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As I piddle around with 40k to make a bespoke Kill Team + RPG elements, I find myself wondering which edition of 40k has the best vehicle rules to use?

Therefore I shall ask the experts...

-STS

I picked 9th (of course).

There are likely to be many who disagree, and there are other editions that were good for this too.

RPG means different things to different people. For me, progression is an important part of any RPG, but it isn't a big priority for some people. Crusade is clearly the most elaborate progression system ever grafted onto 40k- there's no debate about that. The question is just how important progression is to your personal notion of what constitutes an RPG.

Crusade also isn't JUST progression either: the long term goals built into every faction's bespoke content really help shape a narrative protacted over number of games: will the Tyranids devour ALL the Biomass; will the T'au bring the greater good to another star system; will the aspirant reach Sainthood; will the Cult rise up, and just how many tours of duty will you be granted before the Emperor finally bestows upon you the privilege of dying in his name?

You know, that kinda stuff.

Agendas and requisitions often combine in a mission/ reward cycle, like the redemption of a unit that has sworn a penitent oath or the Archon who conquers and claims territory.

Other editions worthy of note: Rogue Trader itself was very close to a warband style RPG, though it is a game in its infancy that lacks rules for many of the units modern players would want to use. Second has been noted for its far smaller armies, which facilitates RPG style play, but there aren't really a lot of rules for linking games in campaign play or any sort of progression. I think 4rth had a progression system? And prototype KT rules and Combat Patrol? The editions blend a little since I used the Witch Hunter dex for 3rd, 4rth and 5th. But whether it was 4rth or 5th, it was great for smaller scale RPG play.

Jake, I think you got triggered by the RPG keyword and missed the actual question. In a Kill Team scale game with an added layer of RPG elements on top, I think you want as much gritty detail as possible in how vehicles are handled. That means 2nd edition, which wasn't too much bigger than Kill Team anyway.

I would say 2nd ed as well, however, you would have to write new rules for every weapon's penetration capability - something you wouldn't have to do for rules that have T values on vehicles.

I’ve been using a slightly modified version of the current edition of Necromunda’s vehicle rules for Kill Team vehicles and it’s been a lot of fun. Plenty of control checks, swerving, and inadvertent crashes.

I'd say RPG is all about emergent storytelling coming from player choices based on what kind of people they want their characters to be, spiced up with some randomness.

Vehicles are not going to help with the former, as they are not likely to offer any dialogue options or moral dilemmas ;D They can sure contribute to creating memorable moments by providing a bit of randomness to create unscripted new decision points in an emergent story.

"Remember when the cultist vehicle was heading right at the garrison gate and we decided to shoot it with a rocket launcher but instead of stopping dead in its tracks when hit, it careened straight into that orphanage and exploded? Steve, who pulled the trigger still has nightmares about it and it's been like 10 years."

For this potential I'd say 2nd edition.

I'm not sure if any edition had vehicles rules that work well in an RPG, but the preview of the new HH edition looks promising.

If you're talking full RPG with just a handful of models, probably Rouge Trader. If you're talking skirmish RPG with a couple of squads, probably 2nd edition.

I'd give Rogue trader a look as an off the shelf solution.

However, if you like homebrew, I'd look at starting with Shadow War Armageddon (Which is a Kill team size game with advancement mechanics) and bringing in vehicle mechanics from either 2nd edition 40k or the Necromunda 95 Ash Wastes supplement.

They all share the same statline and basic mechanics and virtually anything from 2nd Edition can be ported into Shadow War Armageddon.

As it happens, Tabletop Minions just did a video on Shadow War.

I agree, Eilif. Shadow War Armageddon / Necromunda looks very promising for Inq28-style gaming. I’m seriously considering changing to that system soon.

As it stands, I originally was playing Inquisitor at at 28mm scale.

Then I switched to Shadow War Armageddon because it was faster overall and had a broader universe.

I am only thinking of switching to a standard Warhammer 40k edition solely for the RPG elements (having fliers, vehicles, company size battles so there could be characters as leaders, etc.) instead of making everything a comparatively tiny little skirmish game.

This game will replace Dark Heresy/Wrath & Glory rules because as much as I like those games... The combat in those games lacks the frenetic action inherent in other 40k games (tabletop wargames and computer FPS/RTS games).

So, I thought lets put RPG elements into the wargame.

-STS

Ah, so Shadow War: Armageddon is the missing link between 2nd ed 40K and Kill Team! I need to get me a =REDACTED= of the books for that one, dont know anything about it besides the name..

I love Shadow War, and yes, it is a great game. I much prefer it over Kill Team. Rather, I liked KT in 4th Edition, and Kill Team 1st Edition.

-STS

 Arschbombe wrote:
Jake, I think you got triggered by the RPG keyword and missed the actual question. In a Kill Team scale game with an added layer of RPG elements on top, I think you want as much gritty detail as possible in how vehicles are handled. That means 2nd edition, which wasn't too much bigger than Kill Team anyway.

