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It's quite simple, really; in fact I'm sure I'm not the first to come up with the idea. Units have a Leadership that ranges from 2+ (equivalent to Ld 9 or 10) to 5+ (grots and conscripts). Units have to roll a morale test each time they lose a certain share of their models (25 or 50 percent) in a single battle round. Roll a number of D6 equal to the remaining models, and any models that fail their Leadership save are removed.

I think this would avoid the flaws of both the old system, which involved excessive bookkeeping (e.g. rallying tests), and the current system that counter-intuitively makes larger units more vulnerable to morale.

Units with And They Shall Know Know Fear, most of which have Ld 3+, may re-roll failed Ld rolls. A Commissar's Summary Execution allows you to remove one model after making your save roll; if you do so, you may then re-roll all failed Ld rolls for the unit. Armies with a psychological warfare element have abilities (such as psychic powers) that reduce an enemy unit's Ld in the same way that AP reduces a save, or can even force an enemy unit to roll a morale test without having suffered any casualties. There will be situations (e.g. charging a daemon prince) where you must roll a single D6 vs. the unit's leadership; if you fail to meet the target number, the entire unit suffers the consequences (in this case, unable to charge the daemon prince this round). This makes Leadership relevant again for characters.

All in all, it's a system that, IMO, combines the best of both worlds and can easily be adapted to existing units and rules.


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The point of morale in older editions was that it was a lateral mechanism; it wasn't just another step added to the process for determining how much damage was dealt, it was handled in a different way and potentially allowed you to disrupt a unit without killing it by approaching the problem of attacking it differently.

If 'morale' is just going to be a thing that does damage I feel like it adds bloat more than it does anything useful and I'd rather see it dropped entirely.

 AnomanderRake wrote:
The point of morale in older editions was that it was a lateral mechanism; it wasn't just another step added to the process for determining how much damage was dealt, it was handled in a different way and potentially allowed you to disrupt a unit without killing it by approaching the problem of attacking it differently.

If 'morale' is just going to be a thing that does damage I feel like it adds bloat more than it does anything useful and I'd rather see it dropped entirely.

Agreed with this wholeheartedly.

Though if it IS removed as a universal, I'd like to see it still present for Cultists, Guardsmen, and Grots, among perhaps other units, as a unique rule. A Marine running away doesn't make a ton of sense under 99% of circumstances, a Grot running away does.

This all comes down to what morale is being used for in. The game.

It used to be an 'attack' on positioning and activation - being 'wounded' by LD pushed you out of position and affected your ability to activate if affected badly enough.

So, what do we want morale to do?

 JNAProductions wrote:
Though if it IS removed as a universal, I'd like to see it still present for Cultists, Guardsmen, and Grots, among perhaps other units, as a unique rule. A Marine running away doesn't make a ton of sense under 99% of circumstances, a Grot running away does.

So, like, you just slap a "Cowardly" USR onto a few unfortunate units or factions, while everyone else and their mother-in-law just straight-up walks unfazed through the mind-searing horror of the 41st Millennium? Ha ha ha ha ha screw that. As an IG player, sincerely, screw that.

Lots of creatures, units and weapons have a whole shtick around being scary/disturbing or messing with the enemy's mind (e.g. Slaanesh), and it would be a shame to lose this whole aspect of warfare on the tabletop. You're talking about throwing the baby out with the bathwater just because Marine players feel like their oh-so-perfect-and-special boys are above such lowly weaknesses as occasionally reacting to things in an unpredictable manner.

Units not always doing exactly what you tell them to do is an important part of the game. It's part of how no plan survives contact with the enemy.

Hellebore wrote:
It used to be an 'attack' on positioning and activation - being 'wounded' by LD pushed you out of position and affected your ability to activate if affected badly enough.

That's a very good point, actually.

I think this can still work under the system I'm proposing here. You could bring back abilities which, on a failed Ld check, force target units to behave in a certain way (or prevent them from acting as they wish to). Under the current system, I am not aware of many such abilities. Bar a rare few exceptions, Leadership checks in 8th Edition are pretty much relegated to the morale phase, and only determine who flees.


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It was also a system to discourage backfield/end of table camping as one bad roll during morale could force them off the board.

