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I notice that your rules include both Reactive Fire and Overwatch, and that may lead to "bloat." What I mean by that is, your current flow is this:

-First Fire
-Overwatch
-Shooting/Reactive Fire.

First notable question:
-You explicitly state that Reactive Fire does not preempt First Fire. However, one "could argue" that Overwatch triggers it. A more notable question is whether a unit can use Overwatch and Reactive Fire in the same turn.
-Can Overwatch work with Barrage or Ignore LOS weapons (e.x. Hive Guard Impaler Cannons?)
-The rules for stating that "a unit can only make one shot with a weapon/one reaction fire" has unclear RAW. Say a unit of 5 Tactical Marines is shot at up-close. They have 4 Bolters and a Heavy Bolter. Does the unit only get to fire one weapon at one shot, or does the unit get to fire its weapons, each at only one shot? Also, do Vehicles get to use Reactive Fire? Can Reactive Fire be used against Psychic Shooting Attacks, or any other "attacks" that fall outside the realm of shooting/charging (e.x. 5th ed Reaver Bladevanes)?

Under the reactive fire section it defines when you can take reactive fire, either (a) in response to a "normal" shooting attack (not overwatch or first fire) or in response to (b) a charge being declared against you.

I will clarify that a unit can only ever make one shooting attack in a turn regardless of the type. Each model in the unit can make one ranged attack with one weapon, which only shoots once (ie an assault 2 weapon would only get to shoot once as if it was assault 1).

Over watch shouldn't be allowed for indirect fire weapons. I'll add that in.

Vehicles would also not get to use reactive fire.

I think reactive fire should also NOT work again psychic powers.

Following. I plan on also playing with 5th ed. (Not going to fully revamp the rulebook like you have, just update with current model ranges and update all codex's to be consistent with external balance), so this looks like something to watch it's progress

 The Warp Forge wrote:
Following. I plan on also playing with 5th ed. (Not going to fully revamp the rulebook like you have, just update with current model ranges and update all codex's to be consistent with external balance), so this looks like something to watch it's progress

I was working on something similar, though at a snails pace. If you need any of the old FAQs and errata from the era and can't find them on the net let me know and i'll see if I can't upload them somewhere. The pre 5e errata in particular can be tricky to find and some things only appear in tournament faqs or indirectly (such as the firepoints on the 3e immolator)

A.T. wrote:

 The Warp Forge wrote:
Following. I plan on also playing with 5th ed. (Not going to fully revamp the rulebook like you have, just update with current model ranges and update all codex's to be consistent with external balance), so this looks like something to watch it's progress

I was working on something similar, though at a snails pace. If you need any of the old FAQs and errata from the era and can't find them on the net let me know and i'll see if I can't upload them somewhere. The pre 5e errata in particular can be tricky to find and some things only appear in tournament faqs or indirectly (such as the firepoints on the 3e immolator)

Yeah just send me as many as you can thanks!

 The Warp Forge wrote:
Yeah just send me as many as you can thanks!

Done. Just the 3-5e errata, faq, and supplemental pdf files that GW released (that I have).
I have forgeworld dataslates but they aren't sorted by edition and my journals and physical copies but don't contain anything relevant to 5th edition unless you wanted to port in the sisters named characters.

ProHammer in 2021

So, for now, I feel like ProHammer is in a pretty good spot. I managed quite a few games over the past months to test and tweak the system, and it seems to be working really well across the board. We've played games with a range of lists and different era codexes, and it's worked quite well. I think it hit it's goal of taking 5th edition (i.e. classic feeling 40K) and addressing a few of its issues (wound allocation perhaps the biggest) while adding a little more tactical depth and interesting player decisions along the way. I'm really happy with the way shooting turned out.

So what's next?

I have a couple of ideas in the works, and not sure which ones I'm going to advance (so looking for some feedback!).

#1 - Re-write the ProHammer rules from the ground up as a complete, standalone rulebook.

This would be done so that the rules could be presented in a more logical and coherent manner. It would lower the bar to accessing the rules and potentially make it easier for people to try it. I also think the rules could be written more in the style / structure of 8th and 9th and be consolidated a bit in the process.

#2 - Give 9th edition the ProHammer treatment.

