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A few times now I have thought that a "size" characteristic is needed for units in 40k. It would get rid of the "I can see your banner, so shoot all your models" issues that the LOS system in 40k has, and work with their obvious goal to make the game less prone to arguments!

Previously, I was going to suggest a scale of 1-10, as per most other stats, but then I had a different train of thought entirely.

In order to reduce the damage output of shooting somewhat (to bring it in line with CC a bit, and reduce the overall killyness of the game), I would give units a size statistic in inches. When you shoot a model, subtract 1 from your "to hit" roll if they are further away than this statistic.

Infantry would be 12". big guys (ogryns, warbosses etc) would be 18". dreads and sentinels 24", rhinos 30", battlewagons 36", landraiders and monoliths 48".

I would then allow heavy weapons to double this range if they don't move. Sniper weapons would ignore this entirely.

Then you simply give cover a size statistic, and if a model is entirely behind the cover (not poking out either side, ignore vertically) and is smaller than the cover, it is out of LOS. If it is bigger than the cover, it gets a cover bonus. If it is poking out, it gets a cover bonus if it's smaller, but nothing if it's bigger.

I think that this would balance the "first turn firing line" issues which face CC armies. If you take a horde, you're safer for the opening turn. If you take vehicles, you're less safe, but this is compensated for by being a lot quicker. Because in general, it's the foot horde which needs the help.

Thoughts?

I despise TLOS, but I feel a whole new characteristic is unnecessary - keywords seem like a much more elegant way to handle size. LARGE for models with 10 wounds or more, and TITANIC for models that already have that keyword. LARGE models can see over cover and block LOS, TITANIC models can see over LARGE models and block LOS. Add some size keywords to appropriate cover and that's really all you need.

RevlidRas wrote:
I despise TLOS, but I feel a whole new characteristic is unnecessary - keywords seem like a much more elegant way to handle size. LARGE for models with 10 wounds or more, and TITANIC for models that already have that keyword. LARGE models can see over cover and block LOS, TITANIC models can see over LARGE models and block LOS. Add some size keywords to appropriate cover and that's really all you need.

I suppose that this could also be used with the shooting system I was proposing - normally models are at -1 to hit at over 12". Large models is 24". titanic is 48".

Makes sniping infantry across the map with a lascannon less easy. Snipers of course are the exception to this rule. Heavy weapons double this range if they don't move (making them more penalised if they move, really).

Good idea. I dont like the idea that my heavy weapon teans or marksmen way back behind the infantry can be targeted as easily as the units way infront of it

If you do this, it should be based on range of the weapon. For instance:
-Weapons hit at -1 over half range and -2 over 3/4s range
-A 24" range weapon would have a -1 over 12" and a -2 over 18"
-Normal models are normal
-Bigger models (Bikes, etc) are at +1 to hit
-Larger models (typical MCs, vehicles, etc) are at +2 to hit
-Huge models (Knights, Titanics, etc) are at +3 to hit

This has other impacts:
Large targets are now much easier to hit, so die much faster. A reversion of the Wound chart would counterbalance that nicely (while keeping 6s always wound). Easier to hit big stuff, but harder to wound would be great.

Small targets with to-hit penalties are really hard to hit at range - but big targets with to-hit penalties are easier. However, those Alaitoc Wave Serpents aren't nearly as hard to hit anymore, but Rangers and Raven Guard Marines are even harder. I like that. I like that!

Also, as with all to-hit penalties, it risks pushing the possibility of hitting off the table. As such, like Wounds and missing, natural 6s to-hit should always hit. While it might seem odd at first that a Marine would have the same accuracy as a Guardsman firing at an invisible spaceelf at max range, in reality both are taking random shots and getting lucky. If we wanted to track skill beyond that breakpoint, WHFB used a secondary roll for when to-hits needed a 7+. That could be used instead of 6s-hit, but it confused a lot of people. The improved simulation is probably not worth the bloat.

A Shotgun or Melta being at -2 to hit at 10" seems silly. Assault weapons and pistols should either be unaffected by the penalties or severely less so than RF or Heavy weapons; they're effectively already limited to firing at "half range". That's certainly debateable.

