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So pretty simple... a standard GEQ profile becomes Strength and Toughness 2 (and obviously a bit cheaper).

This frees up Strength/Toughness 3 for models of intermediate power (who now sit between unaugmented humans and Space Marines), and makes GEQ units more susceptible to low/mid-strength weapons. Lore-wise, they're about as squishy as 40k units get... and this reflects that. Want to survive as a human/Tau/Eldar/Gretchin/etc. in the 40k universe? Armour, evasion, or both. Otherwise survivability just ain't your thing.

Some weapons (which might be a bit more survivable by humans) could be downshifted as well (shuriken catapults, heavy stubbers and shootas/sluggas the same Strength as flamers and boltguns?... come on).

Note that this wouldn't necessarily mean that Ratlings, etc. (which aren't meaningfully that much weaker than a human anyway), become S1/T1. That would be reserved for things that even a human could stomp.

At the moment this is just a thought experiment (that I've played around with a bit), but keen to hear any arguments for or against that I might not have considered.

Well. The obvious impact is that you're making anything geq way easier to kill and also making anything meq way more survivable in melee against all things geq. So the obvious follow-up questions are:

* Is that a good thing? If so, how so?

* What kind of price increase do you expect to apply to meq armies now that they're wounding geq armies 25% more often with bolters and basically immune to melee with geq?

* What kind of price decrease do you expect to apply to geq armies/units now that they're basically not allowed to hurt the most common army in the game in melee and dying faster in return?

Some additional thoughts:
* This is obviously a massive change with lots of knock-on effects. Have you considered what those ripple effects might be and how you'd address them?

This frees up Strength/Toughness 3 for models of intermediate power (who now sit between unaugmented humans and Space Marines)

Can you provide some examples of the units you have in mind? If you're downgrading them from S/T4 to 3, can you explain how the downgrade helps them?

Lore-wise, they're about as squishy as 40k units get... and this reflects that. Want to survive as a human/Tau/Eldar/Gretchin/etc. in the 40k universe? Armour, evasion, or both. Otherwise survivability just ain't your thing.

Well, narratively tau and eldar are *not* prone to throwing lives away willy-nilly. Mechanically, their armor is only so good, and evasion-as-defense is pretty limited in 10th edition. So are you saying that you think craftworlders whose whole thing is fighting for survival should suddenly start dying in droves, or are you suggesting a bunch of additional proposals to make their armor and evasion more powerful to compensate for the nerf to their S and T?

* Overall, this is (respectfully) probably a bad idea. Change for the sake of statistically-represented minutia that would require an impractical amount of work to fix all the problems it would cause.

* If you want marines to curb stomp hordes of enemies, maybe a better approach would be to update the old Movie Marine rules? They're tongue-in-cheek, but they can be fun if your opponent is willing to buy in to the idea that a handful of marines is going to be mowing down their whole army.

The big question, as with your other suggestions: What problem does it solve?

Which units are so misrepresented with the current profile values, that creating space between humans and Marines is necessary?

Which includes a can of worms all on its own, as Wyldhunt mentioned.

The problem with this is the same problem with all attempts to make Marines feel more elite.

Marines make up the majority of the game.

Thus, it makes bugger-all difference if you make guardsmen T2. The game will still consist of a load of T4 units fighting another load of T4 units.

Marines are quite resilient already. This sort of further skew would bring 40K marines closer to Inercession from KT21, and I dont think such a buff would scale up well.

Now I could totes see civilians in 40K being S2/T2, but consider that even the regular foot soldiers of the 41st millennium have had military training and excercise, they're not your typical lard bag who can barely get through their work shift. Strenght and Toughness are abstractions of many things, a higher toughness means also that a person is more resilient to injury which would make a lesser individual lose their ability/willingness to keep on fighting; Remember that models who take a wound are not necessarily dead, just incapacitated enough not to being able or willing to fight further..

IMHO the granularity problems have more to do with the limitations inherent in a D6 Hit/Wound/Save paradigm, the numbers themselves do an acceptable job considering. Double up the resolution (D12s) so we get to 0.5 point granularity and there could be something more to work with..

 I_am_a_Spoon wrote:
So pretty simple... a standard GEQ profile becomes Strength and Toughness 2 (and obviously a bit cheaper).