I'm getting pressure (nephews!) to play more of 9th edition (despite my hesitancy). But perhaps by taking up the challenge of re-working 9th edition with the ethos of ProHammer in mind would give me the encouragement I need. The good news is that the core rules are CONSIDERABLY shorter than older editions (as you all probably know), so the writing side should be pretty quick. The bigger challenge though is that with stratagems and so many codex specific rules and unit specific rules affecting core rules, it's going to be hard to thread the needle on changes that don't just result in a convoluted mess.

There doesn't appear to be any major comprehensive efforts to rework 9th edition (at least I haven't seen it) in a way that addresses some of the core issues in the game's design (too much lethality, shooting still a little too strong, too much randomness, etc.) and boosting the importance of tactical position and maneuver. The idea too, as with ProHammer, is that it doesn't require any codex-level modifications or FAQs - just modifications to the core rules.

I recently picked up the Middle Earth strategy battle game and rulebook and have been reading that. The turn structure is lot like Epic and I'm thinking of how that might be adapted to 9th edition as a possible starting point. I got a list going of other changes to start testing out as well.

Thoughts from people?

Happy holidays!

 Mezmorki wrote:
...There doesn't appear to be any major comprehensive efforts to rework 9th edition (at least I haven't seen it) in a way that addresses some of the core issues in the game's design (too much lethality, shooting still a little too strong, too much randomness, etc.) and boosting the importance of tactical position and maneuver. The idea too, as with ProHammer, is that it doesn't require any codex-level modifications or FAQs - just modifications to the core rules...

I've got a checklist of things you'd have to do to fix 8th, and it was pretty horrible, loads of work, and would require burning down every Codex and starting over. 9th is worse (because you have to fix all the same problems as 8th, plus badly-written missions and terrain rules that punish specific unit types and non-skew army builds). I don't think there's a quick fix approach where you do a pass through the core rules and make 9th better. They've offloaded so much bloat into datasheets and stratagems it'd be a band-aid over a badly broken system at best.

Any chance you can post your checklist here for my edification? Cheers.

Non-Codex-specific points (these apply to pretty much every Codex):

-Blasts: Revise to FW Conversion Beamer standard (one shot, then do a random number of extra hits at a different profile if the initial shot kills someone). This makes blast weapons much less effective against single-model targets, and expands the design space such that blast weapons don't have to be such efficient anti-everything guns as most ordnance is in 8th/9th.

-Stratagems: Move to a system more like Sigmar's command abilities; instead of five pages of text you need to read and memorize to understand an army put stratagems that affect a unit on its datasheet and stratagems that buff other units on characters' datasheets. Instead of "no duplicate stratagems" to control people blowing through their whole CP allowance in one turn move to 1CP at the start of the game and then 1CP/turn so there is no big pool to blow through unless you refrain from using stratagems at all until the endgame.

-Lethality: Drop about a point of AP from pretty much everything. Small arms should be AP-1 at best and most weapons should cap out at -2, -3 should be reserved for dedicated AT. At the moment the save stat is pretty pointless in a lot of places because of how much random AP-3 is floating around.

-Terrain: The whole system needs an overhaul. Vehicles need to be able to benefit from cover. 18+ wound vehicles need some way to hide. Terrain needs to be able to affect movement (I'm in favour of a flat -X" penalty on the terrain datasheet).

-Snipers: At the moment it's nigh-impossible to interact with characters; the S4/AP-/mortal wounds on 6+ standard for "sniper rifles" is spectacularly irrelevant against pretty much everything. More armies need multi-damage snipers that look like the Vindicare/Eradicator/Transuranic Arquebus if you're going to keep 9th's incredibly powerful character bubbles.

-Vehicles/Monsters: 10W is a spectacularly irrelevant statline against the kind of D2/Dd3-spam floating around. There needs to be a broad rethink of the relationship between vehicles and anti-infantry weapons. I've tossed around a few ideas (double all vehicle wounds/all Dd6 becomes Dd6+3, DR on the statline/facing-dependent DR) but you might also be able to create a similar effect by fiddling with the S/T table. I have yet to do enough math to figure out if there's a fix I like here.

-Antenna-to-antenna LOS: This is just purely stupid, it makes the game tremendously difficult to play (you need to make sure no tiny part of your unit is visible from any position to avoid LOS) and punishes creative modeling (taller base? add banners? fancier weapon? good job, you've just made your unit easier to kill!). I've considered requiring LoS to be drawn to/from the center of the target as a fix, but haven't really settled on a good answer for this either.

