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Simple stuff. If a Primaris Marine is hit in the face with a Lascannon it should not have the ability to shrug it off. Plasma's Flat 2 damage is superior to D6 in almost every regard, making weapons like the Melta and Lascannon utterly worthless.

Ah, more punishment against the humble carnifex. I see.

topaxygouroun i wrote:
Ah, more punishment against the humble carnifex. I see.

Carnifexes are already unusable.

 BaconCatBug wrote:

topaxygouroun i wrote:
Ah, more punishment against the humble carnifex. I see.

Carnifexes are already unusable.

So shouldn't we be pushing in favor of less strong shooting overall instead of taking it more to the limits?

 BaconCatBug wrote:
Simple stuff. If a Primaris Marine is hit in the face with a Lascannon it should not have the ability to shrug it off. Plasma's Flat 2 damage is superior to D6 in almost every regard, making weapons like the Melta and Lascannon utterly worthless.

Why not 2d3? Then it'll ALWAYS be equal to or superior.

Also, plasma overcharge needs to be a proc, not a selection. Make it so that roll of 6 to hit results in +1 S & +1 D and 1 MW to firer. Or even better - roll of 6 causes MW to target and wielder.

MAKE PLASMA TRUE DOUBLE EDGED SWORD AGAIN

 BaconCatBug wrote:
Simple stuff. If a Primaris Marine is hit in the face with a Lascannon it should not have the ability to shrug it off. Plasma's Flat 2 damage is superior to D6 in almost every regard, making weapons like the Melta and Lascannon utterly worthless.

I don't see the issue. If you roll a 2+ he's hit in the face and dies, you roll a 1 and you just hit his arm/shoulder (or whatever) and he's hurt but not dead. Maybe for the melta I could see it, but 2D3 would probably work better really. Las cannon is supposed to be an armor killer, against a small(ish) target it may just punch a hole, which to a marine (or a large Ork e.g.) may not indeed be fatal. Tanks are quite thick, you punch a hole through one of those, you've better odds of hitting something important on the way through, than on a (super-)human which has lots of non-essential parts.

As to "D2 superior in almost every regard", the almost being any time there's a target with 3 wounds or more - which is quite a lot of things!

I agree in general that GW removing almost all D6 or D3 +X is annoying.
So many weapons could be D3+2 or D6+1 and be far more reliable than just D3 or D6

D3+2 replacing all instances of D6 seems reasonable. Makes the min damage = 3 (so always better than Supercharged Plasma), but caps max damage to 5.
You could make Melta and melta-equivalent weapons be D3+2 normally and D6+2 at half range

-

I would advocate 3+2d3 shots for stuff like helldrakes and such lol...

I would advocate replacing all instances of "d3" with "2" just because of how irritating it is to need an extra step when something fires 4d3 shots to figure out if it'll be 7, 8, or 9.

I would advocate fixing plasma back to what it was in previous editions. Why did it become an anti-heavy vehicle weapon? It's supposed to be for elite infantry and light vehicles.

It used to be S7 and gets hot. Now its that without gets hot, and goes up to 8 with it? And Xenos plasma is still left at S6!

Regular Plasma should be S6, ap-3, D1
Overcharged Plasma should be S7, ap-3, D2

Stop having plasma be an anti-everything weapon. Any other fixes and rebalancing of anti armor needs to include this because it's messing up the whole paradigm (eg it's okay if lascannons get better at killing carnifexes if plasma got weaker.)

 BaconCatBug wrote:
Simple stuff. If a Primaris Marine is hit in the face with a Lascannon it should not have the ability to shrug it off. Plasma's Flat 2 damage is superior to D6 in almost every regard, making weapons like the Melta and Lascannon utterly worthless.

What if there was a way to keep the damage at D6 but have a keyword vs various targets that makes it automatically do minimum damage. for instance. this could be a way to reimplement Instant death.

lascannon S9 ap -4 Damage D6 Instant death. An infantry model wounded by this automatically suffers damage in the amount of it's wounds characteristic if the damage roll is less than its wounds characteristic. Does not apply to units with the keyword other than infantry. (aka character & infantry) This prevents you from automatically 6,ing Carnifexes and without raising the minimum output for this weapon to other units and vehicles.

