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Ap Weapons Ignore The Armor they are set as and give -1 to adjacent armor values.

Ie, AP 3 weapons ignore Armor Save 3+ and gives -1 to 2+ and 4+ armor saves.

Reasoning: Increase diversity of weaponry. So that a high AP weapon is not great against every armor in the game. Or a low AP is not relevant against every armor in the game.
Logic would be:
If AP is High: An autocannon would absolutely turn a piece of flack armor into a crap save, but a flak armor is already crap so the degradation is actually negligible.
If AP is Low: The armor penetrating rounds might be good against flack armor, but they'll do crap against a terminator.

Possible extra rules:
Some weapons such as plasma may have a rule that gives -1 to all other saves instead of just adjacent. So Plasma Gun Ignores Armor save +2 and gives all other saves -1.

Thoughts? Confusing? Interesting? Boring? To much thinking involved?

Why would a Melta go right through Terminator armor, reduce Power Armor, but leave flak untouched?

This just doesn’t make any sense.

 JNAProductions wrote:
Why would a Melta go right through Terminator armor, reduce Power Armor, but leave flak untouched?

This just doesn’t make any sense.

And an Autocannon would ignore a Tau Firewarrior's armor but gets absorbed by that thick leather jacket.

The suggestion is FAR worse than the current setup we have.

 JNAProductions wrote:
Why would a Melta go right through Terminator armor, reduce Power Armor, but leave flak untouched?

This just doesn’t make any sense.

I already explained this:
"If AP is High: An autocannon would absolutely turn a piece of flack armor into a crap save, but a flak armor is already crap so the degradation is actually negligible."

So a meltagun focused on cutting trough heavy pansar wouldn't affect a flak armor because it's designed to cut trough heavy pansar of a tank, not murder infantry.

This system would be much better than the system already in place because it means you'd have more room for weapons beyond mass rate of fire or high ap.

Plasma and meltaguns would no longer be the clear superior choice just because high armor penetration is good against everything, there'd be a point to take auto cannons or flamers or heavy flamers or current -1 ap weapons that don't have a large number of attacks.
It'd also be better because it'd make it harder to chip down heavy tanks with those same -1 AP weapons spammed.

That said in the more extreme cases (weapons dedicated to like 2+ armor saves) you might want to give them a little extra bonus since they only have an adjacent save and are supposed to be rather extreme. Perhaps something more generic than a special rule.

You could revise it to:
1. Ap Weapons Ignore the armor they are set as and give -1 to adjacent armor values.
2. Ap 2 weapons ignore armor saves of 2+ and set all other armor saves to -1.

It would fix a large part of the current issue where instead of armor saves you need a small bucket of extra rules (Armor of Contempt, -1 Damage, Feel No Pain, Invulnerability Saves Everywhere) because AP shifts everything and shifts on the lower end of the scale (2+ to 3+ or 3+ to 4+) are huge.

StaevinTheAeldari wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:
Why would a Melta go right through Terminator armor, reduce Power Armor, but leave flak untouched?

This just doesn’t make any sense.

I already explained this:
"If AP is High: An autocannon would absolutely turn a piece of flack armor into a crap save, but a flak armor is already crap so the degradation is actually negligible."

So a meltagun focused on cutting trough heavy pansar wouldn't affect a flak armor because it's designed to cut trough heavy pansar of a tank, not murder infantry.

You've explained it, but your explanation doesn't hold up under scrutiny. Respectfully, both your suggestion and your explanation are counter-intuitive. An anti-tank missile is designed to kill tanks, not leather jackets. So if I'm standing on a tank when the missile hits, I have a better chance of surviving the missile than the tank? You see how that sounds, right? So in-universe, the plasmagun attack is going to go right through power armor, but that same blob of plasma would fail to burn through a flakk jacket because... the flack jacket is so much less durable the plasma forgets to burn it?

This system would be much better than the system already in place because it means you'd have more room for weapons beyond mass rate of fire or high ap.

