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That's reassuring! I'll take another look.

Want a better 40K?
Check out ProHammer: Classic - An Awesomely Unified Ruleset for 3rd - 7th Edition 40K... for retro 40k feels!
 
   
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Most of my experience in playing a non 8th edtion system comes from playing 30k. Super heavies arent that dangerous there to be honest. They can be just as underpowered or overpowered as any other unit. I really cant see why people are so afraid of them.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/09/05 01:36:03


 
   
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terror51247 wrote:
Most of my experience in playing a no 8th edtion system comes from playing 30k. Super heavies arent that dangerous there to be honest. They can be just as underpowered or overpowered as any other unit. I really cant see why people are so afraid of them.

Normal vehicles can be immobilized, shaken and stunned, monsters can get taken down by a force weapon, against an army of 6 vehicles and 50 infantry you are very likely to pick up some models when you attack, but it's not outrageous for things to go south enough against a super heavy that you don't end up picking anything up for a turn. These factors make them difficult to balance, so you often end up with overpowered or underpowered super heavy units.
   
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Rules look great! I'll be trying them out very soon!

Two points I found reading through the document:
  • Page 33: under the "Screening" header - seems like there's some placeholder text ("wd") that is probably intended to be a quick explanation of what screening does/represents

  • Using run/advance interchangeably can be a little confusing, and it might be better to only use advance throughout the text (this also helps differentiate it from special rules like Hit & Run)



  • And one (slightly nitpicky) question: why the cutoff at strength 5 for defensive weapons? IIRC, it was strength 6 in 4th, and changed to strength 4 (I think?) in 5th and beyond. To me, strength 5 feels like a strange cutoff point, because it includes heavy bolters, but excludes scatter lasers/shuriken cannons/assault cannons, it seems like either both should be included, or both should be excluded from defensive weapons.
       
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    Defensive weapons were strength 5 in 4th and he is using that as the base line. S5 weapons were considered primarily anti-infantry weapons that's why they are considered defensive VS S6 and above that are considered more AT primary weapons.





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    I could see an argument that S6 is anti-infantry in so much as it's a sort of hybrid strength between Anti-infantry and anti-light vehicles. Assault cannons, scatter lasers, multi-lasers, star cannons, etc. feel more AA.

    But the reason I left it at S5 was that for many vehicles, their S6 weapons ARE clearly their primary weapon (e.g. Twin-linked assault cannons on various things, Wave Serpents, etc.). In many cases, those same vehicles already have ways of avoiding the restriction (e.g. fast skimmers being able to move decently and shoot with two main weapons).

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    Are there updated codexes, or can any codex from 3rd-7th be used?

       
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    In My Lab

     Illumini wrote:
    Are there updated codexes, or can any codex from 3rd-7th be used?
    I believe the point of this project is to be able to use your existing Codecs with minimal fuss. So just your old books.

    Clocks for the clockmaker! Cogs for the cog throne! 
       
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    ^^^^^ Correct. Use literally any codex you want from 3rd-7th. Can play any versus any other.

    The only restrictions is that in a standard game players are limited to a single standard detachment and force org chart (no allies) and also no Formations may be used. Some codexes provide alternate force organization charts which may be used.

    At a more detailed level, ProHammer provides a consolidated and concise list of universal special rules that should cover everything. In some cases there is a 6th/7th edition version of the USR, which you should use of using a 6th/7th ed codex.

    Want a better 40K?
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    Figured it's been a while since I posted any rule updates / tweaks here. Here's a changelog for ProHammer 2.1:

    SNAP FIRE
    * Clarified that if a unit has a special rule allowing it to snap fire using a different hit value (e.g. 5+) that it can be used as specified in the special rule

    NORMAL & REACTIVE FIRE
    * Clarified that units hit by normal shooting attacks can also use JINK abilities (if they have them), in addition to going to ground or taking reactive fire.

    REACTIVE FIRE
    * Added the condition that units that have gone to ground can't take reactive fire.
    * ADDED: Heavy weapons ARE now allowed to shoot with reactive fire, but still only make 1 shot and count as having moved (so hit on snap fire unless slow & purposeful or whatever)
    * ADDED: A unit hit by reactive fire ignores the AP value of any weapons that have hit them, and so will normally be allowed to take an unmodified armor save.
    * ADDED: Reactive fire hits by weapons that automatically hit (e.g. templates) only do so on a 4+.

    RESOLVING SHOOTING ATTACKS - Applying Wounds
    * Clarified this a little. Basically, it gives the defenders more flexibility to determine what models are removed. You use HITTABLE models as before to determine what models can be hit, armor vs. cover saves etc. But when it comes to applying wounds, you CAN choose to allocate unsaved wounds to non-hittable models, AND if all hittable model are dead can ignore and left over unsaved wounds.

