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Assumed problem:

High strength used to be important to take down vehicles and monstrous creatures.
However, today it is much less important.
Because it is less important some big tanks are strangely frail, and the design space for weaponry has diminished slightly.

Proposed Rule:

Add rule 'Big Guns Required: Ignore AP modifiers from hits with Strength less than this units toughness.'
All vehicles and all monstrous creatures gain Big Guns Required.

Intention: Make high strength weapons a bit more important when taking down tanks and big monsters.

Bonus Suggestion: Big Guns Required could be hooked into other rules, such as stratagems, psychic powers, wargear upgrades, or handled out to a few elite unit options.

Nah. A meltagun should be better than an autocannon at getting through a tank's armor even if that tank happens to be T9.

I think what you're looking for is something like Hellebore's suggestion from this recent thread: https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/807585.page

Basically giving guns a separate AP value for big targets and little targets.

Personally, I feel like one of the best, simple answers to most topics of tank durability is to just up their Wounds a smidge. (About 25-33%). Alternatively, Toughness and Save are arguably kind of redundant from a fluff sense. You could probably get rid of to-wound rolls and make Sv and AP into opposing modifiers to a "Defense" roll that replaces the to-wound and to-save roll. But that would require a huge reworking of lots of things.

I think it is a neat understandable idea, but would need a big rewrite to affect things. If they changed stuff I can instead imagine some kind of Anti Personel/Anti tank system.

 Wyldhunt wrote:
Nah. A meltagun should be better than an autocannon at getting through a tank's armor even if that tank happens to be T9.

I think what you're looking for is something like Hellebore's suggestion from this recent thread: https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/807585.page

Basically giving guns a separate AP value for big targets and little targets.

Personally, I feel like one of the best, simple answers to most topics of tank durability is to just up their Wounds a smidge. (About 25-33%). Alternatively, Toughness and Save are arguably kind of redundant from a fluff sense. You could probably get rid of to-wound rolls and make Sv and AP into opposing modifiers to a "Defense" roll that replaces the to-wound and to-save roll. But that would require a huge reworking of lots of things.

Is a melta having trouble with something tougher than a landraider or a Necron Monolith(wtf it's toughness 8, I thought it was higher) that big a deal?

The_Real_Chris wrote:
I think it is a neat understandable idea, but would need a big rewrite to affect things. If they changed stuff I can instead imagine some kind of Anti Personel/Anti tank system.

This is fair. Especially with 'heavies' factions like Tyranid's or some imperial guard lists you wouldn't want to use it without a major rewrite.

StaevinTheAeldari wrote:

Is a melta having trouble with something tougher than a landraider or a Necron Monolith(wtf it's toughness 8, I thought it was higher) that big a deal?

I'd say so, yes. If you're running an army that relies on a lot of melta (the main imperial anti-tank gun) to kill vehicles, your change would mean that every successful wound would go from basically ignoring armor saves to suddenly having 2/3rds of their wounds saved. Which significantly reduces the value of your high-cost-low-shots weapons with short range. Basically, it brings back something like the all-or-nothing problems of pre-8th AP systems where guns that pay for AP become really cost-inefficient against sufficiently tough targets. Which in turn would incentivize people to not gamble on things like melta and instead gamble on guns that can spam more shots. Or tldr; you make melta kind of a gamble and thus kind of meh.

But that's just an example with the relative outliers of T9 vehicles. There are a fair few S6 and S7 guns out there (star cannons, un-overcharged plasma, primaris plasma, etc.) that are clearly meant to be reasonably comfortable putting shots into tanks that would just become straight up bad at that with this change.

And again, if your end goal is to make tanks more survivable, there are probably better ways to do that with fewer downsides/unintended ripples.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

I'd say so, yes. If you're running an army that relies on a lot of melta (the main imperial anti-tank gun) to kill vehicles, your change would mean that every successful wound would go from basically ignoring armor saves to suddenly having 2/3rds of their wounds saved. Which significantly reduces the value of your high-cost-low-shots weapons with short range. Basically, it brings back something like the all-or-nothing problems of pre-8th AP systems where guns that pay for AP become really cost-inefficient against sufficiently tough targets. Which in turn would incentivize people to not gamble on things like melta and instead gamble on guns that can spam more shots. Or tldr; you make melta kind of a gamble and thus kind of meh.

