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This came up briefly in the bolter buffing thread in the General section, but the topic kind of got lost in other discussions. I thought it was kind of an interesting idea (and similar to ones I've suggested in the past), so I thought it might be fun to create a thread dedicated to it. The pitch:

* Remove the Strength and Toughness stats.
* Remove the to-wound roll from the attack process.
* Increase the Wounds stat on pretty much every unit in the game considerably. Probably by something like 250% - 500%. So a 10 wound vehicle might end up with something like 50 wounds after this change. A space marine might have something like 5 or 10 wounds.

PROS
* Speeds up the game. You're removing one of the 3 most common types of roll (alongside to-hit and saves).
* Gets rid of an all-or-nothing failure point. Your lasguns are more likely to deal some damage even if it's a relatively small percentage of the enemy's total "hit points".
* Gets rid of some of the weird mathematical consequences of the current to-wound chart. Ex: An S9 lascannon is better at wounding a T8 land raider than an S8 krak missile, yet both are equally good at wounding a T7 rhino.

OTHER NOTES
* Obviously you'd have to rework statlines for units and weapons quite a bit. A lascannon might have to do something like 1d6 X 10 Damage to fill its intended niche.

* The amount of bookkeeping should be essentially the same. You'll still only ever have a single model in a unit with a wound counter next to it; that wound counter might just need to track a higher number. So maybe you have to use an extra d10 to track Wounds.

* It might seem like you're removing the ability to compare an attack's power versus the target's durability, but that's not necessarily the case. Currently, the to-wound chart acknowledges that all attacks in the game have at least a small chance of inflicting some damage on a target. So does this proposed system. But instead of deciding that a drukhari grotesque is so meaty that a guardsman's bayonet does literally nothing, we indicate this by having the guardsman's bayonet do something like 1 Damage to the grotesque's 20ish wounds. We also represent the attack's power versus the target's defense via the AP and Sv stats. The guardsman's bayonet is still less likely to hurt a space marine than the grotesque because of the marine's save. The bayonet has an easier time slicing into the grotesque and doing something, but the grotesque can still take a lot more overall punishment.

* Obviously this isn't the sort of change that you can easily plug into your next game and use. I'm pitching this more for the sake of discussion. Think of this in the context of 10th edition overhauling statlines again the way 8th edition did.

I agree with the concept of streamlining overall attack resolution, however this isn't it.

5-10 wounds on basic infantry is incredibly unwieldy, as if tracking 50 wounds for tanks.

Streamlining the attack resolution into fewer rolls would require a substantial overhaul of the system.
Condense either BS/WS, RoF, strength and AP into two stats. These two stats will determine the number of dice you roll and the target value. AP could remain as a modifier to your opponent's roll, but should be dramatically toned down regardless.
Overhaul resolution should be "attacker rolls one handful of dice, defender rolls one handful of dice, done".

The current 40k system isn't terrible though, it just has a few issues that could be removed.
- Random number of shots is annoying and utterly fails to represent "blasts" as it claims.
- The extreme number of rerolls effectively doubles the amount of rolling.
- Random damage numbers increases rolls for little gain
- The number of FNP saves is annoying. Especially 6+ FNPs; an utter waste of time.
- The current AP system encourages a lot of low saves, such as 6+. IMO 6+ saves on the regular are a waste of time for all involved.

I would improve the current system by
- removing random number of shots. "Blast X/Y" becomes a new USR, you get a number of shots per multiple of X in the enemy unit, capped at Y. EG Blast 2/5 shooting at 20 men would cause 1 shot per 2 guys (10), but capped at 5.
- rerolls (and exploding dice) are dramatically reduced across the board, and when they are present it's reroll all or none, so you don't waste time picking out 1s.
- damage numbers become flat and reduced. Wounds are also reduced. Characters are maybe 2-3 wounds each, tanks are 5-7, AT guns are damage 2-3
- Go back to the old to-wound table, make tanks toughness ~8-9.
- Go back to an AP system more similar to the old. Except if your AP equalled the target's save you reduce their save by 1, rather than outright ignore it (still ignore it if you're better).

I wouldn't call 6+ (or ++, or +++) saves worthless. Always roll your saves. 6+ is a 16% chance, not that bad really.

 Blndmage wrote:
I wouldn't call 6+ (or ++, or +++) saves worthless. Always roll your saves. 6+ is a 16% chance, not that bad really.

Armywide 6++ and/or 6+++ can be massive, it always depends on how much that upgrade costs or is already costed if the model comes natively with that save.

I hated the 6+ FNP on my Deathcompany.
Not only does it waste huge amounts of time due to having to roll multi-damage separately, but I would semi-regularly get the squad wiped without a single man saved by the save. Then even if a man was saved, I'd be lucky if it was more than just the one!
So that was a total waste of time.

It'd be more useful now they're 2 wounds a piece, since the 6++ gives them a 30% chance to survive a D2 attack, but it still takes a huge amount of time due to having to roll every one 1by1.

You can keep the S and T values, and just use them as an additional modifier to the armour save; just lose the 'to wound' roll.

You can use the EA mechanics pretty easily.

Roll to hit, roll to save.

There are 5 weapon types:

Small arms - only affect infantry
Anti Tank - only affect vehicles
Macro Weapon - affect all units equally
Titan Killer - affect all units equally and do multiple points of damage
Anti Aircraft - only affect aircraft

This is pretty much what one page rules uses.

