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A gripe that I see come up from time to time in 40k is that too many factions are completely immune to morale-based rules. Marines, for instance, mostly ignore falling back, are immune to soul fright weapons, ignore fear, etc. Daemons basically ignore morale. Any unit with fearless ignores morale. Necrons don't ignore it, but their high leadership means they pass it more often than not.

Even armies that don't ignore it outright have ways of mitigating with synapse, honor knife rituals (or whatever the tau bonding ritual thing is called), fearless characters, stubborn and fearless bubbles, and so on.

This is frustrating for armies whose whole gimmick revolves around morale (Night Bringers for instance), but is it really inappropriate? After all, marines aren't exactly the kind to get scared and run. You could make a strong case for necrons being universally fearless except, perhaps, on the HQs. Eldar aren't unwilling to run away, but it's not too much of a stretch to justify them sticking around when their species is in danger and their war mask is on. Orks could be said to "love a good fight" so much that running away is simply out of characters. What I'm getting at here is that you could come up with a half-convincing fluff reason for just about any army in the game to not run or act in a fearful fashion.

On top of that, morale adds a fair bit of complication to the game. You have to test for morale in movement, shooting, and psychic phases, but only if you lose a quarter of the guys you had at the start of the phase, and then you test in the assault phase, but not the same way you test in other phases, and make sure you're keeping track of how many guys you lost, and don't forget that floating -2 the enemy gives you, and subtract one more if your character is dead, and and and... It's a bit to remember.

And when one army isn't immune to it and does manage to fail a morale test here or there, it's generally kind of a feel-bad rule. Units that get shot up can run away without ever getting a chance to c harge the enemy, even if they've lost less than half of their unit. Shooty units can be forced to snapfire, generally achieving little to nothing for a turn as they attempt to regroup. Your melee unit might suddenly lose a combat it should have won because the third pack of Fear-having daemons that you slaughtered is suddenly unnerving even though you just fought your way through two other identical units.

So with all that in mind, is morale really a mechanic that should continue to be in 40k? Half the armies ignore it, the armies that don't ignore it are punished in a feels-bad fashion, and it slows down the game at least a little as you pause to roll morale tests here and there.

There are a lot of interesting morale-related effects I'd like to see improved or taken advantage of (like soul fright weapons), but are they worth all the down sides of morale? And if so, could rules like soul fright and its ilk be better represented by, for instance, wounding against leadership or lowering the number of enemy attacks rather than requiring morale tests?

Morale might as well be removed from 40K, the way it is treated.

Personally though, I would rather prefer that all the immunities and such be removed, and units be subject to suppression, falling back or overrun by the enemy. 40K ascribes superhero levels of stoicness in the face of death to too many armies. Why? As you mentioned it's disheartening to watch your army turn tail and run instead of obeying your bloodlust to keep pushing forward regardless of the cost

However, broken morale is something every real-life general has had to endure of his troops.

Space marines and the like might be described as fearless in the fluff, but the fact is even they should know when to perform a tactical retreat or keep their head downs until the enemy is reloading or their position is reinforced.

Came to say what Stormonu already succinctly summarized.

I think morale needs to play a larger part in the game myself. Namely, things like fear need a reworking; there are too many things that ignore fear to the point that fear is all but pointless. When I see a daemon Prince slams down front of a unit of guardsmen or tau fire warriors, I want them to be crapping themselves because holy crap, this thing of nightmares is coming for them. Now it's more like, meh, another day, another daemon, whatevs.

I think things like fear should have a range bubble on them because if something is causing fear and you're seeing it, you don't want to be seeing it or anywhere near it. I believe something like the fantasy Terror rule is in need of being brought in for suitably terror/madness inducing things. 40k is full of nightmares brought to life and I feel that should be better reflected.

Morale in general at its core is fine; testing and keeping track isn't a problem- the issue is just how much it's is just bypassed with things like fearless. Yes there are heroic individuals in 40k, but not every Tom dick and Harry.

I know people don't like seeing their models run away from a fight, but I like seeing it- whether my own or an opponent's; I think it a sign a tactical sense or just not wanting to die or things getting g downright nasty for our little dudes. It fits a narrative point of view. This of course doesn't fit the power gamer waac optimum build don't bother putting your army on the table cuz I'm gonna wreck your :cuss: people who believe every Tom dick and Harry should be eating blood thirsters for breakfast /endrant

Honestly, it seems more like GW is trying to phase out morale to me with all the bypasses.

I say remove it. It's not any fun. So many armies ignore it already it doesn't really matter. The few armies that it still matters for would actually improve.

And the whole "realistic" argument doesn't work for me. This is a game that has jumped the shark so high, you can't see the shark anymore.

Keep it it is fun. However remove and they shall know no fear.

Giantwalkingchair wrote:
When I see a daemon Prince slams down front of a unit of guardsmen or tau fire warriors, I want them to be crapping themselves because holy crap, this thing of nightmares is coming for them.