Do you though? Or do you just change from a system where you can represent different degrees of AP into more of a "rock-paper-scissors" system where each AP value works great against one number, okay against two other numbers, and not at all against the rest of the numbers? So a meltagun isn't "better" at getting through armor; it's just better at getting t hrough armor of a specific thickness. You're not really adding room so much as you're making all AP values more or less the same.

Plasma and meltaguns would no longer be the clear superior choice just because high armor penetration is good against everything, there'd be a point to take auto cannons or flamers or heavy flamers or current -1 ap weapons that don't have a large number of attacks.

Are you under the impression that meltaguns are good at clearing a horde of gargoyles? When I want to kill gargoyles, I use Swooping Hawks, not Fire Dragons. And those weapons with middle-of-the-road AP and/or number of shots tend to either be more easily available, more flexible, or less expensive than the more powerful/specialized weapons. I'm sure there are plenty of such weapons who aren't filling their niches very well at the moment, but the answer to those probably isn't a nonsensical overhaul to the AP system.

It'd also be better because it'd make it harder to chip down heavy tanks with those same -1 AP weapons spammed.

Please clarify. Are you trying to make autocannons worse against tanks, or are you frustrated that bolters are consistently killing your tanks?

That said in the more extreme cases (weapons dedicated to like 2+ armor saves) you might want to give them a little extra bonus since they only have an adjacent save and are supposed to be rather extreme. Perhaps something more generic than a special rule.

You could revise it to:
1. Ap Weapons Ignore the armor they are set as and give -1 to adjacent armor values.
2. Ap 2 weapons ignore armor saves of 2+ and set all other armor saves to -1.

So again, a space marine is less likely to survive a plasma shot than a guardsmen because having better armor is worse actually?

It would fix a large part of the current issue where instead of armor saves you need a small bucket of extra rules (Armor of Contempt, -1 Damage, Feel No Pain, Invulnerability Saves Everywhere) because AP shifts everything and shifts on the lower end of the scale (2+ to 3+ or 3+ to 4+) are huge.

The game is too lethal. This is more easily fixed by basically undoing a bunch of the stat creep we've seen over 9th edition, maybe buffing the benefits of cover, getting rid of lethality-boosting stratagems, etc.

This doesn't make any sense, as the others have said.

There's no reason a flak jacket should be untouched by a melta gun.

If you said something like a lascannon being diffused/refracted by ceramic/highly polished metal armour it might have been vaguely plausible with some handwaving.

The issue with AP isn't that it doesn't work, it's that there's too much of it. Armour of any kind is irrelevant when everything ignores it. Tone down the lethality of the game in sensible places (IE no blanket changes that nerf factions that are already struggling), and the AP problem sorts itself out.

I would have preferred the old style all or none approach. AP3 ignores 3+, 4+, 5+, 6+ And reduces a 2+ save by -1.

Though that only works if you start removing all the +1 to saves.

Jarms48 wrote:
I would have preferred the old style all or none approach. AP3 ignores 3+, 4+, 5+, 6+ And reduces a 2+ save by -1.

Though that only works if you start removing all the +1 to saves.

While that approach is better than the OP's suggestion by miles, it's still worse than the current AP system. HH still has all or nothing AP and AP 4, 5, and 6 are exactly the same as AP- and AP1 is only different than AP2 if you're shooting at something with hull points.

I get that the conceptual hurdle is to high.

I thought that well 'heavy ap goes into heavy armor' - 'light ap goes into light armor' would be simple, but with the thematics of 40k and what people are used to it's just to much.

It's a shame though, the survival curve of armor is really borked right now, which is why everything has to get invulnerability saves and the bucket of special rules to make up for it.

It's really two issues.

High AP is good against all other armor categories.
Light AP is to good against heavy armored targets rendering armor saves insufficient.

The old AP system solves the second point, but it does nothing with the first.

StaevinTheAeldari wrote:
I get that the conceptual hurdle is to high.

I thought that well 'heavy ap goes into heavy armor' - 'light ap goes into light armor' would be simple, but with the thematics of 40k and what people are used to it's just to much.

It's a shame though, the survival curve of armor is really borked right now, which is why everything has to get invulnerability saves and the bucket of special rules to make up for it.