I Rather get rid of D[X] Damage all together.

Sometimes you get D6 where 1,2,3 = 3.

D3 = 2
D6 = 3

Point changes as needed.

ThatMG wrote:
I Rather get rid of D[X] Damage all together.

Sometimes you get D6 where 1,2,3 = 3.

D3 = 2
D6 = 3

Point changes as needed.

I see the appeal, but I kind of like being able to potentially do a lot of damage with a couple good shots. While it is annoying to do just 1 damage with a lascannon or bright lance, it feels great to kill a tank with a couple of 5's or 6's. Plus, making it a difference of 2 vs 3 (or even 4 as the average on a d6 is 3.5) makes it even harder to differentiate weapons that are already competing for similar slots. A ravager with disintegrators versus dark lances, for instance. The dissies have thrice the shots of the lances which makes them almost as good against vehicles (better with rerolls) even when the lances potentially do 6 damage apiece. Doing 50% more damage with 33% of the shots just isn't a great trade off, and just making the lance super cheap doesn't make it feel like a very satisfying weapon.

And then there are things like Knights that will take forever to kill if you're only doing 3 or 4 damage at a time.

Wyldhunt wrote:

ThatMG wrote:
I Rather get rid of D[X] Damage all together.

Sometimes you get D6 where 1,2,3 = 3.

D3 = 2
D6 = 3

Point changes as needed.

I see the appeal, but I kind of like being able to potentially do a lot of damage with a couple good shots. While it is annoying to do just 1 damage with a lascannon or bright lance, it feels great to kill a tank with a couple of 5's or 6's. Plus, making it a difference of 2 vs 3 (or even 4 as the average on a d6 is 3.5) makes it even harder to differentiate weapons that are already competing for similar slots. A ravager with disintegrators versus dark lances, for instance. The dissies have thrice the shots of the lances which makes them almost as good against vehicles (better with rerolls) even when the lances potentially do 6 damage apiece. Doing 50% more damage with 33% of the shots just isn't a great trade off, and just making the lance super cheap doesn't make it feel like a very satisfying weapon.

And then there are things like Knights that will take forever to kill if you're only doing 3 or 4 damage at a time.

To be fair, the problem there is the dissie. Most other weapon comparisons don't come out like this (except overcharged plasma.)

 BaconCatBug wrote:
Plasma's Flat 2 damage is superior to D6 in almost every regard, making weapons like the Melta and Lascannon utterly worthless.

I may very well be missing something, but I feel like the preference for plasma is largely to do with the synergy between volume of shots, reroll auras, abilities that proc extra shots on 6's, versatile use, etc. rather than an innate constant advantage over things like melta and lascannons. Sure, a plasmagun is more likely to do *some* damage to a rhino than a meltagun, but you need at least 3 plasmaguns overcharging to have a chance at killing a 10 wound rhino where you only need 2 meltaguns (and a bit less luck) to do the same job. And I think there's something to be said for that.

Sure. Sometimes you roll a 1 for damage. To my mind, that's kind of like in previous editions when you'd roll a glancing hit on the vehicle damage chart. Against multi-wound infantry, well, most things with more than one wound are superhumanly durable in some fashion. The marine loses an arm and just keeps fighting while his physiology patches itself up. The dark eldar grotesque didn't keep any organs important to its short-term survival in that crater you just made anyway and is too numb to pain to go into shock. Even that lowly commissar might have miraculously survived through some combination of luck, grit, and gumption. Being a character generally means having a thicker-than-average layer of plot armor after all. If we're willing to forgive to-wound rolls of 1 always failing, then why can't we use that same logic to forgive damage rolls of 1?

That said, I'm not really opposed to upping the minimum damage as you've proposed. It just seems a little weird that we'd go to the trouble of rolling d3+2 to get a result ranging between 3 and 5. That's kind of a weirdly specific range of number to be rolling for. At that point, you could probably just use the above suggestion and average it out to 4 unless it's important to have a chance of 2-shotting a 10 wound target.

Wyldhunt wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:
Plasma's Flat 2 damage is superior to D6 in almost every regard, making weapons like the Melta and Lascannon utterly worthless.

