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My group of fellow warhammer players wants me to balance Warhammer or at least make it more balanced. Thus I was wondering what you guys on Dakka thought would make good house rules.
I've already done things like make the Riptide a jetpack Walker with AV13/12/11, given tyranids things like monstrous beasts (Haruspex) and reworked ordinance weapons into anti MC guns by having each unsaved wound an ordinance weapon causes them to become 2 wounds. I've started buffing some of the heavy single shot AT weapons such as Vanquisher Cannons with similar rules. Made grav wound based upon the regular, bulky, very bulky, extremely bulky and monstrous creature scale i've seen proposed instead of by armor saves.

Thus I was wondering if you guys had any ideas about big issues that need addressing.

Charge from Infiltrate, Scout and Outflank.

Plasma Pistols cost 10 points rather than 15.

I think you might be going at it the wrong way. The game itself and all of the units within is a huge, daunting prospect.

I'd likely consider tackling general rules, of which there are fewer.

For instance creating points or purchase limits for huge vehicles, creatures etc. would be easier than single-handedly trying to adjust stats on everything.

More importantly are the players will to simply create less crappy lists to increase the enjoyment you're having? Don't like some crazy units - don't use them. The group itself can impose some common sense in list building purely in the name of having a good game. Again, way easier than actually attempting to edit potentially hundreds of units.

instead of turning a riptide into a walker, how about giving MCs a similar table like vehicles'?

If you have anyone using a Sisters of Battle Exorcist, I highly recommend letting that unit in particular ignore the part of the standard line-of-sight rules that only allow vehicle weapons to fire in a line along the barrels of their weapons.

Because the barrels of the Exorcist are pointed straight up and cannot be moved, as it's a pipe organ that shoots rockets out of the pipes. So the standard rules would only let it shoot at models that are in a 45 degree cone directly above the tank. And no, it's not actually a barrage weapon even though it's depicted that way in Dawn of War: Soulstorm.

I dunno, I've been out of the loop for months, they may have hotfixed that issue.

This tank is the Sororitas' only long-ranged anti-tank option, so it's kinda a big deal as to whether or not it gets to shoot at anything other than flyers that stop moving in base contact with it.

The one houserule I like the most is dice that hit the floor are auto-misses ... because they missed the table. Forces people to stop throwing their dice, and start rolling their dice.

SJ

Changing unit types is really complicated, and could create big arguments later.

You might try balancing just by changing point values. If you overcompensate with this, just tweak the number...you won't have to make any middle ground with rule changes.

My house rule when I use to play with my son is in the first game turn phase I move or shoot, then he moves or shoots, then in the second game turn phase, I shoot or move (what I didn't do the first time) then he shoots or moves. This way we still keep the "spirit" of the 2 game turn phases, but break it up instead of doing it all at once.

Also when deploying objectives, if it is in my own deployment zone, it's worth one point to me, but 2 points to him same as if he puts his objective in his deployment zone one point for him and 2 points for me. The objective in the neutral zone is 2 points. This way you make sure you don't grab the one point objective and go for the 2 point objective especially when scoring is done per turn not at end of game.

This thread is definitely more in the realm of proposed rules than anything else, so I'm moving it to that forum.

I did reduce the price of plasma pistols as 15 is ridiculous, but why would changing the Riptide into a walker be complicated? the Tau player was cool with the change and when I discussed it with him he thought it made more sense than having it as a MC. I might throw in something similar to what I heard Age of Sigmar has for its monsters for MCs.

We don't have any SoB players.

