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I was reading the MC thread and this struck me as the chief reason why Vehicles are weaker then MC even if they cost the same or in a lot of cases more then MCs.

Would you be ok with removing the vehicle damage chart? So that instead of suffering results on the damage table you instead just lose hull points.

Second question is would you be ok with changing glancing hits to 1/2 a HP instead of a full HP? This reflects the loss of the damage chart and also makes vehicles even MORE durable, and it has the added bonus of causing High rate of fire weapons with low strength to lose some of their benefits making slower firing, higher strength weapons more viable again.

Personally no. half damage would be pain in the butt to track. rather it would be easier to increase hull points across the board.

it also doesn't change the fact that any pens will still feth it up including a straight auto kill.

the whole HP mechanic needs to change.

Vehicles should move to the T and armor saves system with additional rules for critical hits. in a way that when the model has lost its list hp/wound, it could possible explode on a 6 (since its pretty cool)

additionally a critical system should be added to MC.

I'm going with rewrite the game from the ground up.

I think it would be simpler to do either: 1) Make it so you can only loose 1 HP to glances per turn (no limit on pens, obviously) OR 2) give vehicles an armour save based on their AV (14 = 2+, 13= 3+, 12=4+, etc.) Another 'fix' would be to balance out the buffs the (G)MC rules give to things that are obviously not MCs (Tau stuff, Wraith knights/Lords, Dreadknights, etc.)

 Desubot wrote:
Personally no. half damage would be pain in the butt to track. rather it would be easier to increase hull points across the board.

it also doesn't change the fact that any pens will still feth it up including a straight auto kill.

the whole HP mechanic needs to change.

Vehicles should move to the T and armor saves system with additional rules for critical hits. in a way that when the model has lost its list hp/wound, it could possible explode on a 6 (since its pretty cool)

additionally a critical system should be added to MC.

Basically if a vehicle or MC gets wounded on a 6, other than by things that only wound on a 6, they should get a roll on a critical effect table. which should really just be 1-3 nothing 4, cant move, 5 cant shoot, 6 an additional wound, and maybe on a 7 give it the Spartain style mag explosion where you deal an additional D3 wounds but if it would cause the model to die, then it explodes.

edith god i quoted instead of edited again feth me.

Honestly, all vehicles should follow the same damage rules as Super Heavies, no sub-damage like crew shaken, immobilized, etc, just explodes on a 7 or loss of hull point for everything less, nothing else. This makes vehicles slightly more durable because they don't risk diminishing returns and gets rid of the annoying damage effect tracking.

I'd like to see the transition have penetrating hits follow the vehicle damage rules for super heavies and allow vehicles an armour save on glancing hits only (a penetrating hit is exactly that it gets through the armour) but on the glance you have a chance to save.

Also better armour give a better save as mentioned about 14= 2+, 13=3+ etc.

 Desubot wrote:
Personally no. half damage would be pain in the butt to track. rather it would be easier to increase hull points across the board.

it also doesn't change the fact that any pens will still feth it up including a straight auto kill.

the whole HP mechanic needs to change.

Vehicles should move to the T and armor saves system with additional rules for critical hits. in a way that when the model has lost its list hp/wound, it could possible explode on a 6 (since its pretty cool)

additionally a critical system should be added to MC.

Well no not really, at hte moment you have to keep track of dmg results such as immobilized, shaken, stunned weapon destroyed, that takes just as much effort to keep track of as half hull point damage.

It does change the Pen results. Without a damage table their is no 7 to roll therefore the vehicles will NEVER explode. This is a good game mechanic but it was so poorly done that it ruined vehicles in 7th edition. Maybe when vehicles run out of Hull points they explode, that would be fluffy as well. But they shouldn't just randomly explode to 1 shot, yeah it happens in real life but this is 40k not real life. Im rather sure that I didn't see any Necrons or Eldar in Afghanistan.

The amount of nonsense needs to be lowered, not increased. MCs should be way more vulnerable than they are currently.

How about monstrous creatures lose 1 strength, toughness, and initiative per wound they have suffered. Regaining wounds returns these stats but not in excess of their base value.

In addition to this smash should count the ap of the attack as equal to the to wound roll (min roll required).

Secondly glances on vehicles should have to roll again on a glance table, where a 5+ takes a hull point. All other results are nothing (faux save on glances) also with ap modifiers.

There are a lot of things that need to be done for vehicles to be relevent, especially compared to MCs.

A: Grav weapons don't affect vehicles at all

B: D weapons restricted to Lords of War slots, in turn restricted to 3K+ points; 'lesser' lords of war like knights that are playable in smaller games no longer have access to Str D weapons or stomps.

C: Reduce Str. or RoF for many of the other weapons introduced in recent years. As a benchmark, lascannons should be the go-to long range anti-tank weapon for imperial factions, and should be towards the high end generally, though not the best in the game.

D: weaken vehicle damage chart, but don't remove it

E: Increase armor values or hull points on many vehicles

F: Introduce an injury chart for Monstrous creatures similar in concept and effect to the vehicle damage chart

G: Make some of the MCs that are blatantly dudes in robot suits into Walkers like they should have been to start (dreadknight, tau stuff, etc).


honestly, it's so much that the game would need a 3e style reboot from the ground up to do it. baby step edition changes and codex updates won't fix it. Until then, the game's just boned.