-Reserves: Risk-free reserves with the 9" restriction creates a degenerate metagame where the first person to plonk models on the table is screwed because you're guaranteeing the other guy is going to get the alpha strike on you with a unit you haven't had a chance to interact with the unit in any way. Two ideas on this one: Either require reserves to appear at the end of your turn (giving your opponent their turn to react, maybe with some penalties so arriving from reserves isn't an instant death sentence), or require teleport homers/equivalent near where you want to land to deploy reserves at all (so you can't just risk-free appear behind your opponent if they don't camp in a corner and can interact with your teleporting units before they arrive), or possibly some mix of both.

-One detachment: 9th particularly effectively has no limitations on what you can put in an army. If you're not going to drastically revise the game to give certain unit types glaring weaknesses (ex. vehicles die fast if a unit with anti-tank grenades touches them) you need something like 4e/5e's one detachment to control spam lists.

-Double-action: Move-again, shoot-again, and fight-again powers are tremendously unfun; almost independent of what the actual stats attached to the action are just having the double-action ability makes the unit straight-up better at what it does than anything else that exists. Remove them completely.

-Movement: Even without the move-again powers getting 2d6+22" on a Skyweaver unit or 2d6+30" on a Heldrake makes first-turn charges from outside LOS way, way too easy. Lots of things need to be slower.

-Speed of play: Needing to roll hit, hit reroll, wound, wound reroll, save, FNP almost every time you attack makes the game take much, much longer than it needs to. Exploding hits make it much worse. The buff stack generally needs to be cracked down on.

-Quantity of dice: Stat inflation is getting out of control in lots of ways but RoF/Attacks inflation is particularly bad. A single infantryman shouldn't have any way of getting more than 3-4 attacks, no matter how many buffs you stack on them.

There's a lot more, but that should give you the beginning of an idea of why more people are looking to fix pre-8th than 8th/9th.

 AnomanderRake wrote:
Non-Codex-specific points (these apply to pretty much every Codex):

Awesome stuff. Let me see what I can tackle.

 AnomanderRake wrote:
-Blasts: Revise to FW Conversion Beamer standard (one shot, then do a random number of extra hits at a different profile if the initial shot kills someone). This makes blast weapons much less effective against single-model targets, and expands the design space such that blast weapons don't have to be such efficient anti-everything guns as most ordnance is in 8th/9th.

Count me among the people who still like the templates. Not sure if there is a way to go back to them though, considering how many other rules hook into the current blast template system.

 AnomanderRake wrote:
-Stratagems: Move to a system more like Sigmar's command abilities; instead of five pages of text you need to read and memorize to understand an army put stratagems that affect a unit on its datasheet and stratagems that buff other units on characters' datasheets. Instead of "no duplicate stratagems" to control people blowing through their whole CP allowance in one turn move to 1CP at the start of the game and then 1CP/turn so there is no big pool to blow through unless you refrain from using stratagems at all until the endgame.

I really like this. What if your pool of available points is divided by five (for 5 game turns) and you get that amount per turn. Details on handling on fractions of points (when to round up/down)

 AnomanderRake wrote:
-Lethality: Drop about a point of AP from pretty much everything. Small arms should be AP-1 at best and most weapons should cap out at -2, -3 should be reserved for dedicated AT. At the moment the save stat is pretty pointless in a lot of places because of how much random AP-3 is floating around.

Hard to address without massive re-writing of weapon stats. Part of me is tempted to port the older style AP system back into the game with some tweaking, such that AP -1 = AP5, AP -2 = AP4, AP -3 = AP3, and so on. The additional tweak (which I’ve tested before in ProHammer) is to make it that if your save equals the AP, instead of penetrating it reduces your armor save roll by 1.

The above would do a lot to address lethality from shooting attacks as well.

 AnomanderRake wrote:
-Terrain: The whole system needs an overhaul. Vehicles need to be able to benefit from cover. 18+ wound vehicles need some way to hide. Terrain needs to be able to affect movement (I'm in favour of a flat -X" penalty on the terrain datasheet).

Agreed. Lord of the Rings just has difficult terrain cost 2” of movement for each 1” moved through. Pretty simple solution.