Given how shooting dominant game has become where positioning only really accounts for gaining los, bringing back Ld in the form of previous editions wouldn't do us as much good IMO.

Would it require too much bookkeeping if the units had a "morale" statistic and a "Leadership" statistic, where morale is like wounds and leadership is like the save?

As morale decreases units become less effective - morale checks are done vs the morale stat when you wish to charge scary things or break cover and so on, and if you fail you are penalised. I don't like the idea of not being allowed to charge if you fail, but not counting as having charged and -1 to hit could be an apt result, without you deciding the least scary thing to do is to be charged by the carnifex instead of charging at it!

Ld would be 2+ on HQ's, 3+ on squad leaders, 4+ on normal units and 5+ on lesser units EG. gretchin, conscripts. Units use the highest morale in the squad, and HQ's can confer to units within 3".

Morale would be as it is now, no changes to the value, and would go to a minimum of 2.

Certain events and weapons would inflict morale damage - each model lost would inflict 1 morale damage (which can be saved using leadership) and other weapons can have morale effects added in due course (dirge caster, flamers etc.).

Units which have special morale rules, EG Orks, would have to be adjusted. Orks, for example, could have 2+ ld if they number more than 10 models, and be immune to morale damage if they are over 20 models.

HQ units can heal morale if they start the turn within 6" but will inflict morale damage if they die within 6", so it's a trade off.

Some armies (thinking orks again) can have a warlord trait called something like "old rivalries" where they don't inflict morale damage if they die (as all the other squad leaders wanted him dead anyway!)


I really can't emphasise enough that I would avoid any "you failed so you can't" mechanics. "You failed so you do, but badly" is a much better approach, and can be simultaneously more punishing and less feel-bad. you still made the charge, you just did so crying rather than screaming a warcry.

Or we could just not make morale yet another form of inflicting damage and have it do something unique. Like making the unit unable to act for a turn or physically move towards the nearest table edge.

The current morale rules are a failed experiment.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Or we could just not make morale yet another form of inflicting damage and have it do something unique. Like making the unit unable to act for a turn or physically move towards the nearest table edge.

The current morale rules are a failed experiment.

Indeed.
Just because a squad of conscripts retreated does not mean that they are unlikely to not regroup.

ATM all that morale does is encourage MSU spam, is virtually non existent for certain units, whilest massed units like Militia, Conscripts etc need additional steps taken to be morale proofed because the whole squad else would just be deleted by morale.
Which is moronical.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Or we could just not make morale yet another form of inflicting damage and have it do something unique. Like making the unit unable to act for a turn or physically move towards the nearest table edge.

The current morale rules are a failed experiment.

That's pretty much what I was suggesting...

morale is a unit based stat which can be affected by losing members, pinning weapons, scary monsters, units being destroyed nearby, etc.
Leadership is a means to avoid said effect

Space marines have morale of 8 and Ld of 3+, 2+ for squad leaders. so if a scary monster charges and inflicts D3 morale damage, they can save them on a 3+, or a 2+ if they have a sergeant. lets say they have t save 2 morale damage and take one - their morale is permanently reduced to 7, making them less likely to successfully charge a scary unit or use a stratagem or such like.

I'd completely remove the morale-wounds sh*te from the game and replace it with a punishment - you have to pass morale checks to use stratagems, and to charge scary things, and to fire overwatch. I'm sure there are other things which can logically affect a unit with lowered morale to make them a less effective fighting force. the basic move-shoot-charge (something normal) would be unaffected, but specific actions which require bravery or discipline would need a morale check to perform.

Thus if a unit is dropped to morale 2 by pinning weapons, even if they don't lose any models, they are panicking and can't line up for overwatch, or use stratagems, or break cover, and so forth. it punishes units for being scared without them just vanishing - and with the morale-healing ability of characters (or simply using a nearby characters morale instead, as they have character protection so will probably have a high one, which would streamline this idea a lot, so I'm going with that!) the unit can be recovered! a space marine in the middle of the board panicked and then just vanished? I don't think so.

 some bloke wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Or we could just not make morale yet another form of inflicting damage and have it do something unique. Like making the unit unable to act for a turn or physically move towards the nearest table edge.

The current morale rules are a failed experiment.

