Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Suppressed
A unit that is Suppressed has the following penalties:
-OC is reduced by 1, to a minimum of 0. A unit that normally ha an OC of 1 or more can still perform Actions while Suppressed.
-Stratagems that target at least one Suppressed unit cost 1 additional CP

Shocked
A unit that is Shocked has the following penalties:
-OC is set to 0
-Friendly Stratagems cannot be used on a Shocked unit
-Worsen all ranged weapons BS by 1
-When rolling for Advance or Charge, roll one additional die, and discard one of your opponent's choice
-When making a Fall Back move, must make Desperate Escape rolls

Broken
A unit that is Broken has the following penalties:
-OC is set to 0
-Friendly Stratagems cannot be used on a Broken unit
-Worsen all ranged weapons BS by 2, and all melee weapons WS by 1
-Cannot Advance or Charge
-When making a Fall Back move, must make Desperate Escape rolls, with a -1 penalty
-If, in the Movement Phase, a Broken unit is in Engagement Range of an enemy unit, they must Fall Back. If there is no space for the unit to Fall Back (even with a Desperate Escape) they are destroyed.

When To Test For Morale
-During your Command Phase, any unit that is below Starting Strength must take a Leadership Test. Unless the unit is Below Half Strength, this cannot make a unit anything more than Suppressed.
-The first time a unit is reduced to Half Strength, it must take a Leadership check at the end of the phase.
-If a unit loses any wounds due to a weapon with the Blast or Torrent rule, it must take a Leadership check at the end of the phase.
-If a unit loses any wounds due to a melee attack, it must make a Leadership check at the end of the phase.

If a unit must test Morale for multiple reasons (such as being reduced to Half Strength or less by a Torrent Weapon) then they take one test, with a stacking -1 penalty for each additional reason they must test.

During your Command Phase, any friendly unit that began the phase suffering from Morale can roll a Leadership Test. On a success, that unit's Morale is improved by one step, and they may immediately roll again. A failure for any of these tests does NOT worsen the unit's Morale.

Other Notes
Abilities like a Chaplain's Spiritual Leader would be changed to:

Spiritual Leader wrote:Once per battle, at the start of any phase, you can select one friendly Adeptus Astartes unit within 12" that is suffering from Morale. That unit's Morale is immediately improved by one step, and they may then roll a Leadership Test in the same way as you would roll in your Command Phase to recover further.
If this is done in your Command Phase, this takes place instead of the normal roll.

Suppressed is INTENTIONALLY designed to make low-OC units less reliable. Want to hold Objectives? Take Battleline or other high OC units!

Hmm. Would have to mull this over. Impressions at a glance:

* Feels like kind of a lot. Both in terms of having to remember 3 different similar-but-different statuses and in terms of having to make a lot of tests for a lot of units.

-During your Command Phase, any unit that is below Starting Strength must take a Leadership Test. Unless the unit is Below Half Strength, this cannot make a unit anything more than Suppressed.

* Testing for every unit that is below starting strength seems kind of nuts. Any army that can would be trying to take at least one wound/model off of each enemy unit just to maximize the number of tests their opponent has to take. I don't think it would be unlikely to have players making a dozen tests per side every command phase. That feels like too much to me, and it also doesn't feel particularly fluffy to have units freaking out over losing a single guy out of 20.

Suppressed
A unit that is Suppressed has the following penalties:
-OC is reduced by 1, to a minimum of 0
-Stratagems that target at least one Suppressed unit cost 1 additional CP

With the last point in mind, Suppressed essentially makes it inefficient to use most strats on most suppressed units. So I worry that you effectively end up removing interesting decisions from the game by making strats situationally too inefficient to use. Consider that abilities with limited ranges that make the CP cost of strats higher are currently considered pretty potent abilities.

If a unit loses any wounds due to a weapon with the Blast or Torrent rule, it must take a Leadership check at the end of the phase.

* I probably wouldn't tie it directly to blast/torrent. Instead, I'd create a new rule called something like "Pinning" that specifically causes tests to be taken. This gives you more control over weapon profiles. So if you don't want every warp spider in a squad to be causing a different morale test, for instance, you can hold off on giving their death spinners pinning.

* Moving it to a new rule also lets you put some kind of restriction on how many morale tests can be forced by a given squad. So let's say you *do* give death spinners pinning. You can phrase the pinning rule such that each time a unit shoots, you can select a single enemy unit hit by one or more pinning weapon and have that unit take a test. Otherwise people will split fire like crazy to force a million tests that would slow down the game. It also prevents you from forcing a single enemy unit to end up making 10+ tests due to the attacks of a single unit.

If a unit loses any wounds due to a melee attack, it must make a Leadership check at the end of the phase.

Feels like a mild punishment for choosing to play a melee army. Or at least, it punishes you for not fielding super killy melee bricks that wipe out the enemy in a single activation before they can swing back.

During your Command Phase, any friendly unit that began the phase suffering from Morale can roll a Leadership Test. On a success, that unit's Morale is improved by one step, and they may immediately roll again. A failure for any of these tests does NOT worsen the unit's Morale.

Other Notes
Abilities like a Chaplain's Spiritual Leader would be changed to:

I like this part.

Suppressed is INTENTIONALLY designed to make low-OC units less reliable. Want to hold Objectives? Take Battleline or other high OC units!

I'm not sure if that's a desirable design goal or not. My action monkey/scoring units frequently are not battle line units in my armies. So by making things like rangers or scorpions or mandrakes unreliable in those roles, you risk turning them into "bad units" unless they get some kind of big buff to make up for no longer being able to fill the role of action monkey as reliably.

Overall, I feel like there's something to the escalating levels of suppression, but I think you've perhaps made it some combination of too easy to become suppressed and too punishing when you are suppressed. And perhaps created the need for too many tests and too much bookkeeping. Is there a way to take this general idea and streamline it?

Thank you for your feedback.
I leave for work in five minutes, but I’ll take another whack at this with your words in mind once I’m free from my job.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Alright. Made a small adjustment to the original post, allowing actions to be done while Suppressed if your OC started at 1+, even if it drops to 0.

And looking at it, I'd like to do a more complete overhaul, with Suppressed units not being able to benefit from Command abilities from other units, and Shocked/Broken units not being able to benefit from ANY Command Abilities.
But that would require labeling anything that should be shut off a Command ability. And that's a lot.

I think there's probably one too many levels of morale in these rules. 3 seems like a lot, with very minor differences. 2 would probably work better. I'm also not quite clear from these rules how you drop down the levels of your morale system?

I'd keep Suppressed, but maybe rework it a little bit, then go with Shocked as the basis for the worse level of morale.

Testing for any unit below starting strength is far too time consuming. Half strength is fine as a starting point, with Pinning being a weapon rule you can use to make units test for Suppressed outwith the normal requirements. I'd like to see units that are worse than Suppressed losing most of their special rules, army and detachment benefits to make it really impactful. I think the goal is a good one, but the execution's not quite right here.

A core thing to come out the morale thread for me, is 40k players play an attritional kill stuff game. They aren't up for the more traditional morale aspect of warfare.

Attempts to bring it in don't give them what they want and run up against a races fluff that they are immune to getting worried and never get disrupted by high yield munitions. The focus on individuals reinforces that. 40k doesn't have a concept of soldiers forming systems to direct kinect effect to the enemy, if you see a person/monster/creature standing there they are assumed to work at full effect.

I think only Epic A has had a system abstracted out enough that people seem to accept that stuff like orbital bombardments will disrupt your troops regardless of what they are like individually.