The reason I think it should be proportional to range instead of absolute is that a Lascannon should be firing up to 24" away at no penalty; it's meant for those ranges. But at 36" or 48", it should be worse off.


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(And, how TF do you miss a Land Raider in your face when spraying a Boltgun in front of you. "Large Target" to-hit bonuses should be a thing.)

Agreed with the simplified format.

In general, LOS cannot be drawn through another unit/unit's base.
Units with VEHICLE, MONSTEROUS, TITANIC keywords cannot benefit.
If a unit has FLY keyword, it can draw LOS to any unit.

I think some of the issues for range vs accuracy are already addressed. This is why rapid fire weapons can make more shots when they are closer to the enemy. Rather than introducing more modifiers to hit when at different ranges, (which I dislike because of the way they can stack) perhaps giving all ranged weapons some form of the rapid fire rule. This is already the case with melta where in half range the weapon becomes more effective. The effect could be more shots at close range, more damage, different AP at half range to achieve a similar result - weapons should be more effective at dealing damage at close range, whether because they are more accurate or for some other reason.

I dislike the TLOS in 40k and would change this system entirely, but i think a 1-10 scale or similar is unnecessary. A small, medium, large, titanic system would work fine, but could utilize the key words already in the datasheets: Infantry, Bike, Vehicle, Monster, Titanic etc. I'd introduce terrain with size keywords to and implement a LOS blocking and cover system where you can see larger targets behind smaller ones but they get a cover save, but can't target smaller targets which are behind larger one etc. I'd even go one step further and introduce a target priority system where if you want to shoot a unit that isn't the closest target of it's size category (eg. infantry/vehicle/monster etc) then a test must be passed, perhaps based on leadership. Some units could have special rules to always pass the test or something along these lines.

RevlidRas wrote:
I despise TLOS, but I feel a whole new characteristic is unnecessary - keywords seem like a much more elegant way to handle size. LARGE for models with 10 wounds or more, and TITANIC for models that already have that keyword. LARGE models can see over cover and block LOS, TITANIC models can see over LARGE models and block LOS. Add some size keywords to appropriate cover and that's really all you need.

If you're adding a keyword based on wound count why not just cut out the middleman and make the LOS rules reference wound count?

I think things are fine for the most part.

However I don't understand why a titanic isin't easier to hit than say a grot or a guardian.

It makes no sense, and really really breaks immersion for me.

Titanic units should be fired at with heavy weapons without the -1 penalty by any moving unit IMO.

You could simply make it that you roll to hit according to the dice used to save. So let’s say you fix terminators by making it a 2+ on a D8 or a D10 instead of a D6. Now if you shoot at a terminator you hit him on a 3+ on a D10. So the odds you hit him go up but if it’s weapons with no AP it’s very hard to fail that save. But if you hit him with a meltgagun it’s a -4 to his D10 save so he will fail to save half the time against a meltagun.

Because really I’m sick of terminators or other huge robots or tough units getting killed by a bunch of lasgun hits and rolling some ones on a D6. The odds of failing a save are so high for these elite units. Even power armor could be. a D8 save. Only the weakest units should be D6 saves.

warpedpig wrote:
You could simply make it that you roll to hit according to the dice used to save. So let’s say you fix terminators by making it a 2+ on a D8 or a D10 instead of a D6. Now if you shoot at a terminator you hit him on a 3+ on a D10. So the odds you hit him go up but if it’s weapons with no AP it’s very hard to fail that save. But if you hit him with a meltgagun it’s a -4 to his D10 save so he will fail to save half the time against a meltagun.

Because really I’m sick of terminators or other huge robots or tough units getting killed by a bunch of lasgun hits and rolling some ones on a D6. The odds of failing a save are so high for these elite units. Even power armor could be. a D8 save. Only the weakest units should be D6 saves.

Orks would run wild

Spore mines would be untargetable

Thing is, we have already had this in 40K. And it sucked balls. Weird things would happen all the time just because GW did it in a crappy manner. With the increase int he number of base sizes it becomes even harder to implement a system like warmachine's which works well in the context of it's rules.