Not really. People are associating a capacity for minutiae in mechanics for RPG... and again, as I pointed out, the definition of RPG is fluid and subjective.

Vehicle facings and damage tables aren't as RPG to me as vehicles being able to earn Battle Honours and Scars, or benefit from Requisitions or participate in Agendas.

How vehicle is or isn't damaged, how it does or doesn't do damage... That's just mechanics to me. And for the record, the potential for a single hit from a single weapon to destroy a vehicle do to a lucky roll on the damage was ALWAYS my least favourite vehicle rule, so any system that includes it automatically sucks for me. I MUCH prefer vehicles with wounds.

In 9th edition, one of my favourite armies was an an Ordo Xenos Inquisitor leading a 5 man Fortis KT, and a Watchmaster leading a 5 man Proteus KT in a Blackstar Transport. That's a 25 PL Crusade in 9th- perfectly legal and legit.

In 10th, this army is even better, because the Fortis team is allowed to ride in the Blackstar, meaning the 12 models, consisting of four separate units which grouped into two combat forces, all fit in the same transport. 10th also gives you access to the Agents Crusade content, which sets up scenarios for investigation as well as threat mitigation via Influence or Intrigue. The bespoke Crusade content in the Agents books is literally a random narrative campaign generator. The trade off is that you lose the cool psyker stuff that was in 9th, including psychic battle honours.

40k can accommodate Kill Team + a vehicle sized armies. It does require a bit of a collaborative approach- you can't just face off with a 500 point army designed specifically to feel like a KT + Vehicle vs. a fully optimized, made to kill, tournament style 500 point army. But if you're asking about RPG elements, you're already at collaboration.

When I wrote my post, I didn't know a thing about Shadow War. If it allows you to scaffold an effective and detailed progression system onto second edition rules, I suppose it could work. There still isn't as much material available to support either narrative development or progression as you get with Crusade... And I think I can objectively prove that this a matter of fact, not opinion. The only system I'm aware of that even came close was Necromunda. And we merged classic Necromunda and 2nd edition all the time back in the day, trying to bring some form of progression to 40k, but it was always an imperfect fit.

I just recently picked up the Boarding Actions book, and I like it a lot. It's fully compatible with Crusade. Granted, it doesn't include vehicles, but if you're playing Crusade, you're building armies from a larger roster... So you can have a vehicle on your roster, but you couldn't include it in Boarding action games. I find the roster-based approach really adds a lot of RP to the game.

Necromunda 2nd ed (from specialist games in the early 2000s) is basically 2nd ed 40k/necro rules streamlined, so there are no funky dice, all d3s and d6s.

Which aligns it well with Shadow War. So you can combine the two pretty easily.

Also, 2nd ed necro had vehicle rules for ash waste nomads, so there's pretty much everything you need there.


Fanatic magazine pdfs with ash waste rules somewhere in there:
https://www.specialist-arms.com/fanatic/

I'm pretty sure it's just the gorkamorka vehicle rules more or less.

If you join yaktribe you can download pretty every version of every Necromunda ever made, plus a billion fan docs:
https://yaktribe.games/community/threads/necromunda-community-edition-rulebook.1906/

 PenitentJake wrote:

Not really. People are associating a capacity for minutiae in mechanics for RPG... and again, as I pointed out, the definition of RPG is fluid and subjective.

Vehicle facings and damage tables aren't as RPG to me as vehicles being able to earn Battle Honours and Scars, or benefit from Requisitions or participate in Agendas.

Fascinating. You want the vehicles to be characters.

How vehicle is or isn't damaged, how it does or doesn't do damage... That's just mechanics to me. And for the record, the potential for a single hit from a single weapon to destroy a vehicle do to a lucky roll on the damage was ALWAYS my least favourite vehicle rule, so any system that includes it automatically sucks for me.

I was thinking in terms of more detailed modeling of battle damage. Modeling components and subsystems also opens up opportunities for storytelling. When the vehicle gets damaged, can the party repair it? Does anyone in the party have any mechanicum training? Does anyone know a renegade tech priest who can be persuaded to fix the vehicle? What's the tech level of the world they're on? Can they get parts? Can they afford the parts? Can they steal the parts? Does the NPC with the parts need a favor? But really, how does one call for a tow truck in the 41st millennium?

I MUCH prefer vehicles with wounds.

For me this is instant failure, total non sequitur. How can an inanimate object have wounds? As an abstraction in a larger scale game maybe, but in the micro tactical environment of an RPG? "Hey boss, the taurox needs healing..."

