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What with all the talk about giving Dreadnoughts a T value rather than armour, I got to thinking as to why a toughness value was considered better. It occurred to me that when you have to wound a model with a high toughness you have to go through another step than you do when rolling to pen armour - the saving throw. So why not give Armour units a saving throw too?
Something like AV10-11, 4+; 12-13, 3+ and 14 2+.
This immediately makes it much harder to simply glance a tank to death and makes single shot, high S, low AP weapons more useful.

What do people think? Has this been suggested before?

I like the idea, but vehicules would be very very much harder to crack with this. You would apply AP to these save? Like a Meltagun/Lascannon would ignore a AV14 save if it scores a pen considering it is AP 1 / 2?

The scale could be better at:
AV 10 : 6+
AV 11: 5+
AV 12 : 4+
AV 13 :3+
AV 14: 2+

Funny to notice there are enough AV levels to exactly fit the armor save system. So why not trying?

This has been discussed so many times in so many different ways.

So, what you need to understand is that it's not just the fact that a Toughness value is associated with an armor save.

It's the fact that Monstrous Creatures(and their Gargantuan counterparts) have the ability to:
1) Have an armor save.
2) Have two different values that a weapon has to "meet or beat"(Toughness and Armor values).
3) Have a cover save without meeting a "25% or more obscured" caveat.

Add in the issue of Hull Points(a REALLY small "wound" pool for most vehicles) being a good concept poorly executed with the vehicle rules for this edition(high S, low AP weapons aren't as great as middling S+AP weapons with high ROF) and Penetrating Hits having a chance for you to just get wrecked if the weapon's S/AP are high enough and you'll understand why there's a lot of discussing centered around how best to negate that.

Personally? I don't think Toughness and Armor Saves are the solution. I think a shift in the vehicle rules is the right way to go, removing the ability for anything that is not "Heavy", "Salvo", "Ordnance", "Graviton", or "Haywire" to even damage armored vehicles.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 RazgrizOne wrote:
I like the idea, but vehicules would be very very much harder to crack with this. You would apply AP to these save? Like a Meltagun/Lascannon would ignore a AV14 save if it scores a pen considering it is AP 1 / 2?

The scale could be better at:
AV 10 : 6+
AV 11: 5+
AV 12 : 4+
AV 13 :3+
AV 14: 2+

Funny to notice there are enough AV levels to exactly fit the armor save system. So why not trying?

Here's the issue:
The whole reason things were given an "Armor Value" to begin with was because those vehicles were intended to be much more difficult to crack than your standard monster or infantry.
The current rules made it FAR too easy for anything that isn't high S, high AP, and low ROF to just glance vehicles to death. Penetrating Hits are a joke at this point as the game just doesn't reward you for them while the stuff that is effective against MCs(high-ish S/AP and ROF; things to force lots of saves) is just as if not more effective versus vehicles.

@Kanluwen

I agree with you, but the idea of testing armor save, or any other kind of mechanics that can preserve vehicules from the issue you described, is worth considering. Maybe saves could be used only against glancing hits, or maybe we should just use the same vehicule rules as 5th edition. In any case, the current gap between MC and vehicules is annoying !

See, the problem is that Glancing Hits? They shouldn't be stripping hull points.

Period. End of story. If a shot hits a GMC/MC but doesn't Wound, it doesn't remove a Wound. It doesn't do anything--it gets discarded.

Glancing Hits are just that: Hits that deflect off the hull harmlessly, maybe chipping the paint or something.

 Kanluwen wrote:
T
Here's the issue:
The whole reason things were given an "Armor Value" to begin with was because those vehicles were intended to be much more difficult to crack than your standard monster or infantry.
The current rules made it FAR too easy for anything that isn't high S, high AP, and low ROF to just glance vehicles to death. Penetrating Hits are a joke at this point as the game just doesn't reward you for them while the stuff that is effective against MCs(high-ish S/AP and ROF; things to force lots of saves) is just as if not more effective versus vehicles.

But that's what an armour save would help prevent! I do think it would have to be at least 4+ to be effective, but a 4+ save would straight up double the amount of high APhits required to glance a vehicle to death, while letting low AP hits still deal the damage.

