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A sniper hits an AM officer, even rolls a 6 to Wound... and yet the Officer can keep running around and shouting orders unimpeded despite suffering something like a headshot, or at least a critical injury that would have killed an ordinary human twice over? That level of immersion is also important IMO.

Just to confirm, you understand that from my (and I think Smudge's) point of view, the officer didn't actually get shot, right? The to-hit/wound/etc. rolls that caused him to lose a wound were an abstraction reflective of a sniper trying to kill him and basically causing his luck/options to run thin.

Regarding your miscellaneous changes, I'm probably onboard with most of this. I like models with higher WS being harder to stab to death. Restricting wound allocation to a 3" range might get a little weird if you're also reintroducing the idea of attaching characters to units. Modern 40k is set up in such a way that you generally only have a single injured model in each unit to track. Not sure if this change would actually break anything though. Can't think of any huge implications off the top of my head.

The statlines you've presented are the part that I'd be worried about. A few disorganized thoughts:
* To confirm, does this unit as a whole benefit from Look Out Sir? Like, can my chosen/lord unit be targeted if they're standing behind a horde of cultists?

* If the chosen/lord *can* be targeted, then they're in pretty much the position I worried about in my previous posts. I can kill 10 wounds worth of marines. I do it all the time. Paying 50-70 points for a lord and extra points per chosen over a normal marine or a bunch of cultists actually just makes them less of an asset overall. They maybe even start slipping into active liability territory where you'd rather just not take a lord at all rather than wasting points trying and failing to keep his unit alive and deliver them into combat. If I was forced to field a lord, I'd probably spend as few points on his unit as possible and have them cower behind a building all game. Giving the last 2 wounds in the squad FNP doesn't change that for me. (Although I like the vibe of the god-specific mechanics you've proposed.)

* If the chosen/lord unit as a whole benefit from LoSir, you might be onto something. You essentially end up turning your lord into a 10W unit that loses offense as it loses wounds. Sort of like a vehicle/monster with each model in the squad representing a damage bracket. You'd have to be careful not to make such units too killy though. Imagine a squad of bladeguard or incubi or whatever that can't be shot at until you've cleared the 40-60 wounds worth of cultists/wracks/intercessors in front of them.

* At the risk of getting into the weeds, the Lord of Chaos rule as written would allow the aura to come from the entire chosen unit meaning the aura is quite large. I'd worry about large auras like this encouraging players to go back to bubbled-up armies that we've finally moved away from.

* It seems like formatting retinues in this way would be pretty limiting. I want to have the option to have my chaos lord hang out with cultists or bikers or warp talons or raptors or possessed or terminators or havocs as well as chosen. But it would be pretty unwieldy to have to make a retinue version of each of those datasheets. Similarly, I don't want to be forced to field chosen just because I want to field a lord.

But if the unit a character is attached to *does* gain LoSir, I'd worry about creating abusable untargetable units. Like, you probably don't want a custodes bike captain to make a retinue of bikestodes untargetable. But if the unit a character is attached to *doesn't* gain LoSir, then see above about it being pretty eays to kill 10 wounds worth of marines.

If you want characters harder to stab to death, you need to introduce WS modifiers on HQ/melee oriented units without hard caps on modifiers (which to be fair I don't believe in modifiers caps when we already have the rule of 6s always hit. Rules like the new melee Custodes dude where he can only hit on a 4+ is fething dumb as feth since it doesn't affect units it needs to. A -1 or -2 penalty to hit him in melee is a different story.

Wyldhunt wrote:

A sniper hits an AM officer, even rolls a 6 to Wound... and yet the Officer can keep running around and shouting orders unimpeded despite suffering something like a headshot, or at least a critical injury that would have killed an ordinary human twice over? That level of immersion is also important IMO.

Just to confirm, you understand that from my (and I think Smudge's) point of view, the officer didn't actually get shot, right? The to-hit/wound/etc. rolls that caused him to lose a wound were an abstraction reflective of a sniper trying to kill him and basically causing his luck/options to run thin.

I do understand that that's your/their perception of Wounds, but I haven't seen any evidence yet for that being the intent (rather than just a character being tougher and shrugging off injuries because they're a character). The core rules state that Wounds represent "damage sustained". Maybe I am being too literal, but to me that strongly implies tangible physical damage. Either way, I probably should've framed the above paragraph differently.

Wyldhunt wrote:
Regarding your miscellaneous changes, I'm probably onboard with most of this. I like models with higher WS being harder to stab to to death. Restricting wound allocation to a 3" range might get a little weird if you're also reintroducing the idea of attaching characters to units. Modern 40k is set up in such a way that you generally only have a single injured model in each unit to track. Not sure if this change would actually break anything though. Can't think of any huge implications off the top of my head.

