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In my opinion, it should be roll to hit, role for cover,roll to wound, roll for invun, roll for armour, as if something got past the cover, it has a magical force field, then the armour

While that makes fluff sense, making saves stack more than they already do serves to make most things far too durable.

Also, invulnerable saves represent a lot of different things - shields, ludicrous toughness, exotic material armor, decoys, hitting the wrong target... Basically, if an armor-piercing weapon doesn't beat it, and a flame can't flow around it, it's an invulnerable save. So, even based on fluff, this would get really weird, really fast.

It would require a massive re-balancing of units.

I started in 2nd, when a model could well have both an armour save, invulnerable and be in cover (which modified the to-hit roll at the time). Those models were simply impossible to remove.

Sure it makes more sense from a fluff perspective, but balance needs to figure into games if more than one person wants to have fun.

And what about characters like Lysander? Terminator armour (2+ armour), storm shield (3+ Inv), iron halo (4+ Inv) and Crux Terminatus (5+ Inv) save, before even adding cover, would have a 1 in 54 chance (assuming my maths is correct, which it probably isn't) of dying to any wound.

Hmmm, my Lychguard approve of this change.

I'd really like to see "cover saves" go away in favor of modifiers to hit. Your target is in cover: -1 to hit, Stealth -1, Shrouded -2, etc. Make sure Stealth & Shrouded no longer stack.

I had this half-baked notion last night, in connection to the modifications Lanrak has proposed:

Light cover: +1 evasion
Heavy cover: +1 evasion, +1 save (like AoS)
Stealth: +1 evasion
Shrouded: +2 evasion
Invisible: +4 evasion

And then Stealth, Shrouded and Invisible don't stack with each other. Some things that currently have Stealth and Shrouded would have Invisible instead, and Invisibility confers Invisible, as the name implies.

Though that's kind of a discussion for elsewhere...

If you could only take 1 invulnerable save, if multiple we on the unit, this would keep players from making immortal characters. This could be further mitigated by changing the AP system to negative modifiers to the model's armor value, like in 2nd ed.

The change to the cover rules, to provide negative modifiers to hit, would require a complete re write of to several codexes, like Orks, as it is my understanding that there are some that are almost completely BS 2 with a few BS 3's. a unit with stealth and any cover at all would be immune from any ork fire, making for some seriously one sided issues.

I am currently trying out.

Roll to hit ,(Shooting skill vs target Evasion skill.)Cover etc just adds to the targets evasion score.(I really like your 'Evasion value' ideas jade- angel. )

Roll to save.(Targets armour value vs attackers weapon armour penetration value.)This derives proportional saves and naturally occurring invulnerablility.

Roll to wound .(Weapon damage(S) vs targets Resilience(T).)

So every unit resolves damage in a similar way, and all damage resolution compares opposed stats , (on a table, or directly, which ever works best in play testing.)

Lanrak wrote:
I am currently trying out.

Roll to hit ,(Shooting skill vs target Evasion skill.)Cover etc just adds to the targets evasion score.(I really like your 'Evasion value' ideas jade- angel. )

Roll to save.(Targets armour value vs attackers weapon armour penetration value.)This derives proportional saves and naturally occurring invulnerablility.

Roll to wound .(Weapon damage(S) vs targets Resilience(T).)

So every unit resolves damage in a similar way, and all damage resolution compares opposed stats , (on a table, or directly, which ever works best in play testing.)

I like this concept, but something feels a little off about it. Perhaps it's that you'd have to stop and confer with your opponent about three different values and make sure you had the right value in mind before resolving each of those three rolls. I assume the chart comparing those values to one another is similar to the to-wound chart?

Currently, I almost never have to confer with my opponent to determine what number I hit on (at least with shooting).
Currently, I usually don't have to stop and confer with my opponent about what their armor save is because you usually memorize those values fast or else simply know that nothing is getting a save versus your lascannon, and most things aren't getting a save against your krak missiles.
When it gets to the to-wound roll, this is the part where I sometimes notice the game slowing down slightly as one player confirms what the toughness of their unit is and the other player confirms the strength of their weapon, and then they take a half second to agree that they're wounding on X, and then they roll it.

