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So! I've been reading my 7th rulebook and.. bah, couldn't find -anything- about what happens when unit fails a morale check in a building and, to be precise, on battlements. In 6th it was said that they jump off(often to their death) but 7th seems to have no mention of what to do in such situation. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I feel like I looked everywhere and I couldn't find it.

There is no jumping off rule any longer.


You now just treat falling back from battlements like moving through difficult terrain and count the vertical distance as part of the fallback move.

Eihnlazer wrote:
There is no jumping off rule any longer.


You now just treat falling back from battlements like moving through difficult terrain and count the vertical distance as part of the fallback move.

You sure? Is it the 'official' way or interpretation? Any quote would be great because I have not found a single sentence on what to do in such situation.

Aaany 'un?

Given that there is no specific instructions for how a Unit Falls Back from a Battlement or off the top of a building, it must therefore follow the default Rules concerning how models Fall Back. These instructions, easily found within the Fall Back Section so will not be quoted as per the tenets of this site, require the Models to move towards the table edge a random distance. Rules for Movement now take verticals into account, sadly not using the hypotenuse as I would like but still taken into account. Therefore falling back takes into account the vertical distance from the top of the building to the ground as part of the Fall Back move.

Keep in mind:
If the Unit can not make the Fall Back Move it is removed from play, it would be my interpretation that this also includes Models which can not reach the ground as part of their Fall Back move but I am sure someone will try to argue that they can float mid-air or something....
So Falling back from a tall building is almost a guaranteed wipe for the squad.

 Klerych wrote:
Any quote would be great because I have not found a single sentence on what to do in such situation.

You won't find a quote that says 'There are no specific rules for this situation'... There are simply no specific rules for the situation, and so you follow the normal rules for falling back.

FYI, units falling back are not slowed by difficult terrain.

For multi-level ruins and battlements, I interpret the rules as being that they move down towards the ground floor first, and then directly towards their table edge (since that's the shortest route). You could also probably argue that they would prioritize moving horizontally within the ruins before they try moving downwards - either way, you're moving the same amount, so both methods are equally the "shortest" route towards the table edge. For units on battlements, they just move as far as they can per their fallback roll (including the vertical distance for climbing down).

Fall back moves have this proviso that the unit is destroyed if they are unable to move their entire fallback distance. The examples they give in the rulebook are impassable terrain, or being within 1" of an enemy unit. Well, that's not very enlightening when it comes to vertical distances - they need to move the entire distance or not at all, but it's not strictly impassable terrain. Not sure what you do in that case (if your unit is destroyed if it can't move the full vertical distance between floor levels, that would turn buildings into deathtraps). What happens when you're on the top floor of a 9" building with 3 levels that are 3" apart, and roll a 7 for your fallback? You're not allowed to move the full 9" down to the bottom floor, but it seems weird that your whole squad would be destroyed because the rules can't handle a modulo operation.

I'm also not sure what units who are embarked inside buildings do for fall-back moves. They are not fearless, and can take wounds, so presumably they have to fall back sometimes - do you just fall back from an access point?

Buildings use the same Rules as Transports, and Units Embarked on Transports have the Unshakable Nerve Rule.
I will agree with you that the Fall-Back Rules are very unforgiving when it comes to vertical Distance, to the point I seriously doubt it was the Authors intention to make Ruins into death-traps for cowards.
Needless to say, I think I will keep my suits on the ground for a while....

JinxDragon wrote:
Buildings use the same Rules as Transports, and Units Embarked on Transports have the Unshakable Nerve Rule.

Well... maybe.

The BRB says "Buildings of all types use aspects of the Transport vehicle rules", which is not quite as all-encompassing as other cases in the book where it will say "use all the rules for". They specifically name a lot of other similarities in how the rules work, but never mention unshakable never (which gets a big blurb to itself in the transport rules). My guess is that they are supposed to have unshakable nerve, but I wish the book would come straight out and say that.

We use a lot of multi-level ruins in our local meta, and we've been playing it that you just move as far as you're allowed to vertically in ruins when falling back, without getting destroyed due to half-level moves. I'm generally unhappy with how they've simplified a lot of the terrain rules - the whole "templates hit everything under them" and the lack of the leap-down rules is pretty lame.

