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My idea is that Instant Death is caused by any weapon that wounds on a 2+ (or better) and it inflicts D3 wounds instead of however many you have left.

Maybe a name change might be in order, Massive Damage perhaps.

It will help against the monsterous creatures that can out tank tanks, and encourage the use of high str weapons instead of just spamming mid str.

So I can now one-shot Captains with Plasma, and Commisars with Heavy Bolters?

I mean... I guess? It won't break anything, probably, but my gut says it's an unneeded change.

Edit: Oh, and Hellfire Rounds are now OP as all hell.

 JNAProductions wrote:
So I can now one-shot Captains with Plasma, and Commisars with Heavy Bolters?

I mean... I guess? It won't break anything, probably, but my gut says it's an unneeded change.

Edit: Oh, and Hellfire Rounds are now OP as all hell.

Yes you will be able to potentially one-shot a Captain with Plasma, if you can roll high enough on the D3. Doesn't the fluff also dictate that is possible.
The Str for one-shoting most characters is only one less than it currently is and you still have to roll high enough on a D3.
Hellfire Rounds might have to go up in points, but doesn't it supposed to do massive damage in the fluff.

But it will help with the disparity between vehicles and monsterous creatures. It will prevent creatures from becoming immune to instant death if they are T6 or above and make weapons like Lascannons more useful.
If a Lascannon can potentially one-shot a Land Raider, or even an Imperial Knight, why then can it not cause severe damage to the likes of Carnifexes and Riptides.

Feth that, it's bad enough having S6 able to ID my Eldar, having S5 do it is completely broken.

 Imateria wrote:
Feth that, it's bad enough having S6 able to ID my Eldar, having S5 do it is completely broken.

I gotta say, as a player of an army that has a troops choice that can fire over 50 strength 5 shots in a single shooting phase, making them ignore cover and at BS 5 if all the modifiers line up, this sounds horribly unfair to armies reliant on T3 characters.

I am in favour of changing ID to D3 wounds however.

No, there is no reason to change the ID rule as it is.

Its working fine, most models that get insta deathed from cheap weapons, IE things that are t3, are normally squishy units anyway and only have one wound.

Yes let's give almost EVERY Harlequin an ID weapon with AP2 for +10ppm (despite only being Str 1).

Get rid of ID and give weapons a wounding profile instead.

I'm not entirely against your idea, but it could be refined somewhat.

Instead of 1d3, it could be based on the difference between the weapon's strength and the target's toughness - effectively, give each point of strength that no longer has the effect of making the attack more likely to wound instead make the wound more grievous.

Overkill: For every unsaved wound, subtract the total of Toughness plus 2 from the strength of the attack. If the result is 0 or lower, it has no further effect. If the result is 1 or higher, add the result to the number of wounds suffered by the model that failed its save.

Example: A Space Marine Captain (T4) hit by a Plasma Gun (S7) and failing his save would thus subtract 2+4 from 7, with a result of 1. That Captain would thus take 2 wounds, rather than 1 wound, from that plasma shot.

Alternative Example: An Autarch (T3) is hit by the same Plasma Gun (S7) and failed his save. He would thus subtract 2+3 from 7, with a result of 2. That Autarch would thus take 3 wounds, rather than 1 wound.

Big Critter Example: a Riptide (T6) is hit by a Lascannon (S9) and fails his save. He would thus subtract 6+2 from 9, with a result of 1. That Riptide would take 2 wounds, rather than 1 wound.


This concept would thus fall somewhere between the OP's proposal and Martel's "wounding profile" (without requiring a gaming group to go through every single weapon system and add that characteristic to each - a daunting task, I'd imagine, and probably a contentious one to boot). It would give a bonus to weapons for using higher strength than absolutely necessary to attain the 2+ wounding. It would reduce the number of rolls required. In comparison to the current ID rules, it would allow lower toughness models to have a chance to survive S6 (and if they have enough wounds remaining, S7), while it would subject high-toughness targets like MCs to extra wounds when hit with the sort of weapons that aught to be blowing humongous holes in them (Lascannons, Earthshaker rounds, Railguns, etc.) and a high enough strength is not different in effect to Instant Death, it just has slightly better granularity.

It might be unbalanced in the face of the omnipresent spammed S7. Not sure how to address that.

S6 becomes less effective against multi-wound T3 models, though (only 2 wounds, not ALL wounds), which is nice for those of us with those sorts of models (Tau, Eldar, AM, GSC).

Not sure exactly how D weapons would work, but I'd guess they could either count as Strength 11, 12, or 13 for the purposes of the wounds (want to make sure they can put extra wounds on a T10 Gargantuan Creature) or would count as Strength 10 but always count as having at least a 1 or 2 result for the purposes of Overkill (always inflicting at least an extra wound or two on a failed save, but inflicting the maximum wounds against lower-T models). Edit: They could also apply as unsaved wounds, forcing the enemy to make lots of saves - perhaps to distinguish them from ID-from-special-rules.