    BLAST WEAPONS
    * Clarified that blast weapons, due to scattering or their area of effect, that hits and wounds can be allocated to ANY models in the unit for purposes of wound allocation. There are no "non-hittable" models once the template's position has been placed.
    * Added rule to cover blast markers hitting units in melee engagements.

    TEMPLATE WEAPONS
    * Forgot to include the most important rule - that template weapons ignore cover!
    * Added same rule to cover template weapons shooting into melee engagements

    DECLARING CHARGES
    * ADDED rule that if you declare fire against a transport and it's embarked passengers are forced to get out that same turn, you may still declare a charge against the disembarked passengers.

    CLOSE COMBAT - BREAK TEST
    * Added a rule where units may choose to voluntarily fail a break test. Units that voluntarily fail back however only shoot with snap fire in their next shooting phase. This can setup some interesting trade-offs
    * Clarified that when falling back from an engagement, falling back models can be moved through enemy non-vehicle models they were engaged with.

    PURSUITS
    * Clarified the way pursuits work a bit more, in particular with how units are locked (or not) after making pursuits and dealing extra attacks.
    * Reiterated in this section that units are never locked in an engagement with non-walker vehicles.

    PSYCHIC POWERS
    * Added further restrictions around Conjuration spells and further limited those powers to 6th/7th edition psykters only (where relevant)
    * Added some additional restrictions to some summoning powers and tweaked the unit count for summoned units.
    * Invisibility Power - toned this down. Applies a -1 to hit in close combat and ranged against invisible targets.

    This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/09/15 15:48:03


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    Aus

    Just a word of thanks for all your work Mez, these rules are perfect for someone who loved 5th edition and is just baffled by all the book keeping and "floating layers" to track in 9th.

    I'd love to see optional "addons" for non-templates template weapons (similar system to 9th ed) and a hybrid of hull points/penetration table.
       
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     RustyNumber wrote:
    Just a word of thanks for all your work Mez, these rules are perfect for someone who loved 5th edition and is just baffled by all the book keeping and "floating layers" to track in 9th.

    I'd love to see optional "addons" for non-templates template weapons (similar system to 9th ed) and a hybrid of hull points/penetration table.


    Thanks! Glad you see some promise and hopefully you'll be able to try it out. Always looking for feedback and things to tweak/improve!

    Regarding the "addons," for each of those why do you see the need for them? What is it about using actual templates that seems problematic? What benefit / change would you be trying to accomplish with hull points?

    Let me know your thinking on those.

    Cheers

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    ProHammer Spotlight
    There is a lot going on in ProHammer. These "spotlight" posts talk about a specific aspect of the design and how it evolved, works, or operates with respect to other editions of the game. Hopefully this generates some further discussion and interest.


    =================================================
    ProHammer Spotlight #1: Vehicle Damage
    =================================================

    A source of constant debate across classic editions of 40k (3rd-7th) was the vehicle damage tables and how that affected the overall survivability of vehicles, and in turn their usefulness as transports or weapon platforms. This is an aspect of the rules that no one ever quite seemed happy with, as any given edition was rendered vehicles either too weak or too durable.

    Looking back down memory lane, it went something like this:

    3rd edition: There were glancing hits (vehicles destroyed on a 6), penetrating hits (destroyed on a 4+), and ordinance (destroyed on a 4+). Open topped vehicles had a +1 to the damage results. Skimmers moving over 6" only took glancing hits (crazy!). All vehicles in cover ("hull down") also only take glancing hits. Basically, you needed to roll a "6" to kill a vehicle. Transported units can disembark after the vehicle moves and still assault. Between the hull down rules and assaulting from transports, this was peak vehicle craziness.

    4th edition: Same damage tables as above, but transports suffering penetrating hits, even if not destroyed, forced passengers to disembark, maybe even taking damage if it moved fast. Ouch! AP1 weapons also added +1 to the damage results. Skimmers still only take glancing hits when moving more than 6" The "hull down" cover save only works on a 4+ (not automatic anymore). If the vehicle moved first, passengers can't charge after disembarking. Vehicles were a bit weaker in general, but their utility as a transport (for non-skimmers especially) was curtailed heavily.

    5th edition: There's now just one damage chart, with vehicles destroyed on a 5+. However, glancing hits apply a -2 to the roll, so unless you have an AP1 weapon (still +1) or it's an open-topped (still +1) then it can't be destroyed. Vehicles being obscured get a cover save depending on the type of cover, and if passed simply ignores the hit entirely (no downgrading takes place). Overall, vehicles were tougher to kill than in 4th edition and even 3rd edition. Consensus seemed to be too tough.

