their respective re-rolls, Stratagem. This can give their respective units a slight edge in a firefight.

As to discipline, I've always felt that traditional ATSKNF (not being wiped by a caught fall-back, pre 8th), and now the current UM tactics (fall back and shoot) represented a high form of unit discipline. In my eyes, the current combination of increased Ld. ATSKNF, and fall-back-shoot basically function as exceptional grit. Add to that the stratagem/aura buffs and you get units that outperform their counterparts even though they have the same basic weapons.

I see where the OP is trying to go with Chosen though, with better fire discipline or "firefight awareness" or some such. I do think theres a granularity issue, but also just a "character" issue. GW is looking for broad strokes to paint a picture of a unit through basic mechanics. Chosen get the bolter and Chainsword option, plus more aggressive firefight opportunities with the Black Legion traits. Not that it's particularly useful in its current incarnation.

pelicaniforce wrote:

I'm not sure 40k is really a system or even a setting built to do what you're looking for. Even if a hypothetical model was putting every single bullet exactly where he wanted it while aiming for "weak points" or whatever, there's still an upper limit to just how much something that behaves more or less like a rifle is going to do. If a bolter has, at most, 2 shots, then without a different statline for the bolter or a special rule,

It should be simple. It would be very easy to map the number of shots onto the number of attacks a model has. That itself is specifically ludicrous, a model with a rocket tube and four attacks should never be able to shoot four rockets in a turn. However the basic principle is there.

Basing the number of shots a "basic gun" like a bolter, pulse rifle, etc. would probably work reasonably. It would let units like Chosen as well as characters like Captains and Fire Blades get more bang (no pun intended) for their buck with normally unintimidating weapons. You'd get a couple of odd cases. I don't think fire warrior sergeants (sha'suis?) have an extra attack, and I'd be surprised if a Fire Blade has the same attacks characteristic as a captain. So you'd have this benefit scaling differently for different units. That said, it would be worth testing out. A bolter in a tactical marine's hand is rapid fire 1, a stern guard's rapid fire 2, a captain's 3 or 4 or whatever their attacks are these days. It would still be far from the most lethal weapon in your army, but you could feel okay about giving your elites and HQs something other than combi-plasmas and thunderhammers or what have you.

That said, we are basically talking about creating new weapons. A rapid fire 1 bolter held by a tac marine is effectively different from (but similar to) a rapid fire 2 bolter held by a sternguard. You can name it differently or create a general rule that you apply to certain weapons. The result is the same.

What if shooting had worked just like 3rd - 7th melee, and gone in initiative order, with a winner and loser at the end taking break tests or sweeping?

I've lost the connection here, and that's a different topic entirely. To answer the question though, you'd end up with shooting being even more advantageous than it is now. In previous editions, morale tests from shooting did work more or less the same as they did from close combat, albeit without the chance of being swept. Sweeping Advances were generally unpopular. Getting swept by a gunline before you can even reach close combat would likely be even more so.

Also, this is a game with heroic scale miniatures and heroic narratives. Lysander breaking out of an Iron Warriors prison should definitely steal a bolt pistol and clean up with it. He’d shoot the iron warriors from a perfectly set up stance while they’re reloading or looking somewhere else, and he’d get them while they’re perfectly framed coming around a corner, not just winging them when their heads are down. This is GW, this is warhammer, even if it’s a gussied up version of “hitting weak spots,” it’s roughly what happens throughout most of 40k’s background.

We also have conservation of ninjutsu. Chaos marines are either craven power armored thugs or diabolical villains. There have to be m chai cal differences between stiffs to be cut down by the heroes and wily veterans who get the drop on their victims and massacre whole companies. This has to come from somewhere other than bs and close combat abilities.

Speaking of wiles, those are a characteristic that need representing. There’s the example of a grizzled ship’s captain who has crashed or been boarded. He isn’t a supreme personal combatant, he’s a ship captain. However he can give his assailants a run for their money.