Would be easy enough to grant vehicles cover saves again for being 25%+ and 50%+ obscured. I’d like to see terrain provide more ranges of cover save bonuses or hit modifiers.

 AnomanderRake wrote:
-Snipers: At the moment it's nigh-impossible to interact with characters; the S4/AP-/mortal wounds on 6+ standard for "sniper rifles" is spectacularly irrelevant against pretty much everything. More armies need multi-damage snipers that look like the Vindicare/Eradicator/Transuranic Arquebus if you're going to keep 9th's incredibly powerful character bubbles.

Not familiar enough with these to say what to do yet!

 AnomanderRake wrote:
-Vehicles/Monsters: 10W is a spectacularly irrelevant statline against the kind of D2/Dd3-spam floating around. There needs to be a broad rethink of the relationship between vehicles and anti-infantry weapons. I've tossed around a few ideas (double all vehicle wounds/all Dd6 becomes Dd6+3, DR on the statline/facing-dependent DR) but you might also be able to create a similar effect by fiddling with the S/T table. I have yet to do enough math to figure out if there's a fix I like here.

I think using something more like the old wound table would be better across the board. Generally it means that marginally weaker weapons have a harder time wounding marginally tougher targets, and marginally stronger weapons better at wounding marginally weaker. It creates more variability in the strength ness-toughness match ups across the board, and is better IMHO in every way.

Example, toughness 7. Right now, Strength 4, S5, and S6 weapons all wound on a 5+. S3 or weaker wound on a 6+. With the old table, S4 + S5 would wound on a 6+, and S6 on a 5+. S3 or weaker can’t wound it at all.

I also like the idea of adding damage reduction to front and side hits for vehicles on top of adjusting the wound roll to cut down on the lethality of weapons that do multiple points of damage.

 AnomanderRake wrote:
-Antenna-to-antenna LOS: This is just purely stupid, it makes the game tremendously difficult to play (you need to make sure no tiny part of your unit is visible from any position to avoid LOS) and punishes creative modeling (taller base? add banners? fancier weapon? good job, you've just made your unit easier to kill!). I've considered requiring LoS to be drawn to/from the center of the target as a fix, but haven't really settled on a good answer for this either.

Yeah, this is just stupid and lazy rule writing. Mind boggling really.

LoS should be drawn from the center of the shooting model (for infantry and the like, and/or drawn from their head) and you must be able to see the body, head, upper legs, or upper arms of the target. In the case of vehicles, LoS should be drawn from weapon barrels and you must be able to see the hull of the vehicle. Seems like an easy fix.

 AnomanderRake wrote:
-Reserves: Risk-free reserves with the 9" restriction creates a degenerate metagame where the first person to plonk models on the table is screwed because you're guaranteeing the other guy is going to get the alpha strike on you with a unit you haven't had a chance to interact with the unit in any way. Two ideas on this one: Either require reserves to appear at the end of your turn (giving your opponent their turn to react, maybe with some penalties so arriving from reserves isn't an instant death sentence), or require teleport homers/equivalent near where you want to land to deploy reserves at all (so you can't just risk-free appear behind your opponent if they don't camp in a corner and can interact with your teleporting units before they arrive), or possibly some mix of both.

Another thing that would seem easy to fix. I don’t even know why first turn reserves are a thing. I’d like a system that allows you to either get a guaranteed subset of reserves to enter on a given turn, with an option to defer to a subsequent turn, and/or going back to a more random reserve roll starting on turn 2.

 AnomanderRake wrote:
-One detachment: 9th particularly effectively has no limitations on what you can put in an army. If you're not going to drastically revise the game to give certain unit types glaring weaknesses (ex. vehicles die fast if a unit with anti-tank grenades touches them) you need something like 4e/5e's one detachment to control spam lists.

Totally agree. Personally, if playing under the ProHammer banner, which seeks to create a more classic feeling game, I would just have it so that all armies must use and fit within a standard Battalion Detachment. Players would have to agree to using alternative or supplemental detachments in a single army.

 AnomanderRake wrote:
-Double-action: Move-again, shoot-again, and fight-again powers are tremendously unfun; almost independent of what the actual stats attached to the action are just having the double-action ability makes the unit straight-up better at what it does than anything else that exists. Remove them completely.