SemperMortis wrote:

 Desubot wrote:
Personally no. half damage would be pain in the butt to track. rather it would be easier to increase hull points across the board.

it also doesn't change the fact that any pens will still feth it up including a straight auto kill.

the whole HP mechanic needs to change.

Vehicles should move to the T and armor saves system with additional rules for critical hits. in a way that when the model has lost its list hp/wound, it could possible explode on a 6 (since its pretty cool)

additionally a critical system should be added to MC.

Well no not really, at hte moment you have to keep track of dmg results such as immobilized, shaken, stunned weapon destroyed, that takes just as much effort to keep track of as half hull point damage.

It does change the Pen results. Without a damage table their is no 7 to roll therefore the vehicles will NEVER explode. This is a good game mechanic but it was so poorly done that it ruined vehicles in 7th edition. Maybe when vehicles run out of Hull points they explode, that would be fluffy as well. But they shouldn't just randomly explode to 1 shot, yeah it happens in real life but this is 40k not real life. Im rather sure that I didn't see any Necrons or Eldar in Afghanistan.

Eh im just saying rather than bothering with half points make it just regular points and double up on pens instead. ultimately the same thing.

also yeah i really would rather the chances of an explosion happening only when the vehicle has lost a substantial amount of hp. instead of off the bat on T1

Though to rehaul everything a LOT of things need to be fixed at which point you might as well rehaul the game.

There's really no good reason for HP's or attempting to salvage their current concept. We have two options really.

Go back to the 5E vehicle system and apply the 7E transport rules to avoid issues with Rhinos that only cared about damage results that killed/immobilozed them (though re-inteoduce assault from stationary transports...but thats another thread).

Or, just drop the table altogether and make vehicles into T/sv models with wounds and saves.

These would be the simplest and most effective options.

 ClassicCarraway wrote:
Honestly, all vehicles should follow the same damage rules as Super Heavies, no sub-damage like crew shaken, immobilized, etc, just explodes on a 7 or loss of hull point for everything less, nothing else. This makes vehicles slightly more durable because they don't risk diminishing returns and gets rid of the annoying damage effect tracking.

On the increasingly rare occassions we play 40k we use this rule

5e vehicle damage would work fine if they also allowed for a way to wreck vehicles without the need for a lucky roll.

Perhaps add the HP system but only AP 1 or 2 weapons remove a HP. That way only a weapon designed to pierce heavy armor could actually finish off a tank.

I'm moving into the 'give vehicles toughness and wounds' camp myself. But if this was done, they should be resistant or immune to Sniper, Poison, Fleshbane and Instant Death by force weapons etc. But Ordinance, Haywire, Lance, Melta and Armorbane should inflict extra damage (just in a different way). And all vehicles should have Fearless, Relentless and Hammer Of Wrath too.

My idea would be, vehicles loose wounds like everything else, but at the end of a phase in which they lost a wound, roll a D6 (and only one D6, regardless of how many wounds they lost). On the roll of a 1, one weapon chosen by the player is destroyed. And when they loose their last wound, roll a D6 to see what happens to the vehicle:

1-2: Immobilized: Vehicle retains last wound but can no longer move and is WS:0 for the rest of the game.
3-4: Wrecked: Same as usual.
5-6: Explodes: Dido.

Also, when attacking a vehicle (except a still mobile walker) in close combat, all attacks are AP:2. This is to try and capture the current trend of vehicles being vulnerable in cc. Since vehicles will be very tough most of the time, wounding them will still be a hassle.

Lets take a Leman Russ for example:

WS:1 BS:3 S:9 T:9 W:6 I:1 A:1 LD:8 SV:3+

So as you can see, you'll need to be at least strength 5 to even hurt a Russ, and even then, you'll need sixes, and it'll probably get it's armor save.

Then there's the Rhino:

WS:1 BS:4 S:9 T:8 W:3 I:1 A:1 LD:8 SV:4+

So it's still really tough, but now it's starting to become vulnerable to auto cannons and krak grenades.

This is really WIP in progress though.

Nah, you'd be much better-off just adding 1HP to every standard vehicle in the game to mitigate the 'Glanced-to-Death by Bolters' issue, and I actually like the module damage. It's quick and intuitive and reflects what happens to vehicles in battle pretty accurately. I certainly prefer the current system to what we had in 4th ed.

Still prefer to see how 3+ armor on all vehicles except flyers/skimmers having 4+ would work. Would help mitigate the whole "glance to death" issue from those high strength AP gak weapons like scatter lasers, gauss flayers, etc.

Also I would like to see a vehicle damage table more along the lines of.
1-2 Shaken (can only fire 1 weapon at full BS while stationary, moving is all snap shots)
3-4 Stunned (only snap shots, half movement)
5 Weapon Damaged (a weapon is destroyed)
6 Engine Damaged (permanent half movement)
7 Critical Damage (D3 additional hull points)
8+ Explode (D3+3 hull points,D6" blast Str 4 AP-)

The problem that I have with most of these suggestions is that they make vehicles tougher against mid strength multi shot weapons (good) but they also make them better against single shot high strength weapons which ought to be good at killing vehicles but which already suck at it.

