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Something I've found frustrating of late is the ease with which titanic models (mostly knights) can reduce the effectiveness of the enemy army with their powerful weaponry while the titanic player's own offense is somewhat harder to mitigate as much of it is wrapped up in these often very durable models. I've found that this can make games against things like knight-heavy lists feel somewhat non-interactive as the game basically boils down to whether or not I can make them fail enough wounds to make a bunch of high damage shots stick. So the main goals of this proposed change are:

1. To make target selection a bit more interesting than, "I'll shoot at the one that doesn't have a 3+ invul, I guess." and...
2. To reward players for doing some damage to titanic models in a more concrete fashion than lowering WS/BS a little after you've taken off a land raider's worth of wounds.

THE PROPOSAL

Titanic models no longer "degrade" per the usual wound charts. Titanic models no longer have a single Wounds stat. Instead, you divide a given titanic model's wounds between Vital Systems, Primary Weapons, Secondary Weapons, and Mobility. These are known as "targetable systems." When attacking a titanic model, you declare which system(s) you're targeting. Resolve the attacks using the titanic model's Toughness and Saves stats per usual. Any damage inflicted is resolved against the targeted system with any excess damage being lost (including damage from mortal wounds). When a targetable system has its wounds reduced to 0, the titanic model suffers some detriment as described below.

Vital Systems: The titanic model suffers a -1 to its WS and BS for the remainder of the game.
Primary Weapons: The titanic model loses access to its primary weapon (as indicated in its wargear section).
Secondary Weapons: The titanic model loses access to its secondary weapon (as indicated in its wargear section).
Mobility: The titanic model's movement is reduced to X" (where X is whatever the lowest value on the wounds chart would have been). If the model has Titanic Feet or an equivalent weapon, it loses access to that weapon.

Abilities that restore lost wounds to a titanic model must select a targetable system to restore wounds to each time they're used. Note that some systems might have more wounds than others thus making them more difficult to destroy.

So if you're fighting my paladin knight, you could choose to focus on its Vital Systems to make it all around worse for the rest of the game, or you might focus on its Mobility to get rid of its Titanic Feet and possibly buy yourself an extra turn before it reaches you. If you're facing a shadow sword, you'll probably want to target its primary weapon (which would likely be its main gun) to prevent it from obliterating whatever it shoots at, although said gun would likely have more wounds than, its other systems.

The potential to overkill a given system means that the overall survivability of the titanic model would actually go up a little, but you'd be able to reduce the capabilities of the model more easily as well. The main downsides/potential problems I foresee are that some models lean very heavily on a single system (such as the shadow sword) than others meaning you might be able to neutralize a disproportionate percentage of some model's value than others. Also, this would result in slightly more bookkeeping as you'd likely need to track the damage to various systems off to the side instead of placing a single wound marker next to the titanic model. Obviously some abilities (Hawkshroud and Iyanden) don't directly translate under these rules and would need to be changed accordingly.

POTENTIAL ADDITIONAL RULES:
1. Give individual systems their own toughness and save values that only apply when resolving attacks made against them (as opposed to applying when some ability requires you examine your toughness or save characteristic, for instance.) Adds to the complexity, but gives you more sliders to leave some systems more or less vulnerable.

2. Tie certain special abilities to certain systems. For instance, an imperial/wraith knight's invulnerable save might go away or be reduced when their vital systems are destroyed. This would result in more book keeping but also opens up more opportunities to interact with special rules. You could, for instance, take away the movement abilities of the Yvarna(?) or the Skatach when their Mobility system is destroyed.


And of course the standard disclaimer of, "Of course we'd have to adjust points and probably some other rules as well," applies here. Your thoughts?

Seems too convoluted for the design philosophy of 8th.

I'm kind of skeptical of giving each subsystem a completely independent wound track that's freely targetable; once you knock out the "primary weapon" track the vehicle's ability to contribute to the game is gone, so the rest of the structure is pretty redundant. There isn't really much of a reason to target any other one of the hitpoint tracks.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Seems too convoluted for the design philosophy of 8th.