It's really two issues.

High AP is good against all other armor categories.
Light AP is to good against heavy armored targets rendering armor saves insufficient.

The old AP system solves the second point, but it does nothing with the first.

Is there any example, in real world or popular fiction, or something that can punch through an inch of steel just fine, but can also be deflected by a thick padded jacket?

The first point isn’t a bug. It’s verisimilitude.

 JNAProductions wrote:

StaevinTheAeldari wrote:
I get that the conceptual hurdle is to high.

I thought that well 'heavy ap goes into heavy armor' - 'light ap goes into light armor' would be simple, but with the thematics of 40k and what people are used to it's just to much.

It's a shame though, the survival curve of armor is really borked right now, which is why everything has to get invulnerability saves and the bucket of special rules to make up for it.

It's really two issues.

High AP is good against all other armor categories.
Light AP is to good against heavy armored targets rendering armor saves insufficient.

The old AP system solves the second point, but it does nothing with the first.

Is there any example, in real world or popular fiction, or something that can punch through an inch of steel just fine, but can also be deflected by a thick padded jacket?

The first point isn’t a bug. It’s verisimilitude.

In real life?
Two knights duel while wearing platemail. They'll prefer a warhammer. Same knights outside armor or with light armor, they'll prefer a sword. The hammer doesn't automatically become superior because it's better at penetrating armor.
For guns - hollowpoint bullets are better at lightly armored targets, but if they are wearing bullet proof vests you'll want armor piercing rounds.
For cannons, you usually don't use a cannon to take out a single grunt.

But none of that matters because it's a game.
And yes, there are plenty of games that don't have the same issue that 40k has.
Hell part of the inspiration for this was DoW II multiplayer where you can get bonuses at damage that only apply to Heavy Infantry.

And it is a bug.

40k has hits, wounds, armor saves. That is the core of the survival system. Oh and now we also have multiwounds.

Armor saves have clear categories:

Average Armor 4+,
Good armor 3+,
Very Good Armor 2+,
Bad Armor 5+,
Very Bad Armor 6+.

But with the way ap works you only really have
Good or Very Good armor, oh also, it's actually rather weak because it'll mostly be average or worse.

So the result is Armor of Contempt, -1 Damage on Dreadnoughts and wraiths, Invulnerability saves everywhere, minus chances to hit, more wounds, feel no pain etcetera. Oh and large amounts of weapons that are obsolete and vehicles that are useless because they won't survive.

But that's the thing, the cannon not being used to kill a single grunt isn't because it can't kill the grunt, it's because it's an inefficient toss up between damage potential and opportunity cost. Like burning your house down to get rid of a spider; yes you can do that and it will definitely get rid of it, but there's far easier and far cheaper methods that do just as good a job.

If the armour piercing machine gun round kills you just as well as a hollow point, but also pierces armour, then you're always using it over the hollow point. Armour piercing rounds don't suddenly stop when they encounter flesh.

And the hammer example isn't a great one because they don't pierce armour, they crush it. A hammer blow is lessened by a gambeson, but it's still going to ruin your day.

Afrodactyl wrote:But that's the thing, the cannon not being used to kill a single grunt isn't because it can't kill the grunt, it's because it's an inefficient toss up between damage potential and opportunity cost. Like burning your house down to get rid of a spider; yes you can do that and it will definitely get rid of it, but there's far easier and far cheaper methods that do just as good a job.

If the armour piercing machine gun round kills you just as well as a hollow point, but also pierces armour, then you're always using it over the hollow point. Armour piercing rounds don't suddenly stop when they encounter flesh.

And the hammer example isn't a great one because they don't pierce armour, they crush it. A hammer blow is lessened by a gambeson, but it's still going to ruin your day.

Pretty much this. The hammer isn't less good at killing a peasant because the peasant is more likely to survive a direct hit from the hammer; the hammer is less efficient at peasant slaughtering because it's heavier/slower and loses a lot of its effectiveness when the peasants are grappling you (compared to a short sword with a thrusting tip that you can just kind of rapidly jab into their squishy bodies in a pinch. Or in 40k terms, the peasant isn't passing more armor saves against a hammer than a sword; it's just that the sword grants bonus attacks and doesn't impose a -1 to hit penalty.