But that's just an example with the relative outliers of T9 vehicles. There are a fair few S6 and S7 guns out there (star cannons, un-overcharged plasma, primaris plasma, etc.) that are clearly meant to be reasonably comfortable putting shots into tanks that would just become straight up bad at that with this change.

And again, if your end goal is to make tanks more survivable, there are probably better ways to do that with fewer downsides/unintended ripples.

T9 barely exists.
T8 is common among heavier vehicles/monsters (Land Raiders, Leeman Russ, Wraithlords Lords of War)
T7 is also common (Dreadnoughts, Rhinos, Falcons, Carnifexes, etcetera)
T6 is a bit uncommon, but there are some for skimmers and fliers and very light vehicles. Also tons of infantry without this rule where S6 would still be very useful.

Melta would still kill almost anything in the game. If you shot at a Great Unclean one it would still get it's invul save, but if it had an armor save it'd get that one instead.

Or did you misunderstand the rule? If the strength is equal or higher to the toughness you'd still get the AP modifier. Melta still cuts trough everything at T8. So Imperial Knights, Monoliths, Baneblades, etcetera. And there are plenty of T7 targets out there.

I appreciate the feedback but I have to disagree with you here.

StaevinTheAeldari wrote:

T9 barely exists.

Barely exists, but is becoming more popular. And where it does exist, severely nerfing some of the best current ways of dealing with those very durable units is going to cause problems. Consider sisters, for instance, who tend to lean on a lot of melta for their anti-tank.

T8 is common among heavier vehicles/monsters (Land Raiders, Leeman Russ, Wraithlords Lords of War)

Yep. T8 isn't super common, but it isn't rare either. Armies with lots of S5/6/7 weapons with decent AP are already counting on spamming shots to take down a T8 threat. With your rule, the number of wounds that get through could be reduced significantly.

T7 is also common (Dreadnoughts, Rhinos, Falcons, Carnifexes, etcetera)

Yep. Not quite as much S6 with good AP that springs to mind, but it's still out there. Seems like multi-damage S6 weapons with good AP should still have that AP factored in. It's one of the things that makes, for instance, shining spears not completely awful at dealing with vehicles. Take away the AP, and they're basically no better at tank hunting than dire avengers. Plus, there's the humble krak grenade.

T6 is a bit uncommon, but there are some for skimmers and fliers and very light vehicles. Also tons of infantry without this rule where S6 would still be very useful.

T6 is generally for vehicles and monsters that are reasonably small/squishy enough to be affected by things like inferno bolts and tau breacher guns. Anything at this low of Toughness strikes me as being fair game for AP from S5 and lower weapons.

Melta would still kill almost anything in the game. If you shot at a Great Unclean one it would still get it's invul save, but if it had an armor save it'd get that one instead.

Or did you misunderstand the rule? If the strength is equal or higher to the toughness you'd still get the AP modifier. Melta still cuts trough everything at T8. So Imperial Knights, Monoliths, Baneblades, etcetera. And there are plenty of T7 targets out there.

I appreciate the feedback but I have to disagree with you here.

I think I understand the rule as intended. My issue is that, even if there are still decent targets for something like a meltagun out there, your proposed rule is going to make a lot of guns worse against targets in a way that doesn't seem fluffy or particularly good for gameplay. Meltaguns already only wound T9 on a 5+ as-is. I don't think the T9 target needs to also ignore the melta's AP. I don't think starcannons need to be nerfed against land raiders. I don't think inferno bolts need to be neerfed against venoms. I see a lot of downsides that would create a lot of new balance issues.

If your end goal is to make vehicles more durable or to make Strength more important, there are probably better ways to do that.

