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Just No to 6 always hit. While I agree -1 to hit army traits was a stupid idea caping -to hit or making 6's aleays hit is a bad solution. It leads to situations where their is no downside to taking actions like moving a heavy weapon shooting at an alitoc flyer, if your alread needing 6's no reason not to go full ham and gain all the advantage yoy can.

Caping a unit at generating a -2 on it's self and then if the firing model generates modifiers they still stack is a more balanced approache in my opinion. You can stand still and shoot or move and for go shooting at that unit.

I guess it just seems to me like this is a really weird way to go about trying to address the issue.

There are four big issues that people have with hit mods, right?

1. They can make it impossible to hit a unit.
2. They impact different armies differently (Custodes don't care very much, but Ork shooting quickly becomes useless).
3. They're too strong, especially when stacked.
4. They have a weird interaction with rules that do something on hit rolls of 1 or 6+.

Now, I'm not endorsing these, but I think this catches basically all of the objections. Most solutions proposed are pretty bad, in that they don't really address most of the issues people have, and often create new issues.

"6s always hit" doesn't really help you much with (2), (3), and (4). A single -1 is still halving Ork shooting, and -2 is cutting Guard and Tau shooting to 1/3 of normal, while Marines retain more firepower for longer. And you so rarely actually need a 7+ to hit that it doesn't make a big difference to the power level of hit mods. Meanwhile this rule would create a perverse incentive to acquire new negative hit mods (moving and shooting a heavy weapon, for example) if you already need a 6 to hit -- actually this would be a lot more common than it helping a unit which already needs a 7+.

There's a pretty easy fix for all of this, though. Just convert hit mods into their own roll. Before you roll to hit, you have to roll an X+ to see if you're even firing at the right place. This would impact all BS values identically and could easily be tuned to a desired power level and stackablity. If you want to preserve hit mods at basically their current power level, say that a -1 to hit requires a 3+ (this is the same vs BS4+, better vs BS3+, and worse vs BS5+). This also gives the hit mod traits some nice symmetry with the FNP traits -- it's basically a 5+ outside of 12" vs a 6+ always.

And then this also stacks pretty naturally. A -2 hit mod would be a 5+ to shoot. Again this is achieving the same result vs BS4+. A -3 could be a 6+, which would be weaker than -3 to hit currently is vs BS4+ (currently it means that BS4+ can't hit). You could stop after that, which would cap hit mods at -3 and only very rarely give units an incentive to acquire new negative hit mods (since -3 hit mods are so rare). Or you could say that a -4 just means you can't hit. Or you could do the 6+ then 4+ thing.

Of course this also allows you to fine tune the power of stacking hit mods. If you're really against stacking hit mods, you could say that a -1 requires a 3+ to shoot, a -2 a 4+, and a -3 a 5+. This significantly weakens stacked hit mods. You could also just apply each hit mod independently -- for each -1 to hit you have, you need to roll a 3+. So an attack at -3 to hit needs to roll three dice and get a 3+ on all of them to be allowed to roll to hit. This weakens stacking, but keeps the second -1 to hit just as valuable as the first, and avoids the need for a cap.

 lolman1c wrote:

1. Which means the opponent planned on making sure they could keep that objective. If you don't like it, charge the unit.
2. B.S. modifiers are the strongest because a bunch of people want to play gunline (Tau and Guard) or are forced to because of crap internal balance (Loyalist Scum and AdMech). Tau and Guard have at least auxiliary units that SHOULD take care of that but don't because internal balance again. Stacked modifiers not happening anymore wouldn't make those units better, right? You weren't using them in the first place.
3. There's already a few armies that don't do ANYTHING in certain phases. Necrons and Dark Eldar with no psychic phase is the easiest example of that. That's not bad design is it?