Good point. A vehicle should keep going for as long as the critical systems keep working. AFAIK the vehicles of the 41st M are robust, function over form designs, you can just infect their onboard car stereo with scrapcode and expect the vehicle to crap itself

I may have not played it, but I believe Gorka Morka may be similar to what you are looking for. I think it was similar to Necromunda but with vehicles. Though it was Ork based.

slade the sniper wrote:As it stands, I originally was playing Inquisitor at at 28mm scale.

Then I switched to Shadow War Armageddon because it was faster overall and had a broader universe.

I am only thinking of switching to a standard Warhammer 40k edition solely for the RPG elements (having fliers, vehicles, company size battles so there could be characters as leaders, etc.) instead of making everything a comparatively tiny little skirmish game.

This game will replace Dark Heresy/Wrath & Glory rules because as much as I like those games... The combat in those games lacks the frenetic action inherent in other 40k games (tabletop wargames and computer FPS/RTS games).

So, I thought lets put RPG elements into the wargame.

-STS

That makes sense. I think what you're running up against is that most folks don't think of adding larger scope elements (big battles, flyers, etc) as being "RPG" elements. Quite the opposite in fact.

I think it's important to deterimine exactly what your goals are for a game and your campaign.

If the goal is to have big battles and incorporate some of the characters from your RPG into them (and the results of the battle into your RPG campaign), then you simply need to pick what big-battle ruleset you want and go with that. I'd suggest either the current version of 40k or Grimdark future (depending on how much crunch you want and how much $ you want to spend). Play out your battle and then have your GM determine what the effects of the battle are on the PC's, NPC's and the campaign itself.

If the goal is to actually play out a battle as part of an RPG session of your campaign, then you probably need to compress your scope a bit and then the Shadow War/2nd Edition combo becomes something to build on as you seem to be doing already.

There aren't many systems that do multiple "Scope's" of battle that are inherently compatible with each other. One exception is Battletech where the games for....

RPG: Time of War
Small Skirimsh: Battletroops
Platoon/Lance Level: "Battletech"
Company Level: Alpha Strike
Battallion Level: Battleforce
Space Combat: Battlespace
Planetary Campaighs: Tactical Operations
Galaxy wide campaigns: Strategic Operations

... all share the same income system and many mechanics and are deliberately made to be compatible within a campaign.

I don't think GW could quite put this off as their rulesets change much more frequently and they've outsourced their RPG rules. It could be cool though to be playing a 40k RPG and then move those characters into a kill-team-type game, and then the results of that might roll into a 40k or Epic sized game.

Still all of this is very possible. It just requires a good GM.

What I'm trying to say is that rather than trying to shoehorn a very large game into small game mechanics it might be best to play each scope of game largely as it is and then have the players and GM work the results into the campaign.

Pariah Press wrote:I agree, Eilif. Shadow War Armageddon / Necromunda looks very promising for Inq28-style gaming. I’m seriously considering changing to that system soon.

While you're at it, look at some of the "Inquisimunda" homebrews that were released combining elements of N95 and Inquisitor. There was a bit of a trend of folks playing this after Inquisitor was released and folks began to want something that played more like a wargame than an almost-RPG. There's a few good ones out there including a version or two at yaktribe.

Also "Acolyte" is a smaller scope fan version specifically based on low-level inquision missions based on Kill Team and worth looking at.

tauist wrote:Ah, so Shadow War: Armageddon is the missing link between 2nd ed 40K and Kill Team! I need to get me a =REDACTED= of the books for that one, dont know anything about it besides the name..

The rulebooks are still fairly available though the prices might have gone up a bit after Tabletop minions released the video about the game last week.

A full PDF of the big rulebook is fairly easy to find online and if you only have the smaller game box rulebook, the additional army lists that GW released (and were in the larger standalone rulebook) are still available on the wayback machine.
https://web.archive.org/web/20171113023203/https://www.warhammer-community.com/2017/04/22/shadow-war-armageddon-pre-order-and-downloadsgw-homepage-post-4/

Hellebore wrote:Necromunda 2nd ed (from specialist games in the early 2000s) is basically 2nd ed 40k/necro rules streamlined, so there are no funky dice, all d3s and d6s.

Which aligns it well with Shadow War. So you can combine the two pretty easily.

Also, 2nd ed necro had vehicle rules for ash waste nomads, so there's pretty much everything you need there.

Fanatic magazine pdfs with ash waste rules somewhere in there:
https://www.specialist-arms.com/fanatic/

I'm pretty sure it's just the gorkamorka vehicle rules more or less.

If you join yaktribe you can download pretty every version of every Necromunda ever made, plus a billion fan docs:
https://yaktribe.games/community/threads/necromunda-community-edition-rulebook.1906/

Yaktribe is brilliant. Their "NCE" cleanup of the Necromunda Living Rulebook is really quite slick. Nothing major, just alot of small tweaks and additions to make it run smoother and be a bit more balanced.

It is worth mentioning that you can play an RPG with extremely simple rules or even no rules, dice, stats etc at all (been there, done that). Duolingo may have levels and XPs but is not an RPG as a result for example.