I may very well be missing something, but I feel like the preference for plasma is largely to do with the synergy between volume of shots, reroll auras, abilities that proc extra shots on 6's, versatile use, etc. rather than an innate constant advantage over things like melta and lascannons. Sure, a plasmagun is more likely to do *some* damage to a rhino than a meltagun, but you need at least 3 plasmaguns overcharging to have a chance at killing a 10 wound rhino where you only need 2 meltaguns (and a bit less luck) to do the same job. And I think there's something to be said for that.

Sure. Sometimes you roll a 1 for damage. To my mind, that's kind of like in previous editions when you'd roll a glancing hit on the vehicle damage chart. Against multi-wound infantry, well, most things with more than one wound are superhumanly durable in some fashion. The marine loses an arm and just keeps fighting while his physiology patches itself up. The dark eldar grotesque didn't keep any organs important to its short-term survival in that crater you just made anyway and is too numb to pain to go into shock. Even that lowly commissar might have miraculously survived through some combination of luck, grit, and gumption. Being a character generally means having a thicker-than-average layer of plot armor after all. If we're willing to forgive to-wound rolls of 1 always failing, then why can't we use that same logic to forgive damage rolls of 1?

That said, I'm not really opposed to upping the minimum damage as you've proposed. It just seems a little weird that we'd go to the trouble of rolling d3+2 to get a result ranging between 3 and 5. That's kind of a weirdly specific range of number to be rolling for. At that point, you could probably just use the above suggestion and average it out to 4 unless it's important to have a chance of 2-shotting a 10 wound target.

Rolling a 1 on damage isn't really equivalent to a Glance, because a Glance still at least shook the vehicle and stopped it from shooting. The problem is that Plasma wounds just as easily as meltas now, being str8. There used a be a HUGE difference between str7 plasma and str8 melta with the melta rule to help pen, and ap1 for +1 on the vehicle damage chart. If meltas re-rolled to wound vs vehicles and monsters and did a minimum of 3dmg, then they'd be looking more comparable to plasma if it was str7.

 Drudge Dreadnought wrote:

Rolling a 1 on damage isn't really equivalent to a Glance, because a Glance still at least shook the vehicle and stopped it from shooting. The problem is that Plasma wounds just as easily as meltas now, being str8. There used a be a HUGE difference between str7 plasma and str8 melta with the melta rule to help pen, and ap1 for +1 on the vehicle damage chart. If meltas re-rolled to wound vs vehicles and monsters and did a minimum of 3dmg, then they'd be looking more comparable to plasma if it was str7.

Well, I may be missing the forest for the tress by taking the conversation down this route, but it sounds like that point specifically might be a matter of the melta needing a bit of a buff (as has no doubt been suggested in countless threads). Making melta strength 9 OR letting it use its melta rule outside of half range OR changing the melta rule to "Treat this weapon's Damage characteristic as 2d6" when firing at a target within half range" would make it quite a bit killier against high-wounds targets without requiring sweeping game changes or nerfs to the intentionally-generalist plasma weapons.

The premise here is totally flawed. Damage 2 is almost never better than Damage d6. It only seems that way because the focus on Plasmaguns (and Disintegrators) and the fact that they are better range and/or more attacks than most infantry carried anti-tank weapons.

Rolling d6 damage is better than a D2 weapon 67% of the time and worst only 17% of the time. This is forgivable in that it makes it possible (but unlikely) for two unsaved d6 damage wounds to destroy a model with 12 wounds, while D2 will have done a mere 4 wounds at that point.

So you don't need to 'fix' the problem with weird damage characteristics, you need to fix the comparable weapons rules so that these might Damage 2 weapons aren't better for the cost based on their higher ROF than d6 Damage weapons.

Let me toss out this idea. Not fully formed. I havent compared it to a lot to be 100% behind it.

What if plasma was str 5 d2 ap -2. And over charged str 6 d2 ap-4.

It would place plasma firmly in the elite infantry niche with more damage and keep a reason to overcharge to kill the toughest armors.

It could wound small monsters and vehicles on a 5+ regular or 4+ overcharged

It could wound infantry on a 3+/2+ depending.

