Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

What if flamers (and variants thereof, or flame weapons more broadly) received one or all of the following changes?
1. Firing at +1 BS instead of auto-hitting (keeping the firer's BS somewhat relevant)?
2. Double their current attacks (e.g. becoming Assault 2D6, making them much more powerful and reliable) and/or getting the Blast rule (or a modified version of it)?
3. Becoming Range 6" (aka the range of thrown grenades, hotshot laspistols, etc)?
4. Ignoring enemy cover bonuses and/or actively gaining a bonus itself (e.g. +1 Strength) if the enemy unit is in cover?
5. Reducing the Ld of any enemy unit they successfully damage, by either a flat number or the number of wounds/destroyed models they inflict?

IMO this would make them a lot more characterful and impactful.

No thank you, speaking from the orks at least. Morale isn’t really going to do anything, it’s just going to cut the damage output in third/half, maybe break even, make them just useless because if you’re in 6” you’re in full melee range sort of invalidating any sort of flamer tank.

I think that's too many special rules in one place, but I think some of those suggestions could work.

1.) Don't like this much. Part of the point of the flamer is that it's hard to miss with. You just aim it generally in the direction of the enemy, and everything in that direction is on fire.

2.) Some variation on this I like. I'd probably make them a flat number of shots (removes a dice rolling step), but that number increases based on target unit size. So maybe a flamer is Assault 4 base, Assault 8 if the target contains more than 5 models and Assault 12 if the target contains 11+ models. Not married to those exact numbers.

3.) Nah. That's shorter than the templates used to be (8") and also prevents flamers from being deepstrike weapons. I kind of like where deepstrike/reserve flamers are these days.

4.) Probably makes more sense to just let them ignore light/dense cover. Not that dense cover matters if the flamers auto-hit. If they shoot my rangers, my rangers lose their entire cover bonus to saves; not just part of it. But yeah, I'd be fine with flamers regaining some anti-cover rules.

5.) Nah. The thing is, as horrifying as being burned alive is, it's not really significantly more scary than, say, watching your friend's arm disintegrate from a gauss weapon, seeing tyranid beetles chew their way out of your friend's face, seeing Tzeentch flames transform your friend's guts into a giant caterpillar whose head then splits open to reveal the screaming face of your dead daughter, etc. And none of those weapons impose a morale penalty.

Yeah the thing about making morale effects from weapons is that almost every weapon in this universe would be absolutely terrifying and PTSD inducing to behold by your average human being. But these armies are highly trained motivated professional warriors. Even the Imperial Guard is pretty damn solid. They routinely travel the Galaxy fighting all manner of horrors in all kinds of terrible places. So I doubt a flamethrower is going to make them crack when they’ve likely seen a hive swarm attack or been under an orbital attack or seen dark Eldar shred people alive. Etc.

I do think it would be nice to skip the dice roll and just have automatic hits numbers for different squad sizes

Some_Call_Me_Tim wrote:No thank you, speaking from the orks at least. Morale isn’t really going to do anything, it’s just going to cut the damage output in third/half, maybe break even, make them just useless because if you’re in 6” you’re in full melee range sort of invalidating any sort of flamer tank.

Fair enough. It's worth noting that with +1 to hit, an Ork would be hitting on 4+, and with 2D6 attacks would be getting an average 3.5 hits... the same as with a current D6. The main diff would be a more reliable 3.5 hits. Admittedly this would drop with overwatch (hitting on 5+).

Wyldhunt wrote:1.) Don't like this much. Part of the point of the flamer is that it's hard to miss with. You just aim it generally in the direction of the enemy, and everything in that direction is on fire.

To some extent; they're not magic though. You also have to track each enemy you're firing at, aim for openings in cover/buildings/vehicles, etc.

Wyldhunt wrote:2.) Some variation on this I like. I'd probably make them a flat number of shots (removes a dice rolling step), but that number increases based on target unit size. So maybe a flamer is Assault 4 base, Assault 8 if the target contains more than 5 models and Assault 12 if the target contains 11+ models. Not married to those exact numbers.

Yep, that would work well enough. Making a number of hits equal to/half the number of models in the enemy squad could work equally well, and a little more elegantly IMO. Probably worth leaving that discussion to the linked thread.

Wyldhunt wrote:3.) Nah. That's shorter than the templates used to be (8") and also prevents flamers from being deepstrike weapons. I kind of like where deepstrike/reserve flamers are these days.