The interactive storytelling and free characterisation of protagonists (through all the player choices for their actions/dialogue), these elements are ubiquitous. Remove them and you get a dungeon crawl boardgame like Gloomhaven or Descent, not an RPG.

Cyel wrote:
It is worth mentioning that you can play an RPG with extremely simple rules or even no rules, dice, stats etc at all (been there, done that).

I've heard this claim before, and I'm not sure I buy it. I'd argue that you can very clearly role-play without rules, but you can't play a role-playing GAME without rules of some kind. Many RPG games are very mechanics-light, but light is not the same as non-existent.

Cyel wrote:

Duolingo may have levels and XPs but is not an RPG as a result for example.

The point isn't that all things that include Levels and XP are RPG's; it's that MOST things that ARE RPGs DO include some form of progression system which MAY include XP's (most RPG's do) and/or Levels (far fewer RPGs have levels- many allow you to directly purchase skills which represent learning achieved by wise choices and practice, or in some cases, mentorship, which presents a more holistic representation of gradual growth over time than the sharp and sudden spikes in learning that occur in level-based systems).

Cyel wrote:

The interactive storytelling and free characterisation of protagonists (through all the player choices for their actions/dialogue), these elements are ubiquitous. Remove them and you get a dungeon crawl boardgame like Gloomhaven or Descent, not an RPG.

Absolutely true. But having a progression system that goes with those player choices, and mechanics that provide clear details about HOW to represent, recreate and or resolve those choices on the table only improves and better facilitates the roleplaying. When we did our World of Darkness LARP, the Vampires got very ideological about Clan members studying non-clan disciplines; some of the older and more traditional Clan members viewed it as a lack of faith in one's own clan to seek knowledge elsewhere, while other members encouraged inter-clan relationships that were more likely to result in studying outside the clan... But very little of that narrative, and the roleplaying and scheming and plotting that arose from it would have been possible without the progression system that created leveled disciplines and assigned three to each clan.

Agendas and requisitions ARE the way to represent the choices you roleplay. Like if a squad of battle sisters fails to secure an important objective and you lose the game, you might roleplay swearing a Penitent Oath and declare to your opponent at the end of the battle in your most pious tones: "I, Sister Superior Marina Rachella accept the responsibility for my failure to secure the evidence of Heresy lurking in the Shadows of the Shrine of Saint Severn the Apostle. We have failed our Emperor, and must cast ourselves from his grace!" ... But the way you represent that on the table, is you pay an RP for the Path of the Penitent requisition, which allows you to swap the battle sister models for and equal number of Repentia who have the same number of XP and battle honours as the models they replace. If you LOVE modelling, you can even pick up an extra box of battle sisters and swap heads so that the Repentia have the same faces as the sisters they replace.

Then, that same unit can chose the Atonement in Battle Agenda to start their path to redemption. You might declare, "Though we have fallen from the Emperor's grace my sisters, we can redeem ourselves with the blood of his foes!", but the way you represent that on the table is to choose the Agenda at the expense of one of the other options that may have been available to you, and then you do everything in your power to ensure that the unit kills at least one enemy unit in melee. If they do, you get an XP and a Redemption point. And look: people are going to point out that Repentia's only real purpose and option is to kill units in hand to hand, and it's what they would be doing anyway... And that's true. But what makes it a roleplaying choice is that you only get so many Agendas... And in a 500 point game, likely the scale we're playing at given the topic at hand, that prevents you from choosing other agendas which might feed a potential saint's quest for apotheosis.

And you have to do it three in three separate games in order to earn enough redemption points to buy the glorious Redemption Requisition, which allows the models to be swapped again, this time for either Seraphim, Sacressants or Paragons. Again, head swap, by all means; loudly declare each of your redemption points AND your use of the Glorious Redemption... In fact, if you want to do it up good, play some suitable choir music on your phone and loudly declare your glorious redemption over top... But the rules on the table top guide you to recreate all of that on the battlefield.

Now here's the caveat: I've somewhat simplified the rules as written- some of them are actually fluffier than what I've described above: for example, Dominions and Retributors can also swear oaths, and the Atonement in Battle Agenda can also be used to heal the shame related battle scars of non repentia units, which is the more interesting use of the Agenda, since killing in melee is NOT what most non penitent units are designed to do. But they can also be more restrictive: as written, a unit needs to receive a shame related battle scar to be eligible to swear an oath. But a GM might allow you to do it based on mission or agenda failure if you plead your narrative rationale about that particular failure. Similarly, as written, ALL penitent units need 3 redemption points for Glorious redemption, but a GM might rule that a particularly egregious failure might require five redemption points before the stain of shame can be washed clean.