    6th edition: Single damage table but only used on penetrating hits, with vehicles only destroyed on a 6. AP1 weapons add a +2 and AP2 add a +1. So both harder in general, but potentially the same (4+ to destroy) with an AP1 weapon. The real kicker was the addition of Hull Points. Most "tanks" and heavy vehicles had 3 hull points. Each glancing or penetrating hit knocked off one hull point. The upside is that taking a glancing hit means no loss of function (no crew stunned/shaken, weapon destroyed, etc.), but if all the hull points are lost the vehicle is instantly destroyed anyway. Ugh. In practice vehicles died much more quickly and were more vulnerable to glancing hits. Obscured vehicles take a cover save (like 5th edition), but cover saves were slightly toned down (e.g. woods were 5+ instead of a 4+).

    7th edition: Similar to 6th edition, except that vehicles were only destroyed when taking a penetrating hit on a 7+, meaning you needed a higher AP weapon to outright destroy vehicles. In practice, this didn't matter that much because glancing hits still resulted in a loss of hull points which is how vehicles were usually destroyed. Consensus was that vehicles were still too vulnerable and easy to destroy.

    ProHammer .... so what did we do in ProHammer?

    The "sweet spot" in vehicle survivability and transport utility needed to be somewhere between 5th and 4rd edition. 5th edition was clearly too strong, and 4th edition was probably a tad too weak except for things like skimmers that only suffered glancing hits. We wanted to bring some sanity to the way it worked. Here's what we have:

    (1) There is a separate glancing and penetrating hit table. Glancing hits only destroy on a 7+ and penetrating only on a 6+. AP1 weapons give +1 to the roll, and open-topped gets +1 as well.
    (2) Instead of hull points, we also added another modifier, which is that vehicles that have suffered prior damage (weapon destroyed, engines damaged, immobilized) also get a +1 to the roll. This is only applied after the current attacking unit's attacks are all resolved. This means, for example, if a unit with 3 melta guns shoots a tank, if all hits cause a damage result, none of them would get the +1. The +1 would only then apply to the next unit that shoots the vehicle.
    (3) We added the "engines damaged" result to table, which halves all applicable move distances/speeds.
    (4) If using a 6th or 7th edition codex, hull points are ignored.
    (5) Cover saves / hull down vehicles get the applicable cover save, and if passed reduce the penetration result by one (penetrating hits become glancing, glancing becomes no hit). Skimmers only get a special save if moving flat out.

    The result of the above is that it's pretty rare for a vehicle to just get blasted away in one turn of shooting - though of course it's still possible (as it has always been). Vehicles can take glancing hits all day long and only only die on a 6 if they are already damaged. Hull points be dammed. On a penetrating hit, the table is still fairly forgiving, as you only die on a 5 or 6 if already damaged.

    Regarding use as a transport, we do allow units to disembark and charge after the vehicle as moved, however the assaulting unit loses its charge bonus (unless the vehicle was an assault vehicle or open-topped). Obviously this gives a big advantage to melee oriented units, but other aspects of ProHammer, like reactive fire or overwatch, can be tools to deal with rapidly deploying and assaulting units if you prepare for it. Units do get automatically pinned/entangled if inside a vehicle that gets destroyed, so overwatch can be a helpful deterrent in that way.

    Overall, we've found the above to strike a nice balance in survivability and durability. We've had a lot of situations play out where vehicles were effectively destroyed after having their weapons all blown off and becoming immobilized. We like the idea of vehicles slowly breaking down. At the same time, use cover and careful positioning is still pretty important.

    Let me know what you think!



    This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/11/10 20:49:20


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    Aus

     Mezmorki wrote:
    Regarding the "addons," for each of those why do you see the need for them? What is it about using actual templates that seems problematic? What benefit / change would you be trying to accomplish with hull points?


    As much as I loved the physicality of pie plates and flamethrowers, it is quicker and easier to just roll a D6 or whatever, AND you don't have to sweat about unit positioning. If there's one thing I hate in wargaming it's when the rules make it necessary to be very fiddly and precise with the spacing and positioning of your infantry bases. Hell, I didn't like 6th edition purely on the basis of the wound allocation rules, I want my Sgt to always be leading the squad at the front for rule of cool but those rules made it suicidal!