Why do you say that about orks? Volume of dice? Hitting 50% of the time against. A d10 save model?

warpedpig wrote:
You could simply make it that you roll to hit according to the dice used to save. So let’s say you fix terminators by making it a 2+ on a D8 or a D10 instead of a D6. Now if you shoot at a terminator you hit him on a 3+ on a D10. So the odds you hit him go up but if it’s weapons with no AP it’s very hard to fail that save. But if you hit him with a meltgagun it’s a -4 to his D10 save so he will fail to save half the time against a meltagun.

Because really I’m sick of terminators or other huge robots or tough units getting killed by a bunch of lasgun hits and rolling some ones on a D6. The odds of failing a save are so high for these elite units. Even power armor could be. a D8 save. Only the weakest units should be D6 saves.

I can kinda see where you're going with this; correct me if I'm wrong:

required roll is the same no matter what you shoot at (different for each model but not modifiable).
what sort of dice you use is variable depending on the size of the target, special rules & distance etc.

So the scale would be:

D4
D6
D8
D10
D12
D20

D4 being the most difficult and D20 being the easiest.

This means you could have an easy size statistic which would be a dice. infantry: size D6. ogryns: size D8. Walkers: Size D10. Vehicles: Size D12. Titanic units: Size D20.

Cover would reduce the "to hit" dice to the next one down (IE D8 becomes D6). Shooting at over half the range of the weapon would also do this.

This would mean that units which hit on a 5+ or 6+ effectively cannot shoot at units which need a D4, which is why nothing will do this naturally. Orks, being the main 5+ shooting unit, would have their dakkax3 rule changed to "if you roll the highest value available on a dice, it hits". being invisible means nothing if the air is literally full of bullets!

This would also mean shooting at vehicles and large units will become a lot easier. I might suggest increasing the "to hit" value (decreasing BS) on everything by 1.

It does give you the situation that a marine has a 90% chance to hit a titan. But to me, that sounds right! not many people would miss a titan!

Yes you got it. The problem is the entire weapons system is also in need of some work. Sure you can hit something but that doesn’t mean it will do anything to it. To me it should go in this order.

Roll to hit
Roll saves.
Roll wounds

You have to penetrate armor to even wound. So firing 100 lasguns or autoguns at a terminator shouldn’t even penetrate. They are in an armor class that is beyond the capability of those puny weapons. There should be armor classes that have their own rules. A terminator would be immune to small arms fire and only armor piercing weapons would be able to have a chance. Imagine a terminator dying in combat to an imperial guard soldier and his boot knife. Impossible. Sorry guard fags you gotta use a Melta gun or plasma rifle. It’s like the terminator movies you just can’t stop them with standard weapons.


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One example could be that maybe a Melta Gun does -4 AP. Okay so it has an AP so a hit forced the terminator to save with -4. So he needs a 6+ or something on his D10.

But an auto gun has no AP modifier so because your armor class is “heavy infantry” or whatever you simply ignore it. Penetration is impossible.

I don’t know you would really have to rework all the profiles for weapons and armor classes and everything. It would be more realistic and units would have some character to them because terminators for example would actually be badass again. They wouldn’t die to a couple of unlucky 1s from the imperial guard lasguns.

I think that the issue here is that we are veering greatly from the core principles on which 40k is built; namely a D6 based system with no need for a chart to resolve an action.

As rolling multiple D6 to resolve each wound would be prohibitively slow (EG roll a 3+ on 2D6) I could see some benefit to bringing in other dice. However, it would be easier & smoother if we instead shift everything to a D12, and double all the required rolls & values.

The effect of this would be to have the same % chance to succeed, but more flexibility to change certain things. A meganob might have a 3+ save, a terminator a 2+, but on a D12, both of them are better than a 2+ on a D6.

It also avoids the ballache of having loads of different dice, and not accidentally picking up a D10 in a handful of D12s, etcetera. the only downsides to D12's is that everyone will have o buy different dice, and that a roll of 100 D12's is a lot harder to pick through than 100 D6's, as the numbers are bigger & more obvious. I don't know if they are better or worse for being cocked...