The current 40k profile is a legacy profile. The AoS profile makes more sense -

Move, Leadership, Wounds, Save are all static core values.

Weapons list their hit, wound and damage rolls.

go back to 4th edition... that was streamlined

Remove the to wound roll. When you get hit by a weapon you should be auto wounded. There shouldnt be any chance that you walk away without a scratch. If there is a successful hit you go straight to saving throws.

 p5freak wrote:
Remove the to wound roll. When you get hit by a weapon you should be auto wounded. There shouldnt be any chance that you walk away without a scratch. If there is a successful hit you go straight to saving throws.

Really? Should something that is T8 have the same chances to be wounded by a S1 and a S10+ weapon? A crappy pistol that hits automatically wounds a titan? Lol.

The wound roll makes sense, low S vs high T shouldn't wound easily, and definitely not autowound. Remove the saving throw instead, with armour that affects the to wound roll, increasing the T value or making it harder for the shot to wound the model.

kirotheavenger wrote:I agree with the concept of streamlining overall attack resolution, however this isn't it.

5-10 wounds on basic infantry is incredibly unwieldy, as if tracking 50 wounds for tanks.

Is it? We already frequently have to track two digit values on tanks. So the only extra complication is that you might have to look for numbers other than 1 and 2 on the 10s digit die. Assuming you're using d10s to count wounds. If you're using a dedicated rotating counter, it's even easier. Similarly, most infantry would still have wounds in the single digits. Heck, I imagine most would even have wounds that you could track on a single d6. What am I missing? Where does the extra unwieldiness come from? Maybe I'm just tracking wounds in a weird way?

Streamlining the attack resolution into fewer rolls would require a substantial overhaul of the system.
Condense either BS/WS, RoF, strength and AP into two stats. These two stats will determine the number of dice you roll and the target value. AP could remain as a modifier to your opponent's roll, but should be dramatically toned down regardless.
Overhaul resolution should be "attacker rolls one handful of dice, defender rolls one handful of dice, done".

I'd probably be up for something nice and simple like that. How would you do that while maintaining the concept of some weapons being better vs hordes/heavy infantry/vehicles?

The current 40k system isn't terrible though, it just has a few issues that could be removed.
- Random number of shots is annoying and utterly fails to represent "blasts" as it claims.
- The extreme number of rerolls effectively doubles the amount of rolling.
- Random damage numbers increases rolls for little gain
- The number of FNP saves is annoying. Especially 6+ FNPs; an utter waste of time.
- The current AP system encourages a lot of low saves, such as 6+. IMO 6+ saves on the regular are a waste of time for all involved.

I agree with all that.

I would improve the current system by
- removing random number of shots. "Blast X/Y" becomes a new USR, you get a number of shots per multiple of X in the enemy unit, capped at Y. EG Blast 2/5 shooting at 20 men would cause 1 shot per 2 guys (10), but capped at 5.
- rerolls (and exploding dice) are dramatically reduced across the board, and when they are present it's reroll all or none, so you don't waste time picking out 1s.
- damage numbers become flat and reduced. Wounds are also reduced. Characters are maybe 2-3 wounds each, tanks are 5-7, AT guns are damage 2-3
- Go back to the old to-wound table, make tanks toughness ~8-9.
- Go back to an AP system more similar to the old. Except if your AP equalled the target's save you reduce their save by 1, rather than outright ignore it (still ignore it if you're better).

I like most of that. Going back to the old to-wound table and making vehicles T8+ means we'd be going back to making vehicles immune to small arms fire. Which is probably your goal, but it also means that skew is more of a problem. I didn't love playing 5th edition parking lot games where the majority of my aspect warriors' main weapons couldn't even scratch the enemy's paint.

I've seen the "AP = Sv means -1 to Saves" thing pitched before. It still feels off to me. If an autocannon packs enough punch to ignore a scout's armor entirely, then it should probably be better than a lasgun at penetrating a marine's armor. And then you get weird scenarios like AP3 melee weapons (like banshee power swords) only reducing a marine's save to a 4+. This idea seems to be popular, so I'm probably just failing to see the appeal. I think the current AP system is pretty good; there's just probably a bit too much AP-1 and AP-2 floating around. Especially from army-wide sources like doctrines and subfaction buffs.

 Blndmage wrote:
I wouldn't call 6+ (or ++, or +++) saves worthless. Always roll your saves. 6+ is a 16% chance, not that bad really.

Speaking as a drukhari player, it definitely made a difference for me in 8th edition, BUT it was still a huge pain to spend so much time rolling for something that usually made little difference. I usually find 6+ FNP rolls to be in that category where I'd rather they either boost my defense in a form that doesn't slow down the game or else go away entirely. Like, as hard a pill as it would have been to swallow in 8th, I'd probably have been willing to give up my FNP just for the sake of keeping the game moving.

Kcalehc wrote:You can keep the S and T values, and just use them as an additional modifier to the armour save; just lose the 'to wound' roll.

That sounds promising. How would you have that work exactly?

Hellebore wrote:
There are 5 weapon types:

Small arms - only affect infantry
Anti Tank - only affect vehicles
Macro Weapon - affect all units equally
Titan Killer - affect all units equally and do multiple points of damage
Anti Aircraft - only affect aircraft

This is pretty much what one page rules uses.