That's pretty much what I was suggesting...

morale is a unit based stat which can be affected by losing members, pinning weapons, scary monsters, units being destroyed nearby, etc.
Leadership is a means to avoid said effect

Space marines have morale of 8 and Ld of 3+, 2+ for squad leaders. so if a scary monster charges and inflicts D3 morale damage, they can save them on a 3+, or a 2+ if they have a sergeant. lets say they have t save 2 morale damage and take one - their morale is permanently reduced to 7, making them less likely to successfully charge a scary unit or use a stratagem or such like.

I'd completely remove the morale-wounds sh*te from the game and replace it with a punishment - you have to pass morale checks to use stratagems, and to charge scary things, and to fire overwatch. I'm sure there are other things which can logically affect a unit with lowered morale to make them a less effective fighting force. the basic move-shoot-charge (something normal) would be unaffected, but specific actions which require bravery or discipline would need a morale check to perform.

Thus if a unit is dropped to morale 2 by pinning weapons, even if they don't lose any models, they are panicking and can't line up for overwatch, or use stratagems, or break cover, and so forth. it punishes units for being scared without them just vanishing - and with the morale-healing ability of characters (or simply using a nearby characters morale instead, as they have character protection so will probably have a high one, which would streamline this idea a lot, so I'm going with that!) the unit can be recovered! a space marine in the middle of the board panicked and then just vanished? I don't think so.

I was replying more to the OP.
Your suggestion is good, but will require a few rewrites of the core stat-line. Its probably better to keep the statline as is, but change how it interacts.

I think treating Leadership as a save against Morale is quite clever. In a way, the rules somewhat already do this, except with no guaranteed failure like with regular saves. While I don't think I like having to roll for each model in a squad, I do like the thought behind it. I quite like the simplicity of rolling 1 dice; the ugly part is having to think of 3 numbers, with 2 of those numbers being things you don't often think of.

Currently; Ld + Dice Roll - Models Lost = Lose 0 if 0 or positive, lose number equal to result if negative.

Well, you don't normally look up Ld, so that's a number that's hard to remember. You have to remember how many models died this turn (usually you keep those models nearby, but sometimes you forget), and then you factor in the die result. Finally, you're looking for a negative number, which is an extra mental flip. None of these things are hard, but 3 of them require a moment of consideration.


How about the following?

Ld Saves:
"If a unit has lost any number of models this turn, it has to make a Ld save during the Morale phase. Roll 1d6 and compare it to the Ld Save of the unit. If the number is equal to or greater than the Ld Save value (Ld+), then the unit is brave and suffer so ill effects. If the result rolled is less than the Ld Save value, that many models flee the unit. For example, if a unit of Space Marines (Ld 3+) rolls a 1, then 1 Space Marine flees and is removed from the battlefield. A natural roll of 1 always fails, regardless of any modifiers, and at least one model must flee due to such a result."

So yeah, Characters naturally are fearless, because they're units of 1 model. Same for Knights and most vehicles. Very brave units, such as Terminators, would have a Ld 2+ save. Extra brave units, like Space Marines, would have a 3+ save. Somewhat brave units like T'au would have a 4+ save. Not very brave units like Guardsmen would have a save of 5+. Panicky units like Cultists would have a 6+ save. Cowardly units like Grots would have a - save, meaning they'd always fail and lose models equal to the dice rolled. Two nice things about this system are that it affects both big and small units (and so big units can take the losses more), and that a lot of times it'll keep with GW's way of having consistent stat-lines; 3+'s across the board for Marines, 5+'s across the board for Orks, etc.

Speak of Orks, let's look at a few ways of modifying these values due to special rules:

#1 - And They Shall Know No Fear: One fewer model flees this unit when it fails a Ld save, to a minimum of one.
#2 - Commissars: The first time a friendly unit fails a Ld save whilst within 6" of this model, one model dies instead, and the unit rerolls its Ld save.
#3 - Mob Rule: This unit adds 1 to Ld save rolls for every 10 friendly Ork models within 6" of it.
#4 - Night Lords Terror: Whenever an enemy unit fails a Ld save whilst within 12" of a NIGHT LORDS unit, one additional model flees the unit.
#5 - Terrifying Visions (psychic power): If this power is successfully manifested, up to one target enemy unit within 18" subtracts 1 from its Ld save rolls until the start of your next turn.