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There are currently three "sizes" of BATTLESUIT model:

Small: Stealth Battlesuits (and Shadowsun) are about the size of a Primaris Marine. They're BATTLESUITS and INFANTRY.

Medium: Crisis, Broadside, and Hazard Battlesuits are about the size of a Dreadnought at the smallest. They're just BATTLESUITS.

Large: Riptide, Ghostkeel, and the two Forge World Battlesuits with unfortunate names are big. They're BATTLESUITS and MONSTERS.

Ignoring Stealth Battlesuits for the moment, because they're obviously fine as INFANTRY, this raises two questions.

First, why in the world do Large BATTLESUITS have the MONSTER keyword instead of the VEHICLE keyword? There are no T'au rules or abilities that make a distinction, and no Core rules that make a distinction; the only difference is that the Riptide and Ghostkeel, these massive mechanical weapons platforms... are immune to Stratagems like Machine Glitch, Melta Bombs, or Tank Hunters, aren't affected by Arc Weapons, Shockcannons, or Relics like the Mortis Machina, and ignore psychic powers like Machine Flense or Inescapable Decay... but are affected by Poisoned Weapons, needle pistols, mutagenic Hellfire Rounds, the Tyranid's Implant Attack, and so on. They can apparently be captured by Drukhari to serve as arena beasts, which is a bizarre thing to imagine. Hell, the Clavis is specifically "a strange archeotech device that can disrupt the deviant machine spirits of xenos war engines", and it can't touch a Riptide!

Second, should Medium Battlesuits be VEHICLES, like Penitent Engines, Dreadnoughts, Kastelan Robots, and other "mechanical walker" models of a similar size? Or should they be INFANTRY, like Ogryns, Obliterators, Kataphrons and other "big guy" models? Lacking either keyword puts them in an odd place; they don't eat Heavy penalties, because they're not INFANTRY, but they can't shoot in combat, because they're not VEHICLES. They're hurt by Poisoned Weapons (and similar) and immune to Melta Bombs (and similar) because they're not VEHICLES, but they can't benefit from cover or move through Breachable terrain because they're not INFANTRY. They can't trigger Look Out, Sir with fewer than 3 models because they're not VEHICLES, but they can't take many mission actions because they're not INFANTRY.

I could see either argument. VEHICLES makes more sense from the perspective of Poisoned Weapons, Melta Bombs, etc, would make it easier for them to Look Out, Sir on a Commander/Ethereal, and would allow them to shoot into combat now that they can't Fall Back and shoot with FLY. That would be my preference, though it would ban them from cover and most actions. INFANTRY works fine based on their stats/scale, and would let them do more "core" things like cover, actions, etc, but would hurt them with Heavy weapons. It also makes less sense when dealing an "anti-VEHICLE/anti-INFANTRY" weapon or ability, but Kataphrons are INFANTRY and they're literally just small tanks.

Thoughts?

I say yes to anything larger than a dread naught.

The small suits should be treated as something akin to a bike.

I'm not sure if those are actual distinctions but yes, vehicle key words, imo.

I think in the fluff, things like poisoned weapons have been described as using not just poison, but other compounds suitable for the target. A Spliter Cannon could for example, use acid rounds against a Battlesuit with the same overall effect stats-wise as poison.

I think overall it's a relic of the old editions where the Riptide was a Monstrous Creature as the overall profile fit a monster more than a vehicle. I think it could be changed now the distinction is much less, and it may just be a case that GW will change it in the next book.

I think medium and above should be vehicles.

Any poisoned weapon that would work against a Riptide would work against an Astra Militarum Chimera.

 Valkyrie wrote:
I think in the fluff, things like poisoned weapons have been described as using not just poison, but other compounds suitable for the target. A Spliter Cannon could for example, use acid rounds against a Battlesuit with the same overall effect stats-wise as poison.

It's a bit weird because while that has always been the excuse for splinters working on things like suits, they also just recently made a stratagem representing anti-vehicle rounds. So if I don't have to use Potent Metallotoxins to wound necron infantry on a 4+, why do I have to use it to hurt their ghost arks? Mild fluff/crunch dissonance t here.

I think overall it's a relic of the old editions where the Riptide was a Monstrous Creature as the overall profile fit a monster more than a vehicle. I think it could be changed now the distinction is much less, and it may just be a case that GW will change it in the next book.

Yeah. Big suits are monsters because at the time they were created, being a vehicle/walker came with a bunch of rules baggage they didn't want riptides to suffer from. Several editions later, that distinction matters less, but they're still "monstrous creatures."

Part of me feels like there should be a Mechanical keyword that gets used instead of Vehicle in some places. So necrons might be Mechanical Infantry, and their ghost arks would be Mechanical Vehicles. But Nurgle daemons and drukhari both make that awkward because so much of their anti-infantry offense is based on poison weapons. 'Crons would be a very rough matchup for drukhari if their basic guns only wounded on a 6+.

Wyldhunt wrote:
Part of me feels like there should be a Mechanical keyword that gets used instead of Vehicle in some places. So necrons might be Mechanical Infantry, and their ghost arks would be Mechanical Vehicles. But Nurgle daemons and drukhari both make that awkward because so much of their anti-infantry offense is based on poison weapons. 'Crons would be a very rough matchup for drukhari if their basic guns only wounded on a 6+.

