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.

It's simple, really... We kill the Fear USR. No, I'm not... I'm not mad.

Seriously though, I've thought about how the rule could be improved: the Fear USR simply gives a flat -1 to Combat Resolution for the unit in combat with the unit with Fear. Stubborn units and units with ATSKNF may roll on Ld to avoid it each turn, and Fearless models ignore it. Simple. It's fluffy, too, since a unit that instills fear in their enemies are more likely to run from them in terror than, I dunno, not hit as well.

What do you say?

I would say get rid of it all together. It really doesn't add much and doesn't make much since for most armies.

-1 isn't enough. Back in the day (this may have been WHFB, can't remember), if you lost a combat against a Fear unit, you automatically broke. If you got charged by a unit with Horror (1 up from Fear) and failed your ld test, you broke before the combat was even fought. That second one was too strong imo.

It sounds wierd, but I always thought fear would make more sense and be more useful if it got a name change and caused fearless units to take morale checks after combat. Sort of like a counter.

Alternatively, one could write the fear USR to make any unit swing at the same time or after the unit with fear, or cause them to make an unmodified morale check before they get to swing in combat. Perhaps even the two combined. Getting a bit OP though and would completely change many units and their usefulness.

The fear USR is in a wierd place.

you couldn't truly fix fear unless you dialed back the number of fearless, stubborn, ATSKNF etc units in the game. But I've given this a try: instead of changing fear, make it so that ATSKNF only provides sweep protection and maybe improve base Ld for SM by 1. Now the vast majority of the game is not immune to fear, although space marines are appropriately brave, but not totally immune to morale effects.

Right now, enough things have fear and fear does function properly. We just need to open the flood gates to making everything not immune to it.

The thing I don't like about Fear is that sometimes it's supposed to represent something slightly different than outright being afraid.

Example: Mindschackle Scarabs. It's supposed to represent nanoscarabs burrowing into your mind and taking over your cognitive functions. I firmly believe that (with a slight point increase) if the wording for Mindshackle Scarabs was exactly that of Fear, without it being Fear, that piece of Wargear would be really good, usable, and make sense fluff-wise. But slapping the Fear word onto it makes Space Marines say "No" because reasons. And now it's never taken. Ever.

Honestly, Daemons, Monstrous Creatures, and Tyranids should be immune to most Fear based things. And They Shall Know No Fear, I think, is a bigger problem than Fear itself.

They should put a downside to ATSKNF. Because if you're indoctrinated to never fall back and never surrender, you lose a lot of tactical flexibility. Fearless doesn't let you go to ground as you don't care about getting shot. ATSKNF should have a similar thing to it. Maybe because they don't run whenever they fall back and regroup they must use their shooting or assault to attack the unit that caused the fallback.

There is no way in the Emperor's black sky that a 15-strong squad Ork Nobs would fear a single nurgling 5/12ths of the time. There are a lot of broken things in this game, but Fear ranks really, really high on the list.

Reduce fear to -1WS and make all characters fearless. Horror would be -2WS, and only available to a few MCs and Dark Eldar. Remove fearless from basic troops and elites.

 JimOnMars wrote:
There is no way in the Emperor's black sky that a 15-strong squad Ork Nobs would fear a single nurgling 5/12ths of the time. There are a lot of broken things in this game, but Fear ranks really, really high on the list.

What's really sad is that orks are really the only army that fear is effective against. Most other armies have something against it, where orks have none of the following:
-ATSKNF
-Fearless
-High Leadership
-Will die in combat no matter if they are WS 1 or not, and won't deal much damage if they are WS 1 or not
Where WS 1 orks really does neuter the efficiency of our charges, and we have about half a chance of failing it, and no mob rule on fear checks.

It would be nice to find some balance between making fear actually worth using on other armies, but not completely beating up on da greenskins.

Fluff wise orks actually have more right to ignore fear that marines, they were literally created not to feel fear, and the creature that gave every race the fear of death...had no effect on the orks.

 Formosa wrote:
Fluff wise orks actually have more right to ignore fear that marines, they were literally created not to feel fear, and the creature that gave every race the fear of death...had no effect on the orks.

Orks do know fear. I am not sure what makes you think they don't.

They managed to avoid the very specific fear of death, but they still feel general fear.