    I guess I just like the idea of vehicles having a wound pool AND a degrading statline to go along with it. Always felt a bit lame that a single lascannon shot could wreck a vehicle turn one in 5e, in theory anyway. Even a limited wound pool at least gives an attacker the sense of how far to go they have to defeat something (or increase their odds of defeating something) and the defender isn't sweating bullets over ever single penetrating table roll. Though I concede it makes sense you can OHKO lighter vehicles, so perhaps tilting the damage table for heavy vehicles so it's incredibly rare they will die to a first penetrating hit and have to sustain some other form of damage on the table before having the odds of destruction increase. Something like your seven level table for glancing hits? I suppose 5e "front loaded" shooting at vehicles with the player needing to hit then penetrate, which even with a S9 lascannon against armour 14 was an uphill battle, but once you were "in" with a pen it was just a single D6 between life and death of an expensive and impressive model.

    Then again I've not played 5e for a looooooong time, so I'm pretty well just conjecturing.

    Edit - Oh and of course NOW I go and read your update post there and see it addresses a lot of the things I just typed out

    This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2021/11/11 00:08:57


     
       
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    So, I'm working on a tweak to ProHammer vehicles that is somewhat a re-working of Hull Points.

    The big thing I'd like to solve for is situations where that one unlucky hit knocks out a signature model (e.g. land raider, monolith, etc.) early on in the game due mainly to chance. In ProHammer, you need a 6 on the penetrating table to kill, but modifiers for prior damage, AP 1, etc. can reduce that quickly.

    My idea is to give vehicles a number of "structure points" (not hull points) based on their total Armor Value (add front + rear + one side), like so:

    AV 30 = 0 structure points (for 10/10/10 vehicles.
    AV 31-36 = 1 structure (rhinos/chimeras, dreadnaughts, up to 12/12/12 AV vehicles)
    AV 37+ = 2 structure points (leman ruses, AV14/14/14 vehicles)

    After a vehicle damage roll is taken, the defending player MAY decide to spend a structure point to reduce the damage result by 1. This could be used to turn unlucky 6/destroy result into immobilized instead, and so on. For the toughest vehicles it could mean holding onto them so when they get hit by some big AP1 weapon and have already taken prior damage, you could spend both your points to keep it limping along a little more.

    Unlike Hull Points though, when your structure points are reduced to zero, the vehicle doesn't die, you still need to get a destroy vehicle result on the table. You just don't have any ability to mitigate that any more.

    Thoughts?

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    Aus

    Interesting idea! Narratively I'm not sure I like the idea of the player being able to "spend" an innate part of a model at will. Why not give each facing of armour an ablative value that can be reduced akin to wounds before destroyed is possible? This would give some more meaning to vehicle positioning, risk vs how you can continue to use firepower from fixed weapons, and also narratively is somewhat interesting (after 3 missile impacts to the left side this Predator tank side armour is in a bad state!) That being said I'm not a huge fan of "book keeping" during a game... perhaps limited to the heavier vehicles/tanks? Or perhaps just going with your current system but heavier/tanks get additional penetrations before the bonus applies?

    I suppose with enough tweaking it really stops being the 5e vehicle damage ruleset though....

    This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/12/03 01:50:36


     
       
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    Versteckt in den Schatten deines Geistes.

     Mezmorki wrote:
    Assault cannons, scatter lasers, multi-lasers, star cannons, etc. feel more AA.
    But those weapons, with the exception of Scatter Lasers on a Firestorm, are specifically not AA weapons. Starcannons and Scatter Lasers being unable to fire when a vehicle moves seems strange to me - means IFVs can't really help their infantry all that much.

    This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/12/06 01:30:34


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    Those weapons can still fire when the vehicle moves. ProHammer let's vehicles fire up to two primary weapons (strength 6+) if moving at combat speed, which is 6" for normal vehicles and 12" for fast vehicles. Most eldar vehicles for instance can still move 12" and function as a transport and still fire all or most of their weapons.

    This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/12/06 01:26:45


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    Versteckt in den Schatten deines Geistes.

    Twin-Linked weapons have issues.

    In many cases these are over-costed for what amounts to just a re-roll (some Codices were 1.5x the weapon cost, others were double!).

    Despite there being literally two guns, there's no chance that they ever cause more damage, and that always felt weird to us.

    Way back in the day, when our group did our 40k Revisited project, one of the early changes we made was to Twin-Linked weaponry. Essentially on a natural To Hit roll of 6, the weapon hits twice. It still has the re-roll, and you cannot get a second hit if the re-roll comes up as a 6, but it meant that occasionally Twin-Linked weapons really smacked their targets.

    This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2021/12/06 03:13:49


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    I like that idea for twin-linked weapons! It makes something like a classic land raiders TL-lascannon sponsons way more interesting.

    Good idea and I'll think about working that in!

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    Twin linked weapons seem more realistic in 8th and 9th ed. They are 2 weapons that must target the same target, since linked. Could have the advantage of counting as 1 weapon when it comes to the max number of weapons a vehicle can shot with
       
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    First of all, great work; this is a fantastic service to the community.

