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S5 AP2 really is very good against Terminators...

It's like a plasma gun with 3+ to wound instead of 2+, but with an extra shot and without gets hot.

What if terminators got to reroll failed saves and got PE infantry. Too much? This way no stats change, no weapon profiles change, just all things terminator get those rules.

Martel732 wrote:
To make terminators really work, I think the game would have to be rebuilt around the D10. This would allow armor ranging from 2+ to 10+.

This is a myth. The absolute AP system, range/movement ratio, turn structure, and release schedule would remain crippling problems, d10s or no d10s.

 AnomanderRake wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
To make terminators really work, I think the game would have to be rebuilt around the D10. This would allow armor ranging from 2+ to 10+.

This is a myth. The absolute AP system, range/movement ratio, turn structure, and release schedule would remain crippling problems, d10s or no d10s.

I didn't say it would be the only change. But I was illustrating how D6 does not have enough graduations for a game with this many units.

I think the old 2nd edition style of weapon profiles would be just great alongside the otherwise current rules. A very simple stat line gave different weapons variations of accuracy at different ranges, a range of strength, a huge range of armor penetration, and a very easy way of having weapons do varying amounts of damage.

The vehicle armor penetration was too combersome, but the modern style would synch right into the old 2e profiles, bacause as far as I can tell, weapon strentghs stayed (generally) the same, especially on the traditional anti-tank weapons like lascannons.

 AegisGrimm wrote:
I think the old 2nd edition style of weapon profiles would be just great alongside the otherwise current rules. A very simple stat line gave different weapons variations of accuracy at different ranges, a range of strength, a huge range of armor penetration, and a very easy way of having weapons do varying amounts of damage.

The vehicle armor penetration was too combersome, but the modern style would synch right into the old 2e profiles, bacause as far as I can tell, weapon strentghs stayed (generally) the same, especially on the traditional anti-tank weapons like lascannons.

The D6 was too small of a graduation for that system, too. I'd go with a hybridized system. Rank armor from 2+ to 10+, then assign weapon AP values just as it is now. However, weapons within 1 AP value of the target give a -2 to the save, and within 2 give a -1 to the save. The old armor save system made power armor useless, which made loyalist marines unplayable.

There's a several issues here methinks

First, is a fundamental problem of scale, both in terms of what a D6 system can portray, and the scale of battles the game is attempting to portray. You can only have infantry be so hardy before it goes from being "wow these guys are tough" to "ok, this is obnoxious" as we've seen with Wraiths, TH/SS termi's, TWC's, Centurions, etc and units that can/were able to play wound allocation gimmicks (like 5E Nob Bikers). The problem we're having is that these ultra tough units are more and more getting into detail that's far more appropriate to games with far fewer models in general along with requiring far more power than is justified to kill, and a lot of people seem to view these units as what "should" be the norm as opposed to the system being out of whack. In too many cases we get units where simple weight of fire just is not sustainable to deal with such units, and in others (Wraiths, TH/SS termi's, looking at you), their resiliency to both quantity and quality of fire is absurd. Far more than the gap between vehicles or MC's and basic infantry, we have a gap between such heavy infantry and basic infantry. When it takes an entire platoon's worth of lasgun fire in optimal rapid-fire doubletap range to kill a single Wraith or Thunderwolf for example, and you're having to bring to bear not just equal or double or triple but quadruple the unit's value to inflict any casualties, it really makes these otherwise "baseline" units rather worthless for anything other than the value of their physical presense on the board. This is not something that really needs to be further reinforced with absurd buffs to Terminators.

Another issue that's always bugged me is that the Sv value of armor has been the sole determinant of both protective quality and resistance to penetration in most cases. One could have armor that would effectively give 2+ coverage against things like fists, claws, blades, axes, etc but do absolutely nothing against a bullet, or lets say you've got an otherwise naked individual wearing a terminator armor helmet, meaning you'd need AP2 to penetrate that helmet but it's coverage is such that you'd probably otherwise only rate it as 6+ armor in terms of how often it would actually save despite its quality otherwise.

Finally, yes there's lots of AP2 weapons in the game. This also isn't new, but the quantity of AP2 doesn't bother me. Weapons of such quality should be "relatively" common given the setting, and not every weapon needs to physically penetrate armor to kill what's inside (when facing a dude in plate armor, bring a warhammer, and you'll kill him without ever having to penetrate his armor, likewise an ISU-152 throwing a high explosive shell at a Panther tank may not penetrate the armor but may likely kill the crew inside anyway from the concussive blast). There's a lot of AP2 and always has been (nobody seems to remember 1500pt 3E/4E IG armies with ~45 plasma and melta guns?). There's a more expansive range of types, but massed AP2 has always been available.