Weapons that are already Instant Death by special rule could work like D weapons.

I play with ID houseruled to cause 2 wounds instead of "all remaining" and "doubled strenght ID" requiring a T test to inflict such wound.

But that was a necessity to balance Tyranids against Eldar (and because I don't like singleshooting anything. I have modified vechicle rules also, so there is much smaller chance of exploding anything).

 Unusual Suspect wrote:
I'm not entirely against your idea, but it could be refined somewhat.

Instead of 1d3, it could be based on the difference between the weapon's strength and the target's toughness - effectively, give each point of strength that no longer has the effect of making the attack more likely to wound instead make the wound more grievous.

Overkill: For every unsaved wound, subtract the total of Toughness plus 2 from the strength of the attack. If the result is 0 or lower, it has no further effect. If the result is 1 or higher, add the result to the number of wounds suffered by the model that failed its save.

Example: A Space Marine Captain (T4) hit by a Plasma Gun (S7) and failing his save would thus subtract 2+4 from 7, with a result of 1. That Captain would thus take 2 wounds, rather than 1 wound, from that plasma shot.

Alternative Example: An Autarch (T3) is hit by the same Plasma Gun (S7) and failed his save. He would thus subtract 2+3 from 7, with a result of 2. That Autarch would thus take 3 wounds, rather than 1 wound.

Big Critter Example: a Riptide (T6) is hit by a Lascannon (S9) and fails his save. He would thus subtract 6+2 from 9, with a result of 1. That Riptide would take 2 wounds, rather than 1 wound.


This concept would thus fall somewhere between the OP's proposal and Martel's "wounding profile" (without requiring a gaming group to go through every single weapon system and add that characteristic to each - a daunting task, I'd imagine, and probably a contentious one to boot). It would give a bonus to weapons for using higher strength than absolutely necessary to attain the 2+ wounding. It would reduce the number of rolls required. In comparison to the current ID rules, it would allow lower toughness models to have a chance to survive S6 (and if they have enough wounds remaining, S7), while it would subject high-toughness targets like MCs to extra wounds when hit with the sort of weapons that aught to be blowing humongous holes in them (Lascannons, Earthshaker rounds, Railguns, etc.) and a high enough strength is not different in effect to Instant Death, it just has slightly better granularity.

It might be unbalanced in the face of the omnipresent spammed S7. Not sure how to address that.

S6 becomes less effective against multi-wound T3 models, though (only 2 wounds, not ALL wounds), which is nice for those of us with those sorts of models (Tau, Eldar, AM, GSC).

Not sure exactly how D weapons would work, but I'd guess they could either count as Strength 11, 12, or 13 for the purposes of the wounds (want to make sure they can put extra wounds on a T10 Gargantuan Creature) or would count as Strength 10 but always count as having at least a 1 or 2 result for the purposes of Overkill (always inflicting at least an extra wound or two on a failed save, but inflicting the maximum wounds against lower-T models). Edit: They could also apply as unsaved wounds, forcing the enemy to make lots of saves - perhaps to distinguish them from ID-from-special-rules.

Weapons that are already Instant Death by special rule could work like D weapons.

I like this a lot. I'd love to see this refined and expanded upon.

That looks a bit complicated for people to work out quickly. Some people, it seams can't even handle to hit modifiers.

How about change Instant Death to Weapons Str 7 or higher inflict D3 wounds.
Sort of like in Necromunda weapons with Str7 or higher have the High Impact special rule.

Ok so I'm going to just say this so you can take it into account.

40k is already rule bloated, look at the rule you are proposing, compare is to the current rule, which is simpler to understand?

Second of all, you are also by doing this effecting not just models that take ID wounds, but modes that deal it. So by changing this, you make those models that strike or weapons that are S6+ (T 3 is usually the lowest T on the table outside of special cases) less appealing and powerful.

The big deal about weapons that are strength 8 is that it makes fancy multi wound models think before they act. High s weapons that give ID are there for a reason. Removing ID for example make one of the worst units in the game, terminators, even more worthless becuase now with an ID rule change, their power fists are not as scare against multi wound models anymore.


And again, what easier to comprehend. A id wound removes all of a units wounds and may not use fnp, additionally a weapon with strength double the targets toughness has the instant death rule.

Vs needing to take a strength test to see if it's instant death.

I would be ok with instant death if it worked as followed

ID wounds ignore feel no pain and remove 3 wounds. Against MC they remove D 3 wounds.

Basically remove all wounds with 3 wounds.

Tygre wrote:
My idea is that Instant Death is caused by any weapon that wounds on a 2+ (or better) and it inflicts D3 wounds instead of however many you have left.

Maybe a name change might be in order, Massive Damage perhaps.

It will help against the monsterous creatures that can out tank tanks, and encourage the use of high str weapons instead of just spamming mid str.

That's a change I would like to see. Some people may complain that their characters/units would be too easy to kill but that's the way it's supposed to be in a gun fight imo.

Let there be slaughter