Oof. Not sure I like the sound of that. I feel like there are a ton of weapons that are good against infantry but still okay against vehicles and vice versa. Plasma as an example. It's really good against infantry, but it's still a lot better than a bolter against vehicles. So does a plasmagun count as a macro weapon? Or deathspinners (S6 AP-2) that are really nasty against most infantry but still better than a bolter against vehicles (especially T6 vehicles), but definitely better against infantry than vehicles. Where does that get categorized? Plus, see above about vehicles ignoring small arms and skew lists.

The current 40k profile is a legacy profile. The AoS profile makes more sense -

Move, Leadership, Wounds, Save are all static core values.

Weapons list their hit, wound and damage rolls.

Agreed about the 40k profile being a "legacy". That's partly why I made this thread; I think we could change up some assumptions about how attacks are resolved. That said, I'm not sure I love Sigmar's static to-wound values. It's weird that an arrow hit is as likely to meaningfully harm a goblin as it is giant or a giant tree man. The system I'm pitching in this thread technically does that too (all hits have a 100% chance of wounding because we're skipping the wound step), but it somehow feels more odd to bother rolling out to-wound when there's nothing (barring special rules) to interact with that to-wound value. Like, if you want to reduce the number of saves an opponent has to make by 50% (4+ to wound) or 33% (3+ to wound), then you could probably just factor that into the to-hit roll mechanic. Or, per my opening post, up Wounds on everything so that the increased number of saves still results in the target losing a desired percentage of their overall health.

If each step of the attack resolution process doesn't have some sort of stat comparison being factored in, it feels like you could probably just find a way to remove that step entirely. To-hit isn't really opposed by anything, but it does get interacted with via dense terrain and other rules that result in to-hit modifiers. Only being able to modify a roll by +/- 1 already has people advocating to change that. To-wound compares S vs T, but that to-wound system has weird quirks that makes me think it ought to be looked at. Saves compare to AP. FNP compares to Damage. If we were to take a Sigmar approach, you could almost boil the entire attack resolution process down to an "Offense Roll" and a "Defense Roll". (Not that that's necessarily a bad thing if you find a way to reflect the attacker and targets' respective advantages/disadvantages in a way that feels fluffy.

Wyldhunt wrote:

kirotheavenger wrote:I agree with the concept of streamlining overall attack resolution, however this isn't it.

5-10 wounds on basic infantry is incredibly unwieldy, as if tracking 50 wounds for tanks.

Is it?

Not the end of the world, but yes somewhat annoying. AoS uses essentially this system.
TBH, I think my greater criticism is that stuff just feel incredibly "spongey". Not like they're well armoured, but that they just soak up incoming fire (of all sorts). I like shots to feel impactful and dramatic.

Wyldhunt wrote:

Overhaul resolution should be "attacker rolls one handful of dice, defender rolls one handful of dice, done".

I'd probably be up for something nice and simple like that. How would you do that while maintaining the concept of some weapons being better vs hordes/heavy infantry/vehicles?

You could give weapons just two or three firepower values.
Firepower vs light armour (Guardsmen, Orks), vs medium armour (Astartes, light tanks) and vs heavy armour (Terminators, battletanks).
You can further differentiate those units with their own armour saves.
A heavy bolter might get lots of shots vs light armour, a few vs medium, and none vs heavy. Or perhaps the target roll becomes increasingly difficult, or both.
A plasmagun might get a few shots vs all of them.
A lot of it would depend on exact values and systems you choose, but it's easily done.

Wyldhunt wrote:

I would improve the current system by...

I like most of that. Going back to the old to-wound table and making vehicles T8+ means we'd be going back to making vehicles immune to small arms fire. Which is probably your goal, but it also means that skew is more of a problem. I didn't love playing 5th edition parking lot games where the majority of my aspect warriors' main weapons couldn't even scratch the enemy's paint.

I've seen the "AP = Sv means -1 to Saves" thing pitched before. It still feels off to me. If an autocannon packs enough punch to ignore a scout's armor entirely, then it should probably be better than a lasgun at penetrating a marine's armor. And then you get weird scenarios like AP3 melee weapons (like banshee power swords) only reducing a marine's save to a 4+. This idea seems to be popular, so I'm probably just failing to see the appeal. I think the current AP system is pretty good; there's just probably a bit too much AP-1 and AP-2 floating around. Especially from army-wide sources like doctrines and subfaction buffs.

I think it's better to limit skew by changing the FOC than using an unsatisfying system where tanks are just fat infantrymen. For example "heavy support" could be exclusively battle tanks and equivalents, "elites" could be exclusively fancy infantry. Make the FoC somewhat restrictive and don't hand out huge ways to circumvent it.
Alternatively, make tanks properly vulnerable to infantry at close range, as they should be. Give units krak grenades to attack tanks in melee, prevent tanks from shooting units they're engaged with. encourage combined arms, not punish it.

When I say "AP = Sv = -1" that really assumes a rebalance of AP. Under that paradigm I'd basically shift most things AP4 or better "down" an AP, so your AP3 powerswords become AP2. Keeping current AP systems I'd word the rule "if AP is one higher than save, -1 to save", although now you'd want to increase the AP of most smallarms to AP6 (rather than 5).