 Ashiraya wrote:

 Formosa wrote:
Fluff wise orks actually have more right to ignore fear that marines, they were literally created not to feel fear, and the creature that gave every race the fear of death...had no effect on the orks.

Orks do know fear. I am not sure what makes you think they don't.

They managed to avoid the very specific fear of death, but they still feel general fear.

Until the new book, orks didn't really care about fear the more of them that there were, so an individual ork may feel fear, but the background psychic field obviously overrides this, thats why big mobs and waaaghs are quite literally fearless, so as a race, they don't feel fear, as individuals, they do.

So the answer is simple for orks, 12+ models = fearless, or ld 10 and immune to fear, or just immune to fear.

The problem is not Fear, the problem is that 40K made leadership irrelevant. Fear, Pinning, Morale, etc: no one likes these rules, so they had to make every army immune to them. When they do not (eg Orks, Chaos), all the players complain about how under-powered they are. Realistically, Games Workshop needs to pull back on all the Fearless/ATSKNF/etc in the game, but it will never happen.

 Elric of Grans wrote:
The problem is not Fear, the problem is that 40K made leadership irrelevant. Fear, Pinning, Morale, etc: no one likes these rules, so they had to make every army immune to them. When they do not (eg Orks, Chaos), all the players complain about how under-powered they are. Realistically, Games Workshop needs to pull back on all the Fearless/ATSKNF/etc in the game, but it will never happen.

I agree, but as you say, I think we've got to work with what we've got. It's also why I'd like the Fear rule to just have a flat result, instead of a roll, though still letting some units re-roll it.

The easy answer is to make ATSKNF to provide resistance to fear, rather than outright immunity.

Nobody likes these rules? I love them. debuffing and neutralizing enemy units is practically 50% of the tactics possible in this game, its just rendered impractical because too freaking many are immune to it-and due to that they crank up the debuff even more powerful, so whoever isn't immue is further screwed, and from there being immune matters even more.

The moral/pinning/fear rules would be great, had it been possible to rely on them to at least do SOMETHING against most opponent. but given that the poster boys of the game are immune to nearly any debuff, even codex spesific ones-you simply cannot run your strategy around "braking enemy moral with stacking debuff" or even "debuff and eliminate", or "neutralize some, shoot the rest" or any other list based around these rules.

I mean, everyone are at least a subject to pinning and blind-but nobody can pack enough of it to really throw spanners in the works given that they just might fail even if you meet the conditions.

The impossibility of debuffs in 40k is what led to the whole arms race of "harder to kill" vs "better at killing", because killing is the only thing you can halfway rely on, while defending against moral is either automatic or very easy to most.
And for those few it isn't? tau are fragile you don't need to, orks are having a bad time even without it and eldar variants are the champs at the mind game to begin with, but they don't bother doing it because its only really useful facing other eldar.


TL;DR: you want to fix fear-tone down ATSKNF and make fearless more rare. once you can actually use the damn thing against most targets, at least to a minimal degree-it will surge up along all other debuff mechanics.
ATSKNF should simply reroll all Ld tests, without immunity to anything. makes them quite unlikly to fail (even improves VS pinning), but freaking possible to pull off once in a while, especially with stacking mental attacks.

I'd say ATSKNF should get a reroll for fear tests. I haven't had any issue kicking them in the teeth with my harlequins, so I haven't needed to implement any houserules to buff it as an option.

 The Wise Dane wrote:

 Elric of Grans wrote:
The problem is not Fear, the problem is that 40K made leadership irrelevant. Fear, Pinning, Morale, etc: no one likes these rules, so they had to make every army immune to them. When they do not (eg Orks, Chaos), all the players complain about how under-powered they are. Realistically, Games Workshop needs to pull back on all the Fearless/ATSKNF/etc in the game, but it will never happen.

I agree, but as you say, I think we've got to work with what we've got. It's also why I'd like the Fear rule to just have a flat result, instead of a roll, though still letting some units re-roll it.

I fail to see how pulling back fearless/ ATSKNF isn't something we could do ourselves. Fearless would need a more creative approach, but ATSKNF could really just achieve what most people are looking for with an across the board type of change.

Let's say ATSKNF provides no outright immunity to anything, but the sweeping advance protection and auto- regroup still applies. Now, Space Marines get a unique buff that sets them apart, while not ignoring the entire chapter in the BRB about morale.

Then, we don't really need to 'fix' fear directly, as morale and morale effects are now relevant again.