This frees up Strength/Toughness 3 for models of intermediate power (who now sit between unaugmented humans and Space Marines), and makes GEQ units more susceptible to low/mid-strength weapons. Lore-wise, they're about as squishy as 40k units get... and this reflects that. Want to survive as a human/Tau/Eldar/Gretchin/etc. in the 40k universe? Armour, evasion, or both. Otherwise survivability just ain't your thing.

I'll turn this question on its head. Would it be less a shock to the system to move a limited number of units up to S and/or T 5 to create this space you are looking to free up?

2W Marines also means units that there is a vast gulf between MEQ and GEQ called 1W T4 where things like Necron Warriors can hang out. Gretchin were strong at T2, I don't see any reason why your change couldn't be implemented, S2 lasguns would be too weak against T4 though because of dice math going from 5+ to 6+. I think the only reason it could make sense would be as part of making SM 1W again, like if you were doing Fandexes for 7th edition and you really liked the big gap that the extra wound on Marines made between MEQ and GEQ.

 alextroy wrote:

 I_am_a_Spoon wrote:
So pretty simple... a standard GEQ profile becomes Strength and Toughness 2 (and obviously a bit cheaper).

This frees up Strength/Toughness 3 for models of intermediate power (who now sit between unaugmented humans and Space Marines), and makes GEQ units more susceptible to low/mid-strength weapons. Lore-wise, they're about as squishy as 40k units get... and this reflects that. Want to survive as a human/Tau/Eldar/Gretchin/etc. in the 40k universe? Armour, evasion, or both. Otherwise survivability just ain't your thing.

I'll turn this question on its head. Would it be less a shock to the system to move a limited number of units up to S and/or T 5 to create this space you are looking to free up?

This already happened in 10th, loads of units got shifted from T4 to T5 or T5 to T6 or even T7, as well as getting additional wounds. This is also just better design according to customer satisfaction data, nobody likes to get nerfed, so where possible, use buffs instead of nerfs. If you have an insane overperformer better than everything else, it'd obviously be insane to buff the entire field, including stuff that is already relatively strong just to even things out, but aim for the upper quartile of efficiency, nerf the few things that stick out above that and buff all the things in the bottom half.

Yes, but apparently the OP wants to do that again by pushing many S/T 3 units down to S/T 2 because there isn't enough space at S/T 4. I think that would have a much more drastic impact on the game than a bit more stat inflation would.

Sure, stat inflation could work. But unless you double S/T for everything else, that would impact the current relationships between almost every other unit (which wouldn't necessarily be an all-round disaster, but still).

To answer some other Qs:

- The main problem I wanted to address IMO is that units are too compressed around the S/T 3-4 bracket. Current stats don't reflect the relative capabilities of different units accurately enough. S/T 2 is also underutilised, so my thinking was that this would provide an easy way to decompress the S/T 3-4 bracket.

- Examples of models that might sit between humans and Astartes include Catachans, augmented humans like Sororitas, Space Maine Scouts and (some) assassins, Gaunts, Kroot, Ork boyz (in terms of Strength at least, not toughness), Squats, etc.

- Practically, a drop from S/T 3 to 2 would mean GEQ are somewhat more easy to wound (which they should be against most 40k weaponry) and slightly less effective in melee (although they were reliant on special weapons like powerfists anyway). Note that I didn't say their weapons would change; for example, Lasguns would remain S3 (although I think plenty of other weapons should also become S3 alongside them).

- Costs would decrease proportionately (but not dramatically) for affected units. For most factions, 500-1000pt games could involve more infantry.

- This isn't actually Marine-centric. I play Militarum, most frequently vs. Nids and Death Guard. Aside from changes to Scouts, you're right - Marine vs Marine matchups wouldn't change much.

- I personally think the game would be better if it merged (Armour) Save and Toughness into a single 'gatekeeper' stat... and anything that gets through does X Damage. But that's a different thread.

alextroy wrote:Yes, but apparently the OP wants to do that again by pushing many S/T 3 units down to S/T 2 because there isn't enough space at S/T 4. I think that would have a much more drastic impact on the game than a bit more stat inflation would.

Can you explain this part?

Wyldhunt wrote:This is obviously a massive change with lots of knock-on effects. Have you considered what those ripple effects might be and how you'd address them?

Well that's why I'm posting here. The ones I've thought of don't seem like dealbreakers, but I want additional perspectives.

Wyldhunt wrote:lSo are you saying that you think craftworlders whose whole thing is fighting for survival should suddenly start dying in droves, or are you suggesting a bunch of additional proposals to make their armor and evasion more powerful to compensate for the nerf to their S and T?