TL;DR the game has issues with scale, many heavy infantry units are already getting progressively more ridiculous and we need to recognize that as bad game design as opposed to the new baseline by which to measure everything else, the AP system is wonky, and massed AP2 is nothing new.

 MajorStoffer wrote:
I will say objectively that Centurions are a problem.

They are probably, to me at least, the most Obvious "GWism" I've yet seen released (save for what happened to Dire Avengers, for which I'd feel more righteously angry, but, you know, Eldar...) in where they created a new unit which represents an improved version of an older, underperforming unit in statline, wargear and so on, but is more expensive and aesthetically questionable. I personally pretend they don't exist, and have trained my eyes to not even see them listed on Battlescribe.

Now there's an idea though, "counts-as" centurions, using terminators!

Pure genius.

As for survival versus small arms, while it does take a fair volume of fire to kill a terminator, all a Guardsmen squad needs to do in the entire game is kill 1 terminator to just about make its points back. I can say with some confidence that my Death Korps don't particularly fear terminators, as they're 200+ points for 5 wounds, and 200+ points of lasguns can get through 5 T4 wounds.

The stand-outs, to me, for small-arms durability are Lychguard and MegaNobz, a 2+ T4 is nice, but at the price Terminators are it's not effecient, and yes, making them cheaper will help on that front, it doesn't make them feel any more "walking tank piloted by veteran of dozens of apocalyptic wars," which is a big thing for me with 40k.

I think there is a place for centurions alongside terminators but they need to shfit the durability of terminators up and centurions be shuifted potentially down.

Terminators should be T5, 2+ 5++ 2 wounds. and if you really wanna play up the "veteran space marine elites" angle give em WS 5 BS 5.

Centurions should be WS 4 BS 4, T5 2+ 1 wound. Terminators basicly would be the choice for durability, while centurions would be your choice for raw firepower.

I suppose you could also try upgrading termies to monsterous creatures too. but that might be a tad silly.

The fine line between "not tough enough" and "okay, this is obnoxious" is a result of the one-model-one-Wound system, the absolute AP mechanic, the three-roll gate, and the flat to-hit roll. Using anything other than a d6 wouldn't address any part of the problem.

 AnomanderRake wrote:
The fine line between "not tough enough" and "okay, this is obnoxious" is a result of the one-model-one-Wound system, the absolute AP mechanic, the three-roll gate, and the flat to-hit roll. Using anything other than a d6 wouldn't address any part of the problem.

I disagree, but okay.

No matter the dice used, you still have to get past GW's approach to game design, which is where everything is stemming from.

 AnomanderRake wrote:
The fine line between "not tough enough" and "okay, this is obnoxious" is a result of the one-model-one-Wound system, the absolute AP mechanic, the three-roll gate, and the flat to-hit roll. Using anything other than a d6 wouldn't address any part of the problem.

In part I would agree. However a big issue is that a lot of these overly-tough units are coming in at way too few points. A lot of these super tough units effectively require either identical units or anti-tank weaponry to be turned against them, when they really shouldn't be *that* hardy, and attempting to engage them with relatively standard infantry or even relatively elite infantry in many cases, is simply a non-starter without having to sacrifice far more of your force than you really should have to.

The big issue aside from these units in and of themselves is that they become the basis by which other units are measured, which otherwise really wouldn't seem quite as bad, but in comparison there's no real choice as to the winner.

I think a lot of the problems with terminators could be fixed by treating them like Wolfguard terminators. except start their cost at 30 points for power weapon and storm bolter. This would reflect them not having the extra abilits the wolfguard termies have. Storm bolters should probably have either rending or salvo 2/3 or salvo 2/4. TDA giving toughness +1 would help as well. as Is they aren't worth their points and neither is the hq upgrade which should be 25 points across the board imo. Of course this idea would get rid of the 2 profiles. If this were to be done there would need to be a boost to storm bolters to make them an attractive option.

Terminators don't need fixing. They need a purpose. They cant do long range, centurions do it better. They cant do close combat because close combat is dead, better off to throw jet pack marines at the bad guy with the points cost it doesnt hurt as much when you lose a few.

So perhaps we need to look at the role a terminator can fill. I personally think they should have an inspiring aura. they are the baddest marines who are too alive to get jammed into a dreadnought they should be able to inspire the tac squads to fight harder to impress these battlemasters. Or give them a better base weapon to suit the point cost or adjust more free weapons in. Cant do much about the stats really, they are space marines at the end of the day but the loadout is what needs to be considered better. Like " I dont want to take centurions" mod list for a squad of heavy bolter terminators or "I dont want to close combat but i want to get in close and personal" Terminator with storm bolter and storm shield (great for a Hq defense squad too) every other space marine can fill a job except the terminators.