Yeah, it's a bit awkward from a narrative perspective vs a practical one. I think you can fudge it for Necrons (and Drones, Wraithguard, etc) by saying that despite being mechanical, they're small enough for their mechanisms to still be vulnerable to serious damage from acid splinter rounds, while larger "machine" units have redundant systems and bulkier/more durable elements that will shrug off that kind of insidious damage.

IMO the big suits should be VEHICLES.
They're only MONSTERS for historical reasons, and arguably never should have been so in the first place.

The small ones should definitely be INFANTRY.

IMO, the medium ones should split both ways.
Crisis suits are more similarly sized to Ogryns, so are INFANTRY.
Whereas Broadsides are not more similarly sized to Dreadnoughts, so should be VEHICLES.
They're skirting either side of the line though. Such is the problem when you have massive binary differences and no middleground lol.

Look to the Stormsurge. It is already a vehicle. and all the wargear still works on it. The only difference being that it is the only 'suit' that cannot benefit from an Ethereal's buffs.

Tbh I think the status quo works for the mid-sized suits: they’re really too big to justifiably get the benefits of being infantry and it makes sense they avoid some of the penalties.

Conversely they’re not so much bigger than terminators and the like that it makes sense they’re not treated as vehicles either.

The large suits should definitely be vehicles instead of monsters though - as people have noted it’s only for historical reasons and tbh it was cheesy when they first came out (as walkers were terrible then compared to monsters).

Big and medium suits should be vehicles. This should also apply to some other units like centurions, and the admech breaches and destroyers.

Basically, if a unit is not going to combat capable upon getting it's electronics fried by a haywire weapon or similar, it should have the vehicle tag.

You could get clever, and create a new mechanical tag that replaces the vehicle tag for various anti-vehicle effects that can be added to units like crisis suits without having to change the way they interact with terrain and actions.

Would make sense for larger suits to be vehicles, but crisis size suits should get a fallback and shoot without penalty rule

One of my favourite video games, Age of Wonders: Planetfall, uses damage channels and a very good keyword system. GW's keyword system on the other hand is in some cases complete rubbish as the OP pointed out.

Damage channels:
Physical (e.g. Autogun rounds and most close combat attacks).
Arc (e.g. fancy lightning attacks from high-tech guns)
Fire (e.g. Flamethrowers)
Biochemical (e.g. acid attacks used often by mutated animals)
Psi (e.g. any attack used by psionicists)

Let's have some examples from units:
Vanguard Trooper
Biological, Core, Infantry, Land Movement, Light Unit, Vanguard

Vanguard Owl (Drone)
Psionic Resistance Lvl4, Arc Weakness Lvl2,
Farsight, Core, Flying, Light Unit, Mechanical,
Mindless, Scout, Vanguard

All mechanical units in that game have resistance to psionic attacks and are vulnerable to attacks based on electricity. It's a consistent set of rules which makes sense.

The decision of making the Riptide a monster in the past instead of a vehicle wasn't a mistake but had the intent to drive the sales of the model because monsters performed better in 40K's rule system than vehicles.

And it is apparent for everyone that a sales driven ruleset is only one thing:
A garbage dumpster fire.

@OP:
Let common sense dictate how you change the rules in your future 40K games.

It comes down to how they behaved in previous editions. Tau suits are more or less extensions of their operators and so behaved more like people/monsters. The monster rules better represented how they acted on the field. Vehicle more covers something like a tank. And Dreads were closer to vehicle walkers. Tanks with legs then a person.

Should previous editions iterations of those words influence the rules of the current edition? No. But GW is incapable of good design practices so there you go.

I think the biggest suits should be VEHICLE, maybe even TITANIC as well. They are about Knight sized, right? Would therefore make sense to me to treat them like Knights rules-wise. Knights are also piloted via mind impulse links so the tech should be about equal in terms of reaction time, agility etc. Or wait, what keywords do Knights have? I'm not even sure since I nor any of gaming buddies dont field any..

The smaller suits are OK as they are, being neither VEHICLE nor INFANTRY. I don't even consider Stealth Suits as battlesuits (they're the T'au equivalent of Power Armour IMO), so they are fine as INFANTRY.

Will be interesting to see how the keywords will be defined in the 9th ed T'au codex once it finally arrives.

 tauist wrote:
I think the biggest suits should be VEHICLE, maybe even TITANIC as well. They are about Knight sized, right? Would therefore make sense to me to treat them like Knights rules-wise. Knights are also piloted via mind impulse links so the tech should be about equal in terms of reaction time, agility etc. Or wait, what keywords do Knights have? I'm not even sure since I nor any of gaming buddies dont field any..

The smaller suits are OK as they are, being neither VEHICLE nor INFANTRY. I don't even consider Stealth Suits as battlesuits (they're the T'au equivalent of Power Armour IMO), so they are fine as INFANTRY.

Will be interesting to see how the keywords will be defined in the 9th ed T'au codex once it finally arrives.

Um, the Stormsurge is both Vehicle AND Titanic. Just saying.

Crisis Suits and stealth suits should be INFANTRY, Broadsides Ghostkeels Riptides Stormsurges should be VEHICLES.

Keep the Battlesuit keyword around as it keys off of various other things. oh, and make Savior Protocols either work on everything or work on INFANTRY. There's no reason a drone should have no problem intercepting a lascannon for a Riptide but not be able to stop it shooting at a Hammerhead - the thing about big walker suits is they're actually way way EASIER to shoot - like if you stood a tank on its nose. The barn has a lot more broad-side if you get my jist