I definitely think an individual Eldar should be harder to kill (and costlier) even if not reduced in S/T (Toughness should by no means be their primary defence to begin with). Eldar lives are immeasurably precious, and every loss should hurt. For starters, their aspect armour should be better (making it equivalent to mass-manufactured flak armour is just bizarre), and they should have additional tricks to mitigate or avoid attacks.

Why would you want to shrink downwards instead of streatching upwards.

The T chart has had the artificial ceiling of T10 removed this edition which has allowed a load more granularity in weapon stats making it far easier to give weapons a better target identity than before.
With no ceiling on the chart if you wanted there to be more to differentiate the weaker units that you would be better off moving everything up on the scale to give more room at the bottom.

I mean, yeah, that would be ideal. Just way more work.

Idk. It feels like creating/using that extra space so that infantry frequently cover a wider range of values might not do what you'd expect it to. That is, right now most infantry are T3 or T4. Which means that the difference between S3 and S4 is almost always meaningful. If you want a relatively modest weapon, you can make it S3. If you want something that packs more of a punch, you can make it S4 instead, and that extra point matters against both guardsmen and marines.

Currently, something weird happens when you go from S4 to S5. That is, marines are hurt by it more often than they are S4, but guardsmen don't care about the extra S at all.

Stretching infantry values out so that their T and S covers 3 values instead of 2 means you're going to run into those weird scenarios more often. Going from S2 to S3 will matter against guardsmen and sororitas, but not against marines at all. So it becomes even harder to price those kinds of stats because their actual value will vary so much from game to game. If you wanted to expand the range of common infantry S/T, I think you'd need to switch back to the old SvsT table or something else entirely to avoid a lot of the weirdness caused by the current SvsT rules.

- I personally think the game would be better if it merged (Armour) Save and Toughness into a single 'gatekeeper' stat... and anything that gets through does X Damage. But that's a different thread.

Agreed. I've pitched something like that before.

 Wyldhunt wrote:
Going from S2 to S3 will matter against guardsmen and sororitas, but not against marines at all.

I don't get this part? Going from S2 to S3 would absolutely make a difference vs. T4 Marines (wounding on 6+ and 5+ respectively).

A revised table could be good, although I really admire the elegance of the current one.

 I_am_a_Spoon wrote:

 Wyldhunt wrote:
Going from S2 to S3 will matter against guardsmen and sororitas, but not against marines at all.

I don't get this part? Going from S2 to S3 would absolutely make a difference vs. T4 Marines (wounding on 6+ and 5+ respectively).

A revised table could be good, although I really admire the elegance of the current one.

Yeah, I take back that point. It doesn't hold up now that I look at it with less groggy eyes. Ultimately, I think there are ways to make your proposal work, especially if we use a different to-wound chart. However, I'm not sure if it's worth the amount of work involved. Personally, I don't have much trouble accepting that two units sharing the same S/T value just means they're in the same vague ballpark, so the payoff from diversifying statlines is limited. Even the obvious results of those changes would require mass re-costing of points, and then you'd probably need to do multiple follow-up passes to make sure various weapons are still behaving in a desirable fashion. Swooping hawk lasblasters putting out 4 shots apiece that each wound guardsmen on a 2+ is probably a little spicy, for instance.

I mean... yeah, agreed. But I did point out in the initial post that some S4 weapons should be downgraded in Strength. Not denying that points would have to change for many affected units.

Only if you're doing it across the board, and not just selectively.

If you redid the entire game with S/T1 actually being used and worked from there.

Starting with the smallest/weakest units in the game, ie:

Ratlings/grotz S/T1
nurglings S1T2
rippers S2 T1

human/tau S2/T2
catachan S3/T2
ork S3/T4
scar boy S4/t4

etc

Start from 1 and work up, rather than using the legacy humans =3 and working down.


Also, to avoid issues with the way the new wound table works, you would need to put a caveat on double strength/toughness:

If strength is double or more target toughness (and 2 or more points higher) 2+ to wound

1 vs 2 is problematic using doubling mechanics, so you need to treat it as one step different rather than double. But it's the only interaction that doesn't work in the current paradigm (2 vs 4 is already 2+ even in the old table).


Personally I'm not a big fan of the doubling mechanic anyway. But IMO 1-4 stats should be where most infantry sit, not 3-5.

1-4 grots - marines
5-8 terminators - vehicles
9-10 baneblades - titans