The machinegun example might be slightly too specialized? Like, to my admittedly limited gun knowledge, hollowpoints and armor piercing rounds are both specialized to accomplish different things. In 40k terms, the hollowpoint has worse AP but does bonus damage. One is a kraken bolt, and the other is a vengeance round. And to my understanding, they're both kind of a "variant" of "normal" ammo. As I understand it, hollow points are specifically trading armor piercing ability for the ability to inflict larger, nastier wounds. And I feel like that's a trade-off that doesn't fit most 40k weapons. Like, I might have a specific model of meltagun that trades some of its intensity for a broader spread (in game terms, sacrificing some strength/AP for an extra shot or something), but it's still going to be AP-4 or -3. It's still going to go through a 5+ armor save with ease, and with more ease than a dedicated anti-infantry weapon like a frag grenade. The frag grenade is trying to be a better choice for clearing out hordes of termagaunts than the meltagun by virtue of being able to hurt more bugs at once than the meltagun.

StaevinTheAeldari wrote:
Armor saves have clear categories:

Average Armor 4+,
Good armor 3+,
Very Good Armor 2+,
Bad Armor 5+,
Very Bad Armor 6+.

But with the way ap works you only really have
Good or Very Good armor, oh also, it's actually rather weak because it'll mostly be average or worse.

So the result is Armor of Contempt, -1 Damage on Dreadnoughts and wraiths, Invulnerability saves everywhere, minus chances to hit, more wounds, feel no pain etcetera. Oh and large amounts of weapons that are obsolete and vehicles that are useless because they won't survive.

See, I think you're identifying some of the problems with the oversaturation of AP in the game but then trying to fix it with a really wonky and seemingly unfluffy solution. If we just toned down how freely AP is handed out and took other steps to reduce the lethality of the game, it would address the issues you've mentioned here, but you wouldn't have meltaguns bouncing harmlessly off of guardsmen.

Yeah-good AP working on every type of armor isn’t an issue.
The ease and cheapness of good AP is.

ERJAK wrote:
While that approach is better than the OP's suggestion by miles, it's still worse than the current AP system. HH still has all or nothing AP and AP 4, 5, and 6 are exactly the same as AP- and AP1 is only different than AP2 if you're shooting at something with hull points.

Well, AP4 would reduce a 3+ save to 4+. AP5 would reduce a 4+ save to 5+. Etc. So it wouldn't totally negate it, but the weapon has enough penetration to at least have a better chance at penetrating.

Jarms48 wrote:

See, I think you're identifying some of the problems with the oversaturation of AP in the game but then trying to fix it with a really wonky and seemingly unfluffy solution. If we just toned down how freely AP is handed out and took other steps to reduce the lethality of the game, it would address the issues you've mentioned here, but you wouldn't have meltaguns bouncing harmlessly off of guardsmen.

I understand the difficulty people are having with it, and it saddens me a bit, but I just don't find it any more unfluffy than say a Lascannon or Autocannon failing to wound a guardsman. Like if you were to take a cannon round to the chest and it can fail to wound you I think having an armor save isn't that much worse.
In my system that guardsman would have a 6+ armor save against an AP2 weapon, since AP2 gives a -1 to all other saves. Hardly 'bouncing off'.

Would it feel better if that was just how it worked for all AP values?

Just replace it entirely with: "AP Ignore the armor they are set as and give -1 to all worse armor values."

I don't like it, because it dilutes the point of having AP being better at specific categories of armor instead of just across the board, but it might be easier for people to swallow and think around.

StaevinTheAeldari wrote:

Jarms48 wrote:

See, I think you're identifying some of the problems with the oversaturation of AP in the game but then trying to fix it with a really wonky and seemingly unfluffy solution. If we just toned down how freely AP is handed out and took other steps to reduce the lethality of the game, it would address the issues you've mentioned here, but you wouldn't have meltaguns bouncing harmlessly off of guardsmen.