I would be okay with the current AP system if AP was a lot less common, it's not terrible. but I do prefer the more impactful breakpoint of old AP (but not quite as hard a break as the old AP system was). But as you say, if they stopped giving out +1 AP like candy to the point smallarms are rocking up at AP-2 or even -3 I'd be perfectly happy with the system.

 Blackie wrote:

 p5freak wrote:
Remove the to wound roll. When you get hit by a weapon you should be auto wounded. There shouldnt be any chance that you walk away without a scratch. If there is a successful hit you go straight to saving throws.

Really? Should something that is T8 have the same chances to be wounded by a S1 and a S10+ weapon? A crappy pistol that hits automatically wounds a titan? Lol.

The wound roll makes sense, low S vs high T shouldn't wound easily, and definitely not autowound. Remove the saving throw instead, with armour that affects the to wound roll, increasing the T value or making it harder for the shot to wound the model.

Yes, really. If the weapon has lower strength than toughness your saving throw could be increased, and if strength is less than half of toughness it cannot wound at all. If the weapon has higher strength than toughness it auto wounds.

Or you keep wound rolls, but if strength is half (or less) than toughness it cannot wound at all, and if its twice (or more) than toughness it auto wounds.

Logically speaking though, wound roll should be something that comes after the save roll, and it should really be rolled by the defending player, not the attacking player.

Attacker rolls to hit roll, succeeds.
Defender rolls to save roll (which represents how well protected defender is), if succeeds, then defender rolls to wound roll (which represents how lucky the defender is).

Makes the turns little bit less 'attacker does everything except roll saves' structure from the current iteration to one where attacker moves and attacks and defender defends instead of attacker moves, attacks, rolls again and defender just rolls to see how lucky they are.

Which also brings up other potential revisions where charge phase is played by both players alternating, starting with the player whose turn it is, and with units that advanced getting charge first priority.

I think maybe doing away with wound/save rolls entirely is perhaps a step too far – as others have pointed out, it gives the defending player even less to do. Personally I really like the idea of streamlining things down to a hit roll and a single wound/save/whatever defensive roll, with modifiers for armour or whatever as applicable. The tricky thing seems to be getting it to scale in a sufficiently granular way to cover the full range of stuff that exists in 40K, without sudden jumps in effectiveness of certain profile combinations.

 Nazrak wrote:
I think maybe doing away with wound/save rolls entirely is perhaps a step too far – as others have pointed out, it gives the defending player even less to do. Personally I really like the idea of streamlining things down to a hit roll and a single wound/save/whatever defensive roll, with modifiers for armour or whatever as applicable. The tricky thing seems to be getting it to scale in a sufficiently granular way to cover the full range of stuff that exists in 40K, without sudden jumps in effectiveness of certain profile combinations.

How do you feel about the pitch in the opening post? It sounds pretty similar to what you're describing.

* Get rid of the to-wound roll, but keep a Save roll. (And possibly use S/T as modifiers to the Save. Bonus AP if the Strength is higher. Bonus Sv if the Toughness is higher?)
* Add granular scaling by adjusting the number of Wounds things have. So if you want it to take an average of X lasgun shots to kill a marine, you give marines Y wounds.

Wyldhunt wrote:


* Get rid of the to-wound roll, but keep a Save roll. (And possibly use S/T as modifiers to the Save. Bonus AP if the Strength is higher. Bonus Sv if the Toughness is higher?)

Why not getting rid of the save roll instead, with armour affecting the to wound roll and possibly the damage caused? Something like:

- Heavy armour (current 2+ save) = -1 to wound, +1 AP, -1D
- Medium armour (3+ and 4+ save) = +1AP, -1D
- Light armour (5+ and 6+ save) = +1AP

IMHO, right problem but wrong solution. As 9th Edition has moved on, we have gotten closer and closer to the point we can AOS the 40K stats. However it would need a change to better suit the game’s scale. So I say:

Ditch WS and BS. You can modulate those by changing the number of attacks a unit gets. Every attack hits every time. However an Astartes using a Bolger gets more attacks than a Guardsman.

Add in special rules on weapons that reward targeting the right targets or punish targeting the wrong target. Say all Anti-Personnel weapons gain 50% attacks on a unit basis against Infantry but only get 50% attacks against Armored units (new keyword for Tanks, heavily armored Monsters, and the like). Hard to hit targets apply a penalty to the number of attacks.

So we jump straight to S v T when attacking. Attacker takes their attacks against the target of the comparison and makes their rolls. Successful rolls are passed over to the target player.

The target player makes Saves modified by the weapon’s AP. We have space here for Invulnerable Saves and non-weapon modifiers. All Saves are made at once, not this time wasting assign to a model and roll one at a time.

Then we have Damage to reflect overall deadliness of weapons. This continues to be the number of wounds inflicted. I would make a slight shift in that it would have AOS rollover damage except in specific cases.

Notably, Anti-Tank weapons would not rollover Damage, but I would assign them more attacks for fixed damage compared to the current rules. So a Lascannon might have 2 attacks for 3 Damage instead of one BS 4+ attack for 1d6 Damage.

Blackie wrote:

Wyldhunt wrote:


* Get rid of the to-wound roll, but keep a Save roll. (And possibly use S/T as modifiers to the Save. Bonus AP if the Strength is higher. Bonus Sv if the Toughness is higher?)