That section goes on to name the main ways they differ from Transport Vehicles, which is lacking of any instruction stating that Buildings are denied the Unshakable Nerve Rule. Now it could be argued that it is a non-exclusive list, there are likely other Rules which do not apply to Buildings which haven't been listed, but at this point it is up to the people trying to deny access to a Transport related Rule to prove Buildings do not use said Rule. Till such evidence is put forth, Buildings will gain access to the Transport Vehicle Rule in question as per that section of the book.

Hmm... is an unit on battlements considered as embarked in the building or rather standing on top of it? Wondering because it might make it a lot different - if they'd still be 'embarked' then for morale check uses, it could be treated like models in open-topped transports where they take wounds too.

I guess It'll have to boil down to how I would play it and there are 2 options:

1 - slowed suicide jump(because when you want to run away to avoid death, you jump to your death) as you can't finish your movement in mid-aid, so you can't finish the fall back move, hence losing whole unit automatically(sweet);
2 - simply disembarking and doing the fall back move from the doorway. Sounds more logical and in case of taller buildings like a Bastion takes less time to disembark(one turn) than to make the distance vertically on foot(unless you roll 12), is more reasonable(they just hastily abandon their post) and then adds full fall back move, so if it's going to run, it's even more likely to reach the edge.

Oh well, thanks for your opinions, guys!

 Klerych wrote:
Hmm... is an unit on battlements considered as embarked in the building or rather standing on top of it?

They're just standing on top of it.

Klerych,
The have not been considered 'embarked' since Stronghold was Released....

The actual building would not be difficult terrain, would it?

Rather, isn't the unit on top of the battlements surrounded at all sides by the building (which is sort of a 'vehicle', albeit it friendly) and thus automatically destroyed since it can't fall back?

 Shandara wrote:
The actual building would not be difficult terrain, would it?

Rather, isn't the unit on top of the battlements surrounded at all sides by the building (which is sort of a 'vehicle', albeit it friendly) and thus automatically destroyed since it can't fall back?

The battlements themselves are difficult terrain, though they have provisos for jump/jetpack/jetbike models (they don't take dangerous terrain tests).

While they use a lot of the vehicle rules, buildings are still properly terrain (and not explicitly impassable), which means you can climb up and down them provided that you have enough move inches to spend. Things like beasts, with their 12" moves that are not slowed by terrain, can easily scale the side walls of things like the Fortress of Redemption. Infantry can climb up those walls too, though they would have to press right up against it, and then roll high on their difficult terrain dice (impractical, but doable). And presumably, models that are on battlements that are falling back can climb down from them and run away if they roll a high enough fallback move to successfully make it all the way down. The weird issue is: what happens if they roll a fallback move that is half-way down the side of the building? Well, RAW, they are unable to move their entire fallback distance, and so are destroyed. Kind of lame, but there ya go.

Nicely summarized.

 DanielBeaver wrote:

 Shandara wrote:
The actual building would not be difficult terrain, would it?

Rather, isn't the unit on top of the battlements surrounded at all sides by the building (which is sort of a 'vehicle', albeit it friendly) and thus automatically destroyed since it can't fall back?

The battlements themselves are difficult terrain, though they have provisos for jump/jetpack/jetbike models (they don't take dangerous terrain tests).

While they use a lot of the vehicle rules, buildings are still properly terrain (and not explicitly impassable), which means you can climb up and down them provided that you have enough move inches to spend. Things like beasts, with their 12" moves that are not slowed by terrain, can easily scale the side walls of things like the Fortress of Redemption. Infantry can climb up those walls too, though they would have to press right up against it, and then roll high on their difficult terrain dice (impractical, but doable). And presumably, models that are on battlements that are falling back can climb down from them and run away if they roll a high enough fallback move to successfully make it all the way down. The weird issue is: what happens if they roll a fallback move that is half-way down the side of the building? Well, RAW, they are unable to move their entire fallback distance, and so are destroyed. Kind of lame, but there ya go.

The battlements are separate from the actual building aren't they? I mean it's just the _top_ of the building, but the building walls aren't battlements.

They are separate, however Battlements have specific Rules for moving on and off them which take precedent.

But that's the problem, those rules (page 112) only allow you to:
* go onto the battlements from inside (using the 'access point')
* land on top for Jump/Jet Pack/etc..

