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Skimmed this through the search bar and didn't find anything, so here it is.

Basically I'm thinking of making like Paizo/Pathfinder and simply retooling the 5th edition rules to make a different playing experience.
(Not that I'm bitter about invisible Imperial Knights).

Anything other than the Grey Knights which were a bit too much in 5th ed?

THE POLL:
Basically a list of things off the top of my head which are different in 6th/7th edition. If you think it was a complete improvement, we can work it into the ruleset.
If it comes up I can also do a quick (How it was Then, How it is Now) list for the stuff in the poll, for those who can't really remember 5th or never played it.
There's gonna be something I've missed, please let me know so I can toss them up.

For things in individual codices, make the assumption that it would be the same as the 5th edition codex, but overruled by anything from the new ruleset.

One thing that bugged me the most in 5th was wound allocation. Not that what we have is better, but 5th was bad. Mostly due to multi-wound shuffling shenanigans. GK were bad for this, but also things like orc nobs.

5th, 6th, 8th... I don't think it matters what edition you start out with, I think a small group of rational, reasonable fans could put together a simpler and more coherent ruleset than any of the ones GW has given us, and the new rules would close the ridiculous loopholes that GW keeps creating by changing rules without considering the implications of those changes upon other rules.

Never played 5th, but from what I hear assault armies could charge from reserves... count me in!

Best to cut everything back down to 3rd ed. The game needs a massive amount of fat trimmed. Fliers should just be treated as Skimmers, Special Rules need to be tweaked and shrank down in number. Overwatch, Snap Fireing and the Run rules need to burn in the fires of hell. No ADLs or other buy a building crap.

I'm fine with keeping Slow and Purposeful as I think it was around back then with things like Oblits. Super Heavies and Gargantuan things can stay. I'd like to see hull points scrapped but could be convinced to let it stay. Psychic Powers need a massive nerf and simplification.

But other then that just go back to 3rd before all this got muddied up.

Far as I remember old slow and purposeful was d6 movement.

It made playing Ksons very slow, but not many other things used it.

I recommend starting out with movement, LOS and wound allocation from 4th, vehicles and USRs from 7th, psychics from 6th.

The new vehicle damage table is pretty good as well as AP modifiers on it.

I want to go back to old ld based psychic phase.


Overwatch is fine, run should be a set number for different units and so should charges.

No escape and wall of death should be the template laid out and then d3 hits for every unit under it.

Keep the rules for superheavies/gargants but make it 2000pts + only. SD below 2000pts only counting as s10ap1 would be good too

Flyers should lose the ability to fire 1 weapon after jinking or zooming and not be able fire any if the do both.

Slow and Purposeful, as is, is stupid. Being able to shoot heavy weapons and then charge into combat same turn is a not a good represention of what they are supposed to at all. Make them relentless but with 3" movement and the inability to assault the turn they shoot.
H

Skimmers that jink should only move half their normal distance

 DoomShakaLaka wrote:
The new vehicle damage table is pretty good as well as AP modifiers on it.
No escape and wall of death should be the template laid out and then d3 hits for every unit under it.

Well that'd be a problem 'cos Wall of Death is basically you flaming them as they charge in - so do you put the template down before or after they've charged?
No escape meanwhile is you burning up units which aren't actually represented. If we had to start putting models in the back of the battlewagon we'd run out of room really quickly.

Silly. Overwatch is resolved before the units even roll the charge dice. So you place the template down resolve wounds then continue. It makes flamers scarier, but letts you have an advantage with longer charges.

I worded it a little goofy when I typed that up there. I did nit mean to say to use a template on no escape.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Actually looking back that was exactly what I said. Sorry, I typed that wrong.

 DoomShakaLaka wrote:
The new vehicle damage table is pretty good as well as AP modifiers on it.

I want to go back to old ld based psychic phase.


Overwatch is fine, run should be a set number for different units and so should charges.

No escape and wall of death should be the template laid out and then d3 hits for every unit under it.

Keep the rules for superheavies/gargants but make it 2000pts + only. SD below 2000pts only counting as s10ap1 would be good too

Flyers should lose the ability to fire 1 weapon after jinking or zooming and not be able fire any if the do both.

Slow and Purposeful, as is, is stupid. Being able to shoot heavy weapons and then charge into combat same turn is a not a good represention of what they are supposed to at all. Make them relentless but with 3" movement and the inability to assault the turn they shoot.
H

Skimmers that jink should only move half their normal distance

The old way psychic powers worked was a lot better by far. Still I hate Overwatch with a fiery passion, but you bring up a good point. No random charge ranges, and I'd still prefer run to be removed entirely, and let fleet have that rule like old times. But they really, need to cut the randomness out.