The problem is that IG and Tau are pretty much the only armies that actually suffer morale effects. Pretty much everybody else basically ignores morale, and this effect is amplified on the tabletop via army design and play.

Given the reality of play, morale should be removed entirely from the game.

Alternately, ATSKNF should be removed entirely, and all SM armies should be subject to the same morale effects as Guardsmen, with just a slightly better Ld stat. Chaos Cult Marines, of course, should still be Fearless.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

Giantwalkingchair wrote:
When I see a daemon Prince slams down front of a unit of guardsmen or tau fire warriors, I want them to be crapping themselves because holy crap, this thing of nightmares is coming for them.

The problem is that IG and Tau are pretty much the only armies that actually suffer morale effects.

Lol how to spot the non Ork player

Pretty easy to get around morale issues with IG.

I play nids. I constantly argue that synapse should change to using the unmodified leadership of the nearest synapse creature instead of fearless. It would mean they mostly pass moral tests but at least now they have to take them.

Army wide immunity to moral needs to go away.

The game needs morale to have more effect, not less. For a start, Fearless should be an extremely rare rule. If you look back at how WH handled Unbreakable (the Fearless equivalent) units, there were very, very few that were Unbreakable without having some other drawback based on morale (Instability, undead crumbling etc).

I'd personally ditch Fearless on all but a handful of units and rework ATSKNF in some way. Maybe make it allow you to fire at normal BS when falling back to reflect a tactical withdrawal rather than an all-out rout.

Things like Synpase could just be a Ld bubble rather than Fearless, for example. Then the game would actually feel more dynamic. At the moment there are far too many combinations of armies that are Fearless, or as good as Fearless, so you end up in situations where the game devolves into rolling dice until one side is completely wiped out. That's just dull.

Ironically, one of the armies that relies on fear and psychological tricks the most is one of the most susceptible to it - Dark Eldar.

Morale should definately be a thing.

Even just by replacing almost all armies actual or virtual fear immunity with stubborn would be a great start. Yes, some things should be immune to fear, but not 95% of everything that's worth taking. The introduction of terror (or at least a -ve ld modifier) would also be a nice start to have the ability to have multiple different levels of crapping your pants. Combine the 2 (stubborn to replace fearless on many units, sparing addition of terror as fear+) and you could probably have a morale system that matters worth a damn rather than having Orks and DE take it in the shorts while 50 conscripts are immune because a man in a dress with a couple of rocks on a piece of string is yelling at them. You could even keep the ATSKNF flavour by downgrading terror to fear or something (even if you have to rename fear/terror to dread/fear to keep the catchy name).

First - tau's bonding knife ritual do not work that way.

And the main use of moral check is close combat result.
Even necron unit can lost the combat, get penalty on it's leadership test, fail it and be entirely wiped in the same turn.

This is important game mechanic.

Yes, it should. It should be more of a thing than it currently is.
And They Shall Know No Fear is a fine rule, but since it's available to a third of the armies in the game, it makes Fear/Leadership attack based armies kind of unreliable.
Fearless, especially army-wide fearless, is also far too common.

I did a count, and including things like Mob Rule or Daemonic Instability, 13 of the 27 armies (Including overlap, like Astra Militarum and Tempestus,) can easily run armies that are able to ignore standard leadership. Of those, a full 4 are completely Fearless.
This is not including the armies which can bring things that make units fearless as an option (Ministorum Priests, for example,) or other abilities which make units *effectively* Fearless (Re-rolling Ld10 tests.)


When you can't rely on your abilities to work against half the armies in the game, those abilities aren't reliable. I'm skittish about bringing anti-aircraft guns in midsize games, and everyone has the potential to bring fliers - I'm not going to bring a weapon or ability that's already tenuous when half of my opponents are going to completely ignore it.

As it stands, leadership basically exists at this point solely to penalize guardsmen for not being space marines.

It needs to be readdressed and redesigned, with exemptions to it being the extremely rare exception, rather than the rule. Morale and fear should play a big part in a setting where almost literally everything in the universe is out to get you in the most horrific ways you could never imagine.

Lack of effective morale tests in 40k is a real bugbear of mine.

In Oldhammer, if a Bloodthirster comes screaming at you, there's a decent chance your regiment would 'nope', and head for the hills.

In 40k? It gets a round of applause, possibly some ill-timed selfies.

One way to alter this for make benefit of all? If you're locked in combat, and fail to do any damage (because you can't, or the dice hate you, doesn't matter which), then the unscathed unit should inflict a hefty modifier on your morale test.

Brings back a lot of the scary, whilst still giving a glimmer of hope to non-combat-mentalist armies. It also means nasty combat stuff is less likely to be bogged down in points cheap chaffe, keeping the game flowing and giving Proper Combat Mentalists a serious edge.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Thinking further, a hefty 'you can't hurt me' modifier isn't just a bonus for the big boy.