Maybe the deepstrike rules should change instead.

Wyldhunt wrote:5.) Nah. The thing is, as horrifying as being burned alive is, it's not really significantly more scary than, say, watching your friend's arm disintegrate from a gauss weapon, seeing tyranid beetles chew their way out of your friend's face, seeing Tzeentch flames transform your friend's guts into a giant caterpillar whose head then splits open to reveal the screaming face of your dead daughter, etc. And none of those weapons impose a morale penalty.

And maybe they should (especially if things like Reivers can, for much more arbitrary reasons).

Just to keep playing devil's advocate here, flamethrowers had a reputation as a terror weapon in the wars where they were used, and most creatures have a (well-justified) instinctual fear of fire. I could easily see them perpetuating that in the 41st Millennium.

ou also have to track each enemy you're firing at, aim for openings in cover/buildings/vehicles, etc.

Sure, but they're still loads easier to land hits with than something like a rifle. Auto-hitting is a pretty good way to represent that. Especially if you want them to be an anti-horde weapon that will be firing into big groups of enemies. It's kind of awkward when you manage to fumble a to-hit roll and fail to hit a single boy in a 30 man mob with a flamethrower.

Maybe the deepstrike rules should change instead.

I'm open to changes to deepstrike! But that's its own messy topic, and hypothetical changes to flamer ranges wouldn't be one of my main considerations when discussing a change to deepstrike.

And maybe they should (especially if things like Reivers can, for much more arbitrary reasons).

Just to keep playing devil's advocate here, flamethrowers had a reputation as a terror weapon in the wars where they were used, and most creatures have a (well-justified) instinctual fear of fire. I could easily see them perpetuating that in the 41st Millennium.

It is pretty silly that Reivers have a morale debuff just because they have spooky skeleton masks. But if we were to accept that everything from gauss rifles to flamers to fleshborers is so intimidating that it warrants a Leadership debuff, we're probably better off just lowering Leadership across the game under the premise that you're more likely to be getting shot at by spooky weapons than not. Or we could just not change leadership at all and assume that the current Ld values already represent the average spookyness of 40k weapons.

For an example of a weapon that does cause morale penalties, look at the death jester's shrieker cannon. If you get hit by it, you bloat up like a big, purple balloon, skin creaking as it's stretched to its limit by the sudden full-body agony of the poison that's causing your swelling gums to crush your teeth. And then you explode hard enough to wound your friends with your bone shrapnel. And then your friends, tasting the gore that splattered into their mouths, take a modest morale penalty.

Change cover to be a negative hit modifier instead of a positive save modifier.
Bam template weapons are immediately more useful and actually perform the role which they're intended for.

 Lord Damocles wrote:
Change cover to be a negative hit modifier instead of a positive save modifier.
Bam template weapons are immediately more useful and actually perform the role which they're intended for.

Well, some cover already does that. But relying on to-hit penalties exclusively runs into the weirdness of not being able to stack to-hit penalties, and that's its own messy conversation.

But technically, flamers are already useful when firing at enemies in dense cover due to their ability to auto-hit.

Wyldhunt wrote:

You also have to track each enemy you're firing at, aim for openings in cover/buildings/vehicles, etc.

Sure, but they're still loads easier to land hits with than something like a rifle. Auto-hitting is a pretty good way to represent that. Especially if you want them to be an anti-horde weapon that will be firing into big groups of enemies. It's kind of awkward when you manage to fumble a to-hit roll and fail to hit a single boy in a 30 man mob with a flamethrower.

Or a +1 to-hit bonus (although I'm not too fussed about this one). As for the 'not hitting a single Ork' part, doesn't that also apply to things like grenades, automatic weapons, etc? I always assume that a total fail means a fumble on the part of the operator, technical difficulties, etc. And scrapping the current 1D6 roll would help improve their reliability anyway.

Wyldhunt wrote:Or we could just not change leadership at all and assume that the current Ld values already represent the average spookyness of 40k weapons.

For an example of a weapon that does cause morale penalties, look at the death jester's shrieker cannon. If you get hit by it, you bloat up like a big, purple balloon, skin creaking as it's stretched to its limit by the sudden full-body agony of the poison that's causing your swelling gums to crush your teeth. And then you explode hard enough to wound your friends with your bone shrapnel. And then your friends, tasting the gore that splattered into their mouths, take a modest morale penalty.