Ugh. Yes, eliminate or somehow restrict.

 AnomanderRake wrote:
-Movement: Even without the move-again powers getting 2d6+22" on a Skyweaver unit or 2d6+30" on a Heldrake makes first-turn charges from outside LOS way, way too easy. Lots of things need to be slower.

I think in general movement needs to be normalized a bit more, and made more reliable and predicable. Slower units need a it more speed and flexibility, (i.e. 3+D3” for advance, or always advance up to half their base move speed, etc.). Units able to move really fast need some breaks on what they can do at faster speeds. Fast moving vehicles shouldn’t be able to move flat out and shoot all their weapons with no penalty.

 AnomanderRake wrote:
-Speed of play: Needing to roll hit, hit reroll, wound, wound reroll, save, FNP almost every time you attack makes the game take much, much longer than it needs to. Exploding hits make it much worse. The buff stack generally needs to be cracked down on.

I’d port in ProHammer’s shooting attack resolution process, which handles mixed weapon profiles and mixed target profiles/saves all in one set of rolls. I’d also, while I’m at it, ditch the ability for units to inherently be able to split fire, as that greatly slows down play - e.g. rolling attacks one at a time to inflict just an exact amount of damage you want on a given target, and then shoot a different unit with your remaining models, etc. Give me a break. Players should have to make some tough choices.

I’d stil allow split firing on a successful leadership test, or allow the unit to split fire and target at most two units. This is another nerf to shooting and injects some more interesting decision making into the gameplay.

 AnomanderRake wrote:
-Quantity of dice: Stat inflation is getting out of control in lots of ways but RoF/Attacks inflation is particularly bad. A single infantryman shouldn't have any way of getting more than 3-4 attacks, no matter how many buffs you stack on them.

There's a lot more, but that should give you the beginning of an idea of why more people are looking to fix pre-8th than 8th/9th.

The big thing I’m contemplating as well is trying to play 40k using LotR turn structure. Abilities that allow for double actions (above) could be repurposed to allow units to act out of their normal turn order (i.e. shooting first in lieu of shooting later).

Much to think about!

The point I'm trying to make is that people aren't trying to "fix" 9th because it's so badly broken at this point that it'd be easier to start from scratch. 7th, at least, had a sensible 3rd-derived framework under all the silliness that you can go back and use as a starting point.

I'm not sure LotR turn order is going to help a whole lot; in LotR there is no "attacking first" in combat (models roll off, the winner gets to roll to wound) and shooting isn't usually a big part of the game (models tend to get one shot, only 1/3 of your army can have ranged attacks most of the time, and individual shots seldom have better than about 1/9 chance to kill an armoured infantryman, even if you're an Uruk crossbowman or an elf archer). Going first doesn't have a big impact on how much stuff you're able to kill that turn in the way it would in 40k if you just implement LotR turn order without also burning down all the statlines and starting over to address shooting output.

 AnomanderRake wrote:
The point I'm trying to make is that people aren't trying to "fix" 9th because it's so badly broken at this point that it'd be easier to start from scratch. 7th, at least, had a sensible 3rd-derived framework under all the silliness that you can go back and use as a starting point.

This was my conclusion as well. Back in 8th, I tried house-ruling things to make the game fun again but we found that we ended up rewriting half the game, and returning the other half to 4th edition. I don't think the 8th-9th edition rules are salvageable, sadly. And certainly none of the codices are. Unfortunately the tight coupling between the core rules, the codices, and the latest models pushes you inexorably towards the conclusion that the whole game is unsalvageable. :(

I think 40K has reached the stage of full sociopath takeover according to the cycle of subcultures described at https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths.

Pointed Stick wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:
The point I'm trying to make is that people aren't trying to "fix" 9th because it's so badly broken at this point that it'd be easier to start from scratch. 7th, at least, had a sensible 3rd-derived framework under all the silliness that you can go back and use as a starting point.