    My main concern would be KISS. People are even less tolerant of complexity in fan rule systems, so simplicity is important. Just from this page I see suggestions that are adding additional layers of complexity that I am not so sure are worth it for the improvement they provide.

    For example, looking at the twin-linked matter; why not cut the re-roll and make it is same profile as a single weapon but successful hit rolls, hit twice? It is one simple rule that, speeds up gameplay, is intuitive, and easy to explain. "Twin-linked means hits hit twice" provides much greater appeal than "twin-linked means re-roll misses and 6s hit twice unless it was from a re-roll." In isolation is seems silly to sweat something so small but those small things add up, and add up quick.

    But despite my tangent, this is great work. The very concept of making a ruleset compatible with so many different editions is daunting, that you have actually pulled it off speaks to a high level of skill in rules writing and a huge amount of effort.

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    Aww, thanks for the kind words! It's greatly appreciated and glad you're seeing some good stuff here.

    I agree that KISS is a good thing, but it haven't always followed it in this case.

    I'm a hobby game designer (had one game published by an established publisher and a few others in the works), and so I'm fairly cognizant of how rules are being read and interpreted. There are a lot of holes and edge cases and procedures that aren't explained all that fully in the older 40K rules, and once you try sit down and write the rules out more comprehensively it ends up getting longer!

    That said, there are rules in ProHammer we continue to question whether they are worth the overhead of including. I'm tinkering around with changes to the suppression rules because we sort of forget it's even there most of the time and I'll not sure they are really that necessary. Another one is the "first fire" rule giving an advantage for having not moved at all. There's cases where it can apply, but often it does even come up.

    Anyway - thanks again for the comment and encouragement!

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    Versteckt in den Schatten deines Geistes.

     NinthMusketeer wrote:
    For example, looking at the twin-linked matter; why not cut the re-roll and make it is same profile as a single weapon but successful hit rolls, hit twice? It is one simple rule that, speeds up gameplay, is intuitive, and easy to explain. "Twin-linked means hits hit twice" provides much greater appeal than "twin-linked means re-roll misses and 6s hit twice unless it was from a re-roll." In isolation is seems silly to sweat something so small but those small things add up, and add up quick.
    Because just doubling the hits of all TL weaponry is really bloody powerful.

    The abstraction of Twin-Linked is that it's firing more shots, and is therefore more likely to hit. Our own rule was to represent the rare times where it's bang on target and actually hits with both guns in a meaningful way.

    This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/12/07 01:03:03


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    ProHammer is trying to REDUCE lethality, and while getting ONE extra bonus hit on a 6 is a slight boost to lethality, I would justify it on the grounds that twin-linked weapons, especially low fire rate ones, are rarely worth their price.

    A straight doubling of shots would be way to much of an increase in damage potential, as HBMC asserts, for me to consider.

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    OK - so it turns out, instead of trying out 4th edition, I wound up trying out Prohammer a few times! We liked the concept of fixing a lot of the little things that always irritated us about oldhammer, and it wasnt organized by chimpanzees like GW's old rulebooks, so we went for it.

    Game 1, I used the Dark Eldar 3rd ed dex against my opponent's 3.5 CSM dex, and game 2 I used 3rd ed genestealer cults vs 3rd ed catachans. Overall, great time! Really enjoyed the system a lot.

    Pros(hammer):

    -the elegant way that prohammer so greatly reduces the number of 'trap' options from classic WH rules: Absolutely fantastic. A++ on this front. The introduction of limited split firing, of allowing charging after deep strike and out of combat, of reducing the sharp cutoffs of the old Sx2 = INSTANT DEATH GWOOOOOOOOORRRR and AP = armor = INSTANT DEATH WOOOOOOOOOAHHHH is fantastic.

    I feel like if i take a unit in prohammer it is far, far harder to arm it "wrong" in the strategy layer and render it totally useless - really the only zone where this still happens is with the way vehicle weapon firing/movement works, where you can do something like arm a leman russ with plasma cannon sponsons and an ordnance cannon and, whoopsie! but it is what it is.

    -I also love how much more choice is granted to players in prohammer to allow them to influence things rather than leave everything up to pure randomness. Deep strike mishap going from 'the table of dooom' to 'your opponent sets them up where THEY want the unit to be' is a great example of this - it still FEELS like the unit has suffered a huge mishap and they are most likely screwed, but, its not just pure luck and randomness, it becomes more of a tactical situation.