Why not getting rid of the save roll instead, with armour affecting the to wound roll and possibly the damage caused?

Frankly, I just think the way Saves and AP interact is better than the way Strength and Toughness interact. Every point of AP counters every point of Sv. Barring extremely good and bad saves/AP interacting, you generally push the dice one more pip in your favor for each bit of AP or Sv that you have. Compare that to Strength and Toughness where S3 is just as good as S4 against T5 and T8. Or where a lascannon and krak missile both wound T7 vehicles on the same number despite one of them paying for an extra point of Strength. Plus you have mechanics like invuln saves and cover that allow for interesting twists on the basic attack mechanics.

Do you see a benefit to keeping to-wound but ditching saves?

I could see something like your proposed bonus mechanic working even if we kept save rolls but ditched to-wound rolls. S and T could factor into saves. I'm not sure modifying damage is the way to go (if you want a power fist to do more damage than a power sword, it's probably easier to implement that by just giving it a higher Damage stat), but maybe sufficiently high Strength stats could prevent the target from benefitting from FNP rolls or something. Or maybe a high enough Toughness could turn into a bonus to saves.

alextroy wrote:IMHO, right problem but wrong solution. As 9th Edition has moved on, we have gotten closer and closer to the point we can AOS the 40K stats. However it would need a change to better suit the game’s scale. So I say:

Ditch WS and BS. You can modulate those by changing the number of attacks a unit gets. Every attack hits every time. However an Astartes using a Bolger gets more attacks than a Guardsman.

Add in special rules on weapons that reward targeting the right targets or punish targeting the wrong target. Say all Anti-Personnel weapons gain 50% attacks on a unit basis against Infantry but only get 50% attacks against Armored units (new keyword for Tanks, heavily armored Monsters, and the like). Hard to hit targets apply a penalty to the number of attacks.

So we jump straight to S v T when attacking. Attacker takes their attacks against the target of the comparison and makes their rolls. Successful rolls are passed over to the target player.

I'm with you so far. Nice and simple. Boil everything down to Offense and Defense with advantages and disadvantages translated as the raw number of dice.

The target player makes Saves modified by the weapon’s AP. We have space here for Invulnerable Saves and non-weapon modifiers. All Saves are made at once, not this time wasting assign to a model and roll one at a time.

I'm afraid you've lost me here. Does this imply that there would be no mechanics that result in attacks from a pool having different AP modifiers? Or that units wouldn't have mixed saves? For instance, a lot of factions (notable eldar on their basic weapons) have mechanics that improve the AP of their weapons on a to-wound roll of 6. Would we have to remove all such mechanics in your system? (If so, fair enough; we're talking about a major overhaul as-is.) And then how does that work against, say, a squad containing a single model with a storm shield? If I'm shooting a bunch of meltagun shots at the squad with the shield, then only a single model in that unit would get any save at all. So if I get 3 successful wounds with my meltagunners, I'm killing as few as 0 and as many as 3 enemy models depending on how many successful saves my opponent's storm shield model makes. But if we don't roll those one-by-one, who's to say whether he failed his first save or passed all 3? Or what if the storm shielder ends up protecting against a mix of AP-1 and AP-3 attacks due to the aforementioned eldar mechanic. Again, this isn't necessarily a deal breaker, but we'd have to have an answer for scenarios like this.

Then we have Damage to reflect overall deadliness of weapons. This continues to be the number of wounds inflicted. I would make a slight shift in that it would have AOS rollover damage except in specific cases.

Hmm. I don't love spillover damage. To my mind, the whole point of having a Damage stat on a weapon is to let some weapons take out more Wounds per shot than others. So a plasma gun can kill an entire marine with a single shot, but a flamer can potentially kill up to 6 models to a plasma gun's 2. With spillover damage, the plasma gun is potentially killing 4 W1 models, and it's doing so with a better strength, AP, and superior benefit from to-wound rerolls than the flamer. Basically, the plasma gun starts stepping on the flamer's toes, eroding the flamer's niche.

At that point, I'd maybe consider ditching the Damage stat entirely. Just add S vs T to the list of factors that go into determining your Attack Dice pool, have your opponent make saves, and do 1 damage to the target unit for each failed save. And then anti-tank guns just have a rule like:

Anti-Tank(X): Add X to your Attack Dice pool when targeting Armored units.

So dedicated anti-tank weapons are still contributing against tanks more than against non-tanks, but you don't introduce the weirdness of marine killer weapons also being unexpectedly good at clearing hordes.

Notably, Anti-Tank weapons would not rollover Damage, but I would assign them more attacks for fixed damage compared to the current rules. So a Lascannon might have 2 attacks for 3 Damage instead of one BS 4+ attack for 1d6 Damage.

I can get behind single shot weapons making more attacks and having less random output. That definitely seems to be the direction GW has been going with the recent books. Although there's still something to be said for a gambler's weapon that has the potential to spike its damage, and some weapons might not "feel right" if you made more than one attack with them.

Wyldhunt wrote:

Kcalehc wrote:You can keep the S and T values, and just use them as an additional modifier to the armour save; just lose the 'to wound' roll.

That sounds promising. How would you have that work exactly?