So yes, you CAN roleplay a redemption arc be just saying random crap when stuff happens in game, but don't you see how the existence of the rule actually allows that roleplaying to have an effect on the actual game? And don't you also see how having the rules also helps you to make the random crap you say more focused and thematic and less random?

Roleplaying without rules is also known as improv... And people who do it often know that even it has "rules" of a sort... Such as the most important rule of improv: Yas and...

But roleplaying GAMES, by definition, are the result of a symbiotic relationship between player choices and mechanics that allow those choices to have consequences impactful consequences to the plot of a story that can't be achieved with dialogue alone.

 Arschbombe wrote:

Fascinating. You want the vehicles to be characters.

No, I want my vehicles to be able to have cool upgrades, like a Blessed Hull, a Reinforced Superstructure, an Archeotech Power Cell or Autorepairers, or maybe the gunners will learn enough to become Focused Gunners, or perhaps they and the Pilots can become an Elite Crew.

I'm not sure why you think vehicle upgrades make a vehicle a character, but that's your issue- it ain't anywhere in the rules.

The six battle honours listed above are generic; many factions have faction specific vehicle upgrades, which are even more fluffy. And if you're using 10th's Crusade rules, one of the innovations I really liked is that non-character units are capped at Battle Hardened be default, meaning that they can only have two upgrades. But if one of your vehicles does something truly epic in a game, and you feel that your Warband would venerate and honour that achievement, there is a Requisition that will allow it to become Heroic or even Legendary.

And you talk about modelling opportunities! How would you kitbash an Archeotech powercell on Dreadnought or a Sentinel? Are the Elite Exorcist Crew represented by those kick-ass weird heads that only come with the Exorcist kit, while lesser Exorcists have crew with more conventional helmets? If you burn the RP to allow a vehicle to access heroic or legendary customizations, obviously, you'll want to model those when you get them, but by virtue of the vehicle's status, might you also want to give it some custom heraldry?

 Arschbombe wrote:

I was thinking in terms of more detailed modeling of battle damage.

Huh. Funny. Battle damage is exactly what Battle Scars are. Now, I'll grant you this: GW doesn't go as deep into Battle Scars- there aren't as many bespoke Scars as there are Honours, and they don't have different scars for infantry vs. vehicles, so yes, a vehicle might end up being Disgraced, or Fatigued... Which sounds kinda weird... Until you remember that vehicles have crews, and that sometimes the crew bears the Disgrace of the vehicle's poor performance in a battle.

 Arschbombe wrote:

Modeling components and subsystems also opens up opportunities for storytelling.

As do both Battle Honours as detailed above and Battle Scars.

 Arschbombe wrote:

When the vehicle gets damaged, can the party repair it?

Yes... But you may have to acquire Investigation points or RP, or complete a particular sequence of Agendas over a series of games, but don't worry, because Crusade gives you all those tools too.

Any Crusade mission that uses Investigation points can be repurposed so that your 500 point Crusade force can use those Investigation points to find the Rogue Techpriest who provides the upgrades if you want to go all in on RP. Investigation points are a pretty simple mechanic really- you can investigate in a couple ways: searching for data at terminals, or rummaging through physical archives, both of which can be represented by performing actions at objective markers, or simply holding objective markers. The other way to investigate is capture and interrogate, which is easily represented by defeating units in close combat.

 Arschbombe wrote:

Does anyone in the party have any mechanicum training?

Some factions might have upgrades for units that give them skills related to how they use or interact with their vehicles, but if you had a tank that always transported the same infantry unit, slapping a servo-arm on one of the models in that unit would be one way to model the Autorepairers Battle Honour mentioned above.

 Arschbombe wrote:

Does anyone know a renegade tech priest who can be persuaded to fix the vehicle?

Hey Sarge, remember that Rogue Enginepriest who installed our Archeotech Powercell? Maybe if we find him he can repair this Crippling Damage.

 Arschbombe wrote:

What's the tech level of the world they're on?

You can use the bespoke GSC Crusade content to either choose or randomly determine the character of a planet by determining it's institutional balance, and you can use the bespoke T'au Crusade content to determine which planetary archetypes exist in a given system. I generated my system using the T'au rules... But once I had named and written up descriptions for each of the planets, I used the GSC and Nid dexes to add further definition to each of those planets.

 Arschbombe wrote:

Can they get parts?

Pariah Nexus Blackstone equipment upgrades anyone?

 Arschbombe wrote:

Can they afford the parts?

Do they have the Requisition points? If not, get out there and earn them in battle. That might mean picking an Agenda you don't normally use to stack the odds of getting that RP... Which is, you know... Narrative.

 Arschbombe wrote:

Can they steal the parts?

Any objective in any mission can be declared to be "the parts," and there's all kinds of ways to provide variety there- like maybe someone has to pick the objective up and they can move with it and pass it, and it can be retrieved from a corpse, or even picked up by an enemy; or maybe it's just and objective, but in order to get "the parts" you have to control it at the end game. Or maybe it functions like a regular progressive objective according to the mission rules, but you can extract "the parts" from it by performing an action on it while it is under your control.