Consider this. For arguments sake, I'll say failing to hurt inflicts a standard -2 to Ld for the ensuing morale test.

Dreadnought wades in, smashes a couple of things into a paste. Enemy does nowt. This then gives a -4 to Ld.

Enemy unit is now more likely than not going to break, even with Ld10 (as they drop down to 6, natch).

If they do break? Well, you can't follow up into combat anymore, so there's a chance a wily player can still sacrifice units to draw out your heavy hitters, leaving them horribly exposed in your next shooting phase.

No retreat was a good leveller for fearless armies in cc.

I'd say that if they dropped everyone's morale characteristic by one point, and made fearless much rarer, morale would have more of an impact.

To be honest, all they really need do is return ATSKNF to the previous version - where the Marines still fled, but automatically rallied.

Where they don't run at all has gone from being a challenge for the opponent, to a crutch for the Marine player - dump them on Objectives with Ob-Sec, and your opponent is at a massive disadvantage, as you have to kill every single last one - and even Tactical Marines can take some killing.

Just being able to drive them off the Objective, even if they're coming back next turn, weakens ATSKNF, returning it from Player Crutch to Opponent Challenge.

 Fafnir wrote:
As it stands, leadership basically exists at this point solely to penalize guardsmen for not being space marines.
.

whoo ww have found an other non guard non ork player ; )

 Lance845 wrote:
I play nids. I constantly argue that synapse should change to using the unmodified leadership of the nearest synapse creature instead of fearless. It would mean they mostly pass moral tests but at least now they have to take them.

Army wide immunity to moral needs to go away.

I'd be in favor of that in exchange for giving up my ATSKNF. Half the time, people lock up 2 or 3 Tac Marines and I can't shoot at them anyways.

A quick rundown on the 30 factions (if I'm not mistaken) told me barely 8 of them really care about Fear rule at all. I guess even Soul Blaze has more impact in the game

 oldzoggy wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

Giantwalkingchair wrote:
When I see a daemon Prince slams down front of a unit of guardsmen or tau fire warriors, I want them to be crapping themselves because holy crap, this thing of nightmares is coming for them.

The problem is that IG and Tau are pretty much the only armies that actually suffer morale effects.

Lol how to spot the non Ork player

It's almost as easy as finding a non nid player.

As a chaos player (Thousand Sons, Death Guard, Daemons) I feel bad whenever I ask a player to take a fear test. Knowing that almost all the armies are immune to it, except this one player...

They need to cut fearless out for most of the game. Space marines should not have it. Most of the chaos should not have it. Why is a plague marine fearless? Cause he's half dead? He would still run I'm sure from a tank? Why not? What's the point of it just letting it run him over? Why would they sit and take horrendous amounts of casualties?

Sure, there are fluff reasons we could concoct. But then GW keeps doing it. ELDAR CAN'T LET THEIR RACE DIE. See? You can just keep doing it for everything. Just ditch it except for stuff that really should have it.

I'm all for streamlining the rules and removing bloat.

I do, however, like the idea of a non-tactical retreat.

If you view yourself as a commander, directing these forces from a spaceship, or something, then there should be a mechanism where they can potentially deviate from your script.

They could easily base a lot of very influential mechanics on leadership. For instance, in some capacity, if leadership reduced scatter dice (to a point) when deep striking.

As it stands right now some of these stats are used almost exclusively to "prevent something bad," rather than "enable something good," so naturally people don't care.

You know at some point fearless meant you took wounds equal to the amount you failed your check by instead of getting wiped out.

Personally, as a Death Guard player it is super annoying to have Fear be negated by ATSKNF, it's bogus nonsense and needs to be changed. Like maintaining your WS but counting as charging thru cover even if you have assault grenades.

Something, anything to make these rules balanced. Look at stubborn, that rule is perfect imo.

I think morale should probably be less black-or-white. Having a unit be first rattled after they fail a test and then broken when they fail the second would put less pressure on the Ld stat. And that's just me copying the old Shaken rule for space marines from 2nd edition, with no real work done to make it fit perfectly. Anyone putting some real thought into how to redo the game from scratch would come up with something better.

The moral mechanic has become bloated and contrived. I'm all for a simplifying rewrite.

 oldzoggy wrote:

 Fafnir wrote:
As it stands, leadership basically exists at this point solely to penalize guardsmen for not being space marines.
.

whoo ww have found an other non guard non ork player ; )

Doubt he plays guard either. Guard rarely has any trouble with morale.

I feel like outside of Kill Team the current mechanic doesn't add much to the game, and even in kill team how it works is modified.

Yes, and less armies need to be immune and offensive power needs to be toned down.

Neurons need to port out with a chance of coming back in from reserves if they fail for example. Orks need a good Job Rule rule again. Elder need to rely more on psychic buff to maintain morale. Tryanids need a better implementation of synapse. Etc