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Solution to make vehicles viable, and line up vehicles with MC/GMC/SHV

Remove the damage table.

Vehicles retain HPs, if they are reduced to 0 HP they are destroyed.

Anytime a vehicle suffers 1 or more HP damage from a hit roll a d6.

1-6= no effect.
7+= Destroyed*

AP1 Weapons can add +1 to this roll


*When a vehicle is destroyed roll a D6, if the result is higher than the vehicles starting HPs it explodes.

AP1 weapons can add +1 to this roll.


Explosions = D6 S4 ap- automatic hits to any units within the vehicles starting HPs+d3 inches.

the idea is to balance normal vehicles against MC/FMC/GC/SHV which lose no effectiveness as they are damaged. Also to reduce record keeping and speed up resolution of vehicle damage.

Vehicles don't die from exploding. They die from three 6's from small arms fire. That's the problem, not the meltas. Meltas are designed to kill vehicles, if your opponent gets their meltas within 6" of your tanks it's your fault he did and your tank deserves to die.

well that has very little to do with the problem I am discussing.

There is a large divide in what happens to MC/GMC/SHV/GC and normal vehicles. These other models which take a lot of shooting to kill remain at 100% effectiveness until they die. Somehow their parts don't get damaged, their guns don't get blown up, and they are a-okay until they are dead. Vehicles do not.

Lets imagine something different.


You have a 400pt Knight with 6 HP next to 2 land raiders with 4hp each. (~500pts)

Your opponent drops in with two squads of 6x melta guns on one, and two squads of 6x melta guns on the other.

Vs the knight= average 4 hits, average 4 pens, the knight saves versus 2 of them, so 2 effects. Lets say 1 pen and 1 pen+explode so d3+1 hps. The knight lives, can move, shoot, and loses no weapons.

VS the land raiders= average 4 hits, we will say 2 hits on each land raider. Results are 3 pens and 1 explode. So one raider is down 2 hps, and has to roll twice on a table that further damages its abilities lets say shaken and a gun is blown off, the other is just gone.

Which result would you rather have? Consider one is 400pts the other is 500pts of models.


There is in inherent balance issue with having a class of something take additional damage when damaged, but nothing else does- and the points cost/rules do not reflect this.






This is a big reason people dislike buying vehicles that are not SHV, or in the case of tau/gks MC/GMC.

There are no penalties for certain large tough units between perfect health and death, and for some reason for all other large units(vehicles) there are many states of suffering.

The main result of this change isn't that vehicles die in some way, they are still dying to DSing meltas. It is that there is no need to roll for other effects like shaken/stunned/immobilized/weapon destroyed- just as MC/GMC/SHV do not worry about these effects.

The result is balance between how things are hurt, reduction in record keeping, and time saved during play.

The alternative realistic stance is to add damage tables for MCs/GCs/SHVs where they suffer negative effects that are 'realistic' results of being damaged just like vehicles.

We sort of play this in our games of 6.5 40K and it works really well.

ours is:
no table.
roll a D6 for pen hits- 6 explodes, add +1 for AP2, +2 for AP1.

Our vehicles also have Overwatch

 Mr Morden wrote:
We sort of play this in our games of 6.5 40K and it works really well.

ours is:
no table.
roll a D6 for pen hits- 6 explodes, add +1 for AP2, +2 for AP1.

Our vehicles also have Overwatch

that sounds pretty speedy and reasonable too.

Just use the rules from apocalypse, which is ignore everything on the chart except explodes results. It's why superheavy vehicles have the rule they do.

I wouldn't mind that for streamlining purposes, though I don't think it really solves the essential vehicle problem: light vehicles get sanded to bits all too quickly, heavy vehicles get lucky-shotted. (But, solving that is a matter for another thread.)

EDIT: Oh, wait. I missed that AP2 and open-topped doesn't give bonuses on the chart anymore, and AP1 is only +1. So, those lucky shots will be really rare now. Ok, that might work alright, and does make heavy vehicles a lot tougher.

AOS Damage chart. Gets weaker as it takes more damage. Boom. *minds blown*