It may not make armour on par with high T but it would help redress the balance.
As for on "Heavy" etc. keywords only allowed to destroy armour, that would pretty much make Melta weapons obsolete, along with any chance to defeat tanks in hand to hand. Besides, aren't most of the high S, high ROF weapons heavy anyhow, but on a relentless platform?

 Aben Zin wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:
T
Here's the issue:
The whole reason things were given an "Armor Value" to begin with was because those vehicles were intended to be much more difficult to crack than your standard monster or infantry.
The current rules made it FAR too easy for anything that isn't high S, high AP, and low ROF to just glance vehicles to death. Penetrating Hits are a joke at this point as the game just doesn't reward you for them while the stuff that is effective against MCs(high-ish S/AP and ROF; things to force lots of saves) is just as if not more effective versus vehicles.

But that's what an armour save would help prevent! I do think it would have to be at least 4+ to be effective, but a 4+ save would straight up double the amount of high APhits required to glance a vehicle to death, while letting low AP hits still deal the damage.

It really wouldn't. Right now, there is a reason why people fielding Sentinels usually will field Autocannon Sentinels rather than Lascannon Sentinels--even in the role of tankhunting!
2 shots with 48" range at S7 AP4 versus a single shot at the same range that is S9 AP2 may not get penetrating hits, but weight of fire plays a significant role there.
Simply adding a 4+ save isn't going to be enough with the fact that most vehicles that aren't SH are sitting around 3 HPs. The whole damn system needs a heavy overhaul for vehicles.

It may not make armour on par with high T but it would help redress the balance.

Maybe it would, maybe it wouldn't. Right now people would rather spam high number of shots than use high S/AP weapons for antivehicle work. Why?
Because that stuff is also effective against MCs/GMCs.

As for on "Heavy" etc. keywords only allowed to destroy armour, that would pretty much make Melta weapons obsolete, along with any chance to defeat tanks in hand to hand. Besides, aren't most of the high S, high ROF weapons heavy anyhow, but on a relentless platform?

I figured I wouldn't have to address this, but I guess I do.

I didn't list every single permutation of something that is anti-vehicle. For example, I shouldn't have to say "Armourbane weapons should still be able to damage vehicles" or the same thing with Melta. I listed the ones that immediately sprang to my mind as "things that reasonably should be antivehicle".

 Kanluwen wrote:

It really wouldn't. Right now, there is a reason why people fielding Sentinels usually will field Autocannon Sentinels rather than Lascannon Sentinels--even in the role of tankhunting!
2 shots with 48" range at S7 AP4 versus a single shot at the same range that is S9 AP2 may not get penetrating hits, but weight of fire plays a significant role there.
Simply adding a 4+ save isn't going to be enough with the fact that most vehicles that aren't SH are sitting around 3 HPs. The whole damn system needs a heavy overhaul for vehicles.

But a 3+ save would make a difference - and a 2+ even more so. Say you're firing at an AV 12 tank. 6 Autocannon hits would give you 2 glances/pens, which is exactly what 3 lascannon hits would give you. Now give the tank A 3+, and suddenly the Autocannons only give you 0.66 glances/pens.

Maybe it would, maybe it wouldn't. Right now people would rather spam high number of shots than use high S/AP weapons for antivehicle work. Why?
Because that stuff is also effective against MCs/GMCs.

Which, as above, would no longer be the case.

I didn't list every single permutation of something that is anti-vehicle. For example, I shouldn't have to say "Armourbane weapons should still be able to damage vehicles" or the same thing with Melta. I listed the ones that immediately sprang to my mind as "things that reasonably should be antivehicle".

Still not sure that would be the way forward. After all, light armour should still have some vulnerability to high rate of fire weapons - just not to the degree that it currently does.

I really wanted to playtest some games with vehicles having a 3+ armor save except for Skimmer/Flyers having 4+ armor. AP4 auto cannon class weapons are still good against skimmers/flyers (forcing them to jink) but less effective against ground vehicles. Meltas, Lascannons, Railguns, etc are still the same but things like Gauss, Scatterlasers, Tesla, etc with high str but poor AP can't strip hull points as easily.