    Honestly, I think this kind of agency is something I'd consider adding more of to various systems. Personally I really love Necromunda's fall back rules, where youve got an order of priority:

    1) over 6" away from enemy models
    2) out of line of sight of enemy models
    3) in the best cover available
    4) as far away as possible from enemy models

    If you can achieve a higher priority condition with your 2d6" move, then you must, but otherwise it gives players a little bit of wiggle room to figure out what the unit *would* do in the given situation - if it can get to solid cover, it would. If it can get away from the enemy units currently menacing them, it would. If it could get out of line of sight, it would. I think that helps with achieving versimilitude personally.

    Cons(hammer):

    -I think youre still a little bit away from the mark in terms of simplicity being a good goal in and of itself. A few examples:

    BROKEN and BROKEN SCREEN are two rules which are completely unrelated, but which seem at first glance to be. You read BROKEN SCREEN and think its a rule where a BROKEN unit doesnt provide a SCREEN, but its different.

    PINNED, BROKEN, GONE TO GROUND, REACTED, WITHDREW...there are a lot of statuses that are very VERY close to being the same, but aren't *quite* the same - maybe one of them can shoot but only on 6s, maybe one of them can shoot but all weapons only fire one shot, maybe one of them can't shoot. Very often, the various debuffs are also a long laundry list of things that can be very tricky to remember the distinctions between - sometimes a particular status will strip a model of melee charge bonuses, but other times it will strip it of all bonus attacks, and force it to just fight with the baseline attacks statistic.

    I think the best way to optimise prohammer is to take a look at these various layered systems and really take stock, REALLY look and think "Can I consolidate this, can I boil this down just a little bit to make these two things that are almost the same, the same." IS reaction fire AND overwatch both existing in the same system necessary? Can I find ways to make active overwatch fulfill the same narrative/gameplay purpose that I want reactive fire to fulfil?

    I pull out reactive fire here for this purpose because I think its the prime example of a mechanic that is really borderline of being a "Ram" from 3-7e. A mechanic that is highly convoluted, requires a lot of figuring out, and is limited such that it will really come up in situations where it will be pretty un-impactful. In my eyes, players are basically going to have to look up exactly what reactive fire does...basically any time reactive fire would come up in game. The game will grind to a halt as Sergeant Expendable and his gakky guard squad are gonna get charged and ground to bits by a squad of khorne bezerkers and the players go

    "ok....so you are within 24"...yep...and so every one of these guys is going to shoot, but they only shoot 1 shot, so the pistol is going to be the same as the lasguns..and the missile launcher does get to shoot but its heavy so it counts as moving so it only hits on a 6, and i cant use the blast...but i can use the flamer, it just hits on 4+s instead of automatically..." *one long resolution later*

    "So that's 1 AP- wound and 2 from the flamer"

    "OK 1 fail" *removes 1 khorne bezerker*

    and thats the only time Reaction Fire is going to turn up in that game.

    "Got you, Yugi! Your Rubric Marines can't fall back because I have declared the tertiary kaptaris ka'tah stance two, after the secondary dacatarai ka'tah last turn!"

    "So you think, Kaiba! I declared my Thousand Sons the cult of Duplicity, which means all my psykers have access to the Sorcerous Facade power! Furthermore I will spend 8 Cabal Points to invoke Cabbalistic Focus, causing the rubrics to appear behind your custodes! The Vengeance for the Wronged and Sorcerous Fullisade stratagems along with the Malefic Maelstrom infernal pact evoked earlier in the command phase allows me to double their firepower, letting me wound on 2s and 3s!"

    "you think it is you who has gotten me, yugi, but it is I who have gotten you! I declare the ever-vigilant stratagem to attack your rubrics with my custodes' ranged weapons, which with the new codex are now DAMAGE 2!!"

    "...which leads you straight into my trap, Kaiba, you see I now declare the stratagem Implacable Automata, reducing all damage from your attacks by 1 and triggering my All is Dust special rule!"  
       
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    @the_scotsman

    Thanks! I really appreciate hearing you decided to give a play with your group and to provide feedback on how it went. Can't express my appreciation enough!

    Regarding the Con's that you mention. I absolutely agree with you that there is some streamlining that can happen and that will help streamline the gameplay.

    I see a few areas to tackle in this regard, which you also mention. I'm working on some revisions but I'll share my thinking here.

    Rather than defining "reactive fire" I instead want to define something I'll call "Limited Fire". Limited fire would be the following: Shooting models only make 1 ranged attack at AP "-" and fight at Initiative 1 should they be engaged this turn.. We'd then have "Snap Fire" as we currently define it, where you can shoot as much as you want, but only hit on 6's.

    Having defined those fire conditions, overall we have Normal Fire, Limited Fire, and Snap Fire. All other rules that affect a unit's shooting would use one of these three conditions.

