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How do?

Slightly random one I’m afraid.

But with the change from Ld to Battleshock, I’m wondering if leadership modifiers could be applied to more weapons with the aim of adding variety to what makes a given kill more variety.

Why? Well, consider the relatively humble Bolter and Chainsword. Those are absolutely weapons of horror. Whether by shot or by blade, even the merest glancing blow is going to be horrendously messy. What might be a fleshwound from say, a Lasgun? For a Bolter, that’s your arm off. And bits of said arm embedded in your squadmates faces. Maybe their eyes. Chainsword? Your flesh just got caught in the teeth. Hope you weren’t using the rest of the skin....

And looking at more exotic Xenos weapons? Dark Eldar splinter weapons and even simple knives. All toxin/poison/nasty coated. Possibly/probably involving violent convulsions and unnatural bodily fluid departures.

Consider. If I come at you with a cricket bat, and smack you upside the head? With a good strike, you’re not getting back up. And even if it’s not that palpable a hit, it’ll still knack all the same. But in 40k, there are horrific small arms. Stuff which doesn’t just wipe you from the face of existence, but does so with ridiculous panache. Bits and bobs of what used to be your meat suit flying everywhere.

Now I’m not talking a ‘per wound’ negative. Any horror only has so much potential. But for purely illustrative purposes? What if any Leadership test where you’ve taken Wounds from Bolters/Chainsword/Splinters has a standardised -2 morale modifier?

Do you think this idea has legs? Or is it one of those things that’s a nice idea, but would inherently occupy that awkward position of being useless or stupidly overpowered?

I wish morale was more meaningful in general. It's pretty silly and boring right now, and favors msu for no good reason. Simply rolling a die to see how many free kills your opponent gets is not fun. They should bring back pinning and falling back, or possibly hit modifiers for shaken units. Give certain weapons increased morale effect to give them usefulness beyond just how well it kills a certain target

Given the nature of the background lore of 40k,I lean more toward morale being a special rule that only applies to a few factions. Call it exaggeration and/or propaganda of the lore, but there seems to me that there are more fearless or practically fearless factions out there to the point the Morale Phase is usually a waste of time.

I can easily get behind some suppression mechanics (well more than tar pitting a unit in melee) which can have a element of morale, but I usually regard it as just good sense to keep your head down while the enemy throwing dakka at you.

I prefer Battleshock. It’s far less an ‘all or nothing’ affair.

It works really well in AoS, but isn’t quite the full shilling in 40k.

But for me, that’s been a long time problem in 40k. The rules just don’t reflect the full horror of the setting.

I mean, you can train your spods against the general horrors of war. At least, War as we know it in the modern day. From 3rd to 7th, your Commander could be scoffed by a Carnifex, and the surrounding troops just wouldn’t care.

Battleshock, though currently poorly implemented is a decent base system. They just need to work psychology into the general run of things more. Make breaking the foe’s will a genuine strategy available to all, rather than a convoluted stacking of ranged abilities, casualties and Stratagems which is easily undone by spunking som Command Points to ensure an automatic pass.

And I really do think dishing out Ld reducing abilities will help achieve that.

I'd rather just remove morale entirely. Too few factions have it as a factor to justify a system for it.

Something that was cool in Andy Chamber's treatment of Starship Troopers was that models could avoid being wounded or killed by 'flinching' or moving up to 2" away from an attacker. It not only let you keep models in the game, but it meant that you could push models around, and even push them back.

Mind you, it would also be nice if vehicles and other single-model units were affected by morale. Maybe if it was based on the number of wounds suffered rather than the number of casualties?

The difficulty in 40k is that for every element in 40k that a “Normal Person” would find horrifying, you can find someone or something in the setting that would call it home.

Space Marines with their ATSKNF, Chaos Daemons, Tyranids, Eldar of various colors, the various abominations that humans produce, etc. If half the models (How many Space Marine factions are there, again?) in the game aren’t going to care, what’s the rule for?

Personally would rather staple in the pinning system from Bolt action or K47

I find it to be fairly intuitive in that getting shot at (even if it doesn't kill you) makes it harder to order people around and or shoot properly. mind you this only really effects like guardsmen, non drone tau, kroot and eldar maybe. so its really hard to say.

it may not be possible in the current setting to even have a moral system.