The 'saving throw' can represent not just the armour of the target, but its toughness too. Something simple like an extra -1 ap for S>T, and -2 ap for S=>2xT, and possibly even +1 Sv for S<T (so a Space Marine is saving Lasgun shots on a 2+, but you're eliminating the to wound roll so its not that much different). Might have to eliminate wounding if T=>2xS, as this would make it too easy to kill vehicles with small arms otherwise.

You would have to of course rejig all the current AP on weapons to account for this. Most weapons would end up as 0AP, with a few harder hitting ones with more, and probably not much even then, -2AP on a multimelta say. Invulns remain unaffected as now.
Could also go complicated with dedicated tables, but I don't think anyone likes that sort of stuff any more.

Taking out the wound roll from the attack sequence removes around 1/4-1/3 of the dice rolling for each attack. Yeah, anyway you do it is going to change the relative effectiveness of weapons compared to now - but its a change that would reduce time spent on dice rolling overall. Not a complete idea, but the nucleus of one.

Wyldhunt wrote:

Hellebore wrote:
There are 5 weapon attack profiles:

Anti Personnel - only affect infantry
Anti Tank - only affect vehicles
Macro Weapon - affect both, remove the first save
Titan Killer - affect both, remove the first 2 saves
Anti Aircraft - only affect aircraft

This is pretty much what one page rules uses.

Oof. Not sure I like the sound of that. I feel like there are a ton of weapons that are good against infantry but still okay against vehicles and vice versa. Plasma as an example.

To expand on what Hellebore said a weapon could have any number of values. For example fire range 45cm Twin Hydra Autocannon and you could choose between AP4+ (anti infantry), AT5+ (Anti tank) and its flak attack was AA5+. In your case plasma guns were range 15cm, AP5+/AT5+

The full system was based around 3 layers of saves. Most units got a basic save (Imperial guard didn't, marines got 4+), tough units got a reinforced armour second save (so for example Terminators had a 4+ save and if that was failed a second 4+ save) and some units got an invulnerable save that could never be removed and was taken after you had failed any other saves. There were no save mods bar being crossfired (very bad unless you were a terminator or warlord titan)), but certain weapon types listed above would stop you taking saves or effects like lance might remove a save, etc.

Some units could get very tough. For example a Terminator unit with Chaplain in a bunker would get a 3+ bunker save, 4+ reinforced armour save and then 6+ invulnerable save (86% chance of passing. And -1 to hit from cover, which considering most infantry weapons hit on a 5+ or 6+ made them quite tough... Ignoring to hit mods from orders (stand still and fire to get +1, rush forward and you are hitting on -1) you could need a lot of firepower to take down a tough target. So for example on average 24 autocannon shots (AT6+) to take down a Leman Russ (4+ followed by 4+ armour save). Though only 9 would on average kill a rhino.

All of that though is too big a departure for 40k.

How I would bring it into the present system is to mark a weapon as anti-infantry or anti-tank, targets as infantry (AP), Light (AP and AT) and Vehicle (AT) and then give the shooting unit -1 to unit the wrong target type. So for example shoot a lascannon at a tank - fine. Shoot a lascannon at an infantryman - -1 to hit.

Wyldhunt wrote:

alextroy wrote:IMHO, right problem but wrong solution. As 9th Edition has moved on, we have gotten closer and closer to the point we can AOS the 40K stats. However it would need a change to better suit the game’s scale. So I say:

Ditch WS and BS. You can modulate those by changing the number of attacks a unit gets. Every attack hits every time. However an Astartes using a Bolger gets more attacks than a Guardsman.

Add in special rules on weapons that reward targeting the right targets or punish targeting the wrong target. Say all Anti-Personnel weapons gain 50% attacks on a unit basis against Infantry but only get 50% attacks against Armored units (new keyword for Tanks, heavily armored Monsters, and the like). Hard to hit targets apply a penalty to the number of attacks.

So we jump straight to S v T when attacking. Attacker takes their attacks against the target of the comparison and makes their rolls. Successful rolls are passed over to the target player.

I'm with you so far. Nice and simple. Boil everything down to Offense and Defense with advantages and disadvantages translated as the raw number of dice.

The target player makes Saves modified by the weapon’s AP. We have space here for Invulnerable Saves and non-weapon modifiers. All Saves are made at once, not this time wasting assign to a model and roll one at a time.

I'm afraid you've lost me here. Does this imply that there would be no mechanics that result in attacks from a pool having different AP modifiers? Or that units wouldn't have mixed saves? For instance, a lot of factions (notable eldar on their basic weapons) have mechanics that improve the AP of their weapons on a to-wound roll of 6. Would we have to remove all such mechanics in your system? (If so, fair enough; we're talking about a major overhaul as-is.) And then how does that work against, say, a squad containing a single model with a storm shield? If I'm shooting a bunch of meltagun shots at the squad with the shield, then only a single model in that unit would get any save at all. So if I get 3 successful wounds with my meltagunners, I'm killing as few as 0 and as many as 3 enemy models depending on how many successful saves my opponent's storm shield model makes. But if we don't roll those one-by-one, who's to say whether he failed his first save or passed all 3? Or what if the storm shielder ends up protecting against a mix of AP-1 and AP-3 attacks due to the aforementioned eldar mechanic. Again, this isn't necessarily a deal breaker, but we'd have to have an answer for scenarios like this.