Yeah. Added complexity is definitely one of the downsides of the proposal. I feel like you get back a little bit of your "complexity budget" by not having to worry about standard wound charts/degradation, but this is definitely more complex. Do you feel there might be a way to streamline the concept to achieve the intended goals without breaking the complexity budget?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 AnomanderRake wrote:
I'm kind of skeptical of giving each subsystem a completely independent wound track that's freely targetable; once you knock out the "primary weapon" track the vehicle's ability to contribute to the game is gone, so the rest of the structure is pretty redundant. There isn't really much of a reason to target any other one of the hitpoint tracks.

Good point. What if the impact of losing your last Primary Weapon wound wasn't so severe? For instance, what if the weapon was only unusable for a single turn representing severe but temporary damage that could be jury rigged back into working order or cleared with a few good revs of the chainsword engine? Or perhaps losing the last wound meant that your BS is considered to be 5+ (or whatever) for the rest of the game? That would still make it possible to focus on the feature of the enemy titanic model that has you most concerned without rendering it totally useless.

Also, I partially addressed that issue in the original post. Suppose a shadow sword's Primary Weapon system accounted for 15 of its total wounds? (I want to say the total wounds of a shadow sword is 28. No?) You'd have to do a fair bit of damage to reduce that big gun to 0, and you'd still have a mobile, shooty, durable unit that can cheaply make itself hit on 2s in melee. Would you say that giving the most important feature(s) of a unit a larger proportion of the overall wounds would still render certain units too easy to neutralize?

Instead of targeting systems, which an opponent would cleverly always shoot off your guns first leaving the unit pretty useless. Have a cumulative damage table based on wounds loss, instead of a flat degradation. and it can be unique to each unit without adding too much additional complexity.

Something like:
For a BaneBlade:
Every time this unit loses 4 wounds, roll on this chart, these effects are permanent and cumulative.

1 - Turret damage. The Baneblade cannon, and autocannon may only fire on a roll of a 3+ next turn. If you roll this result twice in the same turn, the turret weapons are rendered inoperable for the remainder of the game.
2 - Fire control systems damage. Reduce BS by 1 each time, if it reached 7+ to hit, treat further rolls of this as 'on fire' instead.
3 - Motive systems damage. -3" movement. If the movement is reduced to 0, treat any further rolls of this as 'on fire' instead.
4 - Combat control damage. -3 attacks. If its attacks are reduced to 0, treat any further rolls of this as 'on fire' instead.
5 - Sponson damage. One set of sponsons may only fire on a 3+, If you roll this result twice in a turn, one set of sponson weapons are rendered inoperable for the remainder of the game. If you don't have any sponsons, treat this as 'on fire' (6)
6 - On fire. A fire is started in the engine room. At the start of the Baneblades next turn, roll a D6 for every fire started, on a 1 suffer D3 mortal wounds, the fire continues to burn, on a 2-4, suffer a single mortal wound, the fire continues to burn, 5-6 the fire is put out.

Allow a techpriest to, instead of adding wounds back, choose to negate one of these effects instead.

On looking at it this may still be a bit complex, would certainly make things a bit interesting though!

I think it might be something to have vehicles and monstrous creatures take morale checks instead, or lose additional wounds.

 Kcalehc wrote:
Instead of targeting systems, which an opponent would cleverly always shoot off your guns first leaving the unit pretty useless. Have a cumulative damage table based on wounds loss, instead of a flat degradation. and it can be unique to each unit without adding too much additional complexity.

Something like:
For a BaneBlade:
Every time this unit loses 4 wounds, roll on this chart, these effects are permanent and cumulative.

1 - Turret damage. The Baneblade cannon, and autocannon may only fire on a roll of a 3+ next turn. If you roll this result twice in the same turn, the turret weapons are rendered inoperable for the remainder of the game.
2 - Fire control systems damage. Reduce BS by 1 each time, if it reached 7+ to hit, treat further rolls of this as 'on fire' instead.
3 - Motive systems damage. -3" movement. If the movement is reduced to 0, treat any further rolls of this as 'on fire' instead.
4 - Combat control damage. -3 attacks. If its attacks are reduced to 0, treat any further rolls of this as 'on fire' instead.
5 - Sponson damage. One set of sponsons may only fire on a 3+, If you roll this result twice in a turn, one set of sponson weapons are rendered inoperable for the remainder of the game. If you don't have any sponsons, treat this as 'on fire' (6)
6 - On fire. A fire is started in the engine room. At the start of the Baneblades next turn, roll a D6 for every fire started, on a 1 suffer D3 mortal wounds, the fire continues to burn, on a 2-4, suffer a single mortal wound, the fire continues to burn, 5-6 the fire is put out.

