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With vehicle damage in particular, GW first modified the damage threshold so that vehicles were only exploded on 6s instead of 5s, while having positive damage modifiers start at AP 2 instead of 1. This made vehicles more vulnerable to glancing rather than penetrating hits.

For 7th...GW then modified the damage table so vehicles exploded on 7s before modification. The end result was that where a Zoanthrope at the start of 6th could one-shot a vehicle via Penetration on a 4+, said Zoanthrope now needed a 6 at the start of 7th (due to having Warp Lance "brilliantly" reduced from AP 1 to 2), while it was now impossible for a Tyrannofex to destroy even a Rhino in a single turn (two non-AP 2 shots, versus 3 Hull Points), much less a Land Raider. There was a reason that Tyranids were locked into Brainleech Devourers.

Meanwhile, Grav became a weapon to mulch through "everything" since most vehicles had 3 HP, and a 6 vs an already-Immobilized vehicle meant doing 2 HP. "Superheavies" were the exception, since they explicitly ignored any damage result that was not an Explodes.

Perhaps, rather than modifying the vehicle damage chart to make "explodes" an increasingly distant possibility, they could have increased the HP of vehicles, and replaced any instance of "instant death/explodes" with "does an extra D3 wounds/HP of damage", such that the pendulum would give an actual purpose to 'high-strength antitank', versus massed S6/7.

Of course, GW then went for the 8th ed approach/9th ed approach where we now get arguments over whether Heavy Bolters are reasonable effective vs Land Raiders compared to Lascannons...

Alright, so after feeling like I got ProHammer into a good spot, I'm now wondering about how to incorporate the core ideas and spirit of ProHammer into a re-worked 9th edition. This would be basically be driven by the idea building on and tweaking the 9th edition core rules in a way that changes the gameplay without needing to make specific changes to entries in the codex books.

Here's my laundry list of things to think about as modifications to 9th to make it feel a bit more like OldHammer and also reduce the lethality of the game a bit:

* Re-do morale phase - broken units would instead fallback X" with a chance to regroup later on. Certain types of abilities/stratagems that affect current morale losses might need global adjustments to how they work.

* Add in additional morale elements/mechanisms (adapt from ProHammer). E.G, suppression / hail of fire for forced pinning tests.

* Adjust terrain and cover save handling. Consider adding in dedicated cover saves as a choice instead of using the cover save modifier. Refine terrain rules more.

* Allow vehicles / monstrous creatures to benefit from cover again if decently obscured.

* Incorporate vehicle facings (vehicles harder to wound from the front? easier to wound from the back?

* Re-implement vehicle weapon firing arcs again, e.g. LoS from each weapon barrel

* Add back in uncertainty to reserve rolls (no automatic entry for reserves)

* Add back in uncertainty to deepstrike (bring back scatter dice?)

* Reduce variability of charges and/or used fixed charge distance based on unit type.

* Re-do shooting target selection per ProHammer (no automatic split fire, use declared fire, ProHammer would allocation process for faster rolling)

* Add in ProHammer reaction fire to charges and close range shooting attacks instead of current overwatch fire (in ProHammer, taking reaction fire is almost as strong as a full normal shooting attack, but it means you don't get to shoot on your next turn - it's a way of breaking down the shooting and approximating alternative activations a bit).

 Mezmorki wrote:
...This would be basically be driven by the idea building on and tweaking the 9th edition core rules in a way that changes the gameplay without needing to make specific changes to entries in the codex books...

I'm skeptical. Without addressing stratagem bloat, special rule bloat, or poorly-considered statline decisions all you'll be able to do is add bloat to 9th that way.

I mean, if you want to play a more battle-ier game, just pick up another game? 40k is easy, for the most part. It's not a simulation. It's an abstract of an insane future where people wear giant boxing gloves to literally smash faces with... while 100 foot tall robots shoot beams of plasma (The heat of a sun) on a planet that somehow doesn't vaporize the weapon firing it.
And actual Daemons exist, and can be demonstrably proven to exist. And Souls are *known* to exist. And running at someone with a Chainsaw is a viable strategy for a large portion of the galaxy.