Literally 1-2 extra wounds would fix a lot of durability issues for vehicles. GW just needs to ignore the arbitrary "oh it has 10 wounds so it 100% needs a 3 tier degrading profile"

After GW spent and entire edition intentionally making AT weapons more effective, I don’t think the answer is to nerf them into the ground. Every high Toughness Vehicle or Monstrous creature already have good Armor Saved. Many have Invulnerable Saves. This proposed rule doesn’t fix any real problem. It just destroys most Armies ability to deal with high toughness targets unless they bring the strongest weapons.

@EviscerationPlague assigning degrading profiles based on whim rather than the 10+ wound rule would be a lot more arbitrary. It's going to be Riptides and NDK all over. How curious the new kits get to become MCs instead of vehicles not have a degrading profile. Changing the rule to 12 would work because 12 is an important number, but 10 is more important and therefore also a great breakoff point, 9 or 13 would have been arbitrary. It is not arbitrary that bolters are range 24" instead of 23" or 25" either.

 alextroy wrote:
After GW spent and entire edition intentionally making AT weapons more effective, I don’t think the answer is to nerf them into the ground. Every high Toughness Vehicle or Monstrous creature already have good Armor Saved. Many have Invulnerable Saves. This proposed rule doesn’t fix any real problem. It just destroys most Armies ability to deal with high toughness targets unless they bring the strongest weapons.

Many people have problems with something like heavy bolters and bolt rifles being too good against units like Rhinos and Predators, the proposed rule fixes that. Removing the option of dealing with high Toughness targets unless people bring the strongest weapons is probably the intention. The proposition to make S4 and 5 useless against Land Raiders is much more extreme, but still quite common, it's something a lot of people that prefer older editions often request.

If a weapon is supposed to be an anti-vehicle weapon it should be S7, if it is anti-huge vehicles it should be S8+. T9 vehicles should not exist. The proposed rule would actually make game design a lot easier, want an anti-TEQ weapon? S4 AP-3 D3 like the Necron transdimensional beamer. Anti-vehicle? S12 AP-3 D3 like the Necron particle whip. Right now a particle whip hit is equivalent to 2 transdimensional beamer hits against a Predator and 1,7 against Terminators, in other words, the transdimensional beamer is not an anti-TEQ weapon and the particle whip is not an anti-vehicle weapon.

The proposed rule might be bad as a standalone house rule, but I think it's better than Blast which was introduced in 9th. Whether the starcannon is meant to be solely anti-TEQ or also anti-vehicle would be up to the designer of the codex, within the framework of the current rules it is pretty hard to make that distinction. What S value is good against infantry?
- 3? That's decent against T8 and awful against the insane amount of T4 infantry in the game.
- S4 is good against T7 and bad against T5.
- S5 and S6 is bad against T7 but suddenly good against T8 and T6 respectively.
Whatever Strength value you choose you're making the weapon better against a popular vehicle Toughness and no better against a popular infantry Toughness.

T9 exist, regardless of your opinion. It is highly like to increase given it being on the Chaos Land Raider. Therefore proposing a rule that ignores reality makes it a poor proposal.

And given your own statement that Anti-Tank weapons should be S7, it seems you already have a good basis for a rule in your own thoughts. Only weapons S7 or higher get to use their AP value against Vehicles and Monstrous Creatures.

The only issues I see here is Plasma weapons with S7 that would effectively be AT despite being more a heavy AP weapon and Assault Cannons which are perfect for shredding light vehicles.

Might be better to make an Anti-Tank rule and creating a list of weapons that get the rule rather than using a blanket Strength rule.

 alextroy wrote:
T9 exist, regardless of your opinion. It is highly like to increase given it being on the Chaos Land Raider. Therefore proposing a rule that ignores reality makes it a poor proposal.

Could you not apply the same logic to ignore invulns and super invulns? Should we assume Terminator armour will gain a super invuln and force weapons will ignore invulns or are we allowed to say certain developments are silly and should be reverted instead of continued?