The obvious answer is yes, but having a stupid vehicle table that allows a one shot Meltakill isn't required to do it, and in fact it's probably better for the play experience to actually used Battle Honours and Scars to create these RP moments than damage tables.

 Arschbombe wrote:

Does the NPC with the parts need a favor?

Well Sarge, the one who did our Acheotech Powercell upgrade probably would, but we could always conduct another investigation to find another Tech Savant. Heck, do you remember that Inquisitor we worked with during the uprising last year? One of the guys in his retinue was a master investigator [you guessed it... A battle Honour which increases your odds of gaining investigation points]... If they're still planetside, maybe we could convince them to join us [Imperial Agents].

 Arschbombe wrote:

But really, how does one call for a tow truck in the 41st millennium?

Well you got me there, because a 40k tow truck a Cargo 8 Ridgehauler pulling a trailer with the damaged vehicle on it instead of a cargo container, but they never made 40k stats for the Cargo 8. Now by all means, you CAN apparently use Shadow War rules to shoe horn all the other army elements you want into second-edish rules that are more compatible with Necromunda... But honestly, wouldn't it be easier to just make your own 40k rules for the Cargo 8 rather than stitch together 3 different games in some kinda Frankenstein's monster hybrid thing?

 Arschbombe wrote:

I MUCH prefer vehicles with wounds.

For me this is instant failure, total non sequitur. How can an inanimate object have wounds? As an abstraction in a larger scale game maybe, but in the micro tactical environment of an RPG?

Well, look... I'm not going to deny that a damage table that includes motive system damaged, weapon system damaged, crew shaken or destroyed isn't more descriptive than a system of wounds; OBVIOUSLY it is. But I'd argue that for many editions, the one shot kill potential of damage tables as written by GW made the actual game play experience less fun. Yes, the wounds system means that small arms can theoretically focus fire and take out a vehicle, but for me, finally blowing up after absorbing small arms fire from 3-4 units feels so much more satisfying than one guy in unit making one shot with one weapon... And killing a high-point vehicle and most of the unit it was transporting. I'll ALWAYS take focus fire over single-shot death. And sure, you can argue that it was uncommon, but it happened often enough that GW came up with Hull Points to prevent it... But Hull points is just another way of saying wounds.

Tolerating the swingy-ness and volatility of damage tables for the sake of creating potential roleplaying hooks that are just as easily produced by Crusade mechanics as illustrated above doesn't make sense to me. In the long run, Crusade mechanics actually do a better job: like if your damage table says you lost a gun, the only way that provides a modelling opportunity is if you choose to magnetize the gun to be removeable because that result on the damage table only persists for the duration of the game. As soon as the game ends, it's magically healed unless you houserule a mechanic to make the damage persistent. But in Crusade, if you get a battlescar, it's persistent by default, and it can persist for the rest of the campaign if that's your narrative. Because if you want it fixed, yes, you can make that happen... But you actually have a number of paths to that outcome, and you DO actually have to make smart choices about Agendas vs. victory points in order to make it happen.

Cyel wrote:
It is worth mentioning that you can play an RPG with extremely simple rules or even no rules, dice, stats etc at all (been there, done that).

I've heard this claim before, and I'm not sure I buy it. I'd argue that you can very clearly role-play without rules, but you can't play a role-playing GAME without rules of some kind. Many RPG games are very mechanics-light, but light is not the same as non-existent.

Cyel wrote:

Duolingo may have levels and XPs but is not an RPG as a result for example.

The point isn't that all things that include Levels and XP are RPG's; it's that MOST things that ARE RPGs DO include some form of progression system which MAY include XP's (most RPG's do) and/or Levels (far fewer RPGs have levels- many allow you to directly purchase skills which represent learning achieved by wise choices and practice, or in some cases, mentorship, which presents a more holistic representation of gradual growth over time than the sharp and sudden spikes in learning that occur in level-based systems).

Cyel wrote:

The interactive storytelling and free characterisation of protagonists (through all the player choices for their actions/dialogue), these elements are ubiquitous. Remove them and you get a dungeon crawl boardgame like Gloomhaven or Descent, not an RPG.

Absolutely true. But having a progression system that goes with those player choices, and mechanics that provide clear details about HOW to represent, recreate and or resolve those choices on the table only improves and better facilitates the roleplaying. When we did our World of Darkness LARP, the Vampires got very ideological about Clan members studying non-clan disciplines; some of the older and more traditional Clan members viewed it as a lack of faith in one's own clan to seek knowledge elsewhere, while other members encouraged inter-clan relationships that were more likely to result in studying outside the clan... But very little of that narrative, and the roleplaying and scheming and plotting that arose from it would have been possible without the progression system that created leveled disciplines and assigned three to each clan.