Its gets plasma out of other things wheelhouses while keeping it excelling in its own.

To elaborate a little more. I feel like the current Str/s of the plasma gun are coming from the old S/T chart and the way that functioned instead of really being adapted for the current S/T chart. It mattered more when you were 2 points over T instead of just 1 so overcharged plasma being str 7 or whatever made a big difference. In terms of killing infantry though, even elite ones, str 6 is basically perfect as the upper limit. You get a 2+ to wound against anything GEQ and a 3+ against anything MEQ while getting a 4+ against something like a carnifex and a 5+ against anything bigger and tougher. And thats with the risk of over charging. When it's standard shots you still have REALLY good to wound rolls against infantry but everything bigger drops down a peg (and should). The big advantage of overcharging shouldn't be more damage but more reliable damage. MUCH better AP and a extra tic of str. The Lascannon becomes the more reliable weapon against T6 and up just because to wound rolls become more reliable.

 AnomanderRake wrote:
I would advocate replacing all instances of "d3" with "2" just because of how irritating it is to need an extra step when something fires 4d3 shots to figure out if it'll be 7, 8, or 9.

So much this.

What if we just removed the RF property and made regular plas Heavy? Hellblasters get to keep theirs, it's baked into the cost. But right now it's too much weapon in Rapid Fire for the points.

I'd say make it heavy 2 then at least you are hitting on 4s, and the chance of overheating goes up, making it more risk/reward.

That, or make plasma weapons shorter range (18 inches perhaps), STR 6 base, and str 7 on the overcharge, making it far, far less ideal as an anti-tank weapon. This would also means a squad could not deep strike in rapid fire range with plasma, putting it on a more even footing with meltaguns.

 iGuy91 wrote:
That, or make plasma weapons shorter range (18 inches perhaps), STR 6 base, and str 7 on the overcharge, making it far, far less ideal as an anti-tank weapon. This would also means a squad could not deep strike in rapid fire range with plasma, putting it on a more even footing with meltaguns.

Vehicle stat translation needs a revisit.

18" inch plasma would solve a LOT of problems. It would mean that deepstriking plasma squads do not double tap, and it would make a big difference with really long range weaponry.

topaxygouroun i wrote:
18" inch plasma would solve a LOT of problems. It would mean that deepstriking plasma squads do not double tap, and it would make a big difference with really long range weaponry.

Deepstrike just needs a major revision. The game needs to do away with immunities and guarantees. Such things need not exist in a chance based game.

Plasma needs to stop being the go to weapon. It is pretty much anti everything atm. St 5, ap1, d 1 on normal and st6, AP 2, d 2 on overcharge would be good imo.

Fightingfirst wrote:
Plasma needs to stop being the go to weapon. It is pretty much anti everything atm. St 5, ap1, d 1 on normal and st6, AP 2, d 2 on overcharge would be good imo.

It shouldn't be AP-1. That's the same as a Heavy Bolter, or a gorram Bolt Rifle.

Less Strength, though, I can get behind.

 JNAProductions wrote:

Fightingfirst wrote:
Plasma needs to stop being the go to weapon. It is pretty much anti everything atm. St 5, ap1, d 1 on normal and st6, AP 2, d 2 on overcharge would be good imo.

It shouldn't be AP-1. That's the same as a Heavy Bolter, or a gorram Bolt Rifle.

Less Strength, though, I can get behind.

Strength 6/7 probably makes the most sense. It stays in line with craftworld and tau plasma weapons, and it goes from wounding on 4+/3+ (overcharged) against most imperial vehicles to wounding on 5+/4+(overcharged). It's basically unchanged versus most 'cron and drukhari stuff, but meh.

Or str 5/6 ap -2/-4. Again. It puts plasma firmly in the kill elite infantry bracket and allows other types of weapons to shine against the higher t.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I am also okay with the idea that xenos plasma is higher strength. Fluff wise (which doesn't actually matter) Mankinds technology is supposed to be degrading and whatever so there is that. But also rules wise they don't have the breadth of options that SM have. They NEED what weapons they do have to cover more ground while SM need their weapons to have more clearly defined niches so that each weapon gets appropriate play within their niche.