Personally I'd eliminate hull points and glances and add an additional +1 to the damage table for each point that you exceed the armour value.

E.g. Lascannon rolls a six to pen AV12. That's 15, 12 was needed to pen so you get +3 and +1 for being AP2.

AT weapons are now good again and all purpose guns are poor against decent vehicles (okay against weak vehicles) but might shake, stun, immobilise, weapon destroyed, etc.

Have one mechanic to govern vehicles and MCs.

Toughness, wounds, armour saves for all, as far as I'm concerned.

The issue of multiple wounds can be solved by using special anti-vehicle rules. Ones that inflict multiple wounds with single hits.

Here's some really basic suggestions:

Armorbane: Always wound a vehicle on a 2+. To wound rolls of 6 inflict instant death. (I always felt that fleshbane should be the same for living targets).

Haywire: haywire hits automatically wound vehicles with no armour saves allowed

Lance: no idea

Melta: at half range, they inflict double wounds

Ordinance: again, no idea.

I still think wounds and toughness is the wrong direction. (G)MC rules are wonky becuase non MCs are being shoved in there. doing this more would not be a fix. Applying an armor save to vehicles both a) limits the ability to glance vehicles to death with standard guns, and b) doesn't punish AT weapons as they are generally a high AP already. The same could possibly ring true if you limited the damage glances could do, however this effects every weapon that doesn't auto pen. the vehicle. If we make tanks MCs then we have to deal with things like: your rhino being poisoned, your tank being MORE vulnerable to 'basic' weaponry (unless these tanks end up being T: 9 or 10), stuff like charging with your tank, etc.


Tl;dr: making more things MCs is not a fix for currently weaker vehicle rules.

Eliminating vehicle rules fixes the weak vehicle rules.

One mechanic. Then you don't have to worry about glancing, or penetrating. All big units that currently fall under the MC or Vehicle rules gets rolled in under one unit type, and then two new USRs/unit types are introduced: Biological and Mechanical. Obviously poison wouldn't work against a riptide (like it currently does), so you assign Mechanical to a riptide, and now its affected by all the special rules that logically would hurt them more. Same thing for Biological creatures who don't really care about haywire. All heavy weapons can now be worked to fill a role of anti-big things, where some specialize in mechanical stuff (haywire) while others focus on living stuff (poison). You'd still end up with a bunch of weapons that work reasonably well against MCs and Vehicles, and other weapons that would be more specialized to dealing with the mechanical constructs and others for biological monsters.

I would keep the damage chart and dump glances alltogether.

Blacksails nailed it. That's exactly what I was thinking of, but couldn't find the words to describe it.

That fix still leaves low rof weapons out in the cold.

I see what you mean, however I dislike that in the sense that it both adds more special rules, and continues to play on the fact that at the moment MC rules are strong. In the parallel universe where vehicles are better, the opposite argument is happening

We're this change to happen, melta would have to be changed, grav would be buffed against vehicles, and other such things unless we add a TON of changes to specify what can and cannot work against mechanical units. This also leaves the problem of being able to be '6-ed' to death by small arms fire (again, unless we make them T: 9+, but that still means pulse weaponry will glance to death as well)

Large, powerful non-D weapons need to inflict multiple wounds. I hate to go all 2nd ed here, but that's the corner that GW has painted itself into.

Yes, we would need to bring back multiple wound inflicting weapons but that's not exactly difficult.

Like I said before, Armourbane could be changed to "always damages a vehicle on 2+, and to wound rolls of 6 inflict instant death" for example. With that, a Leman Russ Vanquisher would be a deadly tank hunter like it's supposed to be. Assuming that a Landraider is toughness 10 with a 2+ armour save, it easily bypasses that toughness, ignores it's armour save and has a 1 in 6 change of outright wrecking it in one hit. No further effect on non vehicles.

Haywire can be auto wounds a vehicle with no armour saves at all.

AP:1 weapons can inflict 2 wounds on a model (so they become decent at taking out MCs as well).

Melta weapons can inflict extra wounds at half range.

Lance can inflict extra wounds at any range.

I beleive vehicle HP should be doubled, the current AV turned into an equivilant Toughness and vehicles be given an Armor Save. Might want to give MC's some extra HP (maybe +2) considering the next step.

Likewise, weapons with Strength 7-8 should deal D3 wounds (to a single target) and weapons with Strength 9-10 should deal D6 wounds (to a single target). Strength D would deal 2d6 wounds (to a single target). Because of this, you could dump the Instant Death rule for weapon Strength exceeding double toughness.

This would make vehicles more resistant to just being glanced out, and turn anti-vehicle weapons into the nightmare weapons they should be. Likewise, the MC vs. Walker debate becomes mostly moot (except for a few effects, like poison, haywire and such).

And most of all, gets rid of the annoyingly archaic Vehicle Damage table.