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While I have previously defended 6th and 7th editions' system of allocating wounds to the closest model, this was mostly due to my being very used to this rule. After being informed of how Wound Allocation worked in previous editions and further thought on my part, I have concluded that 7th edition's system of Wound Allocation only serves to slow down the game and penalize assaults. When combined wiht Look Out Sir!, it slows the game down even further. Close-Combat is already highly representational, so why shouldn't Wound Allocation for the Shooting Phase be too? I have tried to keep these changes a simple as possible, as I am aware that many players already use variations of 5th edition's Wound Allocation system.

Allocate Wounds: The Owning Player of the unit targeted by the shooting attack may allocate wounds to any model in the unit, subject to restrictions.

Models with Multiple Wounds: If a unit is composed entirely of models with multiple wounds, the Owning Player must allocate wounds to a model in the unit that has previously suffered an Unsaved Wound. Once this model has been removed as a casualty, the Owning Player may then choose a different model onto which to allocate wounds.

Wound Allocation and Characters: If possible, wounds must be allocated first to non-character models in a unit. Units composed entirely of Characters (including Independent Characters) must allocate wounds to the model with the fewest wounds, in addition to following the rules for Models with Multiple Wounds. If all the models in a unit are Characters or Independent Characters with an equal number of wounds, the Owing Player may then choose the model onto which to allocate wounds.

Random Allocation: If a unit is wounded by an attack that does not originate from an enemy unit, or is wounded by an effect that specifies that wounds be distributed randomly, do not allocate wounds as normal. Instead, randomly determine a model in the unit. This model is then allocated the wounds from the shooting attack or other effect.

Out of Range: If none of the firing models in the enemy unit are in range of the target unit, then wounds cannot be allocated to that unit. If there are no models in the target unit that are in range, all remaining wounds in the Wound Pool are lost.

Out of Sight: If none of the firing models can draw line of sight to a particular model in the target unit, then wounds cannot be allocated to that model. If there are no visible models in the target unit, all remaining wounds in the Wound Pool are lost.

Look Out, Sir! and Shooting: Sometimes, wounds must be allocated to character models. When a wound is allocated to a non-vehicle character, the character is allowed to make a Look Out, Sir! attempt. To make a Look Out, Sir! attempt, roll a D6.

On a roll of 3 or less, the attempt fails. The wound is allocated to the character as normal.

On a roll of 4 or more, the attempt is successful. The Owning Player chooses a model in the same unit and within 6" of the character, and allocates the wound to that model. This model must be in range and line of sight of the shooting attack. Once a model has had a wound allocated to it through a Look Out, Sir! roll, all wounds allocated from additional Look Out, Sir! rolls must be allocated to that model until that model is removed as a casualty. If these conditions are not met, the wound must be allocated to the character.

I feel that these changes represent the best of both worlds, having 5th edition's means of allocating wounds and 6th and 7th editions' restrictions on line-of-sight and range. Any comments or feedback would be greatly appreciated.

EDIT: After from koooaei, loopholes and wording regarding Characters and Look Out, Sir! were fixed.

This way special dudes will live on and on.

Previously, in 5-th there used to be a rule of spreading wounds between different model types. For example, you've got a meltagun dude, a sarge and 3 marines. And suffer 11 wounds. You must spread them the way each identically geared and named model suffers close to equal ammount of wounds, so this way you've got 2 wounds for a sarge, 2 wounds for a melta dude and 7 wounds to regular marines (cause obviously, they're not as important and you're fine with them being in more danger of failing saves). However, that brought up another problem of multi-wound squads of all the different models. Like 5-th edition paladins where one was with a sword, another with a special sword, another with a stick, another with something else...and this way you could allocate wounds to each model separately. And as they had multiple wounds, they could live on with a bunch of models with 1 wound left. And back than bringing down a t4 2+ 4++ model with 2 wounds was not easy. But that's another story.

Besides, there goes another problem of this system. Fire and assault angles don't really matter outside of cover. Oh, and cover. You got cover based on the percentage of the squad in cover and not on per-model basis. Was pretty un-cinematic too.

Not saying that 7-th wound system is ideal. As for me, it should be a mix between 5-th and 7-th. Like when you recieve 5 wounds, you allocate it to 5 closest models and make saves on a per-model basis. That's slower than both systems but it avoids many problems of single tanking characters and positioning still does matter. Well, i think it's better to cut edges elsewhere. For example, running and jet-jumping moves shouldn't be made in the shooting/assault phase - it should be made together with movement. If you run, you do move faster after all. And it also eliminates one of the stupidest aspects of rulehammer - jsj. And no freaking look outs. It's a time waste. If your character ain't tough enough than don't stick him in the front. And snipers SHOULD matter. Rework barrage so that it's no longer better sniper than sniper.

I like it, TheNewBlood. I'd probably cut out random allocation though. Random wound allocation is a huge pain when you're dealing with strangely-numbered units, and one of the strengths of your system is that you can cut out things like that by just letting the guy getting shot up put the wounds where he wants.

Regarding Kooaei's concerns:

I actually like that the special guys can keep going. It's more fun to me for both players to get to use their fancy upgrades than to lose said upgrades before they can come into play. Currently, placing models carefully can mitigate that, but I'm not sure I'm a huge fan of agonizing over precise placement like that. Letting a hekatrix or aspiring champion be the last to die so that they can be around to have cool duels with their expensive gear is absolutely fine in my book, as is leaving meltagun marines alive so that they can actually hurt their intended targets rather than plinking away at things with bolters.