He has grit. When evaluating graduates from West Point, which has been studied specifically but also any credential of course, the predictive characteristic isn’t academic scores or other talents, it’s grit or mental resilience, which it turns out in school children is linked closely to class and can’t be effectively nurtured. At any rate, an Ork Nob isn’t a good shot but he’s cunning enough to mow down some oomies at a particularly dramatic moment, and a guard sergeant isn’t a a separate unit, so he doesn’t qualify for “chosen bolter” or DA catapult treatment, but he has the daring to be more formidable with his las pistol than the rest of the squad is, that’s why he was promoted.

Let's take a step back and confirm what your actual goals are here. Do you want to make stats for a 20+ guardsman sergeant or a plucky rogue trader? If so, you'll have to explain why a well-balanced model that costs roughly twice as much as a tactical marine can easily give the space marine a run for his money while also maintaining your setting's internal logic. Why do they even bother making space marines if a pep rally to instill extra "pluck" makes someone more lethal than a bunch of dangerous training and surgeries?

For the record, I"m a big fan of plot armor and character-centric mechanics, but you seem to be taking the conversation in a lot of vague directions all at once. What exactly is the goal? Do you want a 20+ point guardsman? If so, why/to what ends? How do you justify that in terms of both gameplay and lore? Are all sergeants meaningful threats to astartes? And if not, would you be better off just making rules for a special character or something instead?

You make them 5 times better than a 4 pt model.
You make them 4 times better than a 5 pt model.
You make them twice as better than a 10 pt model.

If you can make a 20-30 point models pass at least the above benchmarks, we're getting there.

There are so many complicating factors though, it'll be quite tough - particularly when a game like 40K relies very minimally on morale, motivation, coolness under fire, no "pinning" mechanic, no activation advantage for superior units, etc.

In many games it's very easy to put a wider gulf between types of soldiers, even armed with the same weapons. 40K's relatively minimal rules, while fun, make it much harder.

Then, on top of that you have bizarre things which schew the whole process - for instance a super cheap guardsman can often fire twice if given an order, so your more expensive model now needs to shoot more than "twice" the power of the cheaper model, etc.

The reality is that a 20 point model in this game should be stronger and better, with more wounds, etc...but that impacts GW ability to sell you loads of expensive plastic models so it's unlikely to happen outside of your own house rules.

 Elbows wrote:
but that impacts GW ability to sell you loads of expensive plastic models so it's unlikely to happen outside of your own house rules.

I feel like making armies more financially accessible (as in fewer models to make a 2k army) will sell more.

I'd actually agree, but that's probably for another topic. I don't think GW has that one figured out properly, but what I do I know, they're doing well enough right now.

 Elbows wrote:
There are so many complicating factors though, it'll be quite tough - particularly when a game like 40K relies very minimally on morale, motivation, coolness under fire, no "pinning" mechanic, no activation advantage for superior units, etc.

Yes that's right, there aren't many dimensions to being good infantry. There aren't many defensive leadership tests, in many parts because of ATSKNF being so common, and there aren't any active uses of it at all. The solution can be as simple as to pop in a rule like "pass a leadership test, get a bonus to shooting damage."

It's not acually, because Leadership tests don't exist.

I really liked the rule in 4th edition where units had to pass a leadership teat in order to shoot beyond the closest target. Then Space Marine Captains had the rule that gave their Ld to every Space Marine on the table. It was a subtle mechanic, but one that made Space Marines feel more elite/disciplined overall.

I think the OP is drawing a false comparison. The SAS and a regular royal marine are both shooting a human who may or may not be wearing body armor, while in 40K a scout and a veteran space marine are shooting at targets ranging from unarmored humans to walking tanks to giant scaly aliens. It doesn’t matter how good an SAS unit or SEAL team is, they aren’t going to bring down a tank company or fighter aircraft with assault rifles. The range of armor and toughness is much bigger in the 40K universe.
But if your special forces guys want to kill a tank, they bring special weapons optimized for tank-killing, which incidentally is how 40K generally handles veterans: by giving them more special and heavy weapon options, or better armor.

For the system you want, you would have to decouple Rate of Fire from the weaponto a degree. I’m thinking a different stat for weapons, perhaps called Rate of Fire. This becomes the maximum number of times the weapon can be fired by an individual, instead of how many shots you get just for holding onto it. A Rocket Launcher or Lascannon might have a ROF of 1 or 2, whereas a Bolter or Assault Cannon might have 6.