I like your idea on jinking though, no shooting and half movement for all things that can jink.

Edit: I.E. IF you keep Overwatch, which I still hope it dies next edition, PLEASE no random charges and run.

Yeah nothing more frustrating than losing a herd to overwatch and failing the charge range.

Any ruleset that doesn't put a bullet in random charge range is a ruleset I'm not interested in.

 KingmanHighborn wrote:
Best to cut everything back down to 3rd ed. The game needs a massive amount of fat trimmed. Fliers should just be treated as Skimmers, Special Rules need to be tweaked and shrank down in number. Overwatch, Snap Fireing and the Run rules need to burn in the fires of hell. No ADLs or other buy a building crap.

I'm fine with keeping Slow and Purposeful as I think it was around back then with things like Oblits. Super Heavies and Gargantuan things can stay. I'd like to see hull points scrapped but could be convinced to let it stay. Psychic Powers need a massive nerf and simplification.

But other then that just go back to 3rd before all this got muddied up.

I'll be taking Baharroth and soloing your entire army then.

All GW produced editions of the game are terrible, the only solution is to make an entirely new ruleset or to radically alter each and every codex (up to and including changing the unit lists of each army) to try and salvage some sort of balance from the ruleset.

I went through third to remember all of its rhino rushes, death marching necrons, and army mulching phoenix lords.

Seriously, GW has never made good rules ever and never will until every single mouthbreather in their design team chokes on a pretzel and dies.

Um...yeah I doubt that. Baharroth and Swooping Hawk Exarchs in general had that awesome power to roll for more hits, but you rarely got that many extra hits. It was fun to tear through a 30+ gaunt squad though. (I used to play Eldar in 3rd kiddo. ^-^ )

Phoenix Lords were pricy, and needed support and the stars to align just right to be brutal. Most of the time they died to a vanilla Space Marine Chapter Master.

Rhino Rush was a thing, but it was a very beatable thing. AV11 is still AV11.

Necrons came on at the tail in of 3rd, but they have ALWAYS been the number one broken army. And that's the fault of the codex, not 3rd edition.

Not to mention in third a lot of the 'special' characters were locked away until certain points were met and opponents gave permission to use them.

3rd was my favorite, 4th and 5th still good, but it wasn't until the current edition with things like ADLs, flyers (though that too was more tail end 5th.), BS like Overwatch and the Run rule came in and a stupidly high number of USRs.

 KingmanHighborn wrote:
Um...yeah I doubt that. Baharroth and Swooping Hawk Exarchs in general had that awesome power to roll for more hits, but you rarely got that many extra hits. It was fun to tear through a 30+ gaunt squad though. (I used to play Eldar in 3rd kiddo. ^-^ )

Phoenix Lords were pricy, and needed support and the stars to align just right to be brutal. Most of the time they died to a vanilla Space Marine Chapter Master.

Rhino Rush was a thing, but it was a very beatable thing. AV11 is still AV11.

Necrons came on at the tail in of 3rd, but they have ALWAYS been the number one broken army. And that's the fault of the codex, not 3rd edition.

Not to mention in third a lot of the 'special' characters were locked away until certain points were met and opponents gave permission to use them.

3rd was my favorite, 4th and 5th still good, but it wasn't until the current edition with things like ADLs, flyers (though that too was more tail end 5th.), BS like Overwatch and the Run rule came in and a stupidly high number of USRs.

No they weren't.

3rd ed was dominated by "he who had the most blood angels in rhinos"

4th ed was dominated by "he who had the most eldar in undamageable skimmers"

5th ed was dominated by "he who had the most psyfle dreads"

There is no saving 40k in this format.

The only solution is the scorched earth one. Burn everything to the ground, start a new ruleset as drastically different from this one as 3e was from 2e and pray that GW's design team dies or gets fired and never works in the industry again.

No mention of Fish of Fury?

 Tack wrote:
No mention of Fish of Fury?

I tried to block that from my memory.

I think its a heck of a lot more feasible to port 40k setting and units etc over to an established ruleset (such as Beyond the Gates of Antares, or Maelstorms Edge or Warpath when either of those release) than to try and push a ruleset established from scratch.

Those games have existing support, playerbases, and tested rules, while a complete fan edition has nothing but a few gamers on dakkadakka's Proposed Rules subforum to back it up

Hmm. I started in 5th edition, and I'm not sure I really want anything back from those days except being able to assault out of vehicles/reserves, maybe leadership test psychic powers, and maaaaaybe the old rules for cover saves on flatout skimmers/to-hit modifiers for skimmers. The last bit replacing jink, of course.