They don't allow us to move through/along the walls of the actual building, which isn't difficult terrain (since the battlement rules specifically make them separate).

I can see your point, though I have to disagree with the 'along' as nothing prevents a model from skirting the boundary of impassable terrain as long as it doesn't cross said boundary. As the model would be moving vertically along the outside of the wall, not actually crossing the foot-print of the building itself, it has yet to do anything to make the move illegal. If it would then move horizontally at the end of the move, it would be on the battlements without having actually cross the impassable terrains boundary directly. Of course, this requires "Roof-Space" to be defined as including the wall parts themselves, which are often present, or else those would still be part of the building and impassable.

It also causes a lot of secondary Rule interactions to make no sense:
For example, we are informed to make a 6 inch move off the battlement should the building explode.

 Shandara wrote:
But that's the problem, those rules (page 112) only allow you to:
* go onto the battlements from inside (using the 'access point')
* land on top for Jump/Jet Pack/etc..

They don't allow us to move through/along the walls of the actual building, which isn't difficult terrain (since the battlement rules specifically make them separate).

Models don't need any explicit permission to be able to climb up onto terrain - the "Moving Through Terrain" section on page 21 merely requires that you be able to place the model at the location where you finish the move, with the only exception being if the terrain is specifically noted as being impassable. Since a buildings aren't specifically noted as being impassable, it means you can monkey climb all over them.

Really, we ought to be creating datasheets for all the terrain we're using in our games. Normally, a terrain datasheet has a "terrain type" section, along with special rules, capacity, AV, access points, fire points, those sorts of things (the BRB has a number of examples). To really properly follow the rules, all the buildings you're using need to have a datasheet which defines what sort of terrain they are (and I see no reason why they couldn't have multiple different terrain types - for example, defining the building as being difficult or impassable terrain, and the roof as being battlements). This removes the ambiguity about whether you're able to climb onto the building.

DanielBeaver,
Plausible, at least for unclaimed Buildings....
As Claimed Buildings are Units on one side or another, this raises questions about models from moving through them.

JinxDragon wrote:
DanielBeaver,
Plausible, at least for unclaimed Buildings....
As Claimed Buildings are Units on one side or another, this prevents Models from moving through them.

I don't really see anything in the rules that supports that assertion. The only things I see that Claimining a building does is:
- Allows you to score with the building
- Enables you to fire the emplaced and automatic weapons
- Prevents enemy units from embarking if friendly models are embarked

The question would be: does a claimed building invoke the 1" rule against enemy models? That would clearly prevent an enemy from climbing onto buildings, but I don't think that's actually the case - I'm doing a text search through the digital edition of the BRB , and the rules repeatedly emphasis that you need to stay at least 1" away from enemy fliers and vehicles, but it never comes up with relation to buildings (which I interpret as being not a "model" but a piece of "terrain" - kind of a weird point of differentiation, but I think it matters). I remember seeing these same arguments about aegis defense lines and quad guns in 6th edition (since it's something you buy as part of your army, but is treated like a piece of terrain), not sure if it's been cleared up.

A claimed building is a unit in the controlling player’s army and will remain so, even if it later becomes unoccupied, until the building is either destroyed or claimed by an enemy.
That is the line causing problems, as Units are made up of Models....

I won't disagree that the differentiation matters, buildings not being Models caused all sorts of problems in 6th Edition which I feel the above sentence was penned to address. Because the sentence does not state it 'counts as,' which the vast majority of Building Rules do when they repetitive state it counts as Vehicle in situation X or Y, it is not a case of Rules triggering even though the Building wouldn't otherwise meet the criteria. It is now a case of the Buildings simply being Units, and therefore are always a Unit regardless of the situation, creating a whole bunch of new questions and problems.

Another stick to throw in the FAQ pile. The terrain rules have been the source of a lot of conflict and confusion at our FLGS - they're overly terse, and people have been interpreting them in wildly different ways. We use a lot of multi-level ruins and buildings, so I'm very invested in getting the rules right. But... I personally love the idea of being able to physically overrun a building, storming the battlements and such. We did play one game where my assault marines jumped onto the battlements of our homebrew Fortress of Redemption, to engage an embedded gunline of firewarriors and Broadsides. It was a very cool moment, and I hate to see that go away just for the sake of streamlining the game.