I understand the difficulty people are having with it, and it saddens me a bit, but I just don't find it any more unfluffy than say a Lascannon or Autocannon failing to wound a guardsman. Like if you were to take a cannon round to the chest and it can fail to wound you I think having an armor save isn't that much worse.
In my system that guardsman would have a 6+ armor save against an AP2 weapon, since AP2 gives a -1 to all other saves. Hardly 'bouncing off'.

Would it feel better if that was just how it worked for all AP values?

Just replace it entirely with: "AP Ignore the armor they are set as and give -1 to all worse armor values."

I don't like it, because it dilutes the point of having AP being better at specific categories of armor instead of just across the board, but it might be easier for people to swallow and think around.

An AP2 weapon reduces a Sanguinary Guard to no save.
It reduces a Marine to a 4+.
Why does the better armor save worse?

Again-can you think of any real world or popular fictional example of something that pierces good armor just fine, but doesn't work well on weaker armor?
The only example that I can think of that even vaguely applies is Dune's force fields, which allow slow things through, but block anything going above a certain speed. Which is a property of the ARMOR in this case, not the weapon, so it doesn't really work for this situation.

Same thing with having played Knights Of The Old Republic. You'd have the energy Shields you could equip to the characters, but it didn't stop physical objects just energy. It's stupid but it is what it is.

Once again that's the property of the armor though.

StaevinTheAeldari wrote:
I understand the difficulty people are having with it, and it saddens me a bit,

Sorry we can't comprehend your glorious vision. That has to be hard for you. ;D

but I just don't find it any more unfluffy than say a Lascannon or Autocannon failing to wound a guardsman. Like if you were to take a cannon round to the chest and it can fail to wound you I think having an armor save isn't that much worse.
In my system that guardsman would have a 6+ armor save against an AP2 weapon, since AP2 gives a -1 to all other saves. Hardly 'bouncing off'.

"It feels wrong when a lascannon survives a hit from a lascannon, so I'm suggesting rules that make that happen even more often."
^That seems to be what you're saying here, and I think there's probably an argument for sufficiently high strength weapons to auto-wound sufficiently low Toughness targets.

That said, there is a key difference here. The story to-wound rolls of 1 failing tells is, "Sometimes you miraculously survive getting shot at by a powerful attack." Your proposal doesn't just say, "Sometimes you survive an attack," it says, "People wearing flakk armor will consistently survive attacks from a krak missile (AP3) more reliably than people wearing power armor." An army of flakk jackets shouldn't see that the enemy is loaded up with high rate of fire plasma weapons and go, "Oh thank the Emperor! It's only plasma. If they'd brought bolters, our armor wouldn't stand a chance!"

Would it feel better if that was just how it worked for all AP values?

Just replace it entirely with: "AP Ignore the armor they are set as and give -1 to all worse armor values."

I don't like it, because it dilutes the point of having AP being better at specific categories of armor instead of just across the board, but it might be easier for people to swallow and think around.

That would be better than your initial proposal because at least a flakk jacket wouldn't be completely ignoring the AP of a meltagun, but it's still worse than the current GW rules. This version would still run into the weirdness of a guardsman being more likely to tank an AP2 plasmagun shot than a sanguinary guard. (The guardsman would get a 6+ save while the sang would get no save at all.)

EviscerationPlague wrote:Same thing with having played Knights Of The Old Republic. You'd have the energy Shields you could equip to the characters, but it didn't stop physical objects just energy. It's stupid but it is what it is.

Once again that's the property of the armor though.

Right, that's an interaction of properties. You can theoretically have armor that's more resistant to energy damage or piercing or blunt impacts or slashing weapons or whatever. But a flakk jacket probably shouldn't be better at surviving a plasma gun than a suit of power armor is.

Wyldhunt wrote:

StaevinTheAeldari wrote:
I understand the difficulty people are having with it, and it saddens me a bit,

Sorry we can't comprehend your glorious vision. That has to be hard for you. ;D

but I just don't find it any more unfluffy than say a Lascannon or Autocannon failing to wound a guardsman. Like if you were to take a cannon round to the chest and it can fail to wound you I think having an armor save isn't that much worse.
In my system that guardsman would have a 6+ armor save against an AP2 weapon, since AP2 gives a -1 to all other saves. Hardly 'bouncing off'.