I think GW's intention is to make morale something that could happen rather than the absolute wipe-outs of past editions if you were too slow.

If your intention is to be truly terrifying then you have the option to take the tools to do so.

The game is lethal already. Kicking up morale without investing in breaking it just makes the game extra lethal and not for big models.

Or hordes already immune to morale.

Nightlords, Nurgle and Eldar variants can already stack quite a lot of leadership modifiers, but unfortunately you can ignore all of them with the rulebook stratagem. That stratagem alone makes morale more often than not superflous. It could be an important factor when fighting Necrons for example, but it simply isn't. Spend 2CP and ignore being reduced to ld 1. I wouldn't mind it if they eliminated that stratagem entirely. And implement something to make morale important for small units, too.

Only if you take out mob rule and other ways hordes ignore morale, too. Get rid of the demon trick on a 1, get rid of all of it.

It would be nice if more weapons caused a morale check or had a -D3 effect.

but as it stands morale is kinda lame in 8th. I want to take 10 marine squads but not if I'm gonna lose a % of them to something they should never do(in fluff).

certain weapons should do more damage if they have a higher initiative than the target.

So the example above Chainsword and bolter could get the terror keyword. With that keyword the #of attacks is increased, +1 strength (+2if attacker initiative is more than +2diff of target)

It would make sense fluff wise that a Marine armed with the above should be able to tear thru a squad of boys, guardsmen, fire warriors with ease and surely have a major impact on the morale of the unit. it wouldnt change vs berserkers, other marines, nobs, etc since they would be more resilient & battle tested.

other weapons/factions could have their own types e.g. wych blades, TH, raptor claws, etc

Morale could easily be far more prevalent/important in 40K but that unfortunately flies in the face of the "faster, deadlier, faster" mantra of 40K.

They shouldn't have gotten rid of pinning. Pinning should have been reworked into a suppression type mechanic.

Maybe something like, if a unit receives as many hits as their leadership value from a single attacking source, then they are considered suppressed (or overwhelmed in the case of CC), and they suffer penalties to hit rolls and movement for a round or something.

No. Not when morale in 8th is just extra wounds and a "scary" weapon would be functionally almost identical to just increasing the model's attacks.

Yeah, I still don't like how they handle morale. I missed it when units could have a chance of retreating and regrouping. Models suddenly having fatal heart attacks is kind of dumb.

I get that the abstraction is its supposed to represent desertion, but that's a dumb abstraction, because desertion doesn't work like that, especially when we are supposed to be dealing with super disciplined units like Marines.

To be fair the abstraction can represent anything though - even foolish bravery (basically the opposite of deserting) etc. I'm fine with the current mechanic and its reasoning --- it's just poorly implemented and the overall lack of pinning/suppression etc. is an issue.

However if you allow suppression the melee-players who want to deepstrike and auto-charge on turn one will bitch because they brought no guns to a gunfight.

 Elbows wrote:
To be fair the abstraction can represent anything though - even foolish bravery (basically the opposite of deserting) etc. I'm fine with the current mechanic and its reasoning --- it's just poorly implemented and the overall lack of pinning/suppression etc. is an issue.

However if you allow suppression the melee-players who want to deepstrike and auto-charge on turn one will bitch because they brought no guns to a gunfight.

..

That's what grenades are for. Can't suppress you in you suppressed them first. In fact, one should be able to throw grenades in on the charge.
You can use it in the shooting phase, which is fine, but you can't use it in the charge phase which is when one is supposed to use grenades. That's something the earlier editions did right.

Half the armies in the game have no business permanently deserting the way the game simulates it.

Because of multiple factors, most units that could be run as big blocks of models are usually run as MSU.

The armies that should be the most affected by the current rules (hordes) are also the most able to throw 2CP at any morale issues.

The entire morale mechanic in 8th edition is either superfluous or the worst kind of abstraction. I'd rather just rewrite it instead of trying to salvage it with add-ons.