I remember fifth edition as the days of all-mech all the time where I wasn't really able to use aspect warriors unless they were inside of skimmers. Tournaments were basically a parade of internet list marines painted the color of the newest codex. It was kinder to some units and less kind to others.

I know 5th was the last edition before the relatively extreme changes of 6th edition, but I'm not sure I'd call it "better." 7th edition has a few very poorly balanced things (as does any edition) and some rules bloat, but at least there's enough new content to keep things fresh and interesting.

Most of the complaints I hear about 7th seem to be with a handful of specific things that would be easier to tweak than throw out. My spur of the moment fixes for a few of them:

Too many random things like powers and warlord traits- balance them against each other better, and make them purchasable with points.

Broken Psychic Phase- cap warp charges, and fix the handful of actually broken powers (like Invisibility).

Overpowered Factions- First of all, these are not 7th edition specific. That said, most offending books can be brought in line with simple changes. Eldar need a points hike for the wraith knight and a 1 per 3 heavy weapon rule for guardian bikers, for starters. Necrons need a tweak to reanimation protocols, or at least a tweak to the decurion rules.

Hard to Assault: Use 5th edition rules for assaulting out of vehicles/reserves.

Jink: Lots of options here. Maybe just go back to 5th edition cover saves for moving flatout. This makes it harder to benefit from a save while maintaining positioning/firepower.

 Kain wrote:

 KingmanHighborn wrote:
Um...yeah I doubt that. Baharroth and Swooping Hawk Exarchs in general had that awesome power to roll for more hits, but you rarely got that many extra hits. It was fun to tear through a 30+ gaunt squad though. (I used to play Eldar in 3rd kiddo. ^-^ )

Phoenix Lords were pricy, and needed support and the stars to align just right to be brutal. Most of the time they died to a vanilla Space Marine Chapter Master.

Rhino Rush was a thing, but it was a very beatable thing. AV11 is still AV11.

Necrons came on at the tail in of 3rd, but they have ALWAYS been the number one broken army. And that's the fault of the codex, not 3rd edition.

Not to mention in third a lot of the 'special' characters were locked away until certain points were met and opponents gave permission to use them.

3rd was my favorite, 4th and 5th still good, but it wasn't until the current edition with things like ADLs, flyers (though that too was more tail end 5th.), BS like Overwatch and the Run rule came in and a stupidly high number of USRs.

No they weren't.

3rd ed was dominated by "he who had the most blood angels in rhinos"

Eh...no it wasn't, Blood Angels still died in droves to Starcannon fire and Wraithlords. And the Death Company was still expensive, and their Rhino was still AV11, or if they had jump packs had to either move in the open to get shot up, or deep striked and got shot to heck. Even my Nids and Orks back in third could beat the Rhino Rush. It was a good tactic for beginners but it was beatable.

I figure that a "hybrid" of 5th and 7th ed rules would be the best way to make the 40k system work.

With 5th, between cover saves defaulting to 4+, a vehicle damage chart that prevented wrecks on glances, no hull point system, the ability to charge from stationary vehicles, and a general lack of "ignore cover" weapons, the game heavily favored mass light mech. Armies like mass Razorbacks, or semi-mech (like Kopach's wolves) were far better than in subsequent editions.

6th made vehicles faster, yes. It also made them more fragile due to Hull Points, the inability to charge from stationary vehicles, and the new introduction of ignore-cover anti-tank. (Hi Eldar/Tau/etc), as well as that commandment of "Thou must exit thine Metal Box to claim an objective marker."

7th fixed scoring to a degree, and made vehicles more resilient vs being nuked (they still get HP-scrubbed). However, assault is still eh.

If I were to write a system (I try, on-and-off but I am lazy), it would probably be:

5th: Assault movement, assault from outflank/reserve, assault from the inside of a stationary transport, "defensive" weapons, etc.

7th: Snapshots, Psychic Phase (retweaked, no "random powers", etc), S&P="Cannot Run", shooting wound allocation, etc.

Misc: Difficult Terrain halves movement unless "Move through cover." Vehicles get extra HP/explosions strip more HP. Characters get an extra wound each as "lasgun insurance." Game as "I phase/you phase"

Woah. Hull points finally beat out Overwatch.

Eh Overwatch is still an uber stupid bad idea. It and Run, and the ability to take buildings like the ADL should DIE FIRST.

I think all you'd need to do to tweak 5th would be to make mech less powerful. Add in the hull points, damage charts and ap 1/2 rules from 7th and razorspam and leafblower suddenly aren't quite as insane, and really what else was particularly bad about 5th? Besides certain Matt Ward shenanigans, obviously.

I don't think 40k needs burning to the ground, I think just taking one of the old editions (3, 4 or 5) and adding the better rules from later editions would make for a great ruleset.