I have taken to altering the general rules and personally it would seem to fix the problems quicker than going from each unit to the next and fixing them. I am also altering point costs for things that are blatantly over costed such as a defiler and I've also tried making things worth what they are listed at.

for instance the Haruspex
" I'd buff the Haruspex up too WS5 and base FNP in addition to its status as a monstrous beast. Secondly I'd change the rules for the Grasping Tongue attack and have it so that if it hits you get to choose what gets grabbed not just on rolls of six. Along with at least an additional three attacks to its profile"
I wanted it to be scary seeing one of these charging at you not like "look at that waste of points for not being a Flying Hive Tyrant with brainleech devourers and EG

I gave all terminators charge from deep strike along with Raveners and warp talons. Ork Kommandos and Genestealers charge from outflank or infiltrate. Hell I tried to make Kommandos worth their extra points and gave them a special type of stickbomb that caused rerolls for successful overwatch hits. To balance out this I made the general special rule Incoming! which basically allows a unit that is being charged from deep strike to make full bs overwatch if it passes an initiative test.

In regards to large monsters or Super heavies no one in my group owns one. The biggest thing in the group is a Gorkanaut which due to our infantry focused meta is actually rather durable. Money and our general inability to acquire large amounts of it at one time due to our youth helps balance things.

My group as a whole is fairly casual with no apparent cheese, but over the past several games the disparity between armies general level has made the game less and less fun so I was picked to fix it.

Changing game rules are almost always better. For instance, no matter what limits on taking riptides there are, it will always be powerful to take the max amount, because they move fast and carry large guns, whereas there is no correlating ability for infantry.

I think the most fundamental house rule is that any unit can pass a leadership test to make one of its models double the amount of wounds it causes when shooting, and roll an extra die on the vehicle damage chart, and shoot at any single model in range and line of sight regardless of the rest of the respective units. The shooting unit has to include a character that appears on its own data sheet, however.

This allows infantry to kill riptides, etc, and it means that if you are shooting bolters at guardsmen, it actually helps you to win because the guardsmen are valuable, instead of being kind of a waste of time.


The next house rule is units being able to always take their cover save as an extra save against units that are two sizes bigger than they are, even if they take their armor save, cover save, or the attacker has ignores cover. The sizes are swarms < infantry < bulky < very bulky and vehicles (not tanks) < tanks, flyers, and MCs < super heavy and gargantuan.

This means that infantry and bulky infantry are better at shooting infantry than bikes or MCs are, and tougher against MCs and super heavy walkers than, say, MCs are.

I have seen some really interesting rules about armor saves that haravikk posted, but I have not tested them.

pelicaniforce wrote:
I think the most fundamental house rule is that any unit can pass a leadership test to make one of its models double the amount of wounds it causes when shooting, and roll an extra die on the vehicle damage chart, and shoot at any single model in range and line of sight regardless of the rest of the respective units. The shooting unit has to include a character that appears on its own data sheet, however.

This allows infantry to kill riptides, etc, and it means that if you are shooting bolters at guardsmen, it actually helps you to win because the guardsmen are valuable, instead of being kind of a waste of time.

That is interesting and could be fun, but fundamentally alters 40k. Is the goal to balance the game, or change it?

Upping the points of riptides to 400 points (or 450) would do the same thing, as there are now more enemy units free to shoot at it.

I think it's just a house rule for a single, very low number of players.

Personally, I am not worried about riptides, I am worried about how pointless it is to bring anti-infantry units, or weapons like heavy bolters. I want infantry to be good so that s4 guns and s4 close combat attacks have something important to kill.

I don't think I want to play against 400 point riptides under the current edition though. Let's say I'm fighting an army that took two of those riptides, and I also took 800 - 900 points worth of "good" units, I.e. units that move fast, ar hard to kill, and have big guns or TWC-level combat abilities. All I need to do is kill those two suits before they kill my wraith knights or draigo centurions, and suddenly I'm facing an entire army of scrub units that can't reliably kill my own good units.

I just want the powerful units in the game to include units of five veterans with a lascannon.

 Elbows wrote:
I think you might be going at it the wrong way. The game itself and all of the units within is a huge, daunting prospect.

More importantly are the players will to simply create less crappy lists to increase the enjoyment you're having?

Everything you need to balance the game is here.

Only change rules in the framework of special missions or campaigns. But there again, being fair is the only true garantee of having fun!