Not at all. Rules would need to be made. Basically, divide all like successful wounds into wound pools and then roll all those saves together. For units with multiple save values, proportional rolls against the different Saves. So if you have 10 wounds against a 5 model unit with four 3+ saves and one 2+ save (or one 3+ save with a +1 modifier), you would roll 8 of the saves against the 3+ save and 2 against the 2+ save. Damage would then be assigned to the appropriate models.

Then we have Damage to reflect overall deadliness of weapons. This continues to be the number of wounds inflicted. I would make a slight shift in that it would have AOS rollover damage except in specific cases.

Hmm. I don't love spillover damage. To my mind, the whole point of having a Damage stat on a weapon is to let some weapons take out more Wounds per shot than others. So a plasma gun can kill an entire marine with a single shot, but a flamer can potentially kill up to 6 models to a plasma gun's 2. With spillover damage, the plasma gun is potentially killing 4 W1 models, and it's doing so with a better strength, AP, and superior benefit from to-wound rerolls than the flamer. Basically, the plasma gun starts stepping on the flamer's toes, eroding the flamer's niche.

Most 40K weapons don't do damage by hitting you with one shot. They bombard you with lots of shots in an effort to overwhelm your defenses and resilience. The entire class of Rapid Fire weapons work on this principle as do a number of the Assault, Pistol, and Heavy Weapons. There is no reason such weapon's damage shouldn't spill over except as a way to limit their effectiveness against weaker targets. I say begone with that. You just need to account for it in the weapon stats and points. Alternatively, there could be less multi-damage weapons instead saving those for the more anti-tank weapons.

At that point, I'd maybe consider ditching the Damage stat entirely. Just add S vs T to the list of factors that go into determining your Attack Dice pool, have your opponent make saves, and do 1 damage to the target unit for each failed save. And then anti-tank guns just have a rule like:

Anti-Tank(X): Add X to your Attack Dice pool when targeting Armored units.

So dedicated anti-tank weapons are still contributing against tanks more than against non-tanks, but you don't introduce the weirdness of marine killer weapons also being unexpectedly good at clearing hordes.

I fear that would be a point where complexity would get in the way of fast game play. I would also rather avoid too much of the bucket of dice syndrome. Do we really want more 12 attack weapons in the game?

Notably, Anti-Tank weapons would not rollover Damage, but I would assign them more attacks for fixed damage compared to the current rules. So a Lascannon might have 2 attacks for 3 Damage instead of one BS 4+ attack for 1d6 Damage.

I can get behind single shot weapons making more attacks and having less random output. That definitely seems to be the direction GW has been going with the recent books. Although there's still something to be said for a gambler's weapon that has the potential to spike its damage, and some weapons might not "feel right" if you made more than one attack with them.

Does any weapon in 40K really make one attack in the scale of a turn? Only the most one-shot weapons really do that. Even a big gun like a Hammerhead Railgun doesn't make 5 hots over the course of a game. The question becomes how many attacks best represents it's effectiveness in games without becoming a gamblers weapons. We all know those quickly fall out of favor with players.

The scale of a turn is not even remotely defined.
I must be pretty long given that you're running halfway across the board. But also very brief, as many weapons only fire a single shot.

alextroy wrote:

Hmm. I don't love spillover damage. To my mind, the whole point of having a Damage stat on a weapon is to let some weapons take out more Wounds per shot than others. So a plasma gun can kill an entire marine with a single shot, but a flamer can potentially kill up to 6 models to a plasma gun's 2. With spillover damage, the plasma gun is potentially killing 4 W1 models, and it's doing so with a better strength, AP, and superior benefit from to-wound rerolls than the flamer. Basically, the plasma gun starts stepping on the flamer's toes, eroding the flamer's niche.

Most 40K weapons don't do damage by hitting you with one shot. They bombard you with lots of shots in an effort to overwhelm your defenses and resilience. The entire class of Rapid Fire weapons work on this principle as do a number of the Assault, Pistol, and Heavy Weapons. There is no reason such weapon's damage shouldn't spill over except as a way to limit their effectiveness against weaker targets. I say begone with that.

Oh sure. I'm definitely not one of those people that insists an Assault 3 weapon must shoot exactly 3 bullets or whatever. But I do still feel there might be value in indicating that some weapons, regardless of their Damage stat, are better at taking down especially hardy or numerous targets. The gun that kills hardy targets shouldn't, to my mind, necessarily be the same gun that kills the numerous target. So an eldar Scatter Laser (s6, Heavy 6, AP0, D1) is kind of in the same slot as a star cannon (iirc S7, Heavy 2, AP-3, D2). Ideally, I'd like one of those guns to feel like it's good at mowing down hordes while the other isn't great against hordes but is great at taking out heavy infantry.

If we aren't making weapons feel different in that regard, then I'd kind of prefer to just go so abstract that we cut out even more complexity; just reduce it down to a "Killyness" roll vs a "Defense" roll. Which I don't mean to present as a bad thing. If you're playing large enough games that the zoomed in rpg type distinctions are more of a burden than a source of entertainment, then making the game faster and simpler through such an abstraction might have merit. Although at that point we may as well just play Apoc'.

Alternatively, there could be less multi-damage weapons instead saving those for the more anti-tank weapons.

Hmm. Maybe. I still kind of want my tau breachers and Thousand Sons inferno bolters to feel more powerful against marines than against termagaunts, but I'm sure your approach could produce solid results.