This was my conclusion as well. Back in 8th, I tried house-ruling things to make the game fun again but we found that we ended up rewriting half the game, and returning the other half to 4th edition. I don't think the 8th-9th edition rules are salvageable, sadly. And certainly none of the codices are. Unfortunately the tight coupling between the core rules, the codices, and the latest models pushes you inexorably towards the conclusion that the whole game is unsalvageable. :(

Well, in all fairness, the core rules even in 9th edition aren't that long. I could see myself simply re-writing the core rules from scratch. The upside of this effort is that it would let people still tap into the "newness" of the latest model releases, codex's, and all of that. There also seems to be a lot of people dissatisfied with 9th edition, but seemingly content to just carry on regardless. If there is a way to get people to enjoy the hobby more and build up some momentum around an improved ruleset, it seems like it would be worthwhile.

Personally, I have no interest in playing more of vanilla 9th edition (though I still will at times). But I would totally be on-board with a reimagined 9th edition. I don't think it's an impossible task at all.

Pointed Stick wrote:
I think 40K has reached the stage of full sociopath takeover according to the cycle of subcultures described at https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths.

Maybe. In which case we just need to start our own sub-sub-counter-culture so all the cool kids can get back together an be geeky and excited about this game again. Waiting for GW to do it isn't gong to happen.

Honestly, part of the issue is that we all put too much stock on GW's official word on things - we assume they know what's best for the players, but really they are just doing what they think is best for their bottom line. Too many people gripe about GW's handling of things, but convince themselves there is nothing to be done about it. The beautiful thing about analog hobbies is that you can make them your own. Don't like what GW is doing? Take it back.

Yeah. And like you (and many other people, I presume) I've been working on my own total re-do of the rules: https://github.com/Pointedstick/wasteland-tactics/

It's not based on 5th edition but rather a completely new system. It's sufficiently different from classic 40K that I imagine it won't appeal to everyone, which is fine. At this point I'm mostly doing it for myself and my group, and if anyone else finds it fun, that's a nice bonus.

I don't think rewriting 9th's core rules alone would achieve much - a lot of those rules is very closely linked to faction rules.
For example, you can't change detachments without making many armies illegal, like Knights.

I actually prefer the newer AP system though.
I dislike the old "all or nothing" system, and I think the newer one is more realistic and can interact with cover in a more satisfying and realistic way.

 kirotheavenger wrote:
...For example, you can't change detachments without making many armies illegal, like Knights...

One Codex. Everyone else has at least Troops/HQ. Unless you want to get hung up on whether every single possible list build is going to remain legal, which probably isn't doable if you also want to fix any problems.

^^^^

Yes exactly.

Per my suggestions I'd also suggest standardizing the FOC - which means a LOT of lists aren't going to be valid under these revised changes. But the point of such changes is to even the playing field and narrow the range of conditions you're trying to account for.

If the goal is to try and have a somewhat balanced and challenging competitive game, then the variance in lists needs to be reigned in a bit.

Really cool that you are doing this.

5th is my favorite edition, but I always wanted to add things (like thrown grenades) into it. Glad to see the work you have done.

The only thing that keeps me playing more 5th is all of the models/units I have that weren't available until 6th edition or later. I wish I had
a handy formula for converting points of later edition units back to 5th.

I have played a good deal of 8th, and currently playing some 9th using only 8th codices and the 2020 Munitorum Field Manual for points.
I enjoy it well enough, but it just doesn't scratch the tactical detail itch like previous editions. I hope you working on a 9th rewrite doesn't
mean moving on from your 5th rework.

 flakpanzer wrote:
Really cool that you are doing this.
...
I wish I had a handy formula for converting points of later edition units back to 5th.
...
I hope you working on a 9th rewrite doesn't mean moving on from your 5th rework.

Thanks for checking it out!

Regarding points between editions, my experience is that comparable list's don't swing all that much in points between editions, and the point differences are somewhat a wash anyway given that unit abilities, stats, effects are changing alongside of it. I also feel like the difference between the extreme strongest and weakest lists are always going to be greater than the variation you'd have between editions of a codex or between "good" armies from different codexes. In other words - it's not even worth worrying about. I've been playing ProHammer and we've used 5th edition codexes against 7th edition ones. Or 4th edition books against 6th. Doesn't matter as much as people think it does in my experience.

So for ProHammer, it is kind of of the dream in that it lets you use anything 3rd - 7th, with just a few exceptions (no formations for example).

Regarding the future - I've actually started to completely re-write ProHammer "Classic" so that it will be it's own standalone ruleset and not require referencing back to the 5th edition book. It's chance to clean up a bunch of it. I'm also making the language and format more like 8th/9th edition so if and when I do a 9th edition version of ProHammer, it will be a smoother transition. For now, I'm continuing to refine and develop ProHammer classic.