Agendas and requisitions ARE the way to represent the choices you roleplay. Like if a squad of battle sisters fails to secure an important objective and you lose the game, you might roleplay swearing a Penitent Oath and declare to your opponent at the end of the battle in your most pious tones: "I, Sister Superior Marina Rachella accept the responsibility for my failure to secure the evidence of Heresy lurking in the Shadows of the Shrine of Saint Severn the Apostle. We have failed our Emperor, and must cast ourselves from his grace!" ... But the way you represent that on the table, is you pay an RP for the Path of the Penitent requisition, which allows you to swap the battle sister models for and equal number of Repentia who have the same number of XP and battle honours as the models they replace. If you LOVE modelling, you can even pick up an extra box of battle sisters and swap heads so that the Repentia have the same faces as the sisters they replace.

Then, that same unit can chose the Atonement in Battle Agenda to start their path to redemption. You might declare, "Though we have fallen from the Emperor's grace my sisters, we can redeem ourselves with the blood of his foes!", but the way you represent that on the table is to choose the Agenda at the expense of one of the other options that may have been available to you, and then you do everything in your power to ensure that the unit kills at least one enemy unit in melee. If they do, you get an XP and a Redemption point. And look: people are going to point out that Repentia's only real purpose and option is to kill units in hand to hand, and it's what they would be doing anyway... And that's true. But what makes it a roleplaying choice is that you only get so many Agendas... And in a 500 point game, likely the scale we're playing at given the topic at hand, that prevents you from choosing other agendas which might feed a potential saint's quest for apotheosis.

And you have to do it three in three separate games in order to earn enough redemption points to buy the glorious Redemption Requisition, which allows the models to be swapped again, this time for either Seraphim, Sacressants or Paragons. Again, head swap, by all means; loudly declare each of your redemption points AND your use of the Glorious Redemption... In fact, if you want to do it up good, play some suitable choir music on your phone and loudly declare your glorious redemption over top... But the rules on the table top guide you to recreate all of that on the battlefield.

Now here's the caveat: I've somewhat simplified the rules as written- some of them are actually fluffier than what I've described above: for example, Dominions and Retributors can also swear oaths, and the Atonement in Battle Agenda can also be used to heal the shame related battle scars of non repentia units, which is the more interesting use of the Agenda, since killing in melee is NOT what most non penitent units are designed to do. But they can also be more restrictive: as written, a unit needs to receive a shame related battle scar to be eligible to swear an oath. But a GM might allow you to do it based on mission or agenda failure if you plead your narrative rationale about that particular failure. Similarly, as written, ALL penitent units need 3 redemption points for Glorious redemption, but a GM might rule that a particularly egregious failure might require five redemption points before the stain of shame can be washed clean.

So yes, you CAN roleplay a redemption arc be just saying random crap when stuff happens in game, but don't you see how the existence of the rule actually allows that roleplaying to have an effect on the actual game? And don't you also see how having the rules also helps you to make the random crap you say more focused and thematic and less random?

Roleplaying without rules is also known as improv... And people who do it often know that even it has "rules" of a sort... Such as the most important rule of improv: Yas and...

But roleplaying GAMES, by definition, are the result of a symbiotic relationship between player choices and mechanics that allow those choices to have consequences impactful consequences to the plot of a story that can't be achieved with dialogue alone.

 PenitentJake wrote:

Well, look... I'm not going to deny that a damage table that includes motive system damaged, weapon system damaged, crew shaken or destroyed isn't more descriptive than a system of wounds; OBVIOUSLY it is. But I'd argue that for many editions, the one shot kill potential of damage tables as written by GW made the actual game play experience less fun. Yes, the wounds system means that small arms can theoretically focus fire and take out a vehicle, but for me, finally blowing up after absorbing small arms fire from 3-4 units feels so much more satisfying than one guy in unit making one shot with one weapon... And killing a high-point vehicle and most of the unit it was transporting. I'll ALWAYS take focus fire over single-shot death. And sure, you can argue that it was uncommon, but it happened often enough that GW came up with Hull Points to prevent it... But Hull points is just another way of saying wounds.

That's the exact opposite of why Hull Points were implemented in 6th. Hull Points were an attempt to fix the very durable parking lots of 5th edition. A Rhino or Razorback could absorb infinite glancing hits that resulted crew shaken or crew stunned results. In 4th edition SM tactical squads were commonly seen with a plasma gun and a lascannon. In 5th this shifted to melta weaponry because of the ubiquity of the transports. Getting a +1 to the damage roll from a penetration with an AP1 was critical. A vehicle could be wrecked on a 4 and explode on a 5 or 6. But all those glances could at best immobilize a vehicle. So in 6th we got Hull Points. Glancing hits no longer got a roll on the table. A glance removed a hull point. Three glances on a Rhino and it was wrecked. You could still explode a vehicle on a penetrating hit just like before and now melta gave +2 on the table so 4+ and the vehicle exploded. As a consequence, the meta shifted again. This time it went to medium strength, high ROF weapons like scatter lasers and autocannons. The goal was now to just glance everything to death. Vehicles suffered in comparison to monstrous creatures and we ended up with Riptides and Wraithknights as MCs instead of vehicles because of how disadvantaged vehicles were. This system continued through the travesty of 7th until they gave up in 8th and just made all vehicles monstrous creatures.