I think the important thing for creating a tweaked ruleset would be to keep everything as simple as possible to pick up and play, which was the greatest strength of early third ed. I would be well up for playtesting a community ruleset and the guys from my gaming group would be chill enough to help =)

What's so awful about Overwatch? I mean, things like the AdMech/Dark Angels "Overwatch at BS4" are really really mean, but at BS1? How often is that more than mildly inconvenient to anyone except Dark Eldar? (I've lost many a Wytch charging them into, say, Guardsmen or Tactical Marines, but that's more a problem with Wytches). Unless you mean things that are pretty statistically rare, like "Chapter Master gets one-shotted by an Overwatching lascannon"

On the other hand, I say this as someone who never played 4th and 5th, and played only a few games - and those as Eldar and Necrons - in 3rd.

jade_angel wrote:
What's so awful about Overwatch? I mean, things like the AdMech/Dark Angels "Overwatch at BS4" are really really mean, but at BS1? How often is that more than mildly inconvenient to anyone except Dark Eldar? (I've lost many a Wytch charging them into, say, Guardsmen or Tactical Marines, but that's more a problem with Wytches). Unless you mean things that are pretty statistically rare, like "Chapter Master gets one-shotted by an Overwatching lascannon"

On the other hand, I say this as someone who never played 4th and 5th, and played only a few games - and those as Eldar and Necrons - in 3rd.

My only problem with Overwatch is that it adds an interrupt action, one that requires quite a bit of rolling and slows down the game. I love the concept, but it does slow the game down, not that my Tau don't love throwing gobs of dice every time. It also was an addition that heavily favored shooting armies when combined with other nerfs that hurt assault.




Take 5th...
change wound allocation for mixed multiwound models as it was abuseable.
moderate nerf to vehicles, add HP mechanic or a table where Glances can Wreck a vehicle on a 6.
Allow Snap Firing
SnP is no Run


That right there would solidify 5th as the most solid ruleset we've seen to date.

jade_angel wrote:
What's so awful about Overwatch? I mean, things like the AdMech/Dark Angels "Overwatch at BS4" are really really mean, but at BS1? How often is that more than mildly inconvenient to anyone except Dark Eldar? (I've lost many a Wytch charging them into, say, Guardsmen or Tactical Marines, but that's more a problem with Wytches). Unless you mean things that are pretty statistically rare, like "Chapter Master gets one-shotted by an Overwatching lascannon"

On the other hand, I say this as someone who never played 4th and 5th, and played only a few games - and those as Eldar and Necrons - in 3rd.

I think people who complain about Overwatch mostly complain because of things like the Tau rule that lets all their buddies pitch in. Generally, I lose 0-1 bodies to overwatch unless I'm charging a squishy squad into something with a flamer, for instance.

That said, Overwatch can be a "feel bad" rule combined with other 7th edition rules. I used my Solitaire the other day as part of the Hero's Path formation. He arrived from outflank which meant I had to let my opponent shoot him up at least one turn. His 2+ save held out reasonably well, but that left him with a single wound. Then I got just slightly unlucky when I charged the following turn and lost him to overwatch. So the whole "you have to get shot at least once" thing that results from the current outflanking/disembarking rules is annoying enough by itself (and definitely more of a headache than overwatch), but then overwatch gives your opponent another chance (potentially a good chance with the right special rules or buffs) to shoot you up a little more. So it just sort of adds to the frustrations of playing an assault army without using a death star.

Edit: Also, random c harge distance + overwatch means you get those situations where killing one or two guys in overwatch put the unit out of charge range. Thus leaving them exposed to be shot and overwatched an additional time next turn.

I agree assault has been overnerfed, though I'm also not partial to the concept of "shooting army has 1-2 turns to table assault army, then they all get tarpitted or ripped to pieces"...

Maybe a reasonable compromise would be to say that a unit arriving from reserve could shoot *or* charge, but never both, you can charge if you disembark from a non-assault vehicle that didn't move (but with some penalty - give Land Raiders, Raiders, Stormravens, etc a reason to exist), and maybe charge distances of d6+6.

I like keeping some randomness - create a danger bubble where you *could* get charged, but it's not a guarantee - without the "you can fail a 2" charge through terrain" like you have now. Also, a fixed 6" charge makes it way too easy for Eldar Jetbikes and Jetpack Infantry to play merry-keep-away, while a fixed 12" charge is *way* too strong IMHO.

I otherwise mostly like 7th, with a few exceptions (Battle Brother Allies create some broken combos but some armies - ahem, Adepta Sororitas - have real issues without them; Invisibility is thunderously awful, etc)