As you've pointed out, the 5th edition wound allocation system got annoying when ti came to uniquely geared multiwound models.

By fire and assault angles, do you mean not being able to shoot out certain models by coming at them from a certain angle? If so, I'm totally fine with this; see above about hekatrices and aspiring champs. If you really wanted to kill off specific targets, you could also theoretically set up your shooters at a certain distance so that wounds have to be allocated onto the special guys, though that's admittedly a bit of a hassle.

I agree with your sentiment concerning barrage and sniper. With the proposed system, I'd probably just have barrage allocate wounds to models of the defending player's choice. I'd have snipers be precision shots as they are now, but possibly disallow or debuff look out sir rolls. Snipers are actually pretty decent at taking out things like banners, special weapon guys, etc. They're just not so great against characters. I'm torn on that point, because while I'd love for snipers to get a bit of a boost, I'd also hate for upgraded sargeant equivalents to be penalized.

With all the changes suggested here, I think it probably gives characters enough breathing room (they'll almost always die last) to warrant letting snipers ignore LoSir. Snipers aren't exactly dominating the game as is.

Wyldhunt wrote:

Regarding Kooaei's concerns:

By fire and assault angles, do you mean not being able to shoot out certain models by coming at them from a certain angle? If so, I'm totally fine with this; see above about hekatrices and aspiring champs.

For example, i've got a DLS megaboss in a unit of boyz. Boyz have 6+ armor save, boss has 2+ rerollable armor save and fnp. With the current system, you can do absolutely nothing to harm the blob and i won't even need to care bout positioning. ap2? Boyz take wounds. Non-ap2? Nope, 2+ rerollable and fnp, you can't hurt me.

 koooaei wrote:

Wyldhunt wrote:

Regarding Kooaei's concerns:

By fire and assault angles, do you mean not being able to shoot out certain models by coming at them from a certain angle? If so, I'm totally fine with this; see above about hekatrices and aspiring champs.

For example, i've got a DLS megaboss in a unit of boyz. Boyz have 6+ armor save, boss has 2+ rerollable armor save and fnp. With the current system, you can do absolutely nothing to harm the blob and i won't even need to care bout positioning. ap2? Boyz take wounds. Non-ap2? Nope, 2+ rerollable and fnp, you can't hurt me.

You bring up a legitimate criticism. There's also the chance for LoS! to be abused with independent characters as a means of spreading around wounds. I'll revise the rules so that wounds must first be allocated to non-character models, LoS! forces wounds onto a single model, and units of Independent Characters can't spread their wounds around.

The thing with the "special dudes always keep going" actually makes some sense for special and heavy weapons users. If a squad takes two meltaguns, it would be normal for the whole squad to be trained in the use of said meltaguns. So if a member of the squad carrying a meltagun gets killed, one of his surviving squadmates should be able to pick the special weapon and discard his own, as long as the player wants to do it.

The current wound allocation for shooting rules make no damn sense. The fact that someone is closer to a firing weapon does not mean he/she is going to get hit first, or that he/she's even going to get hit at all. And it makes even less sense for non-barrage template weapons, where depending to the circunstances you may even end up killing models you've not even hit.

I was thinking bout this problem. And we first need to determine the most important aspects.

1. Avoiding abusive mechanics.
2. Realistic.
3. Not too time-consuming.

Your suggestion deals with 3 really great.
1 not so much - can still easilly hide chracters and special dudes, can abuse different saves in squads.
2 not at all. First of all, i assume you're gona shift to 5-th ed method of determining cover saves. Than we could get front dudes in the open just standing there and back dudes somehow getting murdered instead.

My method deals with 1 and 2 well enough. When there's a wound pool that every model in range and los has to take wounds from, starting from closest, you can't really abuse mixed saves too effectively. Yet, if you got a front line of tough dudes, they'll still provide a healthy ammount of protection for the back rows - like it should be. And it's realistic that guyz in random order closer to the front fall down dead. Not all the front guyz, not all the back guyz but those more likely to get hit and not lucky enough to get saved by armor or terrain.
However, there's a HUGE problem with 3. It's really time consuming taking into consideration current killiness where you can take like 20+ wounds per every shooting attack.

I'd probably call the system ideal for smaller games. But as is, i need suggestions to make it better. As for your rules, they might actually be good. As good as 5-th ed rules were. I just probably don't like "special dudes never die".

Oh, and i'd like to add that i'm currently on the edge of a complete rule overwrite of 40k, so it's a very important question right now.

The current wound allocation rules can also be abused, and to absurd levels. Unleash an unholy amount of firepower at some 10-man squad, yet somehow the guy at the front (who happens to be wielding the stormshield) absorbs ALL the bullets... until he dies. This could make sense if I could only see that one guy (i.e. if I were shooting at a unit walking down a narrow alley or corridor), but if other members of the squad are visible, they should be legitimate targets as well.

I agree with giving cover saves only to the models behind actual cover though, as it prevents abusing the cover mechanics.

 Korinov wrote:

I agree with giving cover saves only to the models behind actual cover though, as it prevents abusing the cover mechanics.

But than it prevents from using the "i choose who makes saves" system. They exclude each other. You either make cover saves on a per model basis or pick models who make saves yourself but than rely on a percentage of covered models to recieve a cover save bonus. And yep, i'm not happy with the current system either.