 Vaktathi wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:
The fine line between "not tough enough" and "okay, this is obnoxious" is a result of the one-model-one-Wound system, the absolute AP mechanic, the three-roll gate, and the flat to-hit roll. Using anything other than a d6 wouldn't address any part of the problem.

In part I would agree. However a big issue is that a lot of these overly-tough units are coming in at way too few points. A lot of these super tough units effectively require either identical units or anti-tank weaponry to be turned against them, when they really shouldn't be *that* hardy, and attempting to engage them with relatively standard infantry or even relatively elite infantry in many cases, is simply a non-starter without having to sacrifice far more of your force than you really should have to.

The big issue aside from these units in and of themselves is that they become the basis by which other units are measured, which otherwise really wouldn't seem quite as bad, but in comparison there's no real choice as to the winner.

Both of you have good points; GW mechanics really don't reward footslogging infantry with good saving throws with the underlying mechanics; absolute AP means obnoxiously tough units can ignore volume of fire from anything other than the "right" ap value; there's no whittling someone down, whether it be battlecannon or lasgun, and how such units interact with cover (or don't, rather) decreases their perceived value, driving their cost down edition to edition resulting in, what are they now, 30 point lychguard? THey also become mechanically simple and uninteresting, with little the player can do in-game to improve their performance; cover doesn't increase their chance to survive, they need not worry about anything but specific wargear, etc. The game's design makes the high-end units awkward to balance and function. GW's inability to see how some unit types are flatly superior to others further complicates matters; bikes, skimmers and the like being vastly superior to footslogging infantry, and infantry with good transports are again above the footsloggers in all respects, but the points values rarely respect these facts, thus a kitted out thunderwolf is only marginally more expensive than a tactical terminator, in spite of being vastly superior.

d6 -> d10 is not a great change, because values would be still linear. Maybe 12 sided dice which contains values 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 4, 4, 4, 5, 5, 6 would be better. Now you have 1/12 probability to get 1 and 3/12 probability to get 1 or 2.

You do not even need to change rules, only dices.

I've decided to start a GK army sometime in the near future. Looked at termie stats and I think they actually need a 3+ armour.

Da Stormlord wrote:
I've decided to start a GK army sometime in the near future. Looked at termie stats and I think they actually need a 3+ armour.

those are called strike squads.

 vipoid wrote:

natpri771 wrote:
They definitely need to make shooty terminators more playable:
1. Give them access to combi-weapons (storm Bolter versions) Do strom-bolter combi-weapons even exist? .
2. Increase strength and toughness to 5 Unnecessary.
3. Either give them 2 wounds, feel no pain, a 4+ invul or remove the invul and give them a special rule that says AP2/1 weapons just force you to re-roll your successful armour saves Entirely unnecessary.
4. Give them power weapons by default and let the sergeant take a power/chain fist Why not just let them mix and match power fists, rather than only allowing the sergeant one?.

However, it seems GW is very hostile to the concept of new sprues

1. Would assault 2 combi-weapons be that much of a big deal? What do you have against adding new stuff to the game?
2. So, guys in terminator armour should be as tough as guys in power armour?
3. Not all of those simultaneously, I don't see how that is unnecessary
4. I meant that and let the sergeant take a power/chain fist as well

Thinking about it, Terminators are Space Marines. So technically, they've already been fixed.

Nice one miko.

But as I've said many times before, the answer is simply-don't force the power fists.

The power weapon terminators of SW, CSM and GK works out just fine.

The only way to fix terminators is to go back to the drawing board and totally rewrite the way the game is fundamentally played. There will need to be huge changes to a lot of things in the game and it would need to radically approach the shooting and melee combat of the game. Their current systems do not work with the terminator in mind at all.

As a hotfix there are a few things that can be done but really it's cleaning and disenfecting a gunshot wound, your not making the problem go away your making it look not as serious. Cor starters a points drop to 32ppm would help, next give them all the ability to assault from deepstrike, finally we could discuss granting them fnp and maybe strip shuriken catapults of rending.

But really here we are just cleaning an covering up a horrible internal injury here. What would really change things would be to totally rework of shooting combat, melee combat, and saves. One idea I tossed around would be the addition of armor tokens. Each infantry having his own at value that a player could elect to expend in place of a wound. A shooting attack that was not of a high enough ap would simply go onto the token and expend it. And each unit having a varying number.

