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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?

 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.

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.

 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.

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.

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.