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Proposal- give models that have a degrading stat line immunity to low AP weapons.

One of the mentally annoying qualities of 8E is the idea of the humble lasgun being used as some sort of massed antitank weapon, sounding through pure fury of putting enough shots onto a unit that something’s going to get through. IMHO, such desperation should only have an effect once the unit’s armor has been “cracked”, and these sort of weapons might be able to hit some exposed vital part - which is what I think GW was attempting to envision. I think it would also bring some oomph to vehicles and monsters - you really want to put your first few rounds of anti-tank weaponry into these things before you can effectively get infantry to support taking these beasts down.

Under this proposal, units with a degrading stat line gain immunity (or perhaps a FNP-like save) against weapons with low/no AP value at the highest stat line (or two, for Superheavy or Titanic level units).

Example: A Leman Russ at 7-12 Wounds remaining can’t be wounded by AP 0 weapons, at 6-1 Wounds remaining, any weapon can harm it.

A Baneblade at 14-26 Wounds remaining can’t be wounded by AP 1 weapons, at 13-7 Wounds remaining cna’t Be wounded by AP 0 Weapons, and at 6-1 Wounds remaining any weapon can harm it.

A Reaver Battle Titan at 50-60 Wounds remaining can’t be wounded by AP 2 or less weapons, at 35-49 Wounds remaining, it can’t be wounded by AP 1 or less weapons, at 20-34 Wounds remaining, it can’t be wounded by AP 0 weapons, and at 19 or less Wounds, any weapon can harm it.

Do you have any in-game experience in trying to take down even a light vehicle with Lasguns?

Assuming a 3+ save, wounding on 6’s, 4+ to hit, that’s a 1/36 chance. If you dump 200 shots (50 Guardsmen in half range with FRF SRF) you average a whopping 5 or 6 wounds, most of the time. You have a roughly 50% chance to knock a Rhino into the first downgrade.

I would rather just get rid of it, based on effectively being a colossal waste of time.

So, how would this affect factions with poor access to AP?

Nurgle Daemons, as always, is my go-to, since I play them. They have:

HQs
Daemon Prince-Good AP, speed, damage, strength... You know them, you love them, they can handle a tank or two, but not a wholly mechanized list on their own. Also has psykery.
Epidemius-Unique Character with 3 S5 AP-3 D1 attacks. Not viable for taking down Knights.
Great Unclean One-Has a decent amount of good AP and Damage attacks, but both Strength AND Attacks degrade. Also has more than 9 wounds, so will get shot off the board first thing.
Poxbringer-Same as Epidemius, but S6 with his aura, and has Psykery.
Sloppity Bilepiper-Worse than a Poxbringer at big targets.
Spoilpox Scrivener-Worse than a Poxbringer at big targets.
Rotigus-Unique GUO, about equal
Horticulous Slimux-Bit better than a Poxbringer at big targets

Troops
None have AP.

Elite
No AP.

Fast Attack
None have AP.

Heavy Support
Soul Grinder has some good vehicle-munching abilities, but without any form of protection will go down easily.

So, I literally have two slots that can even HOPE to damage wide swathes of the game with this proposal-Heavy Support, with a single option, and HQs.

Of them, two units (GUO+Rotigus and Soul Grinders) can reasonably expect to do damage to a serious enemy vehicle... If they survive to get there.

Of the units I can reasonably expect to survive to reach the enemy, Heralds and Princes namely, even the Prince does a mere 3-4 damage to a Leman Russ. (Increase to 5 with a nearby Poxbringer, 8 with Virulent Blessing, and almost 10 with both buffs.)

These kinds of suggestions are seemingly always made by people purely looking at imperium factions. Namely guard and marines.

1) immune units is bad.

2) not everyone has equal access to everything. Try to imagine the worst case scenario for your suggestion. How broken is that?

 Stormonu wrote:
Proposal- give models that have a degrading stat line immunity to low AP weapons.

Why does this proposal get rejected?

Please make a list of all of the units in the game with degrading stat lines. Then find the ones with degrading profiles that are light enough vehicles that massed small arms fire should be able to take them down.

For instance what has T5, a 4+ Armor save, 10W and a degrading stat line?

Is that a DE raider?

I would prefer it to be based on strength rather than AP, and for it also to only apply to shooting - when you're up close to a tank, you'll be able to target any weak points much more accurately (in previous editions, CC was always against rear armour value).

What about granting +1 to save rather than immunity? whilst I do like the idea of tanks having immunity to piddly little guns, it could be better represented by an improved ability to shrug things off. Models with over 10 wounds gain +1 to saves against AP- shooting attacks.

Assuming a base 3+ save, a Lasgun already has a 1/36 chance to inflict damage on a "proper" tank.

We now want to change that to 1/72... why not just say "No". The entire reason there's a whopping 3% chance for a lasgun shot to inflict damage is because Guardsmen, Guants, and Gretchin have to be on the table with Knights and other Super Heavies. They need a way to interact with those models, and not just get scooped.

So please, lay off of this. It's already *next to* impossible to deal damage, so just don't worry about it, okay?

Should a lasgun kill a terminator?

 greatbigtree wrote:
Assuming a base 3+ save, a Lasgun already has a 1/36 chance to inflict damage on a "proper" tank.

We now want to change that to 1/72... why not just say "No". The entire reason there's a whopping 3% chance for a lasgun shot to inflict damage is because Guardsmen, Guants, and Gretchin have to be on the table with Knights and other Super Heavies. They need a way to interact with those models, and not just get scooped.

So please, lay off of this. It's already *next to* impossible to deal damage, so just don't worry about it, okay?

A Plaguebearer versus a Rhino has a just under 10% chance of hurting their target per attack, with no buffs. And you can put a lot of buffs on them-at best, you'd be looking at more than doubling your odds of dealing damage (22%) and a lot of the attacks deal multiple damage.

An unbuffed squad needs a pretty hefty 119 swings to kill.
A squad with just a Scrivener nearby drops that to 51-pretty achievable.
Add in Virulent Blessing, and it drops to a paltry 24-one squad can kill it, even after taking some casualties.

But, nothing in the game that I know of can buff their AP. So with this rule, no matter how many buffs I put on them, they can't touch a Rhino.