Stopping to calculate a to-wound style value three times per unit seems like it would possibly get old fast. I think I'd love that mechanic for a smaller-scale game (with like, five units per side tops), but doing it with possibly over a dozen different units per side, each one containing multiple weapon profiles and ballistic skills and so forth seems like it might be problematic. Still, let us know how it works out.





Automatically Appended Next Post:

 _Zarrack_ wrote:
In my opinion, it should be roll to hit, role for cover,roll to wound, roll for invun, roll for armour, as if something got past the cover, it has a magical force field, then the armour

Makes sense in terms of fluff. Now let me ask you this: How do you like the idea of trying to kill a lych guard in cover. How many bolter shots would it take to kill a guy with a 4+ cover save, a 3+ invul save, a 3+ armor save, and a 4+ Reanimation Protocol?

I'd kind of like to try out some combination of the ideas that get thrown around here in the Proposed Rules section a lot. Something like...


* To-hit rolls in shooting work like they do now, but cover imposes minor modifiers to this. The main thing to watch out for with this rule is that you very quickly make marines shoot like orks and guardsmen are reduced to snap shooting if you impose more than a -1 modifier.

* Armor Penetration becomes a modifier (like in the old days). The main concern here is that marine armor quickly becomes guard armor if you impose more than a -1 modifier, and anything with worse than marine armor basically doesn't have it. This could be remedied with an "Invulnerability (X)" rule that basically imposes a modifier on the AP's modifier. So an AP (-2) shooting at a target with Invulnerability (1) modifier basically becomes AP (-1) instead.

* To-wound remains unchanged.

Something like that would take both cover and armor saves into account, though invul saves (separate from invulernability) would still sort of be there own thing.

Also, I generally prefer to resolve wounds before saves simply because it cuts down on the amount of time it takes to confer with opponents, gather dice, role, recalculate the new dice pool, and roll again.

@Wyldhunt.
Well as you compare stats in 2 out of 3 of the resolution methods for resolving assault and shooting in 40k anyway.
(WS vs WS, S vs T, AP vs save, or Av vs S+D6, S vs T or damage vehicle table.)

And have to look up USR,s special rules , special snowflake rules, including many additional and counter core rule systems.

Asking your opponent what their Evasion , then Armour value , then Resilience is , seems much simpler and cleaner IMO.

And I would like to use one table to cover all 3 combat resolution steps.(With a wider range of results than just 3+4+5+ )

Looking up where two values cross on a table is not exactly difficult or time consuming.(Compared to arguing about what a poorly worded special rules actually means
for example. )

Stacking different saves makes sense conceptually, but would be stupid broken for many units. TH/SS termis, for example, would go from 17% to take an unsaved wound to about 6%. Then if you toss in, say, 4+ cover, then you're down to 3%.

Stacking saves made a lot of the super-units from 2nd ed. Power field plus terminator armor, for example. Although that's time compared to IH and Necron FNP shenanigans.

Lanrak wrote:
@Wyldhunt.
Well as you compare stats in 2 out of 3 of the resolution methods for resolving assault and shooting in 40k anyway.
(WS vs WS, S vs T, AP vs save, or Av vs S+D6, S vs T or damage vehicle table.)

And have to look up USR,s special rules , special snowflake rules, including many additional and counter core rule systems.

Asking your opponent what their Evasion , then Armour value , then Resilience is , seems much simpler and cleaner IMO.

And I would like to use one table to cover all 3 combat resolution steps.(With a wider range of results than just 3+4+5+ )

Looking up where two values cross on a table is not exactly difficult or time consuming.(Compared to arguing about what a poorly worded special rules actually means
for example. )

Some good points there. To play devil's advocate, your system doesn't really reduce most of those complications though. Sure, you don't have to worry about to-pen formulas or WS to-hit tables being different from your regular to-wound table, but you also don't really reduce any of the other complexity. You'd still have to look up your special snowflakes and USRs. You'd still have to argue about any poorly worded rules (unless you're talking about rewriting all the rules in the game to be clearer, but that's a different topic). None of that goes away.

You'd basically trade having a bunch of different charts for a single chart with different axes. Which is a solid move and would probably work. Where I see this method losing a bit of ground is that you'd increase the time it takes to resolve some of those rolls. For instance, I know that I'm pretty much always hitting on 3's in the current system. With your system, I'd have to check with my opponent to confirm the Evasion stat of that unit before rolling.