    We can then say clearer things like this:

    * As a reaction to being shot, the unit can "Go to Ground" or return fire simultaneously using Limited Fire. If returning fire, the unit is subject to Limited Fire on it's next shooting phase as well.

    * As a reaction to being charged, before moving charging models, the unit can shoot the charging unit with Limited fire. The unit is subject to Limited Fire on it's next shooting phase.

    The above isn't a fully formed idea, but I see where you're going with cleaning it up.

    I'll try to get the terms organized a bit better and provide an update here on what I'm thinking. I agree it would help smooth it out a lot!

    Thanks!

    This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/12/09 16:27:57


    Want a better 40K?
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     Mezmorki wrote:
    @the_scotsman

    Thanks! I really appreciate hearing you decided to give a play with your group and to provide feedback on how it went. Can't express my appreciation enough!

    Regarding the Con's that you mention. I absolutely agree with you that there is some streamlining that can happen and that will help streamline the gameplay.

    I see a few areas to tackle in this regard, which you also mention. I'm working on some revisions but I'll share my thinking here.

    Rather than defining "reactive fire" I instead want to define something I'll call "Limited Fire". Limited fire would be the following: Shooting models only make 1 ranged attack at AP "-" and fight at Initiative 1 should they be engaged this turn.. We'd then have "Snap Fire" as we currently define it, where you can shoot as much as you want, but only hit on 6's.

    Having defined those fire conditions, overall we have Normal Fire, Limited Fire, and Snap Fire. All other rules that affect a unit's shooting would use one of these three conditions.

    We can then say clearer things like this:

    * As a reaction to being shot, the unit can "Go to Ground" or return fire simultaneously using Limited Fire. If returning fire, the unit is subject to Limited Fire on it's next shooting phase as well.

    * As a reaction to being charged, before moving charging models, the unit can shoot the charging unit with Limited fire. The unit is subject to Limited Fire on it's next shooting phase.

    The above isn't a fully formed idea, but I see where you're going with cleaning it up.

    I'll try to get the terms organized a bit better and provide an update here on what I'm thinking. I agree it would help smooth it out a lot!

    Thanks!


    So this is coming back to my overall point with the cons though:

    Why do you need both limited fire and snap fire? wouldnt the overall purpose and what's being represented be essentially the same? Additionally, using limited fire for 'reaction fire' (7e overwatch) seems to make very little sense to me personally, as it would mean that a single shot, high strength weapon, say, an ork Rokkit Launcha, would be the ideal weapon to have to spray and pray at an enemy as they came charging at you, while a high volume of fire weapon like an assault cannon would be the absolute worst weapon to have as its mighty 6 shots would be reduced down to 1. Also, incidentally, single shot weapons get to effectively double their firepower if you can perform Limited fire on both your turn and the enemy turn, because 'limited' in the instance of 1 shot means 'the same.'

    rolling the full dice and needing 6s versus rolling just 1 die makes sense if the philosophy is "yes, OK, it takes too long to resolve snap fire and we know this method makes a little bit less intuitive 'sense' but its faster and easier" but then why keep snap fire? Why not decide on one rule instead of having one form of fire where a guardsman gets 1 hit, one form of fire where a guardsman gets .33 hits, and one form of fire where a guardsman gets .5 hits?

    What i'm saying here overall, is not that you need to necessarily streamline the gameplay. If you settled on one definition of 'still shooting, but not shooting as much' via some method, say: roll to hit as normal, but then discard 1/2 of the successful hits with each weapon rounding up, or: make only one shot with each weapon, or: roll to hit but only hit on 6s, whatever, im personally partial to the former as it doesnt alter a unit's effectiveness via their statistics and leaves all things equal, but the point being if you had one, then one instance versus another of a squad being subjected to that doesnt require two differnet rules to be remembered.

    "Got you, Yugi! Your Rubric Marines can't fall back because I have declared the tertiary kaptaris ka'tah stance two, after the secondary dacatarai ka'tah last turn!"

    "So you think, Kaiba! I declared my Thousand Sons the cult of Duplicity, which means all my psykers have access to the Sorcerous Facade power! Furthermore I will spend 8 Cabal Points to invoke Cabbalistic Focus, causing the rubrics to appear behind your custodes! The Vengeance for the Wronged and Sorcerous Fullisade stratagems along with the Malefic Maelstrom infernal pact evoked earlier in the command phase allows me to double their firepower, letting me wound on 2s and 3s!"

    "you think it is you who has gotten me, yugi, but it is I who have gotten you! I declare the ever-vigilant stratagem to attack your rubrics with my custodes' ranged weapons, which with the new codex are now DAMAGE 2!!"