Cheers!

Thanks for the reply! Glad you are continuing work.

What do you do about Special Rules from later codices (6th, 7th) that didn't exist in 5th?
What about Flyers from 6th/7th - Do you just make them all Skimmers?

The current version of ProHammer includes a unified set of universal special rules that covers up through 7th edition, with a few adjustments for compatibility and balance relative to other editions. Let me know if you see something that appears to be missing.

Regarding flyers, I recently updated the rules for those and they are handled fully in the Vehicle section. I made a few tweaks here and there (so you're less reliant on needing to use skyfire to hit zooming skimmers in case you are using an older codex without those abilities). We've used them in a couple of games now with no major problems.

.

@Flakpanzer

I mentioned this in another topic but i will re-post it here

Mezmorki has done some fine work, it's a bit more than i am willing to do as i prefer to stick to already existing rules, just putting all the best ones into the base 5th framework(so yes things like grenade throwing, snap fire and overwatch etc..). in my topic about the older editions, our group narrowed it down to just 15 rules imported from FW/3rd/4th/6th/7th to improve 5th.

.On points cost-

GWs approach is a bit weird but the points costs are based on how the models in your own army compare to other models in your own army book not how they compare to other armies/units in the game. so the points costs between edition changes are for the most part pretty much a non-issue.

We currently play using any codex from 3rd -7th with everything based in the 5th ed core rules/USRs. if the rules do not exist in 5th they either fall under the 5th USRs or they are not used (i always use the easy example of dunestrider that gives an extra 3" movement to represent the units ability to traverse rough ground with it's 5th ed counterpart-move through cover).

It is also a very simple formula to bring in a single unit from a 7th ed codex into one you want to base your army on(our chaos players use the 3.5 dex for obvious reasons) base points costs from 7th ed codex +points costs and effects for upgrades taken out of the parent codex of choice for the army=success

A side note on flyers
the 7th ed rules are pretty good for flyers but we decided that the original FW rules had a few items that needed to remain-

.jump infantry can assault flyers-normal vehicle movement to hit in assault rules apply (we use the ones from 4th)

.flyers are up high so they never benefit from cover(everybody can see them and they can see everybody) so they have to jink and snap fire or take the hit
however in the old rules there was no such thing as vector lock-you could destroy them with a destroyed result or with an immobilized result (passengers take a S10 AP1 hit from a crash-roll to wound as normal) FW included a 15 point one use chaff/flare launcher that allowed for a re-roll of the damage result much like venerable dreads.

.lastly because they are "up high" all units shooting at them take a 12" range penalty meaning things like pistols and flamer templates can never shoot at them, it is also tied to the reason why dedicated AA units had extended ranged version of the normal guns. hydras had "long barrel" autocannons and the eldar firestorm had a comparable 60" range scatter laser array

Good stuff going on here!

Anybody got a retro-codex for Death Guard for 5th? CSM didn't even have cultists then, and all the DG specific vehicles would need the VDR. Most of the characters would be nice Chosen I guess?

 Darnok wrote:
Good stuff going on here!

Anybody got a retro-codex for Death Guard for 5th? CSM didn't even have cultists then, and all the DG specific vehicles would need the VDR. Most of the characters would be nice Chosen I guess?

All you will ever need is the 3.5 chaos codex it has all you need to make a viable nurgle army that also fits the lore. if you want more demon variants you can always retro them into the 3.5 codex from the 4th ed stand alone demon codex. If you want to use cultists the easy way is to just use corrupted imperial guard with the 5th ed allied rule(1 HQ, 1 troop required, 1 of everything else allowed)

The vehicles are the same as i mentioned above-take the base costs + weapons/profiles and then take all upgrades out of the 3.5 codex.....imagine a nurgle vehicle with the regular plague carrier upgrade for being a nurgle vehicle, then give it mutated hull and parasitic possession so it is tougher and re-grows damage, heck if it is not a transport give it demonic possession as well so it cannot be stunned/shaken. it gets expensive but it feels so right.

 aphyon wrote:
All you will ever need is the 3.5 chaos codex it has all you need to make a viable nurgle army that also fits the lore. if you want more demon variants you can always retro them into the 3.5 codex from the 4th ed stand alone demon codex. If you want to use cultists the easy way is to just use corrupted imperial guard with the 5th ed allied rule(1 HQ, 1 troop required, 1 of everything else allowed)

The vehicles are the same as i mentioned above-take the base costs + weapons/profiles and then take all upgrades out of the 3.5 codex.....imagine a nurgle vehicle with the regular plague carrier upgrade for being a nurgle vehicle, then give it mutated hull and parasitic possession so it is tougher and re-grows damage, heck if it is not a transport give it demonic possession as well so it cannot be stunned/shaken. it gets expensive but it feels so right.