40k's "reality" is divorced from our own. Trying to real-ify it takes away from that.

 greatbigtree wrote:
I mean, if you want to play a more battle-ier game, just pick up another game? 40k is easy, for the most part. It's not a simulation. It's an abstract of an insane future where people wear giant boxing gloves to literally smash faces with... while 100 foot tall robots shoot beams of plasma (The heat of a sun) on a planet that somehow doesn't vaporize the weapon firing it.
And actual Daemons exist, and can be demonstrably proven to exist. And Souls are *known* to exist. And running at someone with a Chainsaw is a viable strategy for a large portion of the galaxy.

40k's "reality" is divorced from our own. Trying to real-ify it takes away from that.

40k still has a reality though, and that reality can be simulated, however different from our own it is.

In fact, it is precisely because it is so different that I would like to see it more reified on the tabletop. I know how our reality works. I want to learn more about 40k's reality, including the rules and laws that govern tank design, daemonic manifestation, and why punching people with a giant glove is a good war-winning move. That's a fascinating world.

 greatbigtree wrote:
...40k's "reality" is divorced from our own. Trying to real-ify it takes away from that.

I don't think rolling back to older editions is trying to "real-ify" 40k so much as try to justify the existence of a bunch of stuff that makes no sense in the 9e rules. Heavy armour is pointless because you can and will chew it to death with machine guns, rifles are pointless because there are armies entirely composed of invincible multi-wound superpeople, maneuver is pointless because the only positional variable that the rules care about is how far away from each other you are, range is pointless because we're playing king of the hill on a shrunken table, dedicated AT weapons are pointless because intermediate-stat spam does the same thing, single-shot weapons are pointless because blasts perform better against all targets...

"Why don't we bring back armour facings?" is less about making 40k "realistic" and more about asking "could we do a thing that makes maneuver and fast AT more relevant?" Things like the Land Speeder, Piranha, and Vyper are effectively pointless in 40k right now because the entire purpose in using them over slower, tougher platforms was to get side/rear shots, but now that there are no side/rear shots there's no reason to take them.

 greatbigtree wrote:
40k's "reality" is divorced from our own. Trying to real-ify it takes away from that.

Well, given that almost all of the above rule suggestions are literally just lifted from older editions of 40K, I fail to see how they would inherently break the intended experience of the game.

 AnomanderRake wrote:
I'm skeptical. Without addressing stratagem bloat, special rule bloat, or poorly-considered statline decisions all you'll be able to do is add bloat to 9th that way.

This is my main concern. Adding on some of this stuff in 5th edition / ProHammer was less likely to break something because of the lack of the things you mention.

Still, I think most of the above rules could be woven in without too much pain.

 Mezmorki wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:
I'm skeptical. Without addressing stratagem bloat, special rule bloat, or poorly-considered statline decisions all you'll be able to do is add bloat to 9th that way.

This is my main concern. Adding on some of this stuff in 5th edition / ProHammer was less likely to break something because of the lack of the things you mention.

Still, I think most of the above rules could be woven in without too much pain.

You could weave them into the core rules, sure. If you didn't then sit down with all the Codexes and all the stratagems and try and work out how all of that interacts with your core rules changes I think you'd end up breaking a lot of things.

One of the things I really dislike about 9e is that it's such an interconnected system built on layers and layers of buffs that it makes itself really hard to do anything other than play tournament-standard games with everything completely as-written with.

I am aware that most of the ideas are lifted from earlier editions.

I believe the current design focus is to give people a “heroic action game” whereas previous design space had tried to be a closer-to-reality Battle game.

Things like having LoS based on weapon locations, firing arcs, and different AV for different facings were attempts to increase the “reality” factor for the game. The current design is moving away from that, in favour of being a little more loosey goosey with exact measurements and other details. Currently, “wouldn’t it be cool if...” takes priority over “that isn’t directly translateable, so no...”.

More high fantasy, less nitty gritty.

40k alternates between abstraction and extreme granularity. The same game that says that "vehicle facings are too complex" does not have any issue with differentiating between a Bolter, a Bolt Rifle, a Heavy Bolt Rifle...

After a certain point, one appreciates how 3rd-5th called a "Power Weapon" a "Power Weapon".

 greatbigtree wrote:
I am aware that most of the ideas are lifted from earlier editions.

I believe the current design focus is to give people a “heroic action game” whereas previous design space had tried to be a closer-to-reality Battle game.