Change the Armour Penetration rules to make Glancing Hits no longer cause a HP loss - instead, on a roll of a 6 they cause the vehicle to be Crew Shaken. Vehicle Damage table modifiers apply as normal to the roll (ie Open Topped is +1, AP2 is +1, AP1 is +2 etc).

Having to Snap Shot is generally a pretty harsh penalty - anything with template or blast weapons isn't shooting at all, and all those other nasty single shot weapons need a 6 to hit. I'd possibly then consider making the Crew Shaken result trigger Dangerous Terrain tests if the Vehicle moves at Cruising Speed (ie more than 6"), Flat Outs, Turbo-Boosts or Runs so that Vehicles which don't really care about shooting still suffer a penalty.

I actually don't mind the idea of vehicles getting a save. The problem is scaling the save with the AV: if you do that, low-AV vehicles get wrecked by medium strength weapons with weak to medium AP. Just like they already do. (6+? Scatter lasers beat it. 5+? Gauss flayers, pulse rifles and shuriken cannons beat it. 4+? Autocannons, heavy bolters and assault cannons beat it, though at least we're in the territory of things that should hurt light vehicles now).

The other half of the problem is the 2+ on AV14. Now suddenly your hail-mary weapons against AV14 - krak missiles, overcharged cyclic ion blasters, battle cannons, singing spears in melee, etc - just bounce off 5/6 of the time, and they need a 6 just to get the glance. You need AP1/2 just to do anything unless you have the volume to fish for lucky shots - and S8 weapons don't.

I like the idea of a 4+ "vehicle save" - basically, it's a 4+ save (so it discounts 50% of hits that you get to use it on), but you need AP3 to ignore it. (There are too many AP4 weapons that can be spammed - heavy bolters, assault cannons, gauss blasters, missile pods, cyclic ion blasters, etc) You could also make it so that penetrating hits always ignore that vehicle save, so that cover, Jink and invulnerable saves remain interesting.

Or, you could make it so that pens don't auto-ignore it, but rather only ignore based on the weapon's AP - but let it stack with any cover or invuln saves the vehicle already gets. That'd be kinda like having Feel No Pain, in a way.

Well you could use a new system where ALL models get an AV from 1 to 10.
And all weapons get a AP value from 1 to 10.

And the armour save the model gets depends on the AP of the weapons hit.(Like the to wound chart comparing AV to AP.)

One damage resolution for ALL the units in 40k....

Just a thought....

I fully agree that glancing shots should not be able to destroy a vehicle, but I had a thought the other day. After the dizziness subsided, I realized that there are certain weapons, that (fluff-wise and logically) should be able to. My solution is two-part:

1. As others have stated, change the vehicle rules so that glancing hits no longer cause damage. They are treated like a miss.

2. Create a new weapon special rule:

Glancing

If a weapon with this special rule scores a Glancing Hit, a hull point is removed as if a Penetrating Hit had been scored.

Heavy Weapons automatically receive the Glancing special rule. It can then be applied to other weapons that make sense. Gauss comes to mind immediately, but I know there are others.

Thoughts?

This is great and all, but i am only concerned about fliers.

As in they get a save too, and not have to jink. Assuming AV changes are made.

That would be a valid concern about flyers, especially since the main anti-flyer weapon is an autocannon, or something with the same S/AP as one. OTOH, we have flying monstrous creatures already, and they already get armor saves.

On the gripping hand, an autocannon needs a 3+ to wound a Bloodthirster or a Hive Tyrant, while it needs a 5+ to glance a Stormraven. But most flyers don't have AV12... I think this one would need some testing.

There might be another consistent way to address this:

Resilient (X+): A vehicle with this special rule discounts the effects of a glancing or penetrating hit on a d6 roll of X or higher, as if an armor save had been made. Weapons with AP3 or better ignore the effects of Resilient.

Most vehicles would have Resilient (5+) or Resilient (4+), some really tough ones might have Resilient (3+), but flyers might not have Resilient at all, or might lose its benefits while Zooming.