Since you find having a vehicle taken out in one shot so distressing, I find myself wondering where you were on instant death? Was getting your SM Captain doubled out by a powerfist unfun too?

Excellent discussion!
As I tweak these rules, I am wondering if Hull Points and later on Wounds for vehicles ended up making vehicles too weak (glancing to death) or too strong (way too many wounds) leading to having to make multi-damage weapons a thing instead of just keeping penetrating hits.

The vehicles went from scary (5th and earlier), to balloons (6th) to sponges that eventually died if you shot at them enough (7th and up).

I personally dislike the hull points and wounds as if you look at WW2 tank battles and even modern ones... they tended to fight until they blew up or had to be abandoned due to a firepower or mobility kill. They don't get plinked to death.... and I find the idea of a Titan getting plinked to death (roll enough sixes) to be silly.

-STS

slade the sniper wrote:
Excellent discussion!
As I tweak these rules, I am wondering if Hull Points and later on Wounds for vehicles ended up making vehicles too weak (glancing to death) or too strong (way too many wounds) leading to having to make multi-damage weapons a thing instead of just keeping penetrating hits.

Probably. They've missed the mark on other mechanics over the years too. Look at invulnerable saves. In 3rd not very many units had them. Now lots of units have them and this created the need for mortal wounds and all the associated dross that enable them.

40k has always suffered from a surfeit of superlatives. Impregnable armor vs unstoppable force. Over and over again. People commonly comment that marines don't play on the tabletop like they do in the lore where every SM captain routinely decapitates an Avatar of Khaine before second breakfast. On the tabletop they're just T4 2W models that die to all the big guns like everyone else. The balance point is in constant flux adding to the charm of it never feeling quite right.

slade the sniper wrote:


The vehicles went from scary (5th and earlier), to balloons (6th) to sponges that eventually died if you shot at them enough (7th and up).

I personally dislike the hull points and wounds as if you look at WW2 tank battles and even modern ones... they tended to fight until they blew up or had to be abandoned due to a firepower or mobility kill. They don't get plinked to death.... and I find the idea of a Titan getting plinked to death (roll enough sixes) to be silly.

-STS

I don't know, maybe everyone you played with didn't put plasma and melta into every unit they brought to the game, but that was my experience, and it meant that vehicles were tissue paper for many of the editions where you think they were scary. Hell, I used to regularly bounce Land Raiders off Genestealer claws because rend got extra armour pen.

Being able to ignore small arms fire does jack to improve durability if there are one or two weapons in every unit that can penetrate the armour, because all it takes is one or two to penetrate your armour and you're dead. If it took 5-6 penetrating hits to kill you, THAT would improve durability... And surprise, that's what the current system does.

And it's worth mentioning that even if they didn't blow you up, they could make you either totally or partially useless for the turn... And again, with a single damn shot. Even glancing hits could keep you from doing what you wanted to do, even if they had a harder time actually destroying you. And you could say "Yay! I'm tough and durable because I survived the game! But I didn't get to move or shoot at all, so being durable meant jack!"

Your opinion is your opinion, and nothing I can say will change it, and that's okay. Again, I believe that the majority of Dakkanauts share your opinion, and mine is the minority. And as I've said to other folks, there could be ways to make the old system better, but from my perspective the current system IS better, so there's no need to hope for GW to rejig the old system, especially they're more likely to end up making it worse.

 Arschbombe wrote:
People commonly comment that marines don't play on the tabletop like they do in the lore where every SM captain routinely decapitates an Avatar of Khaine before second breakfast.

Perhaps... But in many cases, that's because the lore you're referring to is poorly written bolter porn, and it's actually the Lore that needs to change not the game, because SM Captains routinely decapitating an Avatar before second breakfast isn't fun and would make for a really terrible game.

While plinking to death with wounds sounds terrible, the concept is really one of the only ones that helps balance the mechanics of vehicles.

All or nothing destruction on expensive powerful units is really hard to point out without either having a unit that is too cheap and useless, or too expensive and destructive.


However, you can use the concept of plink without the existing implementation.

ie, you record glancing blows, and they add to the dice roll on the penetration table (for example), which itself stacks damaged weapons and destroyed results at the top end, maybe even on a 2D6 table.

So you get 100% effective vehicle, but each non destructive strike increases the chance of the next one being destructive. It allows for chip, without playing like it.