Things like having LoS based on weapon locations, firing arcs, and different AV for different facings were attempts to increase the “reality” factor for the game. The current design is moving away from that, in favour of being a little more loosey goosey with exact measurements and other details. Currently, “wouldn’t it be cool if...” takes priority over “that isn’t directly translateable, so no...”.

More high fantasy, less nitty gritty.

Are people complaining because of the loss of the "nitty gritty realism" or because of the push towards "find the most efficient general-purpose gun and spam it"?

Slightly perplexed. We spent the last few pages complaining about the nuances of all the stuff we don't like about the current edition, but then scoff at the suggestion of changing any of it because it's not in alignment with the direction the game seems to be going.

Of course it's not in alignment! That's the whole point of suggestion changes.

On a more pragmatic note, and maybe this needs to be its own thread, I'd like to discuss some changes to 9th and where specifically such changes might fail or breakdown given the particulars of 9th edition.

All of my responses have been 9th edition = good.

 greatbigtree wrote:
All of my responses have been 9th edition = good.

I'd characterize your responses as "9th = abstraction = good". Which is great for people who like more abstraction and not great for people who don't.

 greatbigtree wrote:
I am aware that most of the ideas are lifted from earlier editions.

I believe the current design focus is to give people a “heroic action game” whereas previous design space had tried to be a closer-to-reality Battle game.

Things like having LoS based on weapon locations, firing arcs, and different AV for different facings were attempts to increase the “reality” factor for the game. The current design is moving away from that, in favour of being a little more loosey goosey with exact measurements and other details. Currently, “wouldn’t it be cool if...” takes priority over “that isn’t directly translateable, so no...”.

More high fantasy, less nitty gritty.

problem here is the same with the playtime, they do it on the wrong side
removing any details of the game that can be seen as player interaction while everything that is player-game interaction (including list building) is expanded with unecessary details

seeing it as to complicated to talk with the opponent but digging in books and rules to get all options for your army is fine

Random thought, which I haven't seen brought up before.... but is part of the lethality question (especially with respect to vehicle) a function of how the wound chart was changed in 8th?

People talk about land raiders dying to heavy bolters. S5 vs. T8 wounds on 5+ in 8th/9th, whereas before it would've been a 6+, which is a 50% reduction in likelihood of successfully wounding. I think this applies in probably other areas as well where a 2-point mismatch between Strength and Toughness usually is no different than the 1-point mismatch, whereas before it was.

I guess you could say the above cuts both ways, as S6 and S7 weapons would previously wound MEQ's easier (on a 2+), whereas now that strength wounds only on a 3+.

This change to the wound chart was pretty massive and underexamined IMHO with respect to its impact on balance.

Obviously, in the old armor value days, a S5 bolter had literally no way to penetrate 14 armor. But if the concern is that higher toughness models are dying too quickly - maybe the old wound chart needs to be brought back. It's a more granular approach.

EDIT:

To put it in 9E terms:

Is the Strength 2 points (or more) HIGHER than the Toughness? 2+
Is the Strength 1 point HIGHER than the Toughness? 3+
Is the Strength EQUAL to the Toughness? 4+
Is the Strength 1 point LOWER than the Toughness? 5+
Is the Strength 2 or 3 points LOWER than the Toughness 6+
Is the Strength 4 points (or more) LOWER than the Toughness? Impossible to wound.

Nothing below strength 8 could hurt a Land Raider without a special rule allowing it.

Well, before it wouldn't have even been able to glance, because AV14.

Of course then Land Raiders had to worry about other things that trivialized them out of competitive play like grav.

How durability changed was a very case per case basis. It affected vehicles different, it affected monster different, it affected infantry different.

Greatly increased wound totals for monsters/vehicles with an accompanying increase in AT damage characteristics would help alleviate the "one gun/hammer fits all" issue.

 Mezmorki wrote:
...But if the concern is that higher toughness models are dying too quickly - maybe the old wound chart needs to be brought back. It's a more granular approach...

The problem is more to do with how damage/wounds were assigned than S/T. GW gave vehicles/monsters too few wounds and made D2/Dd3 too cheap/spammable in the 8e Indexes, and has yet to try and correct that, to the point that they're now having to introduce special rules (Dreadnaughts and -1D to incoming attacks) to correct for the fact that they made spamming mid-power weapons the most efficient solution to the vast majority of targets.