Further, weapons might have multipliers with their ROF. Bolters and Lasguns might be ROF 6/x2. The “x2” indicates that for each attack, the character fires 2 shots. A Heavy Bolter might be ROF 6/x3 (max 6 attacks, each attack allows 3 shots) whilst an Assault Cannon might be something like ROF 9/x6 (max 9 attacks, each attack throws 6 shots).

You then use the model’s Attack characteristic to find out how many attacks the character actually makes with the gun (and melee weapons). Marines might have 1 - possibly 2 for Vets. With Bolters having ROF 6/x2, Marines would get their normal double tap shot, while Veterans would be getting in 4 shots. Some superhero marine with 6 attacks would be spitting out 12 Bolter shots a round this way. Giving a guard squad the order FRFSRF, my give them +1 Attacks with Lasguns, and would work similar to how they do now. Again, heroes and whatnot would be able to pick up these basic guns and be a terror with them - and they wouldn’t have to necessarily switch over to heavier weapons until the inevitable tank or monster shows up.

Yes, simply making the A characteristic do a bit more makes sense to me. Has the benefit of familiarity, too.

Just as a model can make a number of attacks with a close combat weapon equal to its A characteristic, so a model can make a number of shots with a ranged weapon equal to its A characteristic.

You could head-off some of the obvious objections by adding a stat to the weapon that caps how many times it can be used – so a missile launcher only ever gets one shot, for example.

Alternatively, the rule above could be modified to only apply to rapid fire/assault weapons (or whatever).

There'd be some bits to iron out – whether you can use multiple weapons or not, for example – and there'd be some rebalancing to do, but it seems a simple and elegant solution.

No, it isn't possible to do what you want. Nor is it really fluffy. 40k rarely has any equivalent to elite special forces vs. incompetent cannon fodder, even the basic guardsman is a trained soldier taken from the elite of the PDF. You just aren't going to have a huge skill difference beyond what is already represented by BS. But if you stubbornly insist on doing it you'll run into two problems:

1) 40k is a very shallow game with an IGOUGO system. There is no opportunity for reacting to enemy actions, and 99% of what decides games is the math of how much damage your list can produce. The entire concept of things like "better at reacting to targets moving out of cover" doesn't exist, because nobody gets to shoot in reaction to movement. To do this kind of stuff you'd have to completely re-write the game to make it a representation of modern combat instead of a 1980s fantasy game where everyone lines up in neat formations and exchanges attacks until one side is destroyed.

2) 40k's math doesn't allow for what you want. A basic gun with no special rules is inherently limited in what it can do, and if you add special rules like allowing it to fire multiple times per turn you don't have a basic gun anymore. It's a contradictory set of requirements to ask for, and there is no resolution. An expensive model with basic firepower will never be effective unless its job is to do something other than shoot (for example, a buff character with an aura to benefit other units doesn't need to have a great gun), but it sounds like a support character is not what you're looking for.

Additionally, there aren't really any 20+ Point models with a basic rifle. Basic Weapon, 1 W Infantry models top out with point values in the mid-teens. Veterans of most stripes either gain +1 BS (Guard Veterans) or +1 A & +1 LD (the vast majority of Veterans) and only cost 1-2 more points than the basic infantry. Anything more expensive has notable upgrades in rules and/or wargear.

I’ll also stress (again), that even with some sort of change, the moment a vehicle (or anything with T 5+) rumbles around the corner, your superhero with an amazing number of attacks is going to crap his pants because his bullets are just going to bounce off the enemy.

 greatbigtree wrote:
It looks like there's an oversimplification of 40k happening.

It's not just dudes vs dudes. 40k encompasses Knight Titans, and Grots / Conscripts. And you need to abstract that to a D6 roll. 3 point models and 450 point models.

There are 5 points of toughness difference between a human, and a giant stompy robot of doom.

There are 3 points of difference between a raw recruit's accuracy and the most accurate veterans in the ENTIRE galaxy.

A human can punch a metal giant and damage it with 1/6 attacks.

40k, as a system, is unable to abstract the degrees of "realism" it wishes to portray. Mostly because the primary baseline (Marines) only leave one point of improvement (3+ to 2+) for designers to work with, in order to show something is better than "average" when average is a Marine.