I fear that would be a point where complexity would get in the way of fast game play. I would also rather avoid too much of the bucket of dice syndrome. Do we really want more 12 attack weapons in the game?

Valid point.

Only the most one-shot weapons really do that. Even a big gun like a Hammerhead Railgun doesn't make 5 hots over the course of a game. The question becomes how many attacks best represents it's effectiveness in games without becoming a gamblers weapons. We all know those quickly fall out of favor with players.

You're not wrong, but I still feel like there's something to be said for the visceral feeling that comes with rolling a single die for a really potent attack. That's part of the reason I shied away from Star Cannons even when they were considered optimal; the nickel and dime damage, though reliable, just didn't feel as satisfying as a single, high-damage bright lance attack.

kirotheavenger wrote:The scale of a turn is not even remotely defined.
I must be pretty long given that you're running halfway across the board. But also very brief, as many weapons only fire a single shot.

I've always figured it was about 6-10 seconds per round. That's mostly just because a D&D round supposedly takes 6 seconds and partly because that's about how long I feel like the movie version of the fight would take to convey the points of interest for a round of battle. A few seconds of player 1 getting off their opening attacks. A couple seconds of the enemy's general response. A couple seconds of cool points of interest. Then move on to the next round.

Every 40K game is a set piece battle. They must last for 10-20 minutes of screen time. Based on that, a battle round is 2-4 minutes

That being said, the merit of each hit can only damage 1 model versus roll-over damage is an interesting discussion. I think there is space for both within a system. Meltaguns tend to obliterate one target (unless you can get a bunch of guardsmen to line up so that you can shoot through them in one shot) while many weapons are much closer to the spray and pray category of combat. This doesn't even take into account close combat, where a skilled opponent with a dangerous weapon can work through opponents at a terrifying rate.

Why not just use the MESBG system? Remove AP and Saves. You just have Strength vs Defence. So a guardsman would have defence 4, (3 for a basic human, +1 for armour) and a marine would have defence 6, (4 for enhanced human, +2 for heavy armour).

It would be so simple and fast. You'd have to consolidate all silly variant weapons but that's just a good thing IMO. I don't understand what GW is trying to do with 40k. You´re supposed to use huge armies but the rules are fiddlier than most skirmish games.

This is the basic idea of the damage mechanics behind Warlord's entire catalog. If you want to see this system in action Gates of Antares would be a good thing to take a look at.

In practice if you tried to implement this in 40k you'd need to constrain a lot of stats and a lot of weapons that currently have unique names wouldn't get to have different stats anymore, and 40k players tend to lose their gak when you tell them that "yeah, under this system a boltgun, a shoota, a shuriken catapult, a gauss flayer, and a pulse carbine have the same hitting power..."

Or as the Dakka Dakka Wags would say, "you're blandifying my game with these unified stats".

GW might be at overkill on making weapons different, but single roll S v D is a long way from current 40K.

 alextroy wrote:
Or as the Dakka Dakka Wags would say, "you're blandifying my game with these unified stats".

GW might be at overkill on making weapons different, but single roll S v D is a long way from current 40K.

I feel like the complaints of "blandification" are largely a matter of presentation. People seem to have generally approved of the streamlined anti-infantry/anti-armor profiles used in Apoc, but Apoc is very clear that's it's meant for larger scale games and that the simplified offense is there to support a "zoomed out" style of play. Whereas standard 40k is still in that awkward position where it has lots of ur dudez/customization elements (warlord traits, exarch powers, individual model gear upgrades), but 2,000 point games are also large enough to make that level of minutia a bit of a slog. So it's less clear what the "appropriate" amount of differentiation between various weapons is.

In a 1,000 point game (not uncommon around here), it's nice to feel like my faction's gear is different from the other faction's gear. In a 2,000 point game, I'd probably be okay with lumping a bunch of weapons into a single "small arms" profile.

Wyldhunt wrote:

 alextroy wrote:
Or as the Dakka Dakka Wags would say, "you're blandifying my game with these unified stats".

GW might be at overkill on making weapons different, but single roll S v D is a long way from current 40K.

I feel like the complaints of "blandification" are largely a matter of presentation. People seem to have generally approved of the streamlined anti-infantry/anti-armor profiles used in Apoc, but Apoc is very clear that's it's meant for larger scale games and that the simplified offense is there to support a "zoomed out" style of play. Whereas standard 40k is still in that awkward position where it has lots of ur dudez/customization elements (warlord traits, exarch powers, individual model gear upgrades), but 2,000 point games are also large enough to make that level of minutia a bit of a slog. So it's less clear what the "appropriate" amount of differentiation between various weapons is.

In a 1,000 point game (not uncommon around here), it's nice to feel like my faction's gear is different from the other faction's gear. In a 2,000 point game, I'd probably be okay with lumping a bunch of weapons into a single "small arms" profile.

So, it could even be 3 ways to play. A Standard ruleset, that's mostly focused on the 1500-2000pt game size range, a Skirmish set, more detailed but designed for 500-750pt engagements, and an Apocalypse set for the 2500 and above - each balanced to achieve a roughly 2-3hr experience. You can use, of course, each set of rules for battles bigger or smaller, but the time taken would vary.
But that might be too much to lump into one system - they really should have kept the Apocalypse thing going, feels like it just was here for a couple moths then disappeared again.