"It feels wrong when a lascannon survives a hit from a lascannon, so I'm suggesting rules that make that happen even more often."
^That seems to be what you're saying here, and I think there's probably an argument for sufficiently high strength weapons to auto-wound sufficiently low Toughness targets.

That said, there is a key difference here. The story to-wound rolls of 1 failing tells is, "Sometimes you miraculously survive getting shot at by a powerful attack." Your proposal doesn't just say, "Sometimes you survive an attack," it says, "People wearing flakk armor will consistently survive attacks from a krak missile (AP3) more reliably than people wearing power armor." An army of flakk jackets shouldn't see that the enemy is loaded up with high rate of fire plasma weapons and go, "Oh thank the Emperor! It's only plasma. If they'd brought bolters, our armor wouldn't stand a chance!"

Would it feel better if that was just how it worked for all AP values?

Just replace it entirely with: "AP Ignore the armor they are set as and give -1 to all worse armor values."

I don't like it, because it dilutes the point of having AP being better at specific categories of armor instead of just across the board, but it might be easier for people to swallow and think around.

That would be better than your initial proposal because at least a flakk jacket wouldn't be completely ignoring the AP of a meltagun, but it's still worse than the current GW rules. This version would still run into the weirdness of a guardsman being more likely to tank an AP2 plasmagun shot than a sanguinary guard. (The guardsman would get a 6+ save while the sang would get no save at all.)

EviscerationPlague wrote:Same thing with having played Knights Of The Old Republic. You'd have the energy Shields you could equip to the characters, but it didn't stop physical objects just energy. It's stupid but it is what it is.

Once again that's the property of the armor though.

Right, that's an interaction of properties. You can theoretically have armor that's more resistant to energy damage or piercing or blunt impacts or slashing weapons or whatever. But a flakk jacket probably shouldn't be better at surviving a plasma gun than a suit of power armor is.

It's not really your fault, intuition is part of nature, you can't change it, only account for it. It's saddening because it means there's a problem within the 40k design space that can't really be fixed. Also I don't think it's intrinsic to this system either (my glorious vision,lol). Regardless if you use this system or something else, as soon as you try to implement different armor types being significantly different, people wouldn't be able to accept it.

Anyway, I would have modelled up the weapons something like this. This would be for the adjacent style, so AP 4 is also -1 against 5 and 3. Ap 2 is -1 against everything.

Boltgun, Bolt Pistol, Flamer: Ap 5
Heavy Bolter, Heavy Flamer, Assault Cannon: AP4
Autocannon: AP 3
Lascannon: AP 2

Also the weapons with some odd effects:
Missile Launcher: Frag: AP 5, Krak: Ap 2 and 3 (that is, ignore 2 and 3 and -1 to everything else due to being ap 2)
Plasma weapons: Normal: AP 2, Overcharge: AP 2 and 3
Melta weapons: AP 2, if within half range: AP All (still +2 to damage of course)

Close Combat Weapons
Default Close Combat Weapons: AP None
Chainsword: AP 5
Power Maul: AP 4
Power Sword, Lightning Claws: AP: 3
Power Fist, Thunder Hammer: AP:2

Oh and a stratagem like this:
Kraken Bolts:
In the shooting phase, Improve AP of any Bolt weapons target units fire this turn by 1 (AP 5 becomes AP 4)

Probably would need more AP 3 weapons floating around though, due to the prevalence of power armor.

Some of the anti tank weapons or at least with the 1D6 damage weapons should do either more damage or at least have a minimum damage value. But that's an entirely separate issue.

Also I realize people are laser focused on the thematic issue but I think another flaw with this system might be there's to much modifying this or that. It's not difficult when you just think about a single weapon, but across a couple of hours in a game it might get to tiresome.
Since you could have multiple AP values on a single weapon or modify AP trough stratagems it would also be prone to to many special alternative cases over time.