This, as a pure D6 environment with stats being 1-12 (yes twelve) there is not enough variance to encompass details. It's not that you can't use a D6 system with a broader stat base, you just end up with a different rules set... like Warmachine. Then you get say, Toughness(armor) 14 space marine vs a a strength 3 weapon, where the weapon strength = number of D6 it gets to roll. You'd need to roll 14-18 on 3D6 in order to wound the space marine with that weapon. Vastly larger layer of granularity, still a D6 system. But imagine how slow rolling to wound with a mob of 40 slugga boyz would be. 3D6 rolled forty times, call me next week when you are done rolling. So it doesn't work with 40K style scale of units... though it does work better with Old Hammer scale where a battle norm of 2k points would be 2-3 squads of SM and one tank and orks still fielded in squads of 10 as well and used bolters and bolt-pistols.

Insectum7 wrote:I really liked the rule in 4th edition where units had to pass a leadership teat in order to shoot beyond the closest target. Then Space Marine Captains had the rule that gave their Ld to every Space Marine on the table. It was a subtle mechanic, but one that made Space Marines feel more elite/disciplined overall.

This particular rule was very unpopular, because it wasn't a benefit, it was a way of avoiding a sort of mystifying impediment that everyone was subjected to. The challenge is just to make a popular, assertive version of this. There was this sort of gaffe of if your squad couldn't pass a leadership test it wasted its lascannon on some nearby gretchin. This is just frustration with no reward. The inverted version of that rule would be that if the unit fails the test it shoots normally, but if it passes it does extra damage.

alextroy wrote:Additionally, there aren't really any 20+ Point models with a basic rifle. Basic Weapon, 1 W Infantry models top out with point values in the mid-teens. Veterans of most stripes either gain +1 BS (Guard Veterans) or +1 A & +1 LD (the vast majority of Veterans) and only cost 1-2 more points than the basic infantry. Anything more expensive has notable upgrades in rules and/or wargear.

That's been an adjustment, as new codexes gradually recognized that +1 a +1Ld weren't worth +5 points, + 10 points, +12 or +15 points as they had charged in prior editions. Conventionally, a space marine veteran squad was equipped identically to a tactical squad, but had better profiles. The problem is that even if you went back to when they had +1 ws, bs, a, and Ld, that would still be worth only an extra 2-3 points.

Stormonu wrote:I’ll also stress (again), that even with some sort of change, the moment a vehicle (or anything with T 5+) rumbles around the corner, your superhero with an amazing number of attacks is going to crap his pants because his bullets are just going to bounce off the enemy.

Well yeah, because a lasgun or bolter have a fixed strength, one that can't hurt a landraider. Er, at least its a bit implausible that it would.

Apologist wrote:Yes, simply making the A characteristic do a bit more makes sense to me. Has the benefit of familiarity, too.

This is what I'm saying. Not that it should be the A but that it's pretty easy to make some of the neglected stats to do something useful, especially in a fire team style unit that might only be strength 3 like celestians, but has lots of stats either for close combat (attacks and previously initiative) or that are mostly useless or passive, like Ld.

Just as a model can make a number of attacks with a close combat weapon equal to its A characteristic, so a model can make a number of shots with a ranged weapon equal to its A characteristic.

You could head-off some of the obvious objections by adding a stat to the weapon that caps how many times it can be used – so a missile launcher only ever gets one shot, for example.

Alternatively, the rule above could be modified to only apply to rapid fire/assault weapons (or whatever).

There'd be some bits to iron out – whether you can use multiple weapons or not, for example – and there'd be some rebalancing to do, but it seems a simple and elegant solution.

it's that (or whatever) that's the point. There are details to work out to avoid preposterous things happening with plasma guns, but even with 2+ to hit, a marine captain with a bolter barely causes one unsaved wound. It's pretty rudimentary that he should be able to do one or two very solid wounds with his 2-shot gun, or maybe even three wounds, perish the thought.

The entire concept of things like "better at reacting to targets moving out of cover"

It has been pretty normal in other editions to have area terrain, where even if a model is fully obscured by a tree, it is visible with a cover save, and even if it is fully visible by TLoS it gets a cover save as if it were partly obscured.