I think it is really not that easy.

3.5 can indeed make a "viable Nurgle army" - it fails at covering quite a few DG things though. There is nothing in it for Poxwalkers, and Cultists need to use the AL entry. To be fair: I'd simply use the 6th edition codex to fix this part. It has Cultists, and Typhus can make "Plague Zombies" available, which always were Poxwakers in al but name.
What I do like about 3.5 is the ability to take Terminator Champions in any number, making them an "easy fix" for Deathshrouds. It also comes with most of the Daemons already, another good point.

My main issue are the vehicles. The PBC is kind of easy to do, but both MBH and FBD give me some serious headache. Replicating them with the VDR is tough, unless you are happy with singular model entries and ridiculously overpriced units.

And I have no real idea for all the infantry characters outside of lord, scorceror and Typhus - other than fancy unit champions (while already having those!) or completely made up houserules.

So yeah, it would be all over the place, and still have not covered a good part of the DG line-up.

From the experience of actually doing it for the past several years...yes it is actually that easy.

the 3.5 dex is hands down the best chaos dex, but it is missing some of the new characters and vehicles that some players may want to use. if you don't want to do the quick conversion from the new codexes for specific units into 3.5 you are free to use the parent codex they come from for your list instead while adhering to the the 5th ed core rules set/USRs. that's the great thing about how all those editions are cross compatible.

Keep in mind that playing 40K this way is not only more about the old style tabletop tactics but it is also for the immersive lore players. if your looking for power gaming and cheesing out your lists (while it is possible) this isn't really what you are looking for. the focus is more about what 40K used to be- a tactics based tabletop wargame you can enjoy with your friends for some great social activity that still feels like it is in the 40K universe..

When khorne berserkers seize the game winning objective....and then the blood frenzy takes them and they run it towards the nearest enemy unit so they can hit them with a stick....it's funny, not always a good tactic...but absolutely what they would do in universe.

Since we play as a group of friends nobody is looking to be a jerk. And if we want to play something odd we (like the normal social contract of wargaming) plan it out ahead of time with our opponent similar to how FW used to suggest (circa 3rd ed) getting "permission" before you drop a superheavy or flyer on your opposite number without warning.

 aphyon wrote:
From the experience of actually doing it for the past several years...yes it is actually that easy.

Nice!

Genuine question: do you play using the DG vehicles? They only ever had rules for 8th and 9th, so...

 aphyon wrote:
if you don't want to do the quick conversion from the new codexes for specific units into 3.5 you are free to use the parent codex they come from for your list instead while adhering to the the 5th ed core rules set/USRs. that's the great thing about how all those editions are cross compatible.

... does not apply. I was playing around with the VDR, but other than the Plagueburst Crawler I wasn't able to "emulate" the other vehicles... yet.

Not true, DG vehicle upgrades in 3.5 apply to all normal chaos vehicles, there were several DG specific ones from FW and 7th ed that are cross compatible. if your trying to use 8th ed+ you are right it does not work as they are not cross compatible.

A few examples of nurgle units you can use

FW-book 5 the seige of Vraks

.mamon incarnate demon prince of nurgle
.necrosius-space marine character


FW book-13 war machines of the lost and the damned

.all standard chaos space marine vehicles
.all chaos space marine superheavy tanks
.all chaos space marine flyers, dread claws etc..
.chaos dreadnoughts, hellbrutes
.plague hulk of nurgle
.blight drones (the good ones)

Chaos guard including
.plague zombie mob
.blight ogryns(mark of nurgle)

.demon lord scabeiathrax
.spined chaos beast

Etc... there is more than enough stuff for you to use or use "counts as" for the 8th ed vehicles in 5th. .