If your proposal interact badly with existing rules (T9), it makes your proposal bad. Hand waving away the interaction because the problem rule doesn’t fit your paradigm of the game doesn’t magically make the proposal good. It just makes it half baked.

Dragging in what-aboutisms makes your proposal seem weaker, so you should level those out.

 alextroy wrote:
If your proposal interact badly with existing rules, it makes your proposal bad.

Every proposal interacts badly with existing rules, therefore your argument is invalid. Take a proposal you seem to like, adding more dice types. But D12s are barely affected by a -1 to hit or wound and the current rules limit modifiers to +1 or -1, so it interacts badly with how modifiers currently work, so it's a bad idea. Another idea you like is to change Morale to be something other than just inflicting additional casualties, but there are abilities which are designed assuming that is how morale works, whether it be reducing Ld by -1 or changing the rolls required to pass or fail a Combat Attrition test, those might be OP or useless depending on how important passing a Ld test is and whether Combat Attrition is even still in the game when the Morale rule change takes effect.

I'd like to step back and look at the issues the OP is trying to address.

StaevinTheAeldari wrote:
Assumed problem:

High strength used to be important to take down vehicles and monstrous creatures.
However, today it is much less important.
Because it is less important some big tanks are strangely frail, and the design space for weaponry has diminished slightly.

I've highlighted what I understand to be the 3 different issues the OP is attempting to address.

The orange text seems to be the easiest to address, so I'll start there. If reduced design space for weaponry is considered a problem, then I feel like the proposed solution would fail to address the orange text in a big way. By making AP not function for certain weapons against certain targets, you're very much reducing the design space rather than adding to it. A plasma weapon, for instance, is currently an option that struggles to wound high toughness targets (T8 or T9 depending on the plasma weapon in question), but it's still better off than, say, a pulse carbine because its AP and Damage stats mean that those high Toughness targets are less likely to save and will take more damage when they do fail their saves. Your proposal would remove the plasma's superior AP from that equation, effectively diminishing the space for a weapon that isn't great at wounding high T but is still relatively good at bypassing its armor.

The pink text is a topic that comes up in this section of the forums pretty often. I've found that an easier, less-messy solution for most complaints about tank durability is just to give vehicles a few extra wounds. Something like a 20%-33% increase. None of the messy fallout that we've discussed so far in this thread, and tanks become less frail.

The blue text seems like it's going to end up being the most subjective and messy part of the discussion because it seems like we may be getting into a matter of personal preference. Consider:
A.) If Strength is less important, is that inherently a bad thing? If so, why?
B.) The exact Strength value you has currently matters quite a bit in the game. S9+ is able to wound even the toughest targets pretty reliably. S8 is able to tackle T7 and T8 targets better than S7. S7 does okay against T7 (the most common(?) vehicle/monster Toughness) and works quite well against light T6 targets. S6 is mostly for non-vehicle/monster targets. In other words, Strength *does* matter in the sense that being S7, 8, or 9 (or 10+ now that T9 is more of a thing) all have clear upsides that make you glad for the extra point of strength.
C.) Is this a roundabout way of getting to the common complaint that vehicles should be immune/more resistant to small arms fire? Not trying to put words in your mouth, but if so, acknowledging as much might help to cut to cut to the heart of the discussion.

 vict0988 wrote:

 alextroy wrote:
If your proposal interact badly with existing rules, it makes your proposal bad.

Every proposal interacts badly with existing rules, therefore your argument is invalid. Take a proposal you seem to like, adding more dice types. But D12s are barely affected by a -1 to hit or wound and the current rules limit modifiers to +1 or -1, so it interacts badly with how modifiers currently work, so it's a bad idea. Another idea you like is to change Morale to be something other than just inflicting additional casualties, but there are abilities which are designed assuming that is how morale works, whether it be reducing Ld by -1 or changing the rolls required to pass or fail a Combat Attrition test, those might be OP or useless depending on how important passing a Ld test is and whether Combat Attrition is even still in the game when the Morale rule change takes effect.