For example an ork boy would gave one wt and one w, while a centurion could have 2 wounds and 4 wt. This means a lot more math on the player end of things but now cheap gunfire drowning is officially a dead end for killing 2+ armor saves units in fact even 3+ armor is not that bad. And there will be the odd time an ork boy would actually fail his saves and live (a strange thought I know). The fluff being that the armor stopped the bullet rather than the shot bounce off like the armor save would represent.

And this retains the fact that low ap weapons still instagib them but with the correct removal of them as weapon options from some units, price jacks on others, and a total rebalancing and reassessment of weapon statlines it could work.

This means that while a giant pile of conscripts might dump 40 saves on 5 terminators each of those has 4 wounds for them to chew through and if the executioner down the way would only rotate his gun this unit could be removed with only a single blast.

natpri771 wrote:

1. Would assault 2 combi-weapons be that much of a big deal? What do you have against adding new stuff to the game?

I'm not against it - I was genuinely curious as to whether such things exist in he fluff.

natpri771 wrote:

2. So, guys in terminator armour should be as tough as guys in power armour?

Yes. Because the difference is their armour - which is precisely what armour saves represent.

natpri771 wrote:

3. Not all of those simultaneously, I don't see how that is unnecessary

Because the solution to escalation is not 'more escalation'. I believe Vaktathi summed it up very well - one of the major problems at the moment is that several units are far too durable for their cost. We should be looking to tone such units down, not use them as the new standard and try to make every elite unit equally durable.

natpri771 wrote:

4. I meant that and let the sergeant take a power/chain fist as well

 BoomWolf wrote:
Nice one miko.

But as I've said many times before, the answer is simply-don't force the power fists.

The power weapon terminators of SW, CSM and GK works out just fine.

They don't "work out fine" - the only reason GK terms are "okayish" is because they get a relentless psycannon for 185 points and you have to put your librarian somewhere - might as well put him with scoring termies. Strike squads were much much better than GKT before they made psycannons salvo. I still consider termies a troop tax and yes they are STILL overpriced.

When you say that Strike Squads were better, you seem to be neglecting the price drop GK terminators got.

Maybe make a power weapon storm bolter termie 30ppm. TDA gives T5 and reduce the ap of all shooting against models wearing it by 1 (ap1 becomes ap2, and ap2 becomes ap3 ect). Buff storm bolters a bit to make them worth the 5 points they cost (salvo 2/3 or 2/4 maybe with rending on 2/3 profile). Maybe even make them like wolfguard terminators in that they can also be made into assault variant which would make a single unit profile instead of two. The mixing and matching could really help them out.

 NorseSig wrote:
Maybe make a power weapon storm bolter termie 30ppm. TDA gives T5 and reduce the ap of all shooting against models wearing it by 1 (ap1 becomes ap2, and ap2 becomes ap3 ect). Buff storm bolters a bit to make them worth the 5 points they cost (salvo 2/3 or 2/4 maybe with rending on 2/3 profile). Maybe even make them like wolfguard terminators in that they can also be made into assault variant which would make a single unit profile instead of two. The mixing and matching could really help them out.

Really? ALL of that AND a point reduction? If we're going with that then Grots for Orks should be free (or be negative points thus rewarding you for using them)

I always write the same in each of thouse threads.

Terminators are a CC unit with some "bonus" shoting.

To be playable they need:
1. accurate deep strike
2. T5 and fnp
3. Unit size 3+

If terminators become T5 then Tau Broadsides will have to become T6 (since they should clearly have a higher toughness value) and this means that the Riptide will have to become either T7 or T8.

Do you see how it will have a domino effect on other armies?

Like Eldar Wraithguard would have to become T7 or T8 too (meaning the Wraithknight becoming T9 or T10).

elotar wrote:
I always write the same in each of thouse threads.

Terminators are a CC unit with some "bonus" shoting.

To be playable they need:
1. accurate deep strike
2. T5 and fnp
3. Unit size 3+

Or for CC to not hinge on being hilariously fast and durable (i.e. not like Wraiths, the other kind of Wraiths, or TWC). If there were ways for infantry on foot to get into combat without having to spend half the game advancing, that'd be great. Perhaps increase run distance to 6+D6"? It'd certainly make everything that much more manouvreable.

SGTPozy wrote:
If terminators become T5 then Tau Broadsides will have to become T6 (since they should clearly have a higher toughness value) and this means that the Riptide will have to become either T7 or T8.

Do you see how it will have a domino effect on other armies?

Like Eldar Wraithguard would have to become T7 or T8 too (meaning the Wraithknight becoming T9 or T10).

You're making the assumption that Broadsides have to be tougher than Terminators. Don't they already have 2 wounds?