    "...which leads you straight into my trap, Kaiba, you see I now declare the stratagem Implacable Automata, reducing all damage from your attacks by 1 and triggering my All is Dust special rule!"  
       
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    I see what you're saying.

    That said, in my view, snap fire as defined (hit on 6+'s) is never a very satisfying thing to roll. The low chance of successfully hitting is really about giving units a freak-chance to hit something under extremely poor circumstances.

    The intent for reactive fire (and we've used it quite a bit in our games I should add) is about setting up a genuine trade-off decision. It's intended to be positioned between the effectiveness of normal shooting and snap fire.

    For multi-shot weapons, the intent is to reflect you making half of your shots (approx) during the reaction, and other half (approx) during your next shooting phase. In terms of high strength single shot weapons (rokkit launcher, wraith cannon, etc.) the "AP-" adjustment is to cut back on the lethality of those weapons since they are effectively hitting twice as often (and they often have higher strengths already). The reduced AP is also intended to reflect weapons not being properly calibrated or lined up to maximize their impact.

    This all said, I could see, a way to combine the two that might work for both limited fire and snap fire situations. For example, Limited Fire could be:

    * -1 to hit
    * Weapon shoots half it's number of shots (rounded down, to a minimum of 1)
    * Blast + template weapons only hit models underneath on 4+
    * Resolved at AP-

    This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2021/12/09 18:40:32


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    Wait...so am I reading the rules incorrectly? I thought if you used react fire you did not get to shoot the following turn under the current rules
    (which, FTR, I agree with on principle I think it would be an automatic always-do thing if you could just get half your firepower for free during your opponent's turn. React fire halving your firepower effectively makes total sense to me.)

    So to summarize current react fire is:

    -multishot weapons become one shot
    -all weapons lose all ap
    -template weapons hit on a 4+
    -heavy weapons snap fire (AND presumably become one shot and lose all AP?)

    If the rule intent is to halve firepower, wouldnt it be less complicated since you do mandate fast rolling in prohammer to just have a player fastroll for each weapon in the unit and discard half the successful hits, rounding up, and the unit retains the same 'movement status' from its preceding turn (i.e. still counts as having moved/remained stationary/fell back etc if it did that in its preceding turn)?

    That would actually achieve the goal of halving firepower while being less to remember, introduce less strange skewing of the math.

    I think this all makes sense to include along with the various buffs youve included to when youre allowed to perform assaults (after disembarking, after deep striking etc) and it furthers the goal of allowing the player to interact during their opponent's turn. Also, it would allow you to consolidate your systems further, because it would mean that a unit that has an Overwatch token gets to perform React fire in the First Fire step of the shooting phase targeting any enemy unit and does not have to discard half the hits.


    Automatically Appended Next Post:
    Going on a little bit of a 'deep reading' tangent here doodly doop doodly doop keep this in mind as a second thought:

    This is a "Designer Intention Check":

    "The Saving Throw characteristic can never be modified below a 2+ or above a 6+"

    ^Is the intention of this rule that - for example - an ork boy is unaffected by all AP?

    "Hard Cover: Lists "Hard Barricades"
    Fortifications: Lists "Barricades"

    ^lets pretend I have an Aegis Defense Line on the battlefield. Is it a hard barricade or a barricade?

    -Step 1: Reserves
    Step 2: Movement

    Would it not make more sense to reverse the order of these two steps, given that models that arrive from reserves cannot move normally in the movement phase anyway? This would intuitively make more sense to me upon first reading and I think pokeokes the intended rule reading to prevent mistakes.

    Shooting Phase Step 4 Casualty Test

    If this occurs at the end of the turn why put it here?

    This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2021/12/10 13:18:04


    "Got you, Yugi! Your Rubric Marines can't fall back because I have declared the tertiary kaptaris ka'tah stance two, after the secondary dacatarai ka'tah last turn!"

    "So you think, Kaiba! I declared my Thousand Sons the cult of Duplicity, which means all my psykers have access to the Sorcerous Facade power! Furthermore I will spend 8 Cabal Points to invoke Cabbalistic Focus, causing the rubrics to appear behind your custodes! The Vengeance for the Wronged and Sorcerous Fullisade stratagems along with the Malefic Maelstrom infernal pact evoked earlier in the command phase allows me to double their firepower, letting me wound on 2s and 3s!"

    "you think it is you who has gotten me, yugi, but it is I who have gotten you! I declare the ever-vigilant stratagem to attack your rubrics with my custodes' ranged weapons, which with the new codex are now DAMAGE 2!!"

    "...which leads you straight into my trap, Kaiba, you see I now declare the stratagem Implacable Automata, reducing all damage from your attacks by 1 and triggering my All is Dust special rule!"  
       
     
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