Any good proposal should take such rules into account and adjust them accordingly.

For Example, if you want to make a new Morale system, it is incumbent upon you to take into account modern Leadership values, rules that adjust Leadership, and rules that adjust Combat Attrition modifiers. Fail to do all of that and you have a half-baked proposal.

"Any good proposal should take such rules into account and adjust them accordingly."

But when I say T9 should not exist, you say "regardless of your opinion it exists" so which is it? I wrote an essay on Proposed Rules etiquette but I deleted it again, I think you should post a couple threads before making more comments in Proposed Rules alextroy.

I don’t recall your proposal saying all units with Toughness greater than 8 have their Toughness reduced to 8. You said nothing initially and then just noted that T9 shouldn’t exist when your proposal was critized for it’s impact on T9 models.

To be honest the idea that small arms are an effective threat against vehicles and monsters is IMHO quite obsolete. It was true in 8th, but these days most big targets have a combination of T8, 2+ armor, absurd amounts of wounds and/or AoC.

My Tyranid monstrous creatures aren't afraid of bolters, they are afraid of multi-meltas.

How about changing it slightly to;

A unit with the Monster or Vehicle key word ignores the first point of AP against attacks that have a S value of half of the units T value +2, or lower, rounding up in the case of decimals.

So T8 would ignore the first point of AP from S6 and lower, T9 ignores from S7, and so on.

Means that dedicated AT weapons are still scary, but a very heavy tank is less scared of basic plasma guns and heavy bolters.


Please bear in mind I've not done any maths on this suggestion, so please let me know if this simply doesn't work.

 Afrodactyl wrote:
How about changing it slightly to;

A unit with the Monster or Vehicle key word ignores the first point of AP against attacks that have a S value of half of the units T value +2, or lower, rounding up in the case of decimals.

So T8 would ignore the first point of AP from S6 and lower, T9 ignores from S7, and so on.

Means that dedicated AT weapons are still scary, but a very heavy tank is less scared of basic plasma guns and heavy bolters.


Please bear in mind I've not done any maths on this suggestion, so please let me know if this simply doesn't work.

Well, that would mean that sisters' war suits (T5) would reduce the AP of Inferno bolts (S4) which may or may not be intentional. And Strength 6 weapons like laser lances would all be getting nerfed versus T7 targets. So it seems to me like this would be creating a lot of probably unintended casualties/ripple effects.

I think reasonable people could argue that there's no need for a heavy tank to be less scared of plasma and heavy bolters. But assuming that is our desired goal, you're still probably better off just giving whichever vehicles you think appropriate a rule that negates AP (or whatever) unless the attacking weapon has the "anti-tank" keyword.

 Wyldhunt wrote:

 Afrodactyl wrote:
How about changing it slightly to;

A unit with the Monster or Vehicle key word ignores the first point of AP against attacks that have a S value of half of the units T value +2, or lower, rounding up in the case of decimals.

So T8 would ignore the first point of AP from S6 and lower, T9 ignores from S7, and so on.

Means that dedicated AT weapons are still scary, but a very heavy tank is less scared of basic plasma guns and heavy bolters.


Please bear in mind I've not done any maths on this suggestion, so please let me know if this simply doesn't work.

Well, that would mean that sisters' war suits (T5) would reduce the AP of Inferno bolts (S4) which may or may not be intentional. And Strength 6 weapons like laser lances would all be getting nerfed versus T7 targets. So it seems to me like this would be creating a lot of probably unintended casualties/ripple effects.

I think reasonable people could argue that there's no need for a heavy tank to be less scared of plasma and heavy bolters. But assuming that is our desired goal, you're still probably better off just giving whichever vehicles you think appropriate a rule that negates AP (or whatever) unless the attacking weapon has the "anti-tank" keyword.

I forgot that there are T5 vehicles in all honesty. Now actually looking at weapon profiles I can't think of a way of amending my rule to make it work without rules wonkiness.