1. That's a dumb argument. It's basically the other guys argument in reverse. He took lots of shooting to keep you off the object. He doesn't like it's all for nothing so change it.
2.there is nothing wrong with playing an army the way you want to play. Especially if it worked fine for several editions. Take Orks and my friends Lootas. He plays shooty Orks and always has. There is nothing wrong with that and it's very fluffy. Suddenly his edition they don't work against certain armies. At all... like he can't even hit them. Why should he have to go out there and buy more troops and change his beloved army? Why should you be invincible? There is no way to say who shoukd be in he right but the best solution would be to make sure you have equal chances of winning then you can both be happy rather than just 1 player. And this is friendly games I'm talking about!
3.Necrons do basically have that phase now so that argument is gone... but really. There is a huge difference between a max of 6 mortal wounds if you are lucky vs an entire 2k points not veing able to shoot. Most IG armies don't have psykers but they do have shooting... and if you're bring mostly physics then you're losing shooting... i'm sure someone can make a better argument than I can with numbers and crap but i'm too tired right now.

1. The -3 requires more pouring of resources and a -2 only affects certain units in the first place (outside Orks where it is pretty much the entire army bar Grots).
2. Nobody complained about Fliers when they were introduced in 6th/7th outside those people adverse to any change in the rules whatsoever. It didn't affect Orks much but it affected everyone paying for a decent BS stat at all.
Also Orks are just bad right now outside Greentide until we get their codex. So I don't honestly care about complaints from strictly Index armies. Yeah yeah it sucks they don't have a codex yet. Just be patient.
3. No they don't. They have the Gloom Prism and a Warlord Trait and that's it. If you're referring to CTan powers, those don't count. Like, at all.

I have a cool idea. What if the hit chance was circular? Once you reach needing 7+ you instantly go back to hitting in 2+. Similarly, if you are supposed to hit on 1+ you go back to hitting on 6+.
Would solve a lot of problems!

How do Ctan powers not count out of a lore sense? It happens at tge end of the movement phase and is mortal wounds on units when you role dice.... sounds pretty similar if you ask me. And as a Ork player I can only counter with 1 unit.... so necrons get more counter than i do... heck even tau get a 5+fnp.

If you give everyone a 6+ Invulnerable save can my Skitarii have a price drop to account for the 6+ Invulnerable save they're paying for but would now get for free if they weren't?

Dionysodorus wrote:


"6s always hit" doesn't really help you much with (2), (3), and (4). A single -1 is still halving Ork shooting, and -2 is cutting Guard and Tau shooting to 1/3 of normal, while Marines retain more firepower for longer. And you so rarely actually need a 7+ to hit that it doesn't make a big difference to the power level of hit mods. Meanwhile this rule would create a perverse incentive to acquire new negative hit mods (moving and shooting a heavy weapon, for example) if you already need a 6 to hit -- actually this would be a lot more common than it helping a unit which already needs a 7+..

Anything that requires more dice rolling in an edition with too much rolling is a bad fix.

So if a marine and a guardsmen and an ork shoots at that balloon the ork will hit 33%, Guard is 50% and Marine is 67%
Break this down....the Guard hits 1.5151% better than the ork and the Marine will hit twice as often.

With a -1 to hit. The Ork hits 16%....The Guard hits twice as often and the marine 3 times as often So the modifier does cause different effects to different units.

The fix would be that there are close and long ranges. (like rapid fire weapons use in a way) So races that have a lower BS probably have been successful as a race because they overcame their shortfalls. At close range Pistols, Ork shootas, etc could have +1 or +2 to hit.
Of course Guard don't want to move into close range often...whereas Orks love that in the fluff. They should get a +2 and then they charge and stomp the hummies. Marines are tactically versatile....so close or long range makes minimal effect.

Not one person complained about to hit modifiers in 2nd edition. +1 and +2 to hit were very common (make some of those stupid Aura rerolls....more along the lines of +1 to hit and less dice rolling)
Not one person felt -1 or -2 for cover and -1, -2 or -3 for speed....sometimes all stacking with -1 for Blind/Smoke to really hard to hit rolls were broken. And they weren't. That is why game elements like tactics, positioning and how you maneuver your armies is what makes a fun game.
Setting up and tossing hundreds of dice with one or 2 'brilliant' deep strike moves....makes for a simple kids game....to argue otherwise is to demand we lower our expectations.

 AnomanderRake wrote:
If you give everyone a 6+ Invulnerable save can my Skitarii have a price drop to account for the 6+ Invulnerable save they're paying for but would now get for free if they weren't?

No, Skitarii stuff is actually well priced.
- Ranger: 7pts.
- Tau fire warrior: 7 pts.

But a 6+ always saves is a bad idea regardless. AP -4 and AP -5 would be useless.