I remember there being to-hit charts when I used to play in 4th/5th, but they were less intuitive than the current chart. Now they finally have a good chart they've decided to abandon comparative WS.

The 3" range thing (same range as a heroic intervention) would mean that the proverbial power sword sergeant couldn't engage the Lord unless he was in proximity, and being in proximity would make the sergeant more vulnerable than they would have been otherwise. If the character came with a retinue, each would essentially be protected by a 'bubble of mooks' that could absorb wounds. It was the best I could come up with on the spot (but yep, if you're dealing with multi-wound models it could result in some wound allocation issues). Maybe a sub-rule that specifies if you've taken enough wounds to remove a specific model statline from the unit, you always do so?

The alternative was something like allowing characters to allocate hits, or allowing the attacking player to allocate every 2nd hit, which seemed like stranger/wilder changes.

Wyldhunt wrote:
* To confirm, does this unit as a whole benefit from Look Out Sir?

That was the intent, yeah. Although at full-strength they would possess more than 9 Wounds between them, which might raise some interesting questions.

Wyldhunt wrote:
* If the chosen/lord unit as a whole benefit from LoSir, you might be onto something. You essentially end up turning your lord into a 10W unit that loses offense as it loses wounds. Sort of like a vehicle/monster with each model in the squad representing a damage bracket. You'd have to be careful not to make such units too killy though. Imagine a squad of bladeguard or incubi or whatever that can't be shot at until you've cleared the 40-60 wounds worth of cultists/wracks/intercessors in front of them.

Yep, so you can more reliably whittle the unit down in chunks.

At first I went with 2 retinue-members max for the reason you described. A unit like that would probably require a decent number of point to totally screen it though, and at the end of the day... that unit making it across the battlefield as others fall around it just plays into that heroic/cinematic aspect you and Smudge wanted to maintain, right?

Space Marine makes me wonder if a retinue of 2 (for Chaos Lords/Astartes commanders anyway) might be the right/coolest number.

Wyldhunt wrote:
* At the risk of getting into the weeds, the Lord of Chaos rule as written would allow the aura to come from the entire chosen unit meaning the aura is quite large. I'd worry about large auras like this encouraging players to go back to bubbled-up armies that we've finally moved away from.

I did knowingly leave that in, but easy enough to change.

Wyldhunt wrote:
* It seems like formatting retinues in this way would be pretty limiting. I want to have the option to have my chaos lord hang out with cultists or bikers or warp talons or raptors or possessed or terminators or havocs as well as chosen. But it would be pretty unwieldy to have to make a retinue version of each of those datasheets. Similarly, I don't want to be forced to field chosen just because I want to field a lord.

Yeah. I was thinking especially that other elites (e.g. Khorne Beserkers, Deathguard, Terminators for a Lord in terminator armour, etc) would be interesting retinue options, but yeah, the datasheet above was just an example.

Technically the Lord could still hang around with whoever he wanted. The only thing that would change is that he might have a few other models in coherency wherever he goes.

I think there might be something there. I don't think I'm necessarily convinced to lower character wounds because I don't see the same problem you do with treating damage as an abstraction, but I *do* kind of like the idea of making a character's retinue harder to target while screened. Seems like that could add value to things like nobz and boyz, the latter being able to screen for the former. And having a squad of chosen go relatively unscathed while their minions take the brunt of the enemy attack does seem pretty cinematic (and generally the opposite of how that works on the tabletop given that players tend to prioritize more valuable targets first).

So basically, I could probably be convinced to lower character wounds not because I have a problem with commissars surviving bolter attacks, but because I like the idea of screenable retinues and the characters having a bunch of wounds on top of the wounds of their retinue might be a bit much.

I find it interesting that you support the idea of screenable retinues though, spoon. To me, the enemy failing to target the squad of blinged out elites is a more obvious form of plot armor than simply hand waiving damage as an abstraction. The latter can be interpreted as a near-miss or damaged armor while the former implies that my dark reapers see the enemy meganobz but decide not to shoot at them with armor-piercing anti-tank rounds while there are smaller, less armored orks nearby.

Well I interpret character screening as 'this character is occluded from sight, indistinguishable from others nearby or otherwise untargetable due to the chaos of battle'. It makes more sense to me than Wounds as plot armour, especially when viewing them somewhat literally.

Not that the current screening system is perfect ofc.

FWIW, I think some of the issue here is the long standing cultural issue of treating all battlefield casualties as deaths. In most situations, a wounded soldier is removed from battle, even if they're not necessarily killed. On the flip side, the classic heroic trope is to continue fighting wounded. The commander who dies standing because he doesn't want his troops to know he's been hit or the guy who keeps fighting despite the arrow in his knee.

It''s just plot/luck represented in a streamlined way.

you could have a marine captain with W1 and Luck (5), which gives him the ability to ignore 5 wounds receives in the game.

But it works the same as having W6.