Yes, but now imagine a weapon coming at you that belches roaring jets of flame and smoke you can feel from a dozen metres away... which sets your friends alight and sends them stumbling frantically across the battlefield, howling in agony as they burn alive with thousand-degree fuel clinging to their skin (probably the most agonising form of death in the history of warfare)... which, even if the flames don't touch you, suffocates you by sucking the oxygen from the air and poisoning you with carbon monoxide... There's a reason why flamethrower crews usually received the least mercy when captured.

Not saying that other weapons aren't scary too, but even in 40k there are weapons that are scary beyond the relative mundanity of lasers, bullets, explosions, etc (as you've just described). And I think it would make flame weapons more distinctive, particularly against low-Ld enemies (and hoping morale also gets a bit of a rework).

Wyldhunt wrote:

 Lord Damocles wrote:
Change cover to be a negative hit modifier instead of a positive save modifier.
Bam template weapons are immediately more useful and actually perform the role which they're intended for.

Well, some cover already does that. But relying on to-hit penalties exclusively runs into the weirdness of not being able to stack to-hit penalties, and that's its own messy conversation.

Yup. Not sure why we can't stack them, especially if s and s automatically fail/pass respectively (and things like +2 to-hit modifiers already exist as stratagems), but eh.

 I_am_a_Spoon wrote:

Or a +1 to-hit bonus (although I'm not too fussed about this one). As for the 'not hitting a single Ork' part, doesn't that also apply to things like grenades, automatic weapons, etc? I always assume that a total fail means a fumble on the part of the operator, technical difficulties, etc. And scrapping the current 1D6 roll would help improve their reliability anyway.

Honestly, I think this one might just be a matter of me being trained to expect certain behaviors after years of playing the game. Flamers auto-hitting is one of the consistently satisfying things about flamers even in editions where they're not optimal. When you want a weapon that you can count on to land its hits, you go flamers. Whereas blast template grenades have always been capable of scattering off and hitting nothing (or even hitting your own unit). I'm all for ditching the random number of shots.

Not saying that other weapons aren't scary too, but even in 40k there are weapons that are scary beyond the relative mundanity of lasers, bullets, explosions, etc (as you've just described). And I think it would make flame weapons more distinctive, particularly against low-Ld enemies (and hoping morale also gets a bit of a rework).

I just feel like there are so many weapons that are at least as unnerving as a flamer that it would be weird to only give flamers that type of buff. And it would be a bit unwieldy to give half the weapons in the game a morale-modifier special rule. Like, even basic weapons like bolters (meatsplosion) and splinter rifles (gnarly toxins) seem like they could make strong cases for being roughly as unnerving as a flamer. Plus, as you point out morale really needs an overhaul. Probably one that redefines what failing a morale test even means. Most of the factions in 40k have solid lore reasons for being totally unphased by how scary most 40k weapons are. Marines are brainwashed. Drukhari/daemons do more gruesome stuff to relax. 'Nids and necrons are basically incapable of fear. Etc. The only armies that seem like they should generally be able to get freaked out by fire are what? IG, tau, and maaaaybe craftworlders and sisters? Plus, the morale modifier seems like both the hardest to justify and the least mechanically impactful of the changes you pitched, so I'd be very tempted to ditch it for the sake of streamlining your changes if nothing else.

Yup. Not sure why we can't stack them, especially if s and s automatically fail/pass respectively (and things like +2 to-hit modifiers already exist as stratagems), but eh.

It's a lingering overreaction to 8th edition eldar. If you were fielding Alaitoc and/or all planes, you could pretty reliably give most of your army a constant -2 to being hit or occassionally make one unit -3 or even -4 to hit. The 9th edition detachment rules (harder to spam flyers) and changes to Alaitoc (light cover instead of -1 to being hit) probably would have made it a non-issue, but here we are. Now firing a lascannon from the hip while shooting through trees at a vehicle with hologram projectors that's also doing a barrel roll is worth -1 to hit.

If the had effective rules for infantry using terrain and buildings as their armor/cover and actually making them difficult to dislodge, then you would have a specific reason to have assault troops and weapons like flamethrowers or frag missiles which would be doubly dangerous when deployed against infantry in enclosed spaces.