Apocalypse has the Light and Heavy keywords.

I think each weapon should have an AP value like they did a few editions ago. Except if the weapon had low AP or no AP it simply couldn’t kill units like terminators. Basic light infantry rifles are not intended to kill terminators. This is why you have guys with plasma rifles and melta guns and other special and heavy weapons. You could also potentially pay additional points for armor piercing ammo or special options to make your basic light infantry weapons more effective. Like hot shot lasguns.

Infantry should also have bonuses to cover and concealment. Forcing the opponent to deploy its own infantry and assault troops or heavy infantry to take buildings. Infantry use the terrain as their armor. That’s more fun and requires some more terrain and more thinking.


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I think you are right about going to a d12 and d6 system for more flexibility

warpedpig wrote:
I think each weapon should have an AP value like they did a few editions ago. Except if the weapon had low AP or no AP it simply couldn’t kill units like terminators. Basic light infantry rifles are not intended to kill terminators. This is why you have guys with plasma rifles and melta guns and other special and heavy weapons. You could also potentially pay additional points for armor piercing ammo or special options to make your basic light infantry weapons more effective. Like hot shot lasguns.

Infantry should also have bonuses to cover and concealment. Forcing the opponent to deploy its own infantry and assault troops or heavy infantry to take buildings. Infantry use the terrain as their armor. That’s more fun and requires some more terrain and more thinking.


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I think you are right about going to a d12 and d6 system for more flexibility

I do think that terminators should just shrug off lasgun fire. As terminators are multi-wound, I would have that anything S3 or less and AP- cannot hurt a terminator with full wounds. IE they can hurt a wounded terminator - because the armour must have a hole in it. This way a guard squad could throw a grenade at a lone terminator then finish it off with lasguns if it cracks the armour.

Alternatively, I would have a "supporting fire" rule which would mean that the weight of fire from the lasguns/small-arms would assist the weapons which can hurt. EG:

Supporting fire: When a unit is selected to fire, any weapons which cannot hurt the target will instead wound the target on a 6+. The total wounds inflicted by such weapons cannot exceed the total unsaved wounds inflicted by the same unit by other weapons. As such, resolve weapons which can hurt the target first.

EG a unit of guardsmen with a plasmagun, grenade and lasguns shoot at terminators. The plasmagun and grenade score 3 unsaved wounds, and then the lasguns score 5 wounds. This means that the terminators get 3 wounds from lasguns, as they took 3 wounds from powerful weapons.

I don't know if it could be made to work with other units without massive bookkeeping though, but on a unit-by-unit method, this could be serviceable.

I think that’s too much to bother with. This is why heavy weapons and special weapons and tanks and elite infantry exist. Light infantry is cheap because it can’t go head to head against elite infantry. It’s for holding some ground and engaging other light infantry. This idea that lasguns I’m sufficient numbers can kill anything is slowed. It should only kill lightly armored infantry and that’s it

 AnomanderRake wrote:

RevlidRas wrote:
I despise TLOS, but I feel a whole new characteristic is unnecessary - keywords seem like a much more elegant way to handle size. LARGE for models with 10 wounds or more, and TITANIC for models that already have that keyword. LARGE models can see over cover and block LOS, TITANIC models can see over LARGE models and block LOS. Add some size keywords to appropriate cover and that's really all you need.

If you're adding a keyword based on wound count why not just cut out the middleman and make the LOS rules reference wound count?

Because the current rules already refer to Wound characteristics for targeting characters, and it's very clunky. Hell, just look at how much more naturally those rules read with an appropriate keyword:

"An enemy CHARACTER with a Wounds characteristic of less than 10 can only be chosen as a target in the Shooting phase if it is both visible to the firing model and it is the closest enemy unit to the firing model. Ignore other enemy CHARACTERS with a Wounds characteristics of less than 10 when determining if the target is the closest enemy unit to the firing model."

vs

"An enemy CHARACTER can only be chosen as a target in the Shooting phase if it is both visible to the firing model and it is the closest enemy unit to the firing model. Ignore other enemy CHARACTERS when determining if the target is the closest enemy unit to the firing model. LARGE CHARACTERS are not subject to this rule."