Just as a sanity check I math-hammered out heavy bolters vs. lascannons assuming BS 3+ shooting at a land raider. Lo and behold, the heavy bolter is just slightly better statistically speaking. Crazy. Of course the heavy bolters are also cheaper.

My personal proposition is make -1D standard to Monster and Vehicle keywords, with the trade off that you have +1 to hit against such target.

 Tyran wrote:
My personal proposition is make -1D standard to Monster and Vehicle keywords, with the trade off that you have +1 to hit against such target.

I've been toying with an idea also where vehicles benefit from a +1 to their toughness from the front and -1 to their toughness in the back.

To merge the ideas, maybe they just get -1D to attacks in their front and side?

 Mezmorki wrote:

 Tyran wrote:
My personal proposition is make -1D standard to Monster and Vehicle keywords, with the trade off that you have +1 to hit against such target.

I've been toying with an idea also where vehicles benefit from a +1 to their toughness from the front and -1 to their toughness in the back.

To merge the ideas, maybe they just get -1D to attacks in their front and side?

I toyed with this in one of my homebrew fix editions, and found it made everything unnecessarily complicated by comparison to giving vehicles different T on different faces and burning down and rebuilding the damage/wounds stats on everything. Also known as rolling back to pre-8e.

 Mezmorki wrote:

 Tyran wrote:
My personal proposition is make -1D standard to Monster and Vehicle keywords, with the trade off that you have +1 to hit against such target.

I've been toying with an idea also where vehicles benefit from a +1 to their toughness from the front and -1 to their toughness in the back.

To merge the ideas, maybe they just get -1D to attacks in their front and side?

The issue with facings is that they work well on imperial boxes, as boxes have well defined sides. The issue is that everyone else doesn't have boxes for vehicles/monsters.

 Tyran wrote:

 Mezmorki wrote:

 Tyran wrote:
My personal proposition is make -1D standard to Monster and Vehicle keywords, with the trade off that you have +1 to hit against such target.

I've been toying with an idea also where vehicles benefit from a +1 to their toughness from the front and -1 to their toughness in the back.

To merge the ideas, maybe they just get -1D to attacks in their front and side?

The issue with facings is that they work well on imperial boxes, as boxes have well defined sides. The issue is that everyone else doesn't have boxes for vehicles/monsters.

It works great for circle bases, less great for oval bases. If you're looking for a simpler way to add facings back to the game that's easier to eyeball for oval bases you might also consider Flames of War arcs; draw a line across the front of your vehicle perpendicular to its direction of movement, and attacks originating from behind that get some kind of bonus.

 Tyran wrote:

The issue with facings is that they work well on imperial boxes, as boxes have well defined sides. The issue is that everyone else doesn't have boxes for vehicles/monsters.

I see no issue. Ork vehicles are sturdy and tough and proper shaped. Other factions vehicles are flimsy and weak and wouldn't be getting the bonus to T.

In 5th it felt like half my game time was sunk into arguing the facings of trukks, battlewagons and wave serpents.

The speed freeks game has gubbins made of paper you can put onto the buggies' bases to determine facing - without something like this for every vehicle in the game, facings are not an option for me.

then just give each vehicles a base and mark it in 4 places and now it has 4 sides.

 Mezmorki wrote:
Just as a sanity check I math-hammered out heavy bolters vs. lascannons assuming BS 3+ shooting at a land raider. Lo and behold, the heavy bolter is just slightly better statistically speaking. Crazy. Of course the heavy bolters are also cheaper.

May I ask how you got that math?

Heavy bolter: 3 shots. BS 3+: 2 hits. S5 vs T8, 5+ to wound: 0.67 wounds. AP -1 vs Sv 2+, 3+ to save: 0.22 failed wounds. 2 Damage: 0.44 damage suffered.

Lascannon: 1 shot. BS 3+: 0.67 hits. S9 vs T8, 3+ to wound, 0.44 wounds. AP -3 vs Sv 2+, 5+ to save: 0.30 failed wounds. D6 Damage, average 3.5: 1.04 damage suffered.

1.04/0.44 = 2.33

The lascannon is 2.33 times better than a heavy bolter against Land Raiders.