Allow a techpriest to, instead of adding wounds back, choose to negate one of these effects instead.

On looking at it this may still be a bit complex, would certainly make things a bit interesting though!

I think I'd like this more in a dedicated all-vehicles game variant rather than in a normal game of 40k. This adds potentially multiple random damage rolls to a given turn, the results of which have to be book-kept individually and for each superheavy suffering from them. Some of the effects then require additional random rolls later on, possibly for no actual effect. My stated goals were:

1. To make target selection a bit more interesting than, "I'll shoot at the one that doesn't have a 3+ invul, I guess." and...
2. To reward players for doing some damage to titanic models in a more concrete fashion than lowering WS/BS a little after you've taken off a land raider's worth of wounds.

Your system doesn't really do the first (you're still just picking the knight with the worst invul and then seeing how the dice turn out rather than making decisions). It kind of does the second, but I'm not sure it does so more meaningfully than the current wound degradation charts. It also adds a lot of complexity, bookkeeping, and additional dice rolls to the game. Your suggestion is more cinematic though, and would probably work well in a vehicle-centric game variant.






Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Nurglitch wrote:
I think it might be something to have vehicles and monstrous creatures take morale checks instead, or lose additional wounds.

Technically, any vehicles that are part of a multi-model unit can theoretically make and fail morale tests. I've managed to make a leadership-debuffed blight crawler (hauler?) run away after lowering its leadership and killing its buddies.

That said, I'm not sure you want to impose morale tests on most titanic models. Having 400+ points of your army just run away because of one bad roll is kind of a feels-bad rule. Or do you mean have them take additional wounds if they fail a morale test? There might be something there, but you'd have to come up with a mechanic for requiring single-model units to take morale tests and then justify why models controlled by a single brain (imperial knights, primarchs, tyranid titans, forgeworld daemons, etc.) get hurt more when they're unnerved but also aren't running away.

Wyldhunt wrote:

I think I'd like this more in a dedicated all-vehicles game variant rather than in a normal game of 40k. This adds potentially multiple random damage rolls to a given turn, the results of which have to be book-kept individually and for each superheavy suffering from them. Some of the effects then require additional random rolls later on, possibly for no actual effect. My stated goals were:

1. To make target selection a bit more interesting than, "I'll shoot at the one that doesn't have a 3+ invul, I guess." and...
2. To reward players for doing some damage to titanic models in a more concrete fashion than lowering WS/BS a little after you've taken off a land raider's worth of wounds.

Your system doesn't really do the first (you're still just picking the knight with the worst invul and then seeing how the dice turn out rather than making decisions). It kind of does the second, but I'm not sure it does so more meaningfully than the current wound degradation charts. It also adds a lot of complexity, bookkeeping, and additional dice rolls to the game. Your suggestion is more cinematic though, and would probably work well in a vehicle-centric game variant.

Yeah, in my head it seemed quite reasonable and interesting, but when I typed it all out and re-read it, suddenly it seemed a bit over complicated and not very 8th-ish.

If it were to be used in a game of Superheavies only, you could allow a player shooting at the unit, to add or subtract 1 from the damage roll, if they choose to do so, which gives them a little control over where the damage is applied. And the bookkeeping would be easier with fewer units - but then we're sort of getting into Titanicus territory I suppose. It was an interesting thought exercise, but not terribly practical in a standard 40K game.



Going back to your original suggestion, rather than allow the attacker to simply pick a target system, and roll to hit it; say they get to pick a targeted system, and for every hit, roll to see if they hit their target, or something else (I mean the target is moving, on a moving platform, you might still hit the titan, but not necessarily the part you were aiming at). Something like on a 1-3 they hit a random other system, on a 4-6 they hit their intended system. Makes it a bit tougher to shoot off each gun in turn - but you still get to hit something.

You guys are basically describing the game mechanics of the Renegade box set. It sort of works if you only have one or twi to track but if you add in additional tanks squads etc it's not really adding fun or depth it's just another round of book keeping.