 Daedalus81 wrote:
I think GW's intention is to make morale something that could happen rather than the absolute wipe-outs of past editions if you were too slow.

If your intention is to be truly terrifying then you have the option to take the tools to do so.

The game is lethal already. Kicking up morale without investing in breaking it just makes the game extra lethal and not for big models.

Only two factions IIRC have the tools for spooky tech.

Dark eldar and night lords.

mean while guardsmen are equally indifferent to Necrons as to other guardsmen or nids or any other code brown faction.

you could honestly hand wave most of it. since grimdark/balance or whatever. it just doesn't seem right for like a very small fraction of factions in this game.

 Desubot wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:
I think GW's intention is to make morale something that could happen rather than the absolute wipe-outs of past editions if you were too slow.

If your intention is to be truly terrifying then you have the option to take the tools to do so.

The game is lethal already. Kicking up morale without investing in breaking it just makes the game extra lethal and not for big models.

Only two factions IIRC have the tools for spooky tech.

Dark eldar and night lords.

mean while guardsmen are equally indifferent to Necrons as to other guardsmen or nids or any other code brown faction.

you could honestly hand wave most of it. since grimdark/balance or whatever. it just doesn't seem right for like a very small fraction of factions in this game.

Necrons too. Psychological warfare has been a thing they do since 3rd ed, and in 5th ed they expanded on it, only to be forgotten in later editions.
Pariahs reduced everyone down to LD7, and Flayed Ones forced units engaged with them to take a leadership test and hit on 6+ if failed.
The Abyssal Staff was a weapon that induced extreme fear and despair, and the sound from night and doom scythe engines was so unnerving that it caused madness.

 Elbows wrote:
To be fair the abstraction can represent anything though - even foolish bravery (basically the opposite of deserting) etc. I'm fine with the current mechanic and its reasoning --- it's just poorly implemented and the overall lack of pinning/suppression etc. is an issue.

However if you allow suppression the melee-players who want to deepstrike and auto-charge on turn one will bitch because they brought no guns to a gunfight.

You can't deepstike and charge on turn one.
But good luck on the next time you try to not look like you know absolutely nothing about how the game works. You might even succeed one of these days!

Hey look we found the Chaos Daemons (insert other shooting-less army here) player!

You missed the entire point of the post...well done.

 Desubot wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:
I think GW's intention is to make morale something that could happen rather than the absolute wipe-outs of past editions if you were too slow.

If your intention is to be truly terrifying then you have the option to take the tools to do so.

The game is lethal already. Kicking up morale without investing in breaking it just makes the game extra lethal and not for big models.

Only two factions IIRC have the tools for spooky tech.

Dark eldar and night lords.

mean while guardsmen are equally indifferent to Necrons as to other guardsmen or nids or any other code brown faction.

you could honestly hand wave most of it. since grimdark/balance or whatever. it just doesn't seem right for like a very small fraction of factions in this game.

Night lords are best, but Haarken, Despair, the Knight trait, and butcher cannons all count among things that can be used. It isn't entirely necessary to stack to -4/-5/-6

Morale has been awkward in 40k. Too many factions are utterly terrifying monsters fear nothing.

That said, I'm not sure I'd fear an Eldar Splinter weapon or poisoned knife more than a bullet. Yeah, a poisoned shard is likely to be horrific, but so is a mundane bullet that just shattered two ribs on the way in, exploded my liver, burst a lung, shredded my aorta and exploded out my shoulder blade. Yeah, a bolter exploding some dude is likely to be very messy, but given that most casualties in modern war are caused by crew served weapons throwing explosives about, I'm not sure there's much difference.

I would however like to see more things like *suppression* mechanics. It's one thing to stand your ground in the face of terror, it's another to realize "hey, walking into an open killing ground where the enemy has trained automatic weapons and artillery is really stupid". Infantry/armor support is one example in 40k that I feel is absolutely awful, because effectively all the infantry are there to do is physically body block enemy units, whereas in real life they would be there for suppressing fire and checking corners and the like.

Hot-Shot Lasguns are known to melt armor and cause it to ignite to flame.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
That’d be a good mechanic to augment Hot-Shot Lasgun/ Hellgun short range.