Also, if you go TO-HIT > SAVES > TO-WOUND, then you have to lose a little time as you inform your opponent of your number of hits, they gather their dice pool and roll, inform you of their number of saves, and then you modify your dice pool to reflect theirs and roll again.

It's not a major thing, but I suspect you'd feel the time difference adding up over the course of a game. I could be wrong.

Rolling on multiple types of tables doesn't really eat up extra time once you know what the tables/formulas are. I find people are generally better at memorizing the shooting to-hit table or the vehicle damage table than they are at remembering that my grotesques are Toughness 5 or that my wyches are Initiative 6/7 (depending on drugs). So I suspect people would spend a lot of time confirming that your unit's evasion is X and that their armor is Y and so forth, even after they get used to the new system. Obviously this is less of an issue for armies like marines where most units would have very similar evasion/armor/etc. stats. Dark eldar or tyranids, by comparison, would probably lose a lot of game time to confirming these values.

Assuming I'm wrong, your system is probably superior.

@Wyldhunt.
I should have stated these changes would be part of a complete re-write ,to correct the issues with the core rules.(Sorry I did not make that clear.)
And as such I would like the rules to follow the standard convetion used in other war games.
The core rules cover 80% + of the game play, and special rules are used for actual special exceptions.

(40k core rules only cover about 40% of the game play and need special rules and additional systems to try to get the rules to function. )

I would imagine a rule set written specifically for the current inferred and intended game play of 40k, would be roughly 50 pages of core rules, with 20 special rules over 3 or 4 pages, and may be 1 or 2 codex special rules for racial differentiation .

This is based on how other current rules sets with much more complex game play than 40k are written.

These proposed changes would deal with the lack of proportionality and variety in the core rules for combat resolution .
Eg.
I have a SM armed with a las cannon, the chance to hit the side of a battle wagon 2" away, is exactly the same as hitting a single Ratling sniper wearing a camo cloak half way up a tree 40" away.
This is wrong on so many levels even people not really bothered about tactical validity of the rules realize it does not generate coherent narrative.(WTF moments.)
Bad rules writing gives every one issues even those trying to forge a narrative.

In respect to the resolution order, the beauty of opposed values in a chart is you can just swap them round and make the attacker or the target the active player.If this is what alpha play testing suggests should be done

I was going to use the order of resolution I posted in an alternating phase game turn , similar to A,O,S ,(and use simple simultaneous resolution).
As the game structure is set at I move you move . I shoot you shoot, I assault you assault.
I roll, you roll, I roll ,sort of fits with the flow of the game turn.

However, if you want the resolution to be attacker, attacker, defender as it is now.
You can change it to, to hit , to penetrate armour , to save the wound (Toughness test.)

If you have enough diversity and flexibility in the core rules so they cover 80% or more of the game play.Then special rules only have to do the intended job of being special exceptions as they are in other war games.

I would like invulnerable saves to force rerolls of successful hits that the attacking unit scored equal to the normal save value.

So, shooting at a unit with a 4++ means rerolling every hit of 4+ scored against said unit...

Lythrandire Biehrellian wrote:
I would like invulnerable saves to force rerolls of successful hits that the attacking unit scored equal to the normal save value.

So, shooting at a unit with a 4++ means rerolling every hit of 4+ scored against said unit...

This would make broken combinations like a re-rollable 2++ even more broken. Imagine the difficulty of getting through a re-rollable 2++ before the added obstacle of having to re-roll all your hits beforehand?

@Lanrak: Ah. I can't really comment on your proposal in a vacuum then. It sounds like it would be fun to read through... Even if I actually like having a lot of unique rules to make different factions feel unique.

@Wyldhunt.
I just want the special rules to do their job of showing what is actually special.

Having to use special rules and randum rolls to add variety and replace tactical interaction like the current 40k rules do is bad game design IMO.

 Valkyrie wrote:

Lythrandire Biehrellian wrote:
I would like invulnerable saves to force rerolls of successful hits that the attacking unit scored equal to the normal save value.

So, shooting at a unit with a 4++ means rerolling every hit of 4+ scored against said unit...

This would make broken combinations like a re-rollable 2++ even more broken. Imagine the difficulty of getting through a re-rollable 2++ before the added obstacle of having to re-roll all your hits beforehand?

Not many rerollable saves that can't be negated if invuls worked differently...