warpedpig wrote:
I think that’s too much to bother with. This is why heavy weapons and special weapons and tanks and elite infantry exist. Light infantry is cheap because it can’t go head to head against elite infantry. It’s for holding some ground and engaging other light infantry. This idea that lasguns I’m sufficient numbers can kill anything is slowed. It should only kill lightly armored infantry and that’s it

I would put the rankings of units as:

Light infantry (anything with a 4+ or worse)
Elite Infantry (3+ or better)
Light vehicles (sentinels, landspeeders, buggies)
Monsters (carnifexen, squiggoths)
Heavy Vehicles (tanks)
titanic units

Ideally you want anti light infantry to be effective at light infantry, ineffective at elite infantry and can't touch light vehicles.
you want anti-elites to be ineffective vs light inf, effective vs elite inf, ineffective vs light vehicles and can't touch monsters.
and so on, with being effective against the ideal target, ineffective against the one above and all below.

to avoid another table, statistic etcetera you could just be harsh with your to wound chart:

S<<<T (3 or more below) = can't hurt
S><<T (2 below) = 6+
S<T = 5+
S=T = 4+
S>T = 3+
S>>T (2 or more over) = 2+

Then expand the S & T values a bit to make this work. Cheap guard squads become cheaper, but their special weapons become more expensive. Marine squads become cheaper, special weapons become more expensive. monsters and vehicles might get more expensive, but will need a reduced wound count to account for the fact that only certain weapons can hurt them.

I wonder if this system would work, or be too complex:

weapons have S and no AP. When shooting at something, you have 1AP for each point of S you have over the targets toughness.

then increase all weapons strength by their AP. introduce special rules to add AP to some weapons, EG hot shot lasguns.

then increase the toughness of things to account for this newly powerful weaponry. Alternatively, do away with a "to wound" roll at all, and simply modify the save of a unit based on the strength of the weapon attacking compared to their toughness.

Keywords

Light Infantry - guardians, guardsman. T3 units (saves on D6)
-2 to hit while in cover
-1 to hit from Light vehicle weapons
-2 to hit from heavy weapons

Heavy infantry - T4 and T5 (space marine power armor)
+1 to hit from anti personnel weapons
+1 to save from anti personnel weapons
-1 to hit while in cover
-1 to hit from heavy weapons

Light vehicles / Open topped T6
+1 to hit from anti personnel weapons
+1 to save from anti personnel weapons
-1 to hit from Heavy weapons

Weapon classes
Anti personnel- Bolters. Shuriken. S3/4
Special weapons - flamers. Melta. Plasma rifle
Anti light vehicle / Heavy infantry - scatter lasers. Heavy bolter S5/6
Heavy (anti tank) - lascannon. Missile launcher. Multi Melta. S7/8/9


Artillery/Indirect fire - these weapons are designed to pummel buildings and destroy troop formations. They ignore cover saves for infantry. (Whirl winds, night spinner, earth shaker artillery)

Air defenses - Air defense units may choose to not shoot during their turn and go into overwatch. Any enemy air craft entering their firing range during the opponents movement phase may then be fired upon on that opponents turn


Just a rough idea here. Nothing would stack twice. But this makes infantry awesome at holding buildings and forcing you to send infantry in to get them to make infantry and specialized close combat units effective and essential. Rock paper scissor approach



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You would have to go through all the weapon charts and assign them a class. But once every unit had its class with associated bonuses it would be very easy to change the way the game operated and played so there would be more balanced armies with infantry. Heavy infantry. Transports. Tanks. All balanced.


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The other vital part would be special abilities for units and weapons. Terminators would get the ability to move directly through buildings because they have chainfists and powerfists. It would make heavy infantry excel at urban combat.

More urban terrain would make infantry very effective at holding off tanks because the tanks would have many penalties for shooting the infantry but the infantry would be able to shoot back with no problem with heavy weapon teams.

This would make